Why cats will never form an organized religion.
- Thread starter lightgigantic
- Start date
Uh, LG,
So you want us to believe that you can read the mind of a cat - and at that, not only of one cat, but of all cats?
While I in part sympathize with your frustration over a popular negative attitude towards organized religion, I do think you are looking at these things the wrong way, as I have noted before.
Unfortunately, so far, you have not been open to discuss these things.
So you want us to believe that you can read the mind of a cat - and at that, not only of one cat, but of all cats?
While I in part sympathize with your frustration over a popular negative attitude towards organized religion, I do think you are looking at these things the wrong way, as I have noted before.
Unfortunately, so far, you have not been open to discuss these things.
*purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr* :3
@ Write4u
I have a cat and a Jack Russell Terror (Yes, I know how to spell) that thinks it's a cat.
That is so funny a story. If anyone missed it go back 2 posts.
Note:
Egyptians worshiped cats, and if an owner died the cat would be mummified and buried with the owner. I am unsure how they would kill the cat for this purpose, as killing a cat was a crime that received the death penalty in many cases. Perhaps if the owner was dead? IDK...
It is likely the Egyptian culture is responsible for breeding cats to such an extent that they are the cuddly little buttons we see today. Maybe we can someday view the archives of the catholic church and learn all.. Bwahahhaha
I have a cat and a Jack Russell Terror (Yes, I know how to spell) that thinks it's a cat.
That is so funny a story. If anyone missed it go back 2 posts.
Note:
Egyptians worshiped cats, and if an owner died the cat would be mummified and buried with the owner. I am unsure how they would kill the cat for this purpose, as killing a cat was a crime that received the death penalty in many cases. Perhaps if the owner was dead? IDK...
It is likely the Egyptian culture is responsible for breeding cats to such an extent that they are the cuddly little buttons we see today. Maybe we can someday view the archives of the catholic church and learn all.. Bwahahhaha
I would like to but obviously you think you can read the minds of all people who make cartoons about cats so it probably wouldn't be a fruitful discussion ...
[video=youtube;GbycvPwr1Wg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbycvPwr1Wg[/video]
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Cats seem to me to believe that the entire universe revolves around them. The only things that seem to matter to an individual cat are those things that cause that cat pleasure or displeasure.
That suggests that each cat might have a view of things that's kind of incompatible with any other cat's. Or with a human's, for that matter. Cats just aren't entirely social animals.
That creates problems for a cat-like being told to worship a personal theistic God, a separate divine Self whose desires are supposed to take precedence over the cat's own. Cats don't do that.
Moving the analogy from cats to humans, sin is supposed to be our own human desires deviating from and taking precedence over God's own desires, while devoutness is supposed to consist in men and women conforming their own desires to God's.
So atheists might indeed resemble cats, in a religious sense, along with most of the nominally religious people in our modern world where individual freedom and self-determination have become our foremost values. We would seem to automatically be sinners in the traditional middle-eastern theistic sense, where conforming one's desires and will to those of another supposedly divine "person" (becoming that being's pets?) is imagined to be the greatest possible virtue.
That suggests that each cat might have a view of things that's kind of incompatible with any other cat's. Or with a human's, for that matter. Cats just aren't entirely social animals.
That creates problems for a cat-like being told to worship a personal theistic God, a separate divine Self whose desires are supposed to take precedence over the cat's own. Cats don't do that.
Moving the analogy from cats to humans, sin is supposed to be our own human desires deviating from and taking precedence over God's own desires, while devoutness is supposed to consist in men and women conforming their own desires to God's.
So atheists might indeed resemble cats, in a religious sense, along with most of the nominally religious people in our modern world where individual freedom and self-determination have become our foremost values. We would seem to automatically be sinners in the traditional middle-eastern theistic sense, where conforming one's desires and will to those of another supposedly divine "person" (becoming that being's pets?) is imagined to be the greatest possible virtue.
All you posted in your OP was a cartoon with a loaded idea. So we don't have much to go by.
So do tell what it is that you wish to discuss.
I find it really peculiar that people think that about cats.
I've had cats all my life, and it never occurred to me to think of them as selfish or that the whole universe revolves around them and such.
I don't understand how people come to that outlook on cats.
This is probably the idea behind the cartoon, yes.
I find cats to be extremely amiable, sociable, reciprocating beings.
But they don't tolerate to be bossed around, and rewards and punishments don't work on them. Perhaps it's because of that that some people think that cats are stupid or selfish.
LG said in another thread:
If the above is intended to refer to reward and punishment model:
Reward and punishment only work up to a point. Once that point is reached, a person cannot be motivated either by rewards, nor by punishments to do something or to refrain from doing something. People differ in where that point is for them.
Reward and punishment mentality assumes that unless people are rewarded or punished, they will be couch potatoes.
Rewarding and punishing is done towards oneself or toward others.
Enforcing reward and punishment strengthens the conviction that left to themselves, people will not be inclined to do anything wholesome; ie. that a person's true nature is that of a couch potato.
So enforcing reward and punishment actually implicitly strengthens the problematic thoughts, feelings, words and actions that were sought to be changed by reward and punishment.
Theistic preaching seems to be coming from a similar perspective of the punishment and reward model:
If a person is pushed enough, threatened with enough punishment and promised with enough reward, they will comply with the religious instruction; and if they still refuse, they are to be dismissed as indolent, stupid, selfish.
This is a model that works on some people, up to a point.
But this model is inherently corrupt, in that it assumes that left to themselves (ie. to act on their true nature), people will oppose God (which is not actually possible, if people are parts and parcels of God!!), and in that it assumes that the model of rewards and punishments is the only model that is to be applied.
If the above is intended to refer to reward and punishment model:
Reward and punishment only work up to a point. Once that point is reached, a person cannot be motivated either by rewards, nor by punishments to do something or to refrain from doing something. People differ in where that point is for them.
Reward and punishment mentality assumes that unless people are rewarded or punished, they will be couch potatoes.
Rewarding and punishing is done towards oneself or toward others.
Enforcing reward and punishment strengthens the conviction that left to themselves, people will not be inclined to do anything wholesome; ie. that a person's true nature is that of a couch potato.
So enforcing reward and punishment actually implicitly strengthens the problematic thoughts, feelings, words and actions that were sought to be changed by reward and punishment.
Theistic preaching seems to be coming from a similar perspective of the punishment and reward model:
If a person is pushed enough, threatened with enough punishment and promised with enough reward, they will comply with the religious instruction; and if they still refuse, they are to be dismissed as indolent, stupid, selfish.
This is a model that works on some people, up to a point.
But this model is inherently corrupt, in that it assumes that left to themselves (ie. to act on their true nature), people will oppose God (which is not actually possible, if people are parts and parcels of God!!), and in that it assumes that the model of rewards and punishments is the only model that is to be applied.
Cats are very much like gods from their perspective.
Cats looks down on man.
Dogs, however, look up to man.
A pig, though, would look at man straight in the eye as a true equal.
From an alien perspective looking down at a man and his dog and trying to determine who is master and slave - the one following behind picking up poop is clearly the slave.
I guess it is all relative. If a god were to exist would he be a friend like a dog, or always aloof and superior like a cat?
Cats looks down on man.
Dogs, however, look up to man.
A pig, though, would look at man straight in the eye as a true equal.
From an alien perspective looking down at a man and his dog and trying to determine who is master and slave - the one following behind picking up poop is clearly the slave.
I guess it is all relative. If a god were to exist would he be a friend like a dog, or always aloof and superior like a cat?