Why is there religion???

[BaalChatzaf]

4 hours ago, moralist said:

There ya go, Bob.

You are of no more or less importance than a cockroach... except the cockroach wasn't educated by the government.

 

Greg

Most of my education was autodidaction.   You are aware that the government virtually forces people to put their children in the hands of strangers.  It is very difficult to avoid.  Most people do not have the means to do it. 

[moralist]

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Most of my education was autodidaction.  

What career did you pursue, Bob.

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

1 minute ago, moralist said:

What career did you pursue, Bob.

Greg

 

2 minutes ago, moralist said:

What career did you pursue, Bob.

Greg

Software design and applied math.  I learned all of my software stuff after I left school and I did my applied math after I left school.  In school I studied logic and algebra --- all pure math stuff.   Basically I learned my trades OJT.   Post highschool  I worked my way through college and graduate school.  I never pursued an academic career and I stopped working for private firms with government contracts after 1968.  I worked 33 years till retirement in the private sector.  

[Peter]

Greg wrote: To secularists the Holy Trinity of their political religion is dope, sexual perversion, and abortion. end quote

And I answered, “No it isn't. Do you mean hippies?”

And Greg responded: Yes it is. America is steeped in drugs. Both prescription and illegal including marijuana and alcohol. end quote

You are dishonestly missing your own point, when you link THEIR politics and their lack of religion. And that is a sin in the eyes of your God. “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” No one is arguing that dope, etc., are now, or could be a “bigger” problem. But there is no reputable, social or political group that has a “platform” advocating immorality. Some groups do advocate *freedom* in specific areas of human action but they do not advocate immorality.

Dishonesty is immoral. And you are immoral to label Objectivists as advocating any form of irrationality. Generally, you are dishonestly immoral to conflate people who use reason to live their lives with people who do irrational things. You are morally dishonest to pick one secular attribute (like a refusal to have your particular *stupid faith* in the nonexistent) to condemn a group of people. To use your method, you are a tiny, stupid minority within a bigger, stupid majority. Secularists are not monolithic, nor are they divided into left and right. You should be fighting Muslims you moron. There are religions that would consider you a monster that would chop your head off. Secularists in general might find you annoying.

Secularism or lack of irrational belief in illusionary deities does not lead to immorality. Greg, I liken you to the crazy guy with the big sign that reads, “The End Times Are Near.” Except your sign is propped up is in the wrong corner, of the wrong public green. I half expect you to show up next, and hand out . . .

“Jehovah's Witnesses, also known as the Watchtower Society, take very seriously the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19 to take the gospel to all the nations. Based on over a century of experience, they believe door to door evangelism is an effective way to do that. Just as Jesus Christ sent the seventy-two out in pairs (Luke 10:1, NIV), Jehovah's Witnesses travel in pairs. For practical reasons, it protects them against any accusations of impropriety and guards their safety. Having a partner allows one of the Witnesses to look up relevant Bible verses or tracts while the other one is talking. Also, the less experienced member of the pair learns from the veteran Witness in a sort of on-the-job training.”

Greg, you are a fool.

Peter

[BaalChatzaf]

Historically,  the Christ Movement started out as a kind of Reform Judaism.  If it had stayed that way the world would be a lot less worse off.  Unfortunately the Sinister Paul of Tarsus  brought the movement to the Gentiles.   Christianity is what we got when Gentiles totally confounded something that was meant for Jews.

Jews can handle monotheism.  Most other cultural religious groups cannot or will not.  At present Islam is the most dangerous reduction ad absurdum of a set of memes that was invented for Jews by Jews.  

The only Gentile group that could handle this material (historically speaking)  were the Stoics and they have died out over the centuries. 

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: Historically, the Christ Movement started out as a kind of Reform Judaism.  If it had stayed that way the world would be a lot less worse off. end quote

I think you are right. But how do you call a halt or moratorium to new *creative irrationality*? If only we could have put a stop to all the world’s religions but Judaism, all the Jews would now be mumble, mumble, I don’t go to synagogue Jews. No more idiots. No Scientologists, no crystal gazers, no church of the ant people.

Ba’al wrote: Unfortunately the Sinister Paul of Tarsus bright the movement to the Gentiles. end quote

I bright what you are saying.

Ba’al wrote: Jews can handle monotheism. end quote

When I was 12 I ridiculed Christians in the church I was forced into going to, by saying, “One God? For Christ’s sake, then you immediately split monotheism into God, Christ, and the holy ghost. That’s a trinity, not monotheism. And Catholics add the bloody Virgin Mary!”

Ba’al wrote: The only Gentile group that could handle this material (historically speaking) were the Stoics and they have died out over the centuries. end quote

Nah. They live on in the fable of Paul Bunyan. Could you be a bit more specific?

Peter

From Wikipedia. Please donate 25 pesos soon.

Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved.^[1] To live a good life, one had to understand the rules of the natural order since they taught that everything was rooted in nature.^[2]

Later Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that, because "virtue is sufficient for happiness", a sage was immune to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase "stoic calm", though the phrase does not include the "radical ethical" Stoic views that only a sage can be considered truly free, and that all moral corruptions are equally vicious.^[3]

From its founding, Stoic doctrine was popular with a following in Roman Greece and throughout the Roman Empire—including the Emperor Marcus Aurelius—until the closing of all pagan philosophy schools in AD 529 by order of the Emperor Justinian I, who perceived them as being at odds with Christian faith.^[4][5] Neostoicism was a syncretic philosophical movement, joining Stoicism and Christianity, influenced by Justus Lipsius.

[william.scherk]

 

 

Click this image for a religious experience ... 

 

[Brant Gaede]

Nada, zip - nothing happened.

--Brant

edit: something happened when I got close enough to read the words

[william.scherk]

1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

something happened when I got close enough to read the words

It pays off to zoom right in.  I cannot vouch for its validity as objectively correct about the variations and evolution of religion in exact detail, but I bet the broad strokes comport with reality.   Some of this stuff I had no idea of, and it set me new tracks to explore. Here's some detail views of the giant 'historical' tree of the eruption of religion and its rampant speciation ...

Thanks for clicking through and zooming in, Brant. Hope you got something out of it.  It kind of reminds me of all the kinds of breeding stocks of say, banty chickens. Banty-fanciers (insert pigeon or cat or dog) do all kinds of breeding, trying to isolate and purify some sport of nature. In the religious world, in its evolution, it seems to me that the eruption of religion had to obey the same principles of evolution as any school of thought or state of law. From some rootstock are drawn later sports. I like how the tree disappears into pre-history ... and how the mad proliferation gives it a guise of having a life of its own, a reified 'growth and speciation' within and about and as cultural-psychological relict of humanity's evolution in 'itself.' As Michael might put it, a metaphorical holon within the human experience, as broadly adapted as any other faculty of man.

Me, I stand with the atheists, but there is fascination, deep fascination in religion for me -- especially its evolution and its sometimes-dangerous and deadly sports.

 

Who knew?

 

-- and nearer the human rootstock ...

Edited May 9, 2016 by william.scherk
Illustrations were necessary, he thought to himself.

[moralist]

On ‎5‎/‎9‎/‎2016 at 5:52 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

 

Software design and applied math.  I learned all of my software stuff after I left school and I did my applied math after I left school.  In school I studied logic and algebra --- all pure math stuff.   Basically I learned my trades OJT.   Post highschool  I worked my way through college and graduate school.  I never pursued an academic career and I stopped working for private firms with government contracts after 1968.  I worked 33 years till retirement in the private sector.  

Thanks, Bob. 

This goes a long way to explaining why we each have such totally different views of the world.

I'm also self taught, except without any government education because it would have been a totally senseless waste of time for what I do. Each of our paths went in completely opposite directions. You became an employee while I became an entrepreneur. My son in law also started out as an employee writing code, except he quit, started his own business, and is a successful website architect for the major film studios.

What I find odd is that for all of your many years of government education and decades long career you never saw the beautiful transcendent reality that mathematics is a language which pays honor to something far beyond itself.  Neither you nor anyone else, no matter how intelligent or highly educated could have ever created the sublimely well ordered principles of mathematics, you could only discover what had already existed.

 

Greg

 

[Guyau]

.

Greg, why would God need order and the structure of mathematics in his mind? or why would such things be an emanation of his mind if his being of mentality is not an ordered thought across time, but an omniscience in an eternal instant? He would know all, however ordered or chaotic. Would he necessarily have to create mathematics in creating the world? Could his power be constrained in that way? Would he create mathematics only for our enjoyment and utility, mathematics being inessential to his own being? Do you agree with the tradition according to which God created the world? From nothing? Do you believe in God or only something significantly like that? You seem to avoid using the name God. Is avoidance of that name only a public-relations approach for preaching to people such as Objectivist-types, who don’t believe in things such as a supernatural God?

If God created mathematics, did he also create the principle of mathematics and of the world that we call the principle of identity: all things have specific characters and not some other specific characters? If he created that principle, could he have the specific character of being a creator before creating that principle?

Greg, it is just evasion to switch the topic to politics or to say the junk about "we have different backgrounds, education, and life histories, therefore we must think differently about these and many other matters." No. We both have the power to collect seven bolts by counting them. We both have the power to think or not to think. To think of the preceding logical issues concerning reality or to evade them.

Have you bothered to read Rand before preaching to the Randians? What have you read of hers? What are your rejoinders to her arguments (different than those in this post) against the conception God and his existence? Insult or going mum is no substitute for articulate counter-argument, no substitute for the work of articulate thought. (Also, have you read the Bible? You said you don't regard it as the word of God, but as being about God. I'd think that's a good enough reason for reading it and bringing its thought and eloquent expressions forth in support of your view. You did not invent the First Commandment and how it is about God and man, however central it is in your own view.)

It is often said that God is love and that God loves the world and man. In Luther's catechism, the meaning given for each Commandment nine times out of ten begins "We should fear and love God such that we may not . . . ." Do you think it appropriate to love God? Do you think it appropriate for you to love your fellow human beings as God is said to love us? Why is there nothing but hatred and insinuation of your wicked wishes for suffering of those you disagree with in your message? The message with which Christianity has won so many hearts and minds is quite other.

[Brant Gaede]

Greg likes to gloat. His propositions are non-falsifiable but many are workable, even desirable. Arguing with a religionist about God is like arguing with an Objectivist about axioms, except for the benefit of third parties.

--Brant

[Roger Bissell]

28 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Greg likes to gloat.

 

I had to re-read that twice. I thought you said, "Greg likes two goats." (Recalling that he alluded on this thread to Jesus being the Great Shepherd, but not the Great Goatherd, I thought maybe he was getting ready to apply for the job.) 

REB

[Brant Gaede]

You read it twice--or three times?

--Brant

I'm spending too much time on OL

[Brant Gaede]

8 hours ago, moralist said:

Thanks, Bob. 

This goes a long way to explaining why we each have such totally different views of the world.

I'm also self taught, except without any government education because it would have been a totally senseless waste of time for what I do. Each of our paths went in completely opposite directions. You became an employee while I became an entrepreneur. My son in law also started out as an employee writing code, except he quit, started his own business, and is a successful website architect for the major film studios.

What I find odd is that for all of your many years of government education and decades long career you never saw the beautiful transcendent reality that mathematics is a language which pays honor to something far beyond itself.  Neither you nor anyone else, no matter how intelligent or highly educated could have ever created the sublimely well ordered principles of mathematics, you could only discover what had already existed.

Greg

You know math? Or are you just repeating opinions of some mathematicians? Science (and Mathematics I presume) is about discovery, not creation. What a human creator would do is take a discovery and make--literally make--something(s) out of it (or them). The discovery is more important than the creation, but without the creation the discovery is worthless. Archimedes discovered calculus but it was worthless until Newton rediscovered it. We didn't even know about what Archimedes did about that--I think he was the first truly modern man (except for that guy in Egypt, maybe, who calculated the circumference of the earth and did a very good job of it*)--until just recently.

--Brant

for all I know--not knowing math that well--the "principles of mathematics" are not "sublimely well ordered," but that's how I would bet

*but it was a long, long time before Columbus sailed west to get to the east and he did not use the old calculation for he thought--or told Ferdinand and Isabella--that the globe was much smaller than it was

 

[Brant Gaede]

10 hours ago, moralist said:

Thanks, Bob. 

This goes a long way to explaining why we each have such totally different views of the world.

I'm also self taught, except without any government education because it would have been a totally senseless waste of time for what I do. Each of our paths went in completely opposite directions. You became an employee while I became an entrepreneur. My son in law also started out as an employee writing code, except he quit, started his own business, and is a successful website architect for the major film studios.

What I find odd is that for all of your many years of government education and decades long career you never saw the beautiful transcendent reality that mathematics is a language which pays honor to something far beyond itself.  Neither you nor anyone else, no matter how intelligent or highly educated could have ever created the sublimely well ordered principles of mathematics, you could only discover what had already existed.

Greg

Historically geniuses have benefited from government education.

An entrepreneur employs himself.

The people who started Intel were a gaggle of employees and entrepreneurs in one person. They left William Shockley's employment because Shockley was a hog refusing to share in the entrepreneurship so Shockley, a second or third rate genius (his description) but a genius nevertheless, failed. Shockley was an unpleasant man in the same way my own father, who was a sometimes friend of Shockley especially before WWII, was. They met because Shockley's daughter and my sister attended the same NYC nursery school and that's how my mother found out that his IQ was in the low 130s (still a genius) and my dad's was 189 (not a genius but could have been which illustrates my personal thesis that genius is as much about character and how the mind is used as raw brainpower.) The irony is Shockley went on to make a big ado about IQ when his was only decent. (It's possible his IQ was greater, however, for sometimes, I speculate, brainiacs might be bored with a test. The great passion of my life is for human ability and competence and accomplishment. I'm only comfortable around expertise.)

In continuation is why I think Nathaniel Branden was a genius: he invented the sentence completion technique (not sentence completion). I do not evaluate his theorectical work in self esteem except I don't think he quite got his brain around the subject respecting practical applications. His psychotherapy work was ad hoc problem oriented (and brilliance in action). This enabled him to maximize the number of clients he worked with. I know from his own statement that by the mid-1970s he had had about 3000 clients and from that I extrapolated he might have had as many as 10,000 by the end of his career, not even counting the people who attended his numerous "Intensives" starting in 1977.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

9 hours ago, moralist said:

Thanks, Bob. 

This goes a long way to explaining why we each have such totally different views of the world.

I'm also self taught, except without any government education because it would have been a totally senseless waste of time for what I do. Each of our paths went in completely opposite directions. You became an employee while I became an entrepreneur. My son in law also started out as an employee writing code, except he quit, started his own business, and is a successful website architect for the major film studios.

We all knew that that was coming: Apey Jethro thumping his chest, trying to make himself believe that his weaknesses and insecurities are strengths.

 

9 hours ago, moralist said:

What I find odd is that for all of your many years of government education and decades long career you never saw the beautiful transcendent reality that mathematics is a language which pays honor to something far beyond itself.  Neither you nor anyone else, no matter how intelligent or highly educated could have ever created the sublimely well ordered principles of mathematics, you could only discover what had already existed.

 

Yeah, that's the self-taught Apey version of "You didn't build that, someone else made that happen."

J

[moralist]

2 hours ago, Guyau said:

.Greg, why would God need order and the structure of mathematics in his mind? 

He doesn't... we do.

It is for our benefit... not His.

 

Quote

It is often said that God is love and that God loves the world and man.

 

For clarity, what is your definition of love as applied to that statement? I'll comment after you offer your definition.

 

Quote

 Why is there nothing but hatred and insinuation of your wicked wishes for suffering of those you disagree with in your message?

 

There's no hate in the recognition that everyone is getting exactly what they deserve as the consequences they themselves set into motion by their own actions. But rather it is an acknowledgement of the objective reality of personal responsibility. Doing what's morally wrong creates our own self inflicted suffering.

 

Greg

[moralist]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

. His propositions are non-falsifiable but many are workable, even desirable.

And being non-falsifiable defuses pointless arguments, Brant.

Arguments over God are well trampled ground, so it's more productive move beyond it and simply acknowledge the existence of two completely irreconcilable views, and the objective reality that everyone gets exactly what they deserve in their life as the result of their own free choice.

Greg

[Jonathan]

11 minutes ago, moralist said:

...everyone is getting exactly what they deserve as the consequences they themselves set into motion by their own actions. 

You should copy the above statement and keep it handy somewhere, so that you can post it again, and frequently! It's a statement that you should consider repeating often, maybe even in almost every post that you write, because I don't think most people here who have read your posts have been exposed to the fact that the above statement is what you believe. Seriously, you should try to find ways of sharing that thought with people rather than keeping it to yourself.

J

[Jonathan]

12 minutes ago, moralist said:

And being non-falsifiable defuses pointless arguments, Brant.

 

Apey not understand falsifiability.

J

[moralist]

52 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Historically geniuses have benefited from government education.

An entrepreneur employs himself.

Yes. These are two completely different paths.

To become an employee requires a government education because government education needs to groom students to become employees to feed and to grow its bureaucracy. To this end students need to be politically indoctrinated into a specific way of thinking that conforms to the established order.

In contrast, an entrepreneur does not need the government to educate them. Many successful entrepreneurs and creative thinkers needed to escape from government school in order to chart their own course in life.

Government imprinting is at cross purpose to innovation because imprinted minds cannot create. They can only imitate. The government needs imitators for it's malignant cancerous bureaucracy to continue to grow.

 

Greg

[moralist]

...as ugly Jonathan comes crawling out from under his rock...

[Brant Gaede]

9 minutes ago, moralist said:

...as ugly Jonathan comes crawling out from under his rock...

There's a difference between (an) ad hominem (attack) and (an) argumentum ad hominem (attack), but not here.

--Brant

Jonathan does a lot of attacking too

[BaalChatzaf]

10 hours ago, moralist said:

Thanks, Bob. 

This goes a long way to explaining why we each have such totally different views of the world.

I'm also self taught, except without any government education because it would have been a totally senseless waste of time for what I do. Each of our paths went in completely opposite directions. You became an employee while I became an entrepreneur. My son in law also started out as an employee writing code, except he quit, started his own business, and is a successful website architect for the major film studios.

What I find odd is that for all of your many years of government education and decades long career you never saw the beautiful transcendent reality that mathematics is a language which pays honor to something far beyond itself.  Neither you nor anyone else, no matter how intelligent or highly educated could have ever created the sublimely well ordered principles of mathematics, you could only discover what had already existed.

 

Greg

 

I am not a Platonist.   Mathematics is a human creation and activity from beginning to end.  It is fortunate that  we can formulate mathematical systems that have a good correspondence to the reality that we can observe, imagine and induce.  We can also formulate mathematical systems that have no correspondence to he physical reality we can experience.  I do not concur with either Plato or Pythagoras.