I have seen the future.

Well, you can't help saying that, given that you are just a result of random evolution.

Edited Date: 2009-12-02 09:53 am (UTC)

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jagash.livejournal.com

Banning architecture because "we don't like strangers around these parts" seems like a poor approach even if one were trying to harm a religion. Whats next, banning steep sloped roofs?

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Because banning religious always works. Historically this is a great idea and clearly the swiss have been brushing up on their history.

Then again, maybe they're bored. "You know what we haven't had enough of? Political strife. Let's see if we can't piss off a few thousand angry Muslims today."

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skiriki.livejournal.com

Elsewhere, someone noted that the Muslim minority of Switzerland is largely from the former Yugoslavia.

Which they left when the country collapsed and they had to escape religious persecution in the hands of various Christian sects.

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reyl.livejournal.com

So you have a campaign like this:

It designed fliers that feature a veiled woman against a background of a Swiss flag pierced by several minarets resembling missiles.

And sane people say:

the Federal Council takes the view that a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies.

Yet a vote still happens and minarets are still banned? It makes one wonder who benefits more from the fearmongering of terrorism, the evil or the victims.

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Can you really blame them for being so angry in a lot of places? If the rest of the world treated me like dog shit, i'd be angry, too.

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Yeah. What you do, if you're sane, is you ban oppressive restrictions on access to information, and you let education eliminate the religion *for you*.

It takes a couple of generations to work, especially since sane people breed less than insane people and insane people abuse their children by teaching them insane nonsense as if it had any kind of real-world basis, but it happens.

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skiriki.livejournal.com

Well my point is largely "damn, they escaped one place to try and be free from persecution and genocide, only to land into a place which seems to be too keen about persecuting again".

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Of course I *could* say something different - after all, a good chunk of the world shows that evolution has left humans with a disturbing prediclection for making up magical nonsense explanations when they don't understand real things. Thus, it's ENTIRELY possible for the product of an evolutionary process to give a sky-fairy-based explanation in place of a non-stupid one - QED.

(Seriously, dude, an omnipotent all-powerful creator makes us in his own image, but can't figure out how to handle plugging the data cable into the *back* of the camera instead of *running it across the lens*, or how to design spines and hips and knees that work when you're standing upright? Does God have chronic back and knee problems, and a blind spot, too? Fuck theodicy[1], leave aside your complete and total lack of the slightest support for your premises that does not *better* support space gnomes and invisible unicorns, THIS is the clearest demonstration that religious people are nuts: A "perfect being" deliberately made humans work like *this*?)

[1]: although you can't answer that one either.

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I don't know of any major religions that claim that humans are physically perfect. In Christianity, the notion of our physical manifestation being an exact replica of God pretty much went out the window in the Middle Ages with the debate on Adam's navel, which reduced that notion to absurdity. Today, even the Vatican - hardly a bastion of Liberal theology - supports the fact of biological evolution.

This is in the tradition of St Augustine, who wrote in his treatise The Literal Reading of Genesis:
"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are."

Literalism is not a Christian tradition: If Christians took even Jesus literally, they would walk on all fours and eat grass, as the Lord repeatedly referred to his followers as sheep. (An eerily precognitive statement, eh?)

Rather I am talking about the descent of spirit in man, by which you are clearly capable of free will, love of truth, and other such acitivities that are at best tangential - at worst detrimental - to your quest for survival and reproduction. If your origin is in randomness, why are your statements and actions not random? How do you act purposefully in a world without purpose? How can you transcend the blind matter that you claim includes you, and create meaning in a world you believe has none?

Religions, far from being random collections of fairy tales, are toolboxes for thinking about the otherwise unthinkable. Like art and philosophy, they are ladders for traversing the fifth dimension, which only the mind can roam and not the body.

Are religious people stupid? Of course! This is not because they are religious, it is because they are people. You and I are stupid too, but we cannot clearly see it each in ourself, as whenever we do see it, we change ourselves.

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I live reasonably near a city that has banned non-white paint on buildings.

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the descent of spirit in man, by which you are clearly capable of free will, love of truth, and other such acitivities that are at best tangential - at worst detrimental - to your quest for survival and reproduction.

Au contraire! Were they truly counterproductive, they would have been bred out of the species long ago - and the fact that we see them in almost every species capable of such complex behaviour implies that they're either a positive influence, or a necessary side effect of something else extremely positive.

Put another way: I don't need to invent a deity to explain free will or love. Because they exist, they're either a positive survival trait or an unavoidable side effect of an extremely positive survival trait.

If your origin is in randomness, why are your statements and actions not random?

Because an increase in order from mutation-with-selection is not only possible, it is, as far as we can tell, inevitable.

How do you act purposefully in a world without purpose?

By choosing to create purpose?

I need no external source of purpose - and starting from nonsensical, entirely unjustified, deeply stupid assumptions in your personal quest to find an external purpose is inevitably only going to lead you to worthless, pointless, irrational conclusions.

How can you transcend the blind matter that you claim includes you, and create meaning in a world you believe has none?

How can you *not* understand that the only meaning is what we make, and that we're better for it?

Religions, far from being random collections of fairy tales, are toolboxes for thinking about the otherwise unthinkable.

Toolboxes for thinking *irrationally*, creating a framework of *nonsense*, built on *nothing*, from which to proceed to "think about the otherwise unthinkable"

Which is to say, entirely counterproductive to useful explorations of philosophy.

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glitteringlynx.livejournal.com

My first inclination is to say "Hey, it's baby steps" but having read the comments I've changed my mind. THe problem is that trying to ban Christianity and Judaism would never hold well, on principle of not because of actual believers. However they felt they had to do something in public interest.

It's a political clusterfuck any way you slice it.

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I'm in favor. hell, i'm religious and I'm in favor. because any religious decision that can't coexist with rational thought really has no place in a reasonable world.

there are great things about religion and I find that they are always the thing espoused by people who are both religious and reasonable and never in fundamentalists. It's when you let extremists and fundamentalists hide behind religious freedom that you run into problems.

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Your point of view makes perfect sense, as long as you see the world upside down, with spirit as a secondary effect that proceeds from matter instead of the other way around. No wonder you think you literally create meaning instead of finding it. No doubt you also think archetypes are generalizations, gods are created in the image of humans and monotheism is a subset of polytheism. Your whole view becomes completely opposite.

In my world, spiritual truth is discovered rather than invented, much like with any science, except it is currently less refined. So for me it is perfectly natural to find that St Augustine has plagiarized me more than a millennium before I was born, not to mention the Buddha or Lao-Tzu, whom I could hardly reverse engineer from my surrounding culture. If we truly pulled spiritual experiences out of our own aseity, would we not diverge further and further the more we developed our spiritual sensitivity? But the opposite is the case.

(That is not to say that all religions are the same - which is blatant nonsense - or even that they lead to the same goal. Rather, that they unfold in the same spiritual landscape.)

If religions were simply human creations, they would diverge indefinitely except as far as there was contact between them. This is true as long as religion is purely theoretical, but not when it is experiential.

If your worldview was true, it would leave my own life an ongoing parade of inexplicable coincidences.

I believe you and I feel much the same way about stupid religion. But to you, that is the only religion there is and can ever be. For me, that would be as if the only astronomy I ever heard of was newspaper astrology. Of course I would reject the whole thing out of hand. Thus our friend Augustine's observation that conflating stupidity with religion would turn off outsiders, which it certainly has.

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as long as you see the world upside down, with spirit as a secondary effect that proceeds from matter instead of the other way around.

Stop.

Rewind.

Defend your assumption that *I'm* the one going at it backwards, when *you're* the one proceeding from untested, entirely unsupported premises.

If we truly pulled spiritual experiences out of our own aseity, would we not diverge further and further the more we developed our spiritual sensitivity?

Not necessarily. All humans share the same origin, and individual differences fall in a very narrow range. It would be more surprising to me if there *was* a wider range of variety in what people found to be "spiritual".

If religions were simply human creations, they would diverge indefinitely except as far as there was contact between them.

Unless there was something about being human that shaped the tendency towards magical thinking into a specific kind of magical thinking. Or the culture of magical thinking was fundamentally similar across the majority of humanity.

Until we see what kind of insanity completely non-human aliens are plagued with, it's extremely hard to claim that because human insanity runs in a certain direction that this direction must be some kind of objective truth. And even if the aliens were crazy the way human "religious" people are crazy, all *that* might prove is that a tendency towards irrationality is a useful trait along the road to intelligence.

If your worldview was true, it would leave my own life an ongoing parade of inexplicable coincidences.

"Inexplicable" is the wrong word. The word you are looking for is "unexamined".

For me, that would be as if the only astronomy I ever heard of was newspaper astrology.

All religion starts from, and concludes with, unsupported and unsupportable premises.

All religion is stupid religion.

That's why it's called "religion". If it wasn't stupid, they'd call it something different.

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opaqueplanet.livejournal.com

next: banning bricks that are too red.

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But by your own admission, the only level of religion you know of is the magical, which is the most primitive and corresponds to a tribal level of civilization. Even in the western world most religion is on the next level up, the mythical level, which corresponds to a civilization based on law and authority. In it, the divine is seen as an organizing force rather than simply a magical power that grants wishes in exchange for some kind of payment. There are a couple levels above this again, but you know nothing of this and would prefer to continue that way. Is this not really a kind of reverse bigotry? To condemn what you do not know and do not want to know? It is one thing to shy away from it in your own life, but your relentless campaigning comes in a strange light since you are willingly unfamiliar with what you seek to eradicate.

Experiential religion is certainly not untested or speculative. It is based on thousands of years of experience by thousands of people of different ethnicities and living in widely different cultures. There are at any time people who know from rigorous observation what they are talking about. This is no different with contemporary science: The fact that most Americans believe that antibiotics kill virus does not invalidate the actual knowledge by the relatively few researchers who have studied the topic firsthand and know better. Some believe those who have studied things firsthand, some believe whatever they hear from the neighbors. This is human nature, not an artifact of religion in particular.

I have of course given thought to the possibility that religious experience is shaped by shared structures of the human brain. I don't have a problem with this. Vision is certainly shaped by shared structures of the human brain, but these structures is an adaptation to a reality that exist prior to humanity. So also with hearing, smell etc. If humans have a shared religious sensitivity, this implies if anything that there is something for them to sense.

Obviously vision has its optical illusions, and it would be no surprise if religion has the same. Indeed, the major world religions take this for granted. But the notion that an entire mode of experience should be illusory is a quite adventurous proposition, particularly by someone unfamiliar with it.

You know from firsthand experience that you have at least some degree of free will, ethical judgment and creative ability. You seem to insist that these properties must necessarily be derived from matter rather than from an outside source. That is certainly an option, but how is it self-evident? The necessity of the material component is not sufficient proof. A computer's software is not derived from its hardware, even though the hardware must be present and fill stringent requirements for the software to work.

Whether you are right or wrong, you certainly do come across as somewhat unreflected and knee-jerky in this one aspect (unlike some of your other activities). I guess it is just our bad luck that we refer to religion with that old word and not "science of happiness". Perhaps in the future that will be its new name.

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fridgepunk.livejournal.com

the fun thing about that poster is that there are more minarets on the poster than in the entirety of switzerland. (There are 7 minarets on the poster)

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fridgepunk.livejournal.com

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/26202975@N05/4154486816/)

...because seriously? Empathising with theoretical radicalised muslims that DO NOT EXIST IN SWITZERLAND LIKE SRSLY WTF = FAIL of the "just please stop talking now ffs, thank you very much".

And so that this thread has something even approaching genuine lolz* going for it:

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/26202975@N05/4154589836/)

* think of it as extruded lulz-like product.

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the divine is seen as an organizing force rather than simply a magical power that grants wishes in exchange for some kind of payment.

Bull. Shit.

All religion is wish fulfillment, sacrifice in pursuit of reward. "modern" religion simply involves sacrifice to no purpose, as opposed to classic religion, which is sacrifice in favour of the people who insist that you should sacrifice "to no purpose".

Experiential religion is certainly not untested or speculative.

Bull. Shit. The day you show me a *test* that can prove/disprove any given subjective experience to be *real* (and supernatural) as opposed to *insane* ("religious") is the same day I will eat a filing cabinet and experience no ill effects.

"Experiential" is functionally identical to "both subjective and irrereproducible and also explainable better as entirely predictable idiocy".

This is no different with contemporary science: The fact that most Americans believe that antibiotics kill virus does not invalidate the actual knowledge by the relatively few researchers who have studied the topic firsthand and know better

No, some people understand what has been said, some people ignore the facts in favour of their personal preference. See also: non-religious vs religious, specced to the individual.

If humans have a shared religious sensitivity, this implies if anything that there is something for them to sense.

No. You are being stupid. This shared "religious sensitivity" implies that EITHER there is a real thing that all the objectively stupid people are gravitating to, OR, there's something cultural (likely!) or biological (less likely but still possible!) or subliminal (extremely likely!) that suggests the impression of something real.

You're using the "50 billion flies eat shit" argument. And it's still garbage.

Vision is certainly shaped by shared structures of the human brain, but these structures is an adaptation to a reality that exist prior to humanity. So also with hearing, smell etc. If humans have a shared religious sensitivity, this implies if anything that there is something for them to sense.

You are idiotically conflating a real, shared, repeatable experience with a non-real, subjective, non-repeatable, changable-via-suggestion experience.

You are being stupid.

Stop it.

You know from firsthand experience that you have at least some degree of free will, ethical judgment and creative ability.

Of course.

You seem to insist that these properties must necessarily be derived from matter rather than from an outside source

No, you're being stupid again. I insist that, since you posit that these things come from an external source, you demonstrate that this external source is
1) real,
2) verifiable, and
3) more likely than the contrary.

You fail on all three accounts, absolutely. The only person who could possibly believe your statements is an uneducated semiliterate.

I guess it is just our bad luck that we refer to religion with that old word and not "science of happiness". Perhaps in the future that will be its new name.

If religion somehow someday drops the idiotic dross of "faith" and adopts scientific methodology, it might, someday, merit the term "science of happiness". At such a time, though, it would necessarily have eliminated the Biblical Jesus and JHVH as both unproven, and unprovable, and believed in only by the stupid. Are you *sure* you'd like to subject your religious stupidity to the requirements of science?

Edited Date: 2009-12-03 02:22 am (UTC)

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And yet, you hold to and espouse a religion[1] that is incompatible with rational thought.

[1]: Which is to say, any religion[2]

[2]: If it wasn't irrational, counterproductive, antifactual, and stupid, it would have a descriptive term other than "relgion".

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I like you.

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If you think so.

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Wow. that was a lot of work just to look like a douche.

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"Billions of flies eat poop" is a pretty good argument if talking to a fly. And I do: You belong to the same species that, for some obscure reason, benefited from religion in prehistoric times.

Furthermore, I can and will happily direct you to a practice that provides reliable, repeatable, verifiable "magic" results. Meditation was until a few years ago considered to belong to the realm of religion, but is today a cornerstone of the Science of Happiness. It lowers blood pressure, reducing the risk of stroke and heart attacks. It boosts the immune system, at least if the immune system is otherwise mostly intact. It can prevent depression, improve concentration and reduce harmful behavior such as smoking and gambling. And it does all this by magic: Just sit down and repeat a mantra, or even count silently to ten for a few minutes each day. No drugs, electrodes or other physical intervention necessary.

This is probably the best example today of how something once was considered Religion but is now considered Science of Happiness. If you don't meditate already, you owe it to yourself to give it a whirl. We both love living in the future, after all, and meditation is one of the surest ways to continue living longer than otherwise.

Unless you are afraid of religion cooties, that is. There are still millions of religious people meditating religiously, as it were.

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spartonian.livejournal.com

Come on... it was mildly amusing.

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The fact that you call it "magic" simplies demonstrates further why there is no science in your "science of happiness". I will point out that, by using your logic to call it "magic" and claiming that the therapeutic benefits of meditation are "religion", you're also saying that the basic life skills the Scientologists teach are a demonstration of the reality of Thetans and the galactic warlord Xenu.

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It was totally amusing. I laughed my ass off, but that doesn't change my assessment. I'm impressed and confused at the same time.

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I am glad to see you are open-minded enough to accept the reality of meditation despite its millennia of being solely a religious activity. For me personally it is not a matter of history either: I actually learned to meditate from my Invisible Friend, whom you call a "sky fairy". I did not know beforehand what meditation was, nor did I know after I started the practice that it was meditation. As far as I knew, it was simply a new and improved mode of prayer that God had taught me when we were alone. What it was, I only learned later, from someone more versed in such things. I am not sure how common this is, but unless I am some kind of bigwig in the celestial hierarchy, it has probably happened repeatedly in the past. The relationship between religion and meditation is hardly coincidental.

The use of the word "magic" was entirely for your benefit. As far as I am concerned, any sufficiently researched magic is indistinguishable from technology. But if it had not been sufficiently researched, or if you had been unaware of the research, I feel confident that you would have written it off as just another of my magics. It certainly is amazing that you can sit down and just repeat something in your mind for a few minutes each day and improve your physical and mental health. It sure sounds like a thing a sky fairy would bestow on simpleminded people like me.

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It sure sounds like a thing a sky fairy would bestow on simpleminded people like me.

It does, but, this is the really important part, there is absolutely no reason to suggest that the sky fairy *did do so*, or that your personal sky fairy is any more likely than that of anyone else.

(For bonus points, "no sky fairy" is MUCH more likely than "any specific sky fairy", given that there's an infinite number of zero-evidence sky fairies and exactly one so-far-entirely-sky-fairy-less universe.)

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anktastic.livejournal.com

"If your origin is in randomness, why are your statements and actions not random? "

You need to read more and educate yourself. Particularly about chaos theory, statistics and algebra. It's like asking "If you are throwing that dice at random, HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THAT IT YIELDS ABOUT ONE SIXTH OF THE TIME IN EACH NUMBER?"

Meaning that randomness CAN (and does!) PRODUCE ORDER. Now that you understand this, go back and read some more.

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This is an interesting topic in itself. Did you know that the origin of gambling was in religion? In the Bronze Age, it was believed that gods or spirits were influencing the outcome of dice rolls or the drawing of lots. This is understandable, since if you kept at it long enough, "improbable" results would show up, like someone rolling six sixes in a row. Events that were uncommon or far from average were viewed with a certain kind of awe, and assigned a numinous quality.

Today we are more sanguine about such things, but "meaningful coincidences" still have the power to move people, such as when someone dreams of their grandmother the night she dies, conveniently forgetting that each night many thousands of grandmothers die and almost everyone is dreaming of someone. This is why I would not use isolated, non-repeatable cases of such incidents as proof of anything supernatural. It would have to be way, way out of not only the ordinary but the imaginable to count as anything like proof.

Instead, I focus om something everyone can and does experience reliably, namely consciousness, free will and moral judgment. To attribute such qualities to randomness is to remove oneself from the debate, as no one will have a serious discussion with a random number generator. In your mental capabilities arose randomly, you must never the less have transcended that randomness by now, since they are working reliably.

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To attribute such qualities to randomness is to remove oneself from the debate, as no one will have a serious discussion with a random number generator. Duh, I eat poop! In your mental capabilities arose randomly, you must never the less have transcended that randomness by now, since they are working reliably. Duh, I eat more poop! I like eating tasty poop!

And with this trotting out of the traditional long-debunked Creationist strawman attempt to argue against something *nobody is actually saying*, your usefulness to this conversation is over.

In the unlikely event that you're NOT just "bearing false witness" and Lying For Jesus, and you seriously do think "random" properly describes the results of evolution, it's time for you to educate yourself, and learn why what you just said is not just stupid, it's mindbogglingly, unbelievably, Creationism-level weapons-grade stupid.

Free hint: it's ABOUT as correct as someone who says "Christ died for your sins, so it doesn't matter if you sin or not, repent or not, or whatever - everyone has a guaranteed pass into heaven that requires them to do and think *nothing* about it! This is the single unifying core principle of all of Christianity!" - except that that last bit is slightly MORE correct that your strawman, because at least one branch of Christianity (antinomianism - look it up) actually DOES believe that.

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Don't be stupid. A creationst tries to overwrite physics with metaphysics; I simply try to stop you from doing the opposite. You cannot derive meaning from matter any more than you can derive matter from meaning. You and the creationist are counterparts, trying to invade a domain in which you are not at home.

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You seem to think that "produced by evolutionary processes" means "random".

This means you're either ignorant, uneducated, and incompetent to engage in this discussion, or you're lying. Which is it?

(And I'm not trying to "invade" your "domain". I'm pointing out that your "domain" is entirely meaningless and that you've completely and unsurprisingly failed to demonstrate why it would be *useful*, let alone necessary, let alone provide the slightest evidence that it might exist.)

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Well, I'm not the one who thinks we humans are here by accident. Or more exactly, that we are human by accident. That all our qualities and sensibilities are simply byproducts of our ancestors' attempts to survive and reproduce. I guess "accidental" is more exact than "random", but it is not like you don't understand what I say.

Your notion that there is no domain of quality is duly noted. It is idiotic though. That's my whole point: You are bloody well aware that truth, beauty and virtue are real, yet you defend a worldview in which only matter and energy is real. Make up your mind instead of being backseat driver in a conceptual world created by the very people you love to hate.

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I guess "accidental" is more exact than "random",

Aaaaaaand you've just completely changed your thesis, abandoned you previous efforts, and are now claiming that you meant something completely different all along.

Free hint: "talking to a random number generator" is not the same, at all, as saying humans came into existence via undirected processes.

That all our qualities and sensibilities are simply byproducts of our ancestors' attempts to survive and reproduce.

Conveniently enough, that's what *100%*, without even the slightest exception, of the evidence says happened. And the more we investigate, the more we find out that religious explanations are intellectually bankrupt.

but it is not like you don't understand what I say.

I understand you perfectly. It's you who changes your tune every time it's pointed out that what you're saying is *unsupportable.*

Your notion that there is no domain of quality is duly noted.

Hey look! The goalposts! They're MOVING! How on earth can this be?

My claim is not that truth, virtue, and beauty do not exist.

My claim is that, since you (and everyone else, everywhere, in all of recorded history) have utterly failed to demonstrate any evidence for anything supernatural, let alone for *your specific* supernatural nonsense, that assuming the supernatural to exist is ludicrous.

As truth, beauty, and virtue do exist, and the assumption of the supernatural to exist is TRANSPARENTLY UNFOUNDED, truth, beauty, and virtue must be *unconnected* from the claims of religion.

Your "domain" is that of "religious fact", and you claim the term "science of happiness" to refer incorrectly to your antiscientific claims that happiness must be connected to religion. I'm saying you don't get to declare a monopoly on "happiness" as the product of magic.

(Also: You have still utterly, completely, and without reservation failed to support, in any way, your initial presumption of the existence of any god, let alone your presumption of the truth of *your* God.)

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If you believe that the immaterial domain of qualities exists, then you are religious in my book, though I am sure most Americans will think otherwise. You don't need to believe in a personal (much less anthropomorphic) God to be religious - witness Theravada Buddhism, a major religion. Arguably Confucianism is also a religion, though some categorize it as a philosophy.

All this stands as opposite to the insane notion that the mind is merely a function of the body and thus has no real existence, in other words is merely an illusion or a by-product. Those who hold to this notion are in effect saying that they don't exist, which is pretty much as insane as you come.

The various gods are of course thought-forms. God is not some guy, and even the concept of "god" is merely an approximation. Witness how even people with the same religion have each a slightly different god. There is nothing mysterious in that. But as long as you acknowledge the experienced immaterial or ideal domain as real, you can base religion on your own actual experiences and compare them with others who do likewise, and in that way get a steadily deeper understanding of the parts of reality that lie beyond matter.

Those who believe only in matter, however, are cutting off the branch they sit on, since they eliminate the very mind that makes such a judgment.

The theories of evolution and such are somewhat interesting, and can be useful for geologists seeking to identify various strata and find out where to look for oil, coal etc. It is not a matter important to ordinary people in their daily lives, though. An understanding of the invisible self and how to attain higher qualities, however, is essential to increase happiness.

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If you believe that the immaterial domain of qualities exists, then you are religious in my book, though I am sure most Americans will think otherwise. You don't need to believe in a personal (much less anthropomorphic) God to be religious - witness Theravada Buddhism, a major religion. Arguably Confucianism is also a religion, though some categorize it as a philosophy.

Ah, yes, the redefinition of *religion itself* to encompass non-religious concepts in a desperate attempt to make it cover something *real*. I was wondering when you'd get to that particular bit of nonsense.

Let's start, right off the bat, by defining religion. I like "belief in one or more culturally postulated supernatural beings." What do you think?

All this stands as opposite to the insane notion that the mind is merely a function of the body and thus has no real existence,

Stop. Rewind. JUSTIFY YOUR ASSUMPTION.

Being a function of the body is actually the clearest way possible to say that it HAS real existence. Frankly, your assumed thing, being non-detectable, non-evidential, non-supported, and *non-physical* has a much better claim on "has no real existence" than anything I've said.

Those who hold to this notion are in effect saying that they don't exist, which is pretty much as insane as you come.

Oh, wait, did I short-circuit your strawman by pointing out that your initial assumption was unsupported, stupid, AND supported my position better than yours anyway? Whoops, better start over.

in that way get a steadily deeper understanding of the parts of reality that lie beyond matter.

Once again: Justify your assumption that there is something beyond matter, that these concepts you ignorantly ascribe magical properties to are anything other than products of physical existence.

I'll give you a starting point: Mathematics. Is math magic? Is math based entirely in physical things? Does math describe non-physical things?

(Hint: no, yes, yes.)

Those who believe only in matter, however, are cutting off the branch they sit on, since they eliminate the very mind that makes such a judgment.

Nonsense! Once again, justify your *ignorant, unsupported assumption* that matter cannot create a mind.

The theories of evolution and such are somewhat interesting, and can be useful for geologists seeking to identify various strata and find out where to look for oil, coal etc.

All biology is based on evolution. Failing to understand evolution leads to daily failures in simple thinking, ranging from misunderstanding antibiotics to delusional beliefs about flu shots to giving money to churches.

Further, the inaccurate and idiotic denigration of evolution leads to the inaccurate and idiotic denigration of ALL SCIENCE, since the "arguments" against evolution are actually stronger when used against less-well-supported science - and evolution is, literally and with no hyperbole, the single part of science for which THE MOST evidence is found, and which has produced THE LARGEST number of useful predictions and discoveries.

Disregard of evolution is disregard of all science, which is idiocy.

It is not a matter important to ordinary people in their daily lives, though. An understanding of the invisible self and how to attain higher qualities, however, is essential to increase happiness.

I've already addressed the "not important" part, on which you're objectively wrong. Now, it's time for you to SUPPORT YOUR POSITION and JUSTIFY YOUR ASSUMPTION that belief in fake magic is required to be happy.

Edited Date: 2009-12-05 03:48 am (UTC)

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You'd find it less confusing and more entertaining if you paid attention and understood.

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I keep taking pains to make it clear that I am basing my "faith" on experience, and not just my personal experience, but experience that is readily available to everyone, at no cost but a little sliver of time. On this background I posit that the mind is more real than the world, because we - you and I and everyone - experience the world through the mind, and control the world through the mind.

You may think the world as measured by technological devices is more real. But it is the mind that created these devices, the mind that deployed them, the mind that observes them. There is no human reality that is not filtered through the human mind.

The human mind - and from what we see, not the mind of any other animal - is able to visit other worlds than the physical world which we share with our furry friends. Mathematics, as you point out, is real. It is a higher realm, a part of the realm of ideas. The higher realm is not separate from the lower, but is found in it and yet exceeds it.

Our various scientific theories depends on our ability to transcend the endless stream of instances of form and pierce through to the higher principles that lie above the instances. It is an unique aspect of human nature that we are able to explore these higher realms with our mind.

I have no problem with evolution, of course. Only with people who give it a higher position than it warrants. You cannot attribute justice and wisdom and virtue to copying errors and expect me to take it seriously. Limit the theory to the domain where it applies, and approach the ideal domain on its own terms, and we are fine.

Religion is an understanding of the whole of reality that includes the immaterial realms, and the practices that accord with such an understanding. There are many religions, and they are all partial because we are still fairly primitive. We don't really know much about the higher realms, as we are still in the process of colonizing them. Therefore our maps are distorted and filled with blank holes, much like the early maps of America when only a few explorers had traveled there and returned.

That's actually a very good metaphor. What we frequently see today is that people worship Columbus but they won't follow him to colonize the new world. Instead they attack people who idolize Leiv Erikson, and get into fistfights with them. This makes them feel very good about their own status as Columbites, and will surely grant them entrance to the new world when they die. -_- Thus all the religious stupidity that we both see, but which is the only thing you see.

And in conclusion, the material world is real. It is shared and persistent. But so is World of Warcraft. There are realms that are more real, more dense with being, than other realms. There are several such levels of being. Through religious practices, the easiest of which is meditation, you can begin to directly experience this and don't have to rely on your education and theories.

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I keep taking pains to make it clear that I am basing my "faith" on experience,

*Unexamined* experience.

and not just my personal experience,

Yes, just your personal experience. You don't have any others.

experience that is readily available to everyone, at no cost but a little sliver of time

Ah, of course. Hey, dude, when we huff paint thinner, we get euphoric! It's the same for everyone, so that makes it a MAGICAL experience that proves the existence of a supernatural realm.

On this background I posit that the mind is more real than the world, because we - you and I and everyone - experience the world through the mind,

Man, a running process is TOTALLY much more real than the physical hardware! In fact, the hardware wouldn't even EXIST if Windows wasn't running! It's true, I turn my computer off and BANG it stops existing, every time!

able to visit other worlds than the physical world

No, stop. Your terminology is entirely misleading, lacking, and contains unjustified assumptions.

The human mind is capable of IMAGINING other worlds than the physical world. The fact that we can think about Heaven and Middle Earth and a version of Forks Washington where nobody does meth doesn't mean those places *really exist*.

(And, really, you think animals don't have imagination? Then you've never watched an animal dream, or panic over something that isn't there, or get disappointed when something it wants doesn't happen.)

The higher realm is not separate from the lower, but is found in it and yet exceeds it.

Justify "exceeds". "Not separate" and "contained within it", I'll accept, although I mislike the term "higher realm" for a similar kind of unexamined, unjustified inherent assumption.

I have no problem with evolution, of course. Only with people who give it a higher position than it warrants. You cannot attribute justice and wisdom and virtue to copying errors and expect me to take it seriously.

And once again, you dishonestly attempt to claim that evolutionary processes are "just copying errors". You are either *ignorant, uneducated, and incompetent to have this discussion*, or you are *deliberately and actively lying* because you *do* know that you're wrong and yet you keep repeating the creationist nonsense despite that. Which is it?

But going to the idiotic argument you were TRYING to make rather than the revealing one you made by accident: You still have yet to justify your claim that "justice" or "wisdom" have any meaning except in the context of *real* human experience, and that these concepts are impossible without magic, and that a world without magic must necessarily lack any possibility of them.

(I have a thought experiment for you: Imagine there is no life on earth. No life ever has been on earth. No life, in fact, anywhere in the entire universe.

Does the earth still orbit the sun?

Does gravity still work?)

Limit the theory to the domain where it applies, and approach the ideal domain on its own terms, and we are fine.

Religion is an understanding of the whole of reality that includes the immaterial realms,

Stop. JUSTIFY your assumption that REALITY does not include the whole of reality, and that immaterial realms exist in a real sense.
Then, justify your assumption that religion provides you with useful tools for examining said immaterial realms. THEN, justify how the unfounded assumptions made by *your* religion do anything other than interfere, prejudice, taint, and hamper your "examinations" of said immaterial realms.

There are many religions, and they are all partial because we are still fairly primitive.

Ah, of course. Because the entirety of human history telling fairy tales has actually produced *nothing useful* - and yet, a few short centuries of "fuck the fairy tales, let's try something wacky and look only at real things" has produced remarkable progress - in philosophy and sociology as well physical sciences.

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We don't really know much about the higher realms, as we are still in the process of colonizing them.

Once again, justify your assumption that these "higher realms" exist. You still have not done so, making your "colonisation" about as meaningful as my insistence that I have gnomes living under my desk.

And in conclusion, the material world is real. It is shared and persistent. But so is World of Warcraft.

World of Warcraft being, I will point out, *purely physical* and *entirely non-magical*.

There are realms that are more real, more dense with being, than other realms.

Stop. Clearly define "realm", and then justify your assumption.

There are several such levels of being.

Stop. Clearly define "levels of being" and then justify your assumption.

Through religious practices, the easiest of which is meditation, you can begin to directly experience this and don't have to rely on your education and theories.

Stop. Justify your assumption that your experiences reflect something other than a real effect in the real world.

Do you see, yet, why I say that you have completely failed to examine, in the slightest, any of the things you claim to be basing your life on? Your entire "faith" is based on unexamined, ignorant, unfounded, untested assumptions. When confronted with the fact that you've never really thought about any of this, you repeat it as if the repetition changes anything.

You have, in short, a religion.

All religion is stupid religion. The phrase "stupid religion" is a tautology - if something isn't stupid, it can't be "religion".

That being said:
You continually repeat idiotic statements about evolution, like that a being produced by a purely evolutionary process must be a "random number generator" or a "product of copying errors".

Two questions arise from this.

#1: Are you LYING about evolution, or do you NOT UNDERSTAND evolution? There is no third possibility. For bonus points, you repeat the error after it's been corrected repeatedly, which inevitably leads me to conclude you're the "bearing false witness" type. God *told you* not to lie. Why do you lie?

#2: Do you actually think that God gets any more, or less, likely based simply on evolution itself being more, or less, likely?

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