Um ... well ... er ... no comment on the length.
That statement just didn't jive with any of the defintions I found.
I was just looking through definitions of the word
run, just for the hell of it. There's a couple in there that I'm not used to (e.g. a stream), and one or perhaps two that I don't see there. It happens.
My point was that Humanists using the label religion was innappropriate under the standard or most common defintion that requires a deity.
Very few Humanists do label themselves as part of a Humanist religion.
But you're also looking at one of the reasons why I generally say I have no specific religion. I carry a conception of what the word "God" means, and I do find it funny that so many people have a problem with that definition. I also find it a little sickening, because people seem so bent on division that even the atheists have trouble dealing with this notion of the word "God", as I would hope is evidenced at least by recent debates at Sciforums. I mean, I understand when a Christian tells me that God must be this or that. I don't get it when an atheist does.
We may all have a beef with Christians, but there are other offending religions. Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism all have questionable practices and beliefs.
Yo,
Teg: you seemed to have a problem earlier in this topic that is starting to bug me. Remember, you said "theists", so I went on to discuss broader theism and you asked me what it had to do with a topic about Christianity?
Well?
Why are you so bent on extending your criticisms to other religions in this topic about Christianity when you were so confused about the presence of those ideas in the topic?
Start your own topic about the problems of Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism if you want.
It's getting a little irritating watching you so desperately trying to open this topic up so you can hold all theistic ideas--even those you don't understand and those you don't know exist--accountable for your frustrations with Christianity.
Puritans and Muslims: covering of body for religious reasons, unnatural level of shame. Too many to list: fasting, attendence of mandatory gathering, tithing, reliance on a single book. Hacidic Jews: having sex througha hole in a sheet. Practice of multiple marriages: Islam and Mormon (remove the second "m" for a better description).
Wow ... you seriously need to start dealing with more intelligent people. Your conception of religion is quite stained by such theists.
I mean, also included in those religions is allegedly human kindness. I agree that what you've listed is pretty silly for religions, but we see a problem with people taking things too literally (e.g. hole in the sheet). I can't always tell you the original meaning of the idea, such as the hole in the sheet, because I haven't done that psychohistorical research. However, from Aziz Al-Akbari,
Converstions With a Sufi Master:
Can you tell, from a letter, the next steps that a student should be taking, or the things which are holding that student up in spiritual progress?
Certainly, you can tell. The vast majority of letters are not concerned with spiritual things at all. They are generally full of opinions, assumptions and decisions which show clearly that the writer is seeking spirituality within a much lower-level context.
Could you be specific on this?
Yes. Take this letter. The writer has decided to live a "simpl elife"; has adopted all kinds of prayers and techniques, and writes to ask what should be added to all this to complete, as it were, his religious progress.
This means that people choose certain ideas and practices and then want to add these, without realising that the very bases of their thinking may be at fault?
Precisely. This is very clear when you have a "crank" letter, because you and I are perhaps agreed that obviously stupid procedures are not spiritual. But when people are invoking practices and ideas which are generally considered pious or good in themselves, the blocking function of the obsession, or what we could call the idolatrous effect of over-valuing symbols or instruments, is not immediately apparent. To revert to your original question, anyone could immediately see what is holding up the student if it were only generally realised that secondary things: mere totems, useless conceptions, forms of amusement, are not in any sense spiritual. It is because of this insistence that secondary things are not primary that Sufis have been execrated by literalists.
An example of the problem?
The great woman Sufi, Rabia, carrying a lamp, saying that she wanted to "Burn the Kaa'ba (holiest place of Islam) if it stood in the way of the worshipper's way to God".
So secondary considerations become primary. How does this condition come about, in the first place?
Two tendencies,sometimes working together, cause this situation. The first is that all people have a yearning towards the Divine, as you may have read in Rumi's writings. This causes people to adopt anything that they imagine to be divine or of divine origin. They have forgotten that yearning alone is not enough. The second is that many people register, within them, the divine origin or connexion of certain ideas or practices. This leads them to suppose that these thoughts or actions must necessarily apply to them, or to everyone, or to all times. THey have mistaken the container, with its "scent of former content of musk", with "the musk itself".
But how can it be true that anything in the world is of Divine connexion? Surely such things are of a totally "other" nature?
On the contrary; because of the principle "Al-mujazu qantarat al-Haqiqa" ("The Apparent is the Bridge to the Real) there are many things which conduct to the Real. This, indeed, is the purpose of the presence of the Sufi teacher and the nature of his work. It is the distinguishing of irrelevance from relevance which marks the Sufi enterprise.
So the apparently divergent projections of various Sufi groups and "orders" mark the difference between different people and times, stressing what activities are relevant at what times, to guide people to the Truth?
That is so. Equally, of course, this knowledge gives you the opportunity to discern, in so many self-styled "Sufi" people and groups, the unfortunately imitative nature of their activities and ideas. They do not, of course, belong to the spiritual world, but to some kind of circus.
Would you call this kind of imitative person or grouping a false one?
I would prefer to call itt "useless for spiritual purposes". "False" may seem to some people to imply deliberate deception; whereas the falsity here often comes about because of sheer lack of information.
Does this remark connect with Idries Shah's statement that "there are even more false disciples than there are false teachers"?
Certainly. The fact, is of course, that where there is a demand from "learners" for something which is offered by "teachers" there is always an abundance of "teachers" and "learners" who are not in fact carrying on any real teaching or learning activity. This happens in all human communities.
Surely this means that there are two sorts of "spiritual" activity: one which is only emotional and the other which is real? If this is so, it seems that people wil feel that you are claiming everyone other than you to be wrong?
There are, indeed, two sorts; there may even be more than two. But it is not we, but the facts which indicate the existence of the two. Think of an analogy: suppose people performed fertility dances to ensure good crops and someone came along and said that fertility was not produced by dancing and also that something entirely different was responsible for good crops. Would you not then find many people who would think that this new suggestion was unacceptable and that the newcomer was claiming all kinds of qualities for himself or herself which were not inherent in in the statement of fact?
So you are not going so far as to say that the proferring of this information entitles you to any special consideration or ascendancy for you or your personal or group organization?
You are, I fear, confusing ascendancy of leadership--the socio-emotional activity, with function. This is best illustrated by using another analogy. Supposing I and perhaps my organization were to come into a community where art or arithmetic were unknown or even faultily known. We could demonstrate these things, quite aside from any activity which also claimed to be the same or which claimed importance or ascendancy. People would then be able to study with us and there would be no need for leadership or ascendancy. What we demonstrated and contributed would be perceived and employed, and its function would be understood to be educational or operational. This, indeed, is the essential distinction between something learnt to be employed and something experienced to be enjoyed.
But should one not enjoy something which is employed? And why should people always learn things to be employed?
There is no reason why something which is employed should not be enjoyed. What is ineffective is when something is enjoyed and thought to be something more than, or other than, that which is enjoyed. Further, there is no reason why people should always learn things which have to be employed. The point is that there are things to be employed, and people should be allowed to know which are employable so that they may benefit from this employment.
What, then, is the real character of people who claim, or for whom it is claimed, that they are the greatest or most important exponent or representative of spirituality?
This is two questions. Taking them in order, the supposed Sufi who says or implies that he is supreme is no Sufi at all. As for the second question, people for whom things are claimed by others cannot be ranked or described by character, since the description originates with others, and the claiming describes others, not the person being described.
How does one know whether a teacher or an organisation is fully authoritative?
It is not a matter of describing how one knows, as this cannot be described. It is a matter of stating that people always know.
Then why do they follow spurious or ineffective people and cults?
For the same reason that people buy false bargains offered by deceivers. The reason is that they know, inwardly, that the offer is false. Their own inner falsity answers, and they find their affinity.
But does this not mean that you are saying that nobdoy can be trapped by false things as every trapped person is himself dishonest?
No, it does not mean this at all.
Then what can it possibly mean?
Not only does it not mean what you imagine, but it demonstrably meanst that there is a true part and a false part to everyone. Whoever extends the false part will perceive through his or her own falsity, and will be able to perceive only the false.
How are people to extend the real part of themselves to the Real?
Those who do not have to ask, can do it. Those who do have to ask, are given instructions on the methods to overcome their own falsity by the Sufi School itself. Many people, of course, can learn this apart from through a Sufi school.
But how does anyone know when he or she can profit from contact with a Sufi School?
It is not a matter of "how" since there is no "how" which can be spoken in words. But the perception comes through that part of one which looks at one's own falsity. People are always trying to find sincerity. They should give equal attention to the perception of falsity, so that they may instantly shun it.
• Al-Akbari, Aziza. "Conversations with a Sufi Master". From
Sufi Thought and Action. Idries Shah, ed. London: Octagon, 1990. pp. 267-271
• It is a rule of mine to never copy an article in its entirety unless I can link you to it on the web; usually, I only ever reproduce web news articles in full. However, I have violated this rule, violated copyright laws blatantly, and, in the words of David Bowie:
I did it all for you. I can only hope that the disservice I have done to the author is outweighed by the service such a reproduction can accomplish in the long run.
• I have chosen not to footnote the passage at all because I would rather leave it to you in order to let your purest reactions be present. How you read this article speaks much toward certain things. I'm more curious in seeing how things come up.
• I will, however, offer one contextual clarification because I'm not going to spend multiple posts undoing the damage it can cause if your objections ignore the idea. Adilbai
Kharkovli notes:
(T)he Sufis are operating in the field of religion which means that they are committed to a belief in a meaning for human life, the existence of a divine power, and a transmission of the knowledge of that meaning, that power and certain opportunities for mankind. This is a contextual note that I feel it necessary to remind people of because, frankly, it makes understanding what they mean by "progress" a little less confusing to those predisposed to assign attributes of one ideology to another.
Furthermore, the Armstrong citation in my prior post speaks directly of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: I think, quite clearly, she is describing a body of religion that has transcended the silliness you've mentioned.
There are religions that I am not including. To be sure there are religions without such weird practices
Which is why I'm hammering on your use of "theist". Furthermore, I have not gone so far as to perceive your use of the words
ignorant and
theist as synonymous, despite what appears to be an effort to do so on your part. I'm happy to deal with issues of ignorance, and I'm happy to deal with issues of theism. But the two are not the same in the sense that
ignorant people have much in common with other differently-grouped ignorant people. I'm perfectly happy to read that idea in terms of almost any paradigm. Watch what people do with Nietzsche, or with "Anarchism", or with "Marxism".
In that sense, I'm happy to accept the idea that ignorant people have much in common with other differently-grouped ignorant people.
We are, all of us, ignorant of certain things in the Universe. It's how we choose to approach them that counts. Most Christians, for instance, use God as a bulwark against the perception of ignorance. While God represents the sum of the mystery in the Universe (e.g. that of which we are ignorant in the Universe), it is demonstrably easier to superstitiously hold up that ignorance as an authority than it is to engage that ignorance and resolve it with knowledge. Such is my personal complaint about the nature of Christianity, for instance. To "know God" should mean to attempt to know as much of what "God" represents as possible. For those suffering from distraction as a result of accreted religious dogma, knowing God ceases to be about learning what is hitherto unknown, and becomes the obedience play we're all so familiar with.
Look back at the Armstrong quote:
Other rabbis, priests, and Sufis would have taken me to task for assuming that God was--in any sense--a reality "out there"; they would have warned me not to expect to experience him as an objective fact that could be discovered byt the ordinary process of rational thought. They would have told me that in an important sense God was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music that I found so inspiring. A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist--and yet that "he" was the most important reality in the world.
Quite obviously, she is discussing a group of people that operates outside the narrow confines you describe. We might look at this, so to speak, in terms of esoterica. Why, for instance, do these people (for the sake of argument) "get it" while the clear majority of people do not appear to understand?
This can have profoundly negative implications. For instance, what is the use of the ideological system if the majority of the people cannot understand it?
This is an unfortunate condition of reality, so to speak. People are far too busy selling cars, freaking out over the news, and so forth to consider such ideas on a regular basis. The rest of the living experience often demands an immediate regard toward reality, such that abstractions are left for special or rare occasions.
However, when the budget comes up in the US, listen to the debate. Not a single legislator knows the entirety of what is contained in that budget. A budget is good or bad based solely on very narrow issues: abortion, defense, and so forth. Nobody is capable of taking the whole of its data and putting it into a context that explains its full relationship to the American people who will actually put the money down.
Or watch the news, and how people react to certain crimes. I'm always a fan of presumption toward murderers. It's beyond amusing; it's sickening. Psychopaths are psychopaths are psychopaths, and we do need to protect ourselves from them. But the shock people show--oh, the horror--is a little ridiculous. I well understand that some people, for various reasons of conditioning or biological necessity, are unable to recognize certain standards of conduct. It doesn't make them terrible people
per se, but people equate the danger with some inner hatred. While it's true that the psychopathic killer is definitely operating according to a different scale of values, the hatred people assign to the psychopath's perspective is purely speculative, and only serves to reinforce the "good" people's sense of morality. Of the majority of people, it seems that nobody particularly cares to understand the whys and hows of the psychopathic killer, despite the fact that such information might provide us an opportunity to save people's lives by understanding the certain common links between psychopathic killers. I'll even give an example of this process, with something less than Ted Bundy as the example:
• When I was in college, my girlfriend had a thing for talk television. I still remember the last time I willingly watched
Oprah. It was a show about a tragedy. Young people, out on a date, and for some reason the 17 year-old boyfriend murdered his girlfriend. Oprah invited him to appear on her show via satellite from prison. She asked him specifically what he's been up to in prison, and included in his response was that psychiatrists had been spending time with him. Oprah asked him specifically what for and what the psychiatrists said. He pointed out that the psychiatrists had diagnosed severe ADD. At which point Oprah exploded. How could he make such excuses for his crime? What kind of animal was he? Yadda, yadda, yadda and all I wanted to know was at what point the killer had made any excuses for his crime. He never held ADD up as an excuse; in fact, Oprah cut him off mid-sentence, so that if he was going to, he didn't have time. The audience gets all excited, cheering Oprah's holy rage. Nobody wanted an answer. The assignation of morality was such that people could not fathom his situation. Therefore, by their own morals, he was a deliberately horrible person despite the fact that nobody--killer included--understood fully why the crime had happened. People rushed to judgment, and chose to forego any opportunity to obtain new information.
And while I would speculate that 90% or more of the audience was religious, I can also say that in my own life, I observe similar processes among atheists. It's what I mean when I say it's a human problem; that it is not restricted merely to theistic or religious thought.
Rather than condemning the person outright, we can learn more if we try to understand the values involved in the crime. By doing so, we can undermine the perceived legitimacy (according to the criminal) of said values.
In this sense, such outrage as people tend to show is useless, selfish, and possibly even damaging.
I cannot attack a relgion with five members for the reason that it is too obscure.
My big question though is whether these religions you are not including are theistic? You seem to have some difficulty with the idea of a non-theistic religion, but if those are the religions you're not including, well, that's one thing. Nonetheless, I cannot believe the effort you're putting into transferring the problems of Christianity to the whole of theism. It's rather sad, as it undermines any sense that you know what you're talking about.
I am only for the purposes of this discussion talking about the practices of religion in general. They go to a building every week. They listen to some guy repeat the same stupid stories every week. Then they go back about their lives as if nothing had happened.
Well, that hardly constitutes all of theism, does it? Again, this is one of the reasons why I generally say I have no specific religion. Consider some terms:
• God
• Myth
• Religion
• Theism
Are they really synonymous?
They aren't so much religious as they are simply wanting insurance of going to the positive afterlife.
Ah,
redemptive religion. A little narrower a term than
theism, eh?
I would wager that not many of them even believe or listen to the crap issuing forth from the podium. They only go out of obligation and fear.
Such is a problem with redemptionists, I agree.
They make it easy for me to attack them. Complacency and faith are often the same.
Attacking is your own prerogative. Are there any other words you'd like to make synonymous for this debate, though?
How do you treat your family and friends? Do you ever have faith in them? Would you let someone speak ill of them, condemn them verbally, call them bad people, even if what that person is criticizing happens to be true? Or do you maintain your faith in your family and friends? Is it mere complacency?
That was my point. They all have different gods.
Then why lump them together? Make it easier to attack? Make a big enough target and maybe you can hit the broad side of a barn at point-blank?
They can't all be right. Every one of them has a god, though. If even one is right the others are making stuff up.
Correct. That's why I pursue essential definitions and concepts in religion. If the religious phenomenon can be understood, its detriment can be alleviated or eliminated.
What if I'm right though? That means they are all making crap up
It's entirely possible, but you seem to be focusing on the issue as if it's fully intentional.
And why not considering that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are all based on some guy called a prophet hearing words from a deity.
Yes, but do you really think that any of those religions are looking at the core of what was said? There are, among Abramic monotheists, some who do, indeed, search for that "prophetic" core. Once again, consider the passage from Armstrong, especially the portion that has been presented a second time.
We have another word besides prophet to describe these people now: schizophrenic.
Quite narrow, indeed. What, the prophet couldn't have had good hashish or mushrooms? Don't read your kids fairy-tales or fables, or even children's stories. After all, trains and animals and trees don't talk.
Shel Silverstein's
Giving Tree? Too bad it apparently has no value since trees don't talk.
Much religion is like a mental illness, so I'm not going to chide you for that. But schizophrenia is a narrow range of possibilities.
In the meantime, your apparent compassion toward mental illness is such that I hope you never have occasion to counsel someone regarding issues of the psyche.
If it's a mental illness, why attack the ill? Why not
help them?
Visiting church religiously can mean once a week. I shower more frequently than that. I practice this once a day.
Try answering the question next time,
Teg.
What was the point of that response? No, don't bother telling me. I'd much rather you tried answering the question.
I have no fault with dictionary defintions of any of that. I tend to go with the first as it is most common. After that one, who knows.
Which makes all other definitions illegitimate? What, because you choose a narrow range of definitions, everyone needs to figure out what that is in advance? While I generally place the responsibility for communication on the person attempting to communicate, there is something called
learning,
Teg. For instance, Raithere and I had a disagreement about the meaning of the word
sense, and I gave him sh@t for "prioritizing" definitions. This is what I see you doing here. He and I disagreed about the word "sense", and his rejection came in part because there were definitions with lower ordinal numbers before the one I was using. Yet we see, for instance, the same use of the word
sense as I used in the now already-cited (and, it feels, oft-ignored) Armstrong passage:
It would have saved me a great deal of anxiety to hear--from eminent monotheists in all three faiths--that instead of waiting for God to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself .... They would have told me that in an important sense God was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music that I found so inspiring. It's not so much a lack of comprehension on anyone's part, it seems, but an insistence on restricting the acceptable definitions of words in order to reduce the number of factors at play. It is easier to reject a "sense" of God if we limit that, as such, to direct sensory perception. However, as Raithere and I eventually settled that issue, so do I hope to be able to resolve our present disagreement over definitions. But I find it quite disgusting that one should reject a definition of a word merely because they're not used to using it that way. It creates the impression that one is not prepared to discuss that aspect of something, and therefore wishes to cut it out of consideration. Refusing the definition despite evidence to the contrary seems rather religious to me. And since that refusal stems from a discussion in which the atheistic perspective is essential to that part of the debate, it gives the impression that you're turning atheism into a religion. On the one hand, it keeps me chuckling. To the other, I wonder what the hell the problem is.
I find your comparison to fascists fitting. While Fascists are not neccessarily a religion, they often have religious similarities. They are annoying because they insist on dominating the lives of their followers and making their beliefs known at every instance.
Well, I'm glad we could have that moment of accord. However, what of
integrity? As you've asserted that low membership implies a lack of integrity in the religion, I'm wondering what membership says about the integrity of larger religions? I noticed you didn't address
that point.
That God exists is irrelevant because, and I point you to this passage yet
again:
Other rabbis, priests, and Sufis would have taken me to task for assuming that God was--in any sense--a reality "out there"; they would have warned me not to expect to experience him as an objective fact that could be discovered byt the ordinary process of rational thought. They would have told me that in an important sense God was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music that I found so inspiring. A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist--and yet that "he" was the most important reality in the world.
In other words, it becomes irrelevant because there is little that can be said definitively about God. The mystical assertion that
God is constitutes the whole of what can be said definitively about God. Before you react to that, stop and consider the number of things you might say about God in that response, and ask yourself,
Who says that's true?
So what happens, then, is that the notion of God itself is the table, and is not so much on the table. From there, ideological considerations come into play. To wit: read through the Old Testament where the Hebrews are wandering through the desert. God abhors homosexuality, right? Well, to be quite honest, recreational sex in general--wasting of seed and exposure to disease--got a bad rap during that period. God says? Well, I'm sure that if the Hebrews had invented microscopes and discovered the existence of microbial life, the Bible could have made its case better. In the meantime, it is not my place to ask forgiveness for the Jews for their horrible failure. I mean, what kind of people are they, right? Don't have microscopes ... so ignorant, so ignorant.
If you had no conception of genetics (lacking the equipment to document them) and no conception of microbes (again, lacking equipment to document them) and happened to be a tribal sage looking around at certain things going wrong in your community, how would you explain it? Don't have sex with your sister. But why not? Well, we see a problematic relationship between sleeping with your sister and the offspring produced. No gay sex? It's part of a larger idea about recreational sex: we see a problematic relationship between recreational sex and people getting sick. With no knowledge of genetics or microbes, how exactly do you explain this to the people?
And that's one of the simplest examples I can give.
It would seem that if the deity does not exist the belief has become outmoded.
In the sense that Christians adhere to "church values" because of God, I agree with you.
That seems integral to the belief itself.
When one stumbles across a way of looking at God that is acceptable--ironically, mine comes from the annals of Christianity--it makes it easier then to set aside the argument of whether God exists or not. Christians and, it seems, atheists alike look toward narrow conceptions of God, that it is something, someone, or somehow definable. When you say that God is something, what happens to all that God is not? This is especially relevant in the Abramic monotheistic religions because God is supposed to be definitive and authoritative. However, when God becomes something that cannot be contained or expressed, when God is relegated to the ineffable, it becomes a word that represents a state or condition in the Universe that includes all things, all times, all ideas, and so forth. God is no longer
something that gives orders and so forth. Even John Calvin, who is said to have invented God in his own image, was aware of this, and considered the reduction of the larger sense of God to the Biblical version a kind of
baby-talk.
Are these friends complacent?
In what sense? None of them adhere to any one religion anymore because their studies of those religions have shown that the exclusivity of a major religion like Christianity is untenable. The individual adherent, for instance, can tell me what they experience. For instance, a Christian can tell me what they experience in Christianity. PhD's in theology, degrees in philosophy, and so forth, generally look at a larger picture than any one individual. One of the most basic questions at this level happens to be reasonably represented by the Sufi notion of an "ancient core" of principles or ideas (see
Kharkovli thread referred above). As those who examine religions go through the list, there exist certain common values that humanity in general claims to recognize. Why is murder wrong? What about rape?
The foundation for Justice, for instance, cannot be shown to have an objective root. It is a comparative value and, just like in fables and fairy-tales, one can pull out of the symbols of a religious story the value at play, though the basis of that value is left to the nebulous "God", since it cannot be demonstrated.
Murder is wrong because it's wrong. Period. I can actually demonstrate that if we can accept that life does, indeed have a purpose, and that purpose is perpetuation and progress of the species.
Beyond that, nothing even approaching objectivity can be put as the root of why murder is wrong.
At such a level, studying religion becomes more philosophical than practically religious.
It's what happens when people stop worrying themselves about the pettiness and idiocy of such ideas as we find in Christianity or other redemptive religions, for instance.
Then you just assume a god to exist.
But
how does that god "exist"? Therein lies a very important question. As long as you're willing to lump theologies together, it will be difficult for you to recognize such perspectives as we've seen repeatedly in the Armstrong passage:
A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist--and yet that "he" was the most important reality in the world.
So how does this condition come to be? Quite simply, by dealing within the reality that exists inside the myth. As such, God does not really exist, and the importance of that God comes from the fact that it is such an integral part of the human experience. Why that is, how it is expressed, and what to do about that become essential questions to the continuation of the human endeavor.
Generally a positive assertion requires at least a little proof before adopting it as truth.
And for some people, that proof is empirical and not necessarily something that can be passed on for validation. If the individual observes it .... Well, ask someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens, or who thinks that all the Ufos are extraterrestrial or based on extraterrestrial technology. Ufos and alien-seed theory are fast becoming the new religion. I'm fascinated by the process, watching the classic values of old myths be translated into new myths representing the symbols of the era. Look back in history: angels? Okay, that almost makes sense if we consider that there were no flying craft, and even take into consideration an old painting of Madonna and Child featured in many a TLC/Discovery channels Ufology special which bears a flying, radiating crown in the background. The myth for the times. Cigar-shaped Ufos? Coincided with zeppelin technology. Ever see the classic "Kaiser helmet" photo out of Oregon in the 1950's? Think for a moment of the SR-72 Blackbird. Imagine a test version of the plane with only one tail. Now put it up in the sky at a distance and look straight down the nose of it: you'll see the basis for a "Kaiser helmet" Ufo. There's not much new about the Ufo/EBE mythos, except the accreted forms assigned to various traditional roles in the pageant.
That is only rational thinking, I know. And as I have defined relgion as occurring from an irrational thought process, it seems simple enough to discard all of that mess offhand
Simple enough?
Well, put life into logical terms, according to logical thought processes. There will be among that logical process many irrational presuppositions.
Go for it. Many people talk about logic, but few, if any, want to spell that logic out.
They don't need to prove their belief to me, but they try and fail anyway.
Fair enough. I hope you don't mind if I hold you to the first part of that in the future.
But when does the contemplating end in favor of actual action.
Depends on the standards one sets. To the one hand, nothing is ever definitive, so that if you wait for that, you'll never act. To the other, though, is the observation that people in general at as if things were definitive.
I have on occasion overexcercised my brain to the point of depression.
My sympathies directly; I know the feeling well.
All points lead to some level of suffering in the near future. That is non-productive.
A twofold consideration for the moment:
• Given the inevitability of suffering, and accepting that suffering is bad even in the sense that it is non-productive, the reduction of suffering seems a positive aim. A friend of mine who is a student of Buddhism reminds that warfare is not immoral, as no morals exist, but it is still bad because it is a highly inefficient means of causing change. I can't necessarily argue with that point; I could, but I don't actually see a functional need to.
• Secondly, if suffering is non-productive, what does that mean? Again, from
this topic (already referred):
Without a goal, motion is meaningless. If Portland is your goal you can make progress by driving a mile down the road toward Portland, but if you have no goal, then driving a mile in the direction of Portland or in any other direction is meaningless motion, not progress. That "man sets his own goals" is an evasion, because human goals shift frequently and radically. One may make progress in terms of this or that limited goal, but unless there is a general and final goal, it is not possible to speak of progress overall. (Russell, Jeffrey B.
Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1984.
cf footnote 6, pp. 21-22) In other words, if suffering is non-productive, toward what does productivity aim?
How much of what you know do you truly understand? How much of who you are is dependent upon the path someone else has prescribed you?
Excellent questions. And these are fundamental to the purpose of the religious experience. But, as an American, most of my life, if not all, is dependent upon the paths laid before me by others.
I altered my path in favor of law
An excellent point to examine: From what does law derive, and toward what does it aim? In other words, what is law for and why is that important? Now, you and I can probably agree that George Dubya needs to get the silver foot out of his mouth when he says that we need judges who know that the law is derived from God. However, once we've finished laughing our asses off at Dubya, there still remains the issue of whence comes the law and its authority. I had, actually, long forgotten that comparison, and thank you deeply for reminding me of it.
I spent six years in a lock of depression. I quit life from the end of Elementary School to the end of High School. I quibbled environmental issues, those other two questions.
One of the saddest things I found from my own similar experience is that much of what caused the negative emotions that led to depression was a response to the paths laid before me. I quibbled many issues of history, politic, and humanity during that period. And for every rhetorical defeat I suffered, every conceptual failure I encountered, every ideological dead end I followed, it took from fourth grade until I had already dropped out of college to figure out that such disappointment is part of the active learning process.
I went to those buildings 1/3 of the time and pulled out a 3.83 GPA. That was a failing. Sometimes they would fail me just because I did not attend, even though my papers would have given a B. That too was a failing.
I had teachers who refused to fail me. I don't recall doing any homework aside from research papers and such for about the last two years of high school. My GPA suffered reasonably, but nonetheless, because of the school I was at, my combined mediocre GPA (2.8/4.0) and my mediocre SAT scores (1090 combined) still qualified me somehow as one of the state's top 10% of graduates. Pretty sad testament to the school system, although I did find out when I got to college how odd the public schools were. Students from Oregon's public schools, including a troop of my associates in college who were on various honor rolls, were damn near functionally illiterate. I wrote a bunch of papers for other people during that time; I should have charged money, but they learned more from sitting there watching me work and listening to me lecture them the whole time I wrote than they were learning elsewhere. In the end, after I dropped out, 2/3 of that circle would eventually drop out of school, and the remaining third happened to be the ones I didn't write papers for. Honor roll, my ass. This bunch was illiterate. However, leaving nostalgia behind ....
Consider the esoteric religions. What happens when people take what they think of a religion and make it "fact"? That is, look, for instance, at the number of selfish redemptionists who are visibly "learning-challenged", who discard fact in favor of long-standing religious belief. We can think in terms of the Sufi interview above when we stop to consider that by going forth without guidance they might have lost touch with the process. I was always annoyed at being graded on attendance; it was a disease factor, in a way, as people would haul themselves to class in no condition to be around anyone merely because if they missed five classes they would fail. But on the other hand, as the public lamented declining academic standards, it was apparent to me that professors were grading the papers on the grounds that, well, they were completed and turned in. One could make all sorts of wild assertions and generally not make sense, but if your sentence structure was okay, and your punctuation was accurate, and you met the page, word, and citation requirements, it was good enough. People can earn their degrees with no real guidance about what the information means in general, and merely base their "education" on their own perspective. Think of historical revisionists who refuse conventional history in order to make a political point. What happens, in the religious sense, when someone engages a similar process? Compassion and kindness? What proportion of Christians do you know who keep those ideas close to the center of their experience? Most of my acquaintance show an incredible intolerance of their fellow human being, and seem to get off reminding people of the consequences of not being just like them. Two cents stemming from the ideas of attendance and experience.
That harmonic dissonance has more to do with my nack of finding patterns where none exist and ussually none intended to exist. It is my form of meditation. I would stare at a piece of paper long enough to see the imperfections in the fabric. I would darken the thinner areas until I had an image. I would get faces and jumbled messes of shapes. It is not unlike looking at the stars and clouds for a pattern. We compensate and feel better for it.
I cannot directly comment in the sense of a counterpoint. Although there does exist a sense of analogy if we stop to consider that, someday, we will be able to describe those patterns of imperfection in the paper (or other seemingly random aspects of life) mathematically. However, that risks becoming a huge digression best left for another day, so I'll leave it at that.
I haven't found one that does not fall under these categories
Well, if they were common, religion in general wouldn't be the mess that it is.
Most don't even want to discuss their identity.
So is your described "conversation" from a post or two ago an exceptionally limited sample of your experience with theists? You wrote that it is the same conversation you have with every theist. Should we then conclude that this conversation, despite its consistency, represents a minority experience among the whole of theists of your acquaintance?
The others become to irrate for any logical discussion.
Irate in what way? For instance, we have seen much in recent weeks about disrespect, irate tantrums, and so forth in our discussion boards. I know that some theists, myself included, get really irate when people try to tell us what we think so that they can tell us it's wrong. If they don't care to pay attention to what we think, they ought not be commenting on it in the first place, as such behavior only goes to prove that the idiocy of the Christians this present topic discusses is not limited to Christianity or theism. As to the other, some people might be construed as rude if they choose not to dignify with a response such simplistic and aggressive inquiries as are generally put forth by an atheist who chooses to assign the attributes of one limited version of one deity to all versions of all deities.
Does one go forth to understand what the assertion of God is, or does one go forth asserting what God is in order to debunking it?
I am actually referring to the more sound theists!
On the one hand, see the remarks immediately preceding this section. To the other, I'm wondering if those sound theists you're referring to happen to be among those described by the now oft-referred Armstrong passage?
That was one case. Often they will initiate it like so:
Them: Heres a video about Christ.
Me: I don't want it.
Them: why?
Well, at this point, I'm wondering what specifically about Christ the video is. Propaganda? Of course I don't want it; I'll be impressed the day
new Christian propaganda hits society. Presently it's all quite stale.
Furthermore, I see that you have once again shifted from theism to Christianity directly. I find the attempt to make them so directly synonymous offensive and ill-conceived.
As long as we're dealing with fundamentalist Christianity, it seems to me that I'm right there with you. However, the aggressive extension of those complaints and ideas to include broader theism is, well, rude and described best by terms outside civility.
Think of it this way: I don't like the American pseudo-Capitalism. Neither do the fundamentalist Muslims who like blowing stuff up. When they rant about Americans, they're forgetting about the section of the population that would quickly come to their direct aid if they would just calm the f--k down and stop making their own situation worse. But of those Americans who sympathize with the inequity shown the Muslim world by the West, well, they want to kill us, too. We're not inclined, then, to do much to intervene. In the meantime, we'll focus on those Muslims who aren't trying to blow us up, and try to hold our greedy government responsible for what unnecessary damage is visited upon the peaceful ones.
There are many people out there who spend much time and effort trying to unravel the conundrums of religion for the betterment of humanity. Including them in your rage ... well, if you call them ignorant ....
If atheism is just a disbelief in God, or a lack of belief, or whatever simple definition that could not necessarily be established because even our posting atheists found the dictionary definitions to be lacking, then that's fine. But this high-and-mighty oppositional stance that some people show when they try to lump all of theism together to fit the extremely narrow view of Christianity they oppose is a poor joke, and shows that the rejection of God or religion does little, if anything, to alleviate the conflicts 'twixt people. It establishes that a certain brand of idiocy that many of us do or have in the past related exclusively to religion in various degrees is, in fact, a human problem and not a religious problem.
I have had friendships with theists that lasted two or three years before the discussion of theism comes up.
Are we speaking of theism in general or Christianity specifically? You switch back and forth so much that it's hard to tell which one you're referring to.
It's hard to know if the ones who agree are just placating me
They probably are. Were they more honest, and assuming that they have not been legitimately converted away from their faith by your ever-so-persuasive rhetoric, they would not placate you but try with varying degrees of patience, what the error is. Part of it is lack of information. Quite often, it is difficult to link the concepts together in a way that is relevant to you, or to any other person who might be the target of information exchange. But I tend to think the majority of them will simply be ducking the issue.
Then there was this particular female that confronted my friend and I with a passage from the bible denouncing homosexuality. More often than not actually they intiate.
Well, being that we're back to Christianity, I'm right there with you.
Sometimes I will even forgo the discussion. Some people you know have a certain peace existing in a state of idnorant bliss. Removing them from that might be detrimental to their development.
What's really quite funny about that is that Christ directly disagrees with you (
cf Matthew 25.31-ff). It is bad to leave people in a state of ignorant bliss.
Learning. Understanding. That famous watchword, "Compassion"?
This more has to do with the fact that we don't go looking for them.
Well, I can certainly understand that, especially having lived through Oregon's anti-gay campaigns. But think of it this way: you can keep sending troops to the front line to shoot, kill, and die, or you can send teams deep behind the lines to cut off the enemy's capability to create and equip soldiers. Cut the supply lines, cut the foundation of the operation. Staying out in the skirmish is merely that. Understand their religion better than they do, cut off their ability to push for the usurpation of human equality and respect.
In fact most of those theists you are referring to fight with each other rather than us.
Well, did you forget that to such fundamentalists as the topic allegedly discusses, we, who have less or even no religion, and who do not read according to the fundamentalist mores, are just as much sinners than you? Even worse, according to some? And besides, when dealing with ideas that so directly affect human conduct, ought we not be sure of what we're seeing? Much disagreement might come among the academic theists and philosophers about what something means, but at least they're not holding an end result up as a cause and going forth from that point.
They pick evolution, an idea adopted by the school system. Teachers like any community fall into the same statistics of religious to non. So they fight religious evolutionists.
On the one hand, you seem to be shifting back to the Christians instead of the fundamentalists. To the other hand,
what?
And, sometimes, you
tell, also.
What are your parameters of god? That is of importance. They often go with a vague description. God is love. What does that mean? I can't come up with something that describes my deity that you can't immediatly see through.
In that sense I often wonder about the atheists who got upset because I wouldn't give them a shoebox version of God. It seems atheists have a hard time dealing with ideas that they can't shoot down from the word
go. In other words, it seems atheists have a hard time transcending narrow, nightstand gods as many fundamentalists do.
Technically, it is not my problem if one is so dedicated to an idea of God that they cannot understand another. However, if that one insists that the narrow idea of God to which that one is dedicated is the only acceptable version, and substitutes it in lieu of other ideas of God just to criticize a person as ignorant or to ritually repeat the knocking-off of that miniscule God, well, you shouldn't speak such ill of people. Period. It is rather lacking any intellectual value to do so.
However, insofar as I can tell, the idea that God is love arises from the notion of love and hate. God, in the Abramic monotheistic religions, is supposed to represent what is good. Love is the good side of a generalized dualism.
God is love is a compressed version of a larger idea, and that larger idea compressed from something else. When that compression is tacked on to the essence of the idea of God, it becomes an
accretion.
God is love is a rather pollyanna perspective. It hasn't anything to do necessarily with arrogance of separating love and hate and then allying oneself with the better. It is, in fact, sheer optimism. There are times when such a phrase is effective in the situation, but generally speaking such sugar-coated sentiments are baby-talk.
But what is love? A feeling.
Love is also an abstract idea.
Then god is that chemical reaction in your brain that illicits a feeling of love.
It's possible. If God is merely a feeling, I'll agree.
But think of this: There are days when the chemical feeling of love is not present. So what happens if my kid goes out and smashes the car on a joyride intended to impress the guy she wants to go out with? If that chemical reaction that is love is absent, does that mean I don't love my daughter?
Is that all we are human robots? Yes.
Just ... don't. Please don't make me ask you who or what programmed the robot. Cool enough?
A computer, sure. A robot? No.
Perhaps it is that whole demystifying thing that people resist.
That's definitely part of it, but not the whole of it. For instance:
We are only happy with what we don't understand
Getting there is often a large part of the reason for the experience. Most people I know stopped playing with their Rubik's cube after solving it a couple of times. It's not like I know anyone who still sits around, asking their kids to mix it up for them so they can solve it yet again. More relevantly, I don't play
Civilization III anymore because, barring an absolutely ridiculous terraforming, I can beat it. It's a matter of predicting how long it takes you to get through the tech tree and aiming for the options that get you the most. Betweeen the Great Library of Alexandria and the Great Wall of China, I can consistently keep enough of a technical advantage to secure the UN and other "wonders". At that point, I can invoke a fundamentalist government and proceed to stomp across the map. Presently, it's all a matter of how fast I can hit keys. That's about the only thing that varies the game time for me. If I'm really lucky, though, I get a terraform that is almost impossible to cope with. Why play the game? It's boring. I know what comes next. Why play Tic-Tac-Toe anymore? I know that technically, you can't win.
Chess, however, has enough variations to keep me interested.
Just a few examples.
That is why we at base resist any attempt to understand.
I must admit, though, I had always presumed that people found understanding too difficult. When we add up biology, chemistry, social conditioning factors, and environmental factors, it's not quite as easy to figure as the tech tree in video game. When there's too many factors, people economize. From those economizations come the images that, when taken literally as the whole of the truth, become religious ideas.
thanx much,
Tiassa
