The superiority of one's beliefs

[Hankenhunter]

Holy moly, Ive just gotten a Christian to defend a different religeon. Mind blown.

[Habitat]

7 minutes ago, Hankenhunter said:

They're religion was pounded into the rocks for all to see. Try to keep up.

I'll bet it  wasn't as prominent as the Medieval cathedrals of Europe. That really was extreme "monumentalism", puts anything in South America to shame. How did they turn into technological, colonizing powers, "wasting" resources on those spires ?

[Habitat]

8 minutes ago, Hankenhunter said:

I wonder what else they might have accomplished if their best artisans hadn't spent all their time chiseling out fantastically shaped gods all òver the temples dedicated to their gods. Boom shakalaka! 

 

You mean, like the great Cathedrals of Europe that occupied legions of people for centuries ?

[Hankenhunter]

41 minutes ago, Habitat said:

You mean, like the great Cathedrals of Europe that occupied legions of people for centuries ?

People controlled by the church. The sheep who've been fleeced by the priesthood into building monuments to nothing. Would havegone over a lot better if the church built homes for the people instead of the preisthood. The church was and is a giant parasite sucking contentedly off of mankind.

[Habitat]

 

 

1 hour ago, jmccr8 said:

okay thank for lettimg me know what an upstanding friend you are YOU DO NOT HAVE A LEG TO STAND ON AND TJANK YOU FOR BEING TJE NUMBLED KIND OF MAN YOU ARE mERRY cRASTMANAA TO YOU TOO

 

I hope you have the stamina to last the festive season, merry Xmas to you and yours.

[Habitat]

2 minutes ago, Hankenhunter said:

People controlled by the church. The sheep who've been fleeced by the priesthood into building monuments to nothing. Would havegone over a lot better if the church built homes for the people instead of the preisthood. The church was and is a giant parasite sucking contentedly off of mankind.

It exists only by the consent of the population. There is no compulsion to hand any money over. 

[+Hammerclaw]

Jesus Was a Capricorn

Kris Kristofferson

Jesus was a Capricorn
He ate organic food
He believed in love and peace
And never wore no shoes

Long hair, beard and sandals
And a funky bunch of friends
Reckon we'd just nail him up
If he came down again

'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty decent folks can frown on
If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me

Eggheads cussing rednecks cussing
Hippies for their hair
Others laugh at straights who laugh at
Freaks who laugh at squares

Some folks hate the Whites
Who hate the Blacks who hate the Klan
Most of us hate anything that
We don't understand

'Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Who they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty decent folks can frown on
If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me

Songwriters: KRIS KRISTOFFERSON

© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

For non-commercial use only.

[Hankenhunter]

17 minutes ago, Habitat said:

It exists only by the consent of the population. There is no compulsion to hand any money over. 

Well aren't you the sneaky one. Just like the priesthood who filled peoples minds with crap about gods wrath visiting them if they didn't listen to the priests. They used and still use the same tactics the repubs are using today to control gullible people. Fear. The art of using fear to achieve their ends. It's worked since caveman days. Including the unwritten doctrine of "He who wears the most outlandish hat and vestments shall be named the smartest and most wisest of men and the masses shall follow his bidding unquestioningly or pain of death shall be visited upon you. Amen". Con men and snake oil salesmen all.

[Habitat]

1 minute ago, Hankenhunter said:

Well aren't you the sneaky one. Just like the priesthood who filled peoples minds with crap about gods wrath visiting them if they didn't listen to the priests. They used and still use the same tactics the repubs are using today to control gullible people. Fear. The art of using fear to achieve their ends. It's worked since caveman days. Including the unwritten doctrine of "He who wears the most outlandish hat and vestments shall be named the smartest and most wisest of men and the masses shall follow his bidding unquestioningly or pain of death shall be visited upon you. Amen". Con men and snake oil salesmen all.

And you are free to just walk on by. But, there is something there you can't quite dismiss from your mind ! This place is awash with such rubber-neckers !

[psyche101]

3 hours ago, Piney said:

No that's the general consensus among many academics. Doctrine, dogma, End Times fear and false hope set us back thousands of years. 

 

Not a great many non religious institutions to choose from at the time. I wonder how far Newton would have got had he been an outspoken atheist.

[HandsomeGorilla]

8 hours ago, Piney said:

No, but I do get annoyed at obvious lies, bias's and superstitions that other's can't see.

Things like Falun Gong, Creationists, the Book of Mormon and Urantia. I think- "WTF  people it's the 21st century!"

I have never even heard of Falon Gung or Urantia. 

Is that a good thing? 

[XenoFish]

20 minutes ago, Not Your Huckleberry said:

I have never even heard of Falon Gung or Urantia. 

Is that a good thing? 

Extremely good. 

[XenoFish]

Kind of perk regarding this thread. We'll see who are the spiritually arrogant ones.

[eight bits]

A slightly tricky topic. If I understand Jodie's goal, she wants to talk about how beliefs, like religious beliefs, feel "from the inside." Something like whether religion has held societies back is more "from the outside."

Counterfactual hypotheticals are four-star lady dogs. Like, would Newton or Galileo have been better sceintists and mathematicians if they hadn't been so religious? Well, they were both religious, and the cost to them for being that way is easily toted up. What we don't get to see is what would have happened if what did happen didn't happen. Woof.

It might help to recall that most of the work in science isn't done by the genius hero figures, but rather the army of time-servers. But the geniuses tell the grunts where to go, what to work on, what counts as science even.

There's a proverb about genius being close to madness. That's not a casual saying. Let's run with that a little.

What was the purpose of religion in the psychic constitution of Galileo and Newton? One purpose of religion is to provide an ego defense against being overwhelmed by unconscious contents. We also have good reason to think that "genius" consists of "tickling the dragon's tail" of unconscious contents and faculties.

The phrase about the dragon comes from the jargon of Los Alamos. It referred to assembling near-critical mass lumps of fissionable material on laboratory benchtops to make measurements. Very dangerous, and on one famous occasion, the screwdriver pushing the stuff around slipped. A great deal of scientific advance occurred on that day, too. We learned what it's like to die from a radiation overdose. (A nicer species would have paused to consider whether we really hated Japanese civilians that much that we would impose what we learned that day upon them ... you know how that turned out. We harbor dragons; make no mistake about that.)

Anyway, I would seriously consider the hypothetical possible world where religion was the glue that held the conscious faculties of Galileo and Newton together.

More broadly, I think there is a naive folk psychology popular among seculars that but for religion, everybody would be an aspiring Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson. If that were true, holy moley, we'd have been to the moon by 1500 and today Star Trek would be steam punk.

However, it is just possible that but for religion some other aspects of the dragon within would find expression instead of what was actually expressed.

We don't know, and the cheery rationalist hypothesis isn't a slam dunk. The evidence on point, the record of how our fellow humans have conducted themselves, ourselves, in the world, is anything but cheery. We have our moments, though.

 

Edited December 22, 2019 by eight bits

[XenoFish]

4 minutes ago, eight bits said:

A slightly tricky topic. If I understand Jodie's goal, she wants to talk about how beliefs, like religious beliefs, feel "from the inside." Something like whether religion has held societies back is more "from the outside."

Counterfactual hypotheticals are four-star lady dogs. Like, would Newton or Galileo have been better sceintists and mathematicians if they hadn't been so religious? Well, they were both religious, and the cost to them for being that way is easily toted up. What we don't get to see is what would have happened if what did happen didn't happen. Woof.

It might help to recall that most of the work in science isn't done by the genius hero figures, but rather the army of time-servers. But the geniuses tell the grunts where to go, what to work on, what counts as science even.

There's a proverb about genius being close to madness. That's not a casual saying. Let's run with that a little.

What was the purpose of religion in the psychic constitution of Galileo and Newton? One purpose of religion is to provide an ego defense against being overwhelmed by unconscious contents. We also have good reason to think that "genius" consists of "tickling the dragon's tail" of unconscious contents and faculties.

The phrase about the dragon comes from the jargon of Los Alamos. It referred to assembling near-critical mass lumps of fissionable material on laboratory benchtops to make measurements. Very dangerous, and on one famous occasion, the screwdriver pushing the stuff around slipped. A great deal of scientific advance occurred on that day, too. We learned what it's like to die from a radiation overdose. (A nicer species would have paused to consider whether we really hated Japanese civilians that much that we would impose what we learned that day upon them ... you know how that turned out.)

Anyway, I would seriously consider the hypothetical possible world where religion was the glue that held the conscious faculties of Galileo and Newton together.

More broadly, I think there is a naive folk psychology popular among seculars that but for religion, everybody would be an aspiring Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson. If that were true, holy moley, we'd have been to the moon by 1500 and today Star Trek would be steam punk.

However, it is just possible that but for religion some other aspects of the dragon within would find expression instead of waht was actually expressed.

We dpn't know, and the cheery rationalist hypothesis isn't a slam dunk.

 

I've thought that some of the ye olde scientist and even alchemists for that matter were trying to understand the works of God. That could've been a motivating factor. 

[eight bits]

10 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

I've thought that some of the ye olde scientist and even alchemists for that matter were trying to understand the works of God. That could've been a motivating factor. 

Yes, even today you'll find scientists who say that.

The alchemists are especially interesting, IMO. Newton was one. They are sort of "transitional figures." On the one hand, they were educated intellectuals who turned their gaze outward onto the real world, and they systematically manipulated the material being studied in order to learn. That's proto-science. On the other hand, they unconsciously projected aspects of themselves onto what they were seeing.

They were doing self-psychotherapy while telling themselves they were doing chemistry.

Meh, we are more complicated than we first appear. God love us.

Edited December 22, 2019 by eight bits

[XenoFish]

1 minute ago, eight bits said:

They were doing self-psychotherapy while telling themselves they were doing chemistry.

I see occultism in the same light. People we not summoning actually demons, just bringing the negative/darker aspects of their own persona to the surface. 

I often get hell for calling God an idea, but the real question to the individuals is 'how functional is that idea to me?' 

The idea of god can bring out the best and the very worst in others. Just the same with non-belief as well. It's a people problem, it always has been. 

[Hawken]

You talk about how people shouldn't Impose their beliefs on others. I agree with that.

Maybe public schools should make it Optional for students to say the Pledge.

But also optional to take LGBTQ history.

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, Hawken said:

You talk about how people shouldn't Impose their beliefs on others. I agree with that.

Maybe public schools should make it Optional for students to say the Pledge.

But also optional to take LGBTQ history.

History isn't a belief though. You would have to make American Indian history optional, and English (insert every country here) history.

What is the point teaching selected parts of what actually happened? That sounds like a really bad thing?

Edited December 22, 2019 by psyche101

[Jodie.Lynne]

9 hours ago, Will Due said:

 

No two people have ever thought the same about anything. It's impossible. 

Yet today there's a movement towards eliminating "those who think differently" by those who think alike.

 

 

Care to give an example? You have me curious.

[Piney]

5 hours ago, psyche101 said:

Not a great many non religious institutions to choose from at the time. I wonder how far Newton would have got had he been an outspoken atheist.

Burnt in a few days. 

[Hawken]

1 hour ago, psyche101 said:

History isn't a belief though. You would have to make American Indian history optional, and English (insert every country here) history.

What is the point teaching selected parts of what actually happened? That sounds like a really bad thing?

When I was in school. American history was required. But state history was optional. Don't know how it is today.

[SHaYap]

3 minutes ago, Piney said:

Burnt in a few days. 

Not before being tortured into a confession and recant of all things science and mathematical 

Remember Giordano Bruno... 

~

 

[Piney]

Just now, Hawken said:

When I was in school. American history was required. But state history was optional. Don't know how it is today.

History is hardly taught. It's all about certain test taking skills in public schools.

Then there's the revisionist history certain colleges teach.  

[Piney]

1 minute ago, third_eye said:

Not before being tortured into a confession and recant of all things science and mathematical 

Remember Giordano Bruno... 

Galileo too.