It's kind of odd. On one hand, I feel that I am "deeply religious", yet on the other hand, I hear about (and see) the freakazoid "Christians" that are described here (and elsewhere) and feel that I want to be as far removed from them as possible.LOL! I mean people that I know in everyday life. ;)... I don't know anyone that is deeply religious. ...I'm hurt. (I think).
;-)
I know what you mean. The kind of Christian that tells you that you're going "to burn in Hell" for believing in evolution. I was once called an atheist by someone for stating that I believe in evolution and Creationism shouldn't be taught in school. This same person also believed there was a buried angel in his backyard. I swear I'm not making this up. Thankfully, those kind of Christians are a rarity.
You need to get out more. Houston is hardly part of the "Bible Belt".
Yeah, I'm in an office full of "holy rollers," is the problem.
Knock knock, Moff.oh dear...
Who's there?
God.
Who's there?
God.
"Am I on Candid Camera?"
--Bill Cosby's Noah
While it is true that most Canadian fundamentalists would be seen as moderates in America we do have our share.
Also, I'm the only Canadian in my family. I was born there and refused to apply for American citizenship when I turned 18 much to the chagrin of my father. I'm sure many Americans would have sighed a breath of relief had they known.
But I have spent a good three or four years living in America at one time or another, and I have holy rollers and speaking in tongues in my maternal grandfather's side of the family. He, for his part, was staunchly non-religious: not ranting, he just wouldn't have anything to do with it, and wouldn't talk about it, other than saying grace before supper. He referred to my Aunt Betty, who was a devout episcopalian, as "Aunt Batty".
I've been to churches all through Washington DC and in West Virginia, some of my visits were compelled by the same kind of fascination that makes people slow down to rubberneck gruesome car accidents.
And I have seen holy rolling. I have seen speaking in tongues. I've heard scads of southern Baptist preaching. But I have yet to see people dancing around with rattlesnakes and would really love to, at least once, before I die.
I do sort of wish you'd both tone it down a notch; this seems to be one of the few threads I can go to without getting into an argument nowadays.
Yah I started out just wanting Zombie to chill, then ended up with spittle all over my desk, you know?
Sorry guys.
God who?Knock knock, Moff.oh dear...
Who's there?
God.
God who? Are you kidding me? Were you expecting another god? I believe I said thou shalt have no other gods before me. Do I have a reason to be worried, Moff? Do I?
What I was kind of talking about was the difference between expectations of Christians and expectations of other people who look at the Bible. If you're not a Christian, then all the Bible is, is just a collection of ancient stories. Some of them possibly useful. Some of them a bit disturbing. But in any case it isn't wrong. But Christians should be looking at the Bible as both a collection of individual works as well as a whole unit. If you're not a Christian, feel free to pick out the bits you like and throw away the other parts, but for Christians, I feel that if they just pick out the bits they like, they don't really understand what God, Jesus or the Bible is all about. They end up making the Bible something that it isn't.
As a student of literature, looking at the Bible textually (as a Christian or not does not matter) I still need to look at its content both in its elements and as a whole. So really, it's not just Churchgoers, or those who hold it as the infallible word of God who must approach it with rigor.
Me? I certainly don't just throw stuff away--although I do label some parts as fantastical, ignorant, or just outright mythologizing and measure them as such.
For my part, I've found those who study the scriptures in reputable post-secondary institutions (in both schools of divinity and comparative literature programs) to be far more methodological, and more rigorous than most church opinion and policy makers; and most of the ordinary worshippers I've met don't spend much time reflecting on their weekly messages in the context of the whole. I find more often they want to apply them to their own lives and this is what they be doing I reckon. So as I see it the distinction on who looks at things as a whole and who doesn't is not set between believers and non-believers. It is set between people who take their analysis with rigor and those who don't.
For example, and I know everyone here is familiar with this problem, I find that those who use Leviticus to decry and condemn homosexuals to be completely ignoring the Jesus message, while for me the Jesus message is the yardstick for everything else in that book.
Leviticus literal? Whoa.... no need to go there in this thread I hope.
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And I have seen holy rolling. I have seen speaking in tongues.
I've actually *done* speaking in tongues. They called the 'holy rolling' being 'slain in the spirit' and I didn't quite get that far into the whole deal before realizing what big fakers they were.
I think I was eight when I twigged to how the 'holy rollers' were also the biggest drama-queens and attention-seekers (and always clustered in the front row, nobody in the back of the church was ever 'slain in the spirit'). Luckily I stayed in public school, as the graduates of that churches attached school have, in my experience, shared the unfortunate traits of being unable to read (seriously, they would come to my grandmothers house for help using *the phone book*), unable to get a job, prone to stealing food from their neighbors freezers to 'support their family,' hooked on drugs and / or pregnant at the age of 14 by an unknown father.
And that was just the ones in our neighborhood. Scary when you have to put a padlock on your freezer to keep the so-much-holier-than-thou folk from stealing the beef you butchered to get you through the winter because they have eight kids, two adults and no jobs between them living out of a single-wide trailer home, and Clinton cut off their welfare by limiting it to five years total. (Making it 'our fault' for voting Democratic, that they could no longer live off of our taxes, which they claimed was religious persecution... Gosh, I'm so glad to be out of Oklahoma!)
hehehe
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Think Again: God -- Agree or not, it's still good reading. Linkified.
Neat article. They almost lost me at the mention of Richard Dawkins. I can't stand that man. He's the worst kind of morally sanctimonious twit, perfectly capturing the essence of everything he hates about close-minded and intolerant people of faith, without actually having a Bible to thump.
IMO.
The Bible and the Koran may have prohibited usury, but over the centuries Jews, Christians, and Muslims all found ways of getting around this restriction and produced thriving economies. It is one of the great ironies of religious history that Christianity, whose founder taught that it was impossible to serve both God and mammon, should have produced the cultural environment that, as Max Weber suggested in his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was integral to modern capitalism.
Neat bit there. We've gone from "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." to Prosperity Gospels.
Thanks! I'm surprised most of the stats haven't changed that much since 1982.Yeah; honestly I had assumed that the "pro-Creationist" numbers would show a recent upswing (over the last decade or so). Maybe my perception has been influenced by my own location over time (ever deeper into the Bible Belt), more than by shifts in overall percentages.
I know something about this. Overall numbers of religious adherents are declining pretty much everywhere that isn't a developing nation with a dictatorship riding on top of it. (The future of Christianity, according to the Christians, is in Africa and maybe South Asia.) Irreligion is the fastest growing sentiment, ranging from indifference and disinterest to disgust at religion in general. On the face of it, one would think that all religions are shrinking at comparable rates, so the number of fundamentalists, evangelicals, snake-handlers, faith healers, and the like ought to be going down. The ebbing tide lowers all boats and all that.
Well no. It turns out those denominations, especially the ones housed in big megachurches, are growing. They're certainly not making huge inroads at converting nonbelievers or believers of other faiths, but they're doing very good at siphoning off the right wing of more liberal religious groups. The left wings of these same groups are more or less agnostics and atheists already (Seriously, the only difference between John Shelby Spong and an atheist with leftover cultural affinities for Christianity is that he doesn't like the term.), and they're leaving through the other door. The general softening of denominational hostilities has greatly facilitated this, since there's less pressure to keep one on the reservation if it's not to one's liking.
(Seriously, the only difference between John Shelby Spong and an atheist with leftover cultural affinities for Christianity is that he doesn't like the term.)
Hehe. Well said. Although I think that there are a lot of people just not interested in matters of spirit who don't want to be thrown in with Spong.
(Seriously, the only difference between John Shelby Spong and an atheist with leftover cultural affinities for Christianity is that he doesn't like the term.)Hehe. Well said. Although I think that there are a lot of people just not interested in matters of spirit who don't want to be thrown in with Spong.
Count me among them. (Matters of the spirit? There's no spirit to matter! :) ) But Spong himself has said he's not a theist and thinks theism should be abandoned. He probably wouldn't like the term, but he looks thoroughly post-Christian to me. Sure sounds like an atheist, if not the same kind of atheist I am or Dawkins is.
Well I reckon you'd have to read his latest stuff to measure him, dude, but frankly it sounds as if you wouldn't like it much.
The term he uses is nontheistic--he clearly fits in neither theistic nor atheistic categories.
Me, I call it neo-Christian.
Well I reckon you'd have to read his latest stuff to measure him, dude, but frankly it sounds as if you wouldn't like it much.
I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, he's still a churchman talking about church stuff. Unless he's talking about pawning the cathedrals and giving the money to deserving groups, there's not a lot he could say that would go over well with me.
The term he uses is nontheistic--he clearly fits in neither theistic nor atheistic categories.Me, I call it neo-Christian.
Nontheistic is atheistic. An atheist is one who does not believe in theism. Spong doesn't. He doesn't like the word, but it fits him.
Nontheistic is atheistic. An atheist is one who does not believe in theism. Spong doesn't. He doesn't like the word, but it fits him.
That's fine, you can argue semantics with him not me. If you're demanding that I use the word... I can tell you for sure that your atheism and his atheism have nothing in common whatsoever.
My take is that with such a broad range of atheism to pick from, the word doesn't really do us much good these days--so sad that common usage doesn't always give us what we want when it comes to precise meanings, eh? And while you may prefer to lump him in with yourself, I prefer to keep my signifiers as discrete as possible, and he's got enough people using the word non-theistic now that it does actually mean something in a limited community.
I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, he's still a churchman talking about church stuff. Unless he's talking about pawning the cathedrals and giving the money to deserving groups, there's not a lot he could say that would go over well with me.
Well actually, I think he does say something to the effect that the big churches are eventually going to collapse under their own weight, and that what succeeds them is actually going to have to do something useful or... IT'S ALL OVER.
Still. The God and love and foundation of all being stuff would probably give you pricklies.
My take is that with such a broad range of atheism to pick from, the word doesn't really do us much good these days--so sad that common usage doesn't always give us what we want when it comes to precise meanings, eh? And while you may prefer to lump him in with yourself, I prefer to keep my signifiers as discrete as possible, and he's got enough people using the word non-theistic now that it does actually mean something in a limited community.
Spong can of course call himself whatever he wants. (I don't actually much want Spong lumped in with me either. I read one of his books and he came off as slightly more honest than average, making him one of the two Christians who have ever come to my attention that even made a serious go at it, but otherwise not especially well.) But we must be talking past each other, since my use of atheism is laser-precise. It is a descriptor that tells us one and one thing only about a person, specifically whether or not said person believes in a deity.
Spong does not, and has re-purposed the word god for some species of high vaguery. I think that your criticism would apply far better to him than to me. For what it's worth, I enthusiastically agree that the over-broadening of precise terms (or for that matter, outright re-definitions) is unhelpful and I'll add that it's usually done with the precise agenda of sabotaging intelligent discussion with willful obscurantism.
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The Gospels are written from different perspectives based on what the different apostles consider to be the way things are. One is more about Jesus' divinity another is more about Jesus' humanity. This creates contradictions when in reality they are individual personal testimonies designed on the individual beliefs of those apostles. The "heretical" Gospel of Judas casts Judas as the instrument of God's will allowing the events to unfold as they were meant to unfold leading to his death and resurrection and of course the whole saving of everyone. Judas was hardly the villain of the tale, unlike a certain someone who rejected Jesus 3 times that night.
That being said Jesus was fairly strong in his beliefs that were against organized Religion. Christianity is not supposed to be about someone telling you what you believe in, but rather you finding for yourself what you believe in.
The "heretical" Gospel of Judas casts Judas as the instrument of God's will allowing the events to unfold as they were meant to unfold leading to his death and resurrection and of course the whole saving of everyone. Judas was hardly the villain of the tale, unlike a certain someone who rejected Jesus 3 times that night.
Something on the order of 50 non-canonical Gospels have survived from Antiquity, and maybe one, two, or three hypothetical reconstructions. Composition dates range from about 70 CE to 180 CE, roughly.
But we must be talking past each other, since my use of atheism is laser-precise. It is a descriptor that tells us one and one thing only about a person, specifically whether or not said person believes in a deity.
Laser precise in your mind, Samnell. Perhaps you should look into the term, because there is actually quite a wide range to atheism. Certainly, some brands of atheism apply to Spong.
Spong does not, and has re-purposed the word god for some species of high vaguery. I think that your criticism would apply far better to him than to me. For what it's worth, I enthusiastically agree that the over-broadening of precise terms (or for that matter, outright re-definitions) is unhelpful and I'll add that it's usually done with the precise agenda of sabotaging intelligent discussion with willful obscurantism.
Really: atheism = not precise. Go argue with wikipedia on that.
Me willful obscurantism?... haha, perhaps, perhaps. Are you implying someone is sabotaging intelligent discussion? Anyway, this does bring to mind the fact that sometimes things really are obscure and we have to find unusual ways to signify them, as in poetry that I write to express the awe, the sheer wonder, and the pure love I feel for my daughter (sure you can describe them biologically, but I'm trying to explain the experience, the feeling, not the biological system). And sometimes things we experience are simply not within our conceptual framework and we must find unusual (metaphorical) ways to point at them, like talking about "God" and "being" and "spirit"... and it just so happens that even science does this when conceptualizing the physical world where it is invisible to us. Or for an example from psychology: when a adult having been born blind has sight medically restored they can't make sense of the visible world, they can't even recognize a cube even though they can see it. To reach them, to help them identify the object, therapists must use what more or less amounts to metaphor. The point being that we must try as best we can to signify those things that defy ordinary conceptualizations and we use whatever way we can--I'm sorry if some attempts disappoint you. When I invent a God-measuring apparatus I'll be sure to give you a call.
What Spong has done with the Christian God is nothing new--they're just ideas that began cropping up in world literature hundreds of years ago and he's trying to fold them into "conventional" Christianity. It's nothing to me because I was exposed to the literature before Spong and kind of yawn and say "been there done that" when I read him. And yes, I guess you could say he re-purposed it (or someone did), and it is certainly vague--this seems to be perfectly in line with the history of religion. As our grasp of factual knowledge eats away at God's borders and human thought matures, ideations of God consequently become either more metaphysical or disappear completely (<looks around>.. or they turn weird). Should we somehow quantify those freaky things that guys like Spong define metaphysically I'm sure another guy who thinks just like Spong will come along and find some new boundaries for the divine. And really, if my God measuring device works then I reckon God will cease to be God and some other dude will come along and find a new experience to call God.
Wow, I read a really interesting article the other day about a guy who is trying to map his own consciousness through a whole array of fascinating experiments. I wish I could post the link but I can't remember where I found it. Maybe BBC news. Maybe he'll kick back the boundary a little farther so I can engage in some willful obscurantism in my denoting of things that don't really exist (except in my own consciousness).
:)
(Matters of the spirit? There's no spirit to matter! :) )
You said this with a smile and I appreciate that. Nevertheless, I'd like to point out that while you may turn your nose up at people talking about spirit all you like (really! I'm cool with that) the experience that we are describing with this word remains and we will continue to use it no matter how much electro-shock therapy you give us. We're not, if it's what you have in mind, talking about ghosts and poltergeists and physical spirits. We are talking about a facet of human consciousness. You certainly don't scoff at angst, love, and happiness... while spirit may be more obscure or vague or airy-fairy than those I still don't get why someone would tell me it does not exist. Hmmm. Whatever... it's not me joking to you that your experience does not exist. ;)
Something on the order of 50 non-canonical Gospels have survived from Antiquity, and maybe one, two, or three hypothetical reconstructions. Composition dates range from about 70 CE to 180 CE, roughly.
I think Paul's letter precede these dates somewhat.. or that's what I hear anyway. Interesting it is how the earlier you get, the miracles just disappear!
I think Paul's letter precede these dates somewhat.. or that's what I hear anyway. Interesting it is how the earlier you get, the miracles just disappear!
Something on the order of 50 non-canonical Gospels have survived from Antiquity, and maybe one, two, or three hypothetical reconstructions. Composition dates range from about 70 CE to 180 CE, roughly.
The genuine Pauline corpus does. I'm not sure about the ones attributed to him which we're fairly certain he didn't have much to do with, but one would expect them to be later.
And funny how that happens, isn't it? Augustine of Hippo took up his bishopric with the firm opinion that miracles had not continued into his present day and in fact should not have since all need for them was through when Jesus left town. By the end of his life, some decades later, he's claiming that a local spring has the power to raise the dead and he knows a man so resurrected. I guess God was just shy until he needed a new roof on his church or something. :)
Laser precise in your mind, Samnell. Perhaps you should look into the term, because there is actually quite a wide range to atheism. Certainly, some brands of atheism apply to Spong.
And look right in the first sentence is the exact meaning I had in mind, and in fact the one anybody could adduce from context. The first sense is just the third rephrased, and the second logically entails the other one and so can be regarded as a subset of atheism. Call it a flavor if you like. Vanilla and chocolate have some differences, but they're both kinds of ice cream.
Me willful obscurantism?... haha, perhaps, perhaps. Are you implying someone is sabotaging intelligent discussion?
That wasn't my intention at all. I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I actually had in mind Spong and various theologians, mostly the liberal sort but any apologist ends up there fairly fast, dedicated to vagueness.
Anyway, this does bring to mind the fact that sometimes things really are obscure and we have to find unusual ways to signify them, as in poetry that I write to express the awe, the sheer wonder, and the pure love I feel for my daughter (sure you can describe them biologically, but I'm trying to explain the experience, the feeling, not the biological system).
I understand what you're trying to say, but to me the feeling is the biological system. The two are entirely identical. Anger, happiness, arousal, pain these are all biological phenomena. The excess verbiage doesn't help anything, doesn't to much to further mutual understanding, and is better dispensed with. Being sufficiently esoteric eventually devolves into onanism. I'll never begrudge anybody a bit of that, but it's poor fodder for conversations.
And sometimes things we experience are simply not within our conceptual framework and we must find unusual (metaphorical) ways to point at them, like talking about "God" and "being" and "spirit"... and it just so happens that even science does this when conceptualizing the physical world where it is invisible to us
I shall take your word for it if you want to discuss the high strangeness of quantum mechanics. I don't have the education to participate. (I don't even know Calculus!) But integrating new experiences into our conceptual frameworks doesn't necessarily require new verbiage. I have never been to Rwanda. In fact I've lived all my life, save two weeks, in the north-central United States. I have no doubt that were I to go I would get some sensory overload from all the new and strange things I might see (I certainly did in Paris, and I had a lot better idea what to expect in Paris.) but on seeing a new animal, or tree, or building, I do not immediately reach for a whole new vocabulary with which to describe it. Quite the opposite, the task is integration, not invention.
Or for an example from psychology: when a adult having been born blind has sight medically restored they can't make sense of the visible world, they can't even recognize a cube even though they can see it. To reach them, to help them identify the object, therapists must use what more or less amounts to metaphor. The point being that we must try as best we can to signify those things that defy ordinary conceptualizations and we use whatever way we can--I'm sorry if some attempts disappoint you. When I invent a God-measuring apparatus I'll be sure to give you a call.
This is all no more mysterious than learning to walk or exercising an atrophied muscle to me. The brain's a bit more complicated than a simple muscle, but the principle is the same.
What Spong has done with the Christian God is nothing new--they're just ideas that began cropping up in world literature hundreds of years ago and he's trying to fold them into "conventional" Christianity. It's nothing to me because I was exposed to the literature before Spong and kind of yawn and say "been there done that" when I read him. And yes, I guess you could say he re-purposed it (or someone did), and it is certainly vague--this seems to be perfectly in line with the history of religion. As our grasp of factual knowledge eats away at God's borders and human thought matures, ideations of God consequently become either more metaphysical or disappear completely (<looks around>.. or they turn weird).
I know what you mean. In times of great ignorance, gods are invoked to explain everything. As ignorance recedes, suddenly these explanations are found to be false and become a bit of an embarrassment. Thus the impetus to define gods down into smaller and smaller little boxes (always while pretending not to!) to avoid that uncomfortable realization and convince oneself that this is how things really were all along. A fellow could draw some inferences from that. :)
Should we somehow quantify those freaky things that guys like Spong define metaphysically I'm sure another guy who thinks just like Spong will come along and find some new boundaries for the divine. And really, if my God measuring device works then I reckon God will cease to be God and some other dude will come along and find a new experience to call God.
One hopes not, or at least that fewer do so with each iteration. Lately that seems to be the case. Schroedinger's god is a fun little bit of conversational flim-flam but it's not a very honest way to hold an opinion. "Oh, that's not what I believe!" "Well ok, so you just said you believe this..." "Oh, I don't believe that either." "What do you believe then? Let me ask some specific questions..." "Stop being a jerk!"
I've read an exchange between Ken Miller and Richard Dawkins that followed that format almost exactly, with Miller smugly mocking Dawkins for asking a straightforward and relatively respectful question about his opinions. (Did Jesus have an earthly father?) The worst Dawkins said to this was to ask that the question not be dismissed out of hand. I understand the exchange was widely-reported as though he'd suggested Miller be skinned and roasted alive for Dawkins' erotic pleasure right there, which is typical.
You said this with a smile and I appreciate that. Nevertheless, I'd like to point out that while you may turn your nose up at people talking about spirit all you like (really! I'm cool with that) the experience that we are describing with this word remains and we will continue to use it no matter how much electro-shock therapy you give us. We're not, if it's what you have in mind, talking about ghosts and poltergeists and physical spirits. We are talking about a facet of human consciousness. You certainly don't scoff at angst, love, and happiness... while spirit may be more obscure or vague or airy-fairy than those I still don't get why someone would tell me it does not exist. Hmmm. Whatever... it's not me joking to you that your experience does not exist. ;)
Some are talking about ghosts, ectoplasm, and the like. Some aren't. It's really hard to keep track since when one starts asking probing questions, most get awfully wriggly. (I confess that I find this deeply, deeply annoying. It's just not an honest way to have a conversation.) I don't deny for a second that people have experiences which they consider to be spiritual. I simply deny that they really are spiritual for any definition of spiritual that has anything to do with gods, poltergeists, magic, or the like. A spiritual experience (and I have experienced a few moments of profound awe and the like myself) is simply an ordinary brain function, like perceiving a color or doing math.
As for why I'd tell you (Or anybody, it's not personal to me unless someone's been insulting. You haven't.) that it doesn't exist, I say such things for the same reason I'd say that Santa Claus doesn't exist or the Easter Bunny is a fable.
To me there's no great mystery to speaking up at all. When one hears an adult, especially one who seems to be of average or better intelligence, go on about such things one becomes a bit concerned. Especially when this is an extremely popular hobby able to warp laws around its peculiarities and all of that. I'd behave much the same way about people who insisted on hats being worn if they had such influence and used it the same way. It's a bit like finding out the bus driver is on so many different drugs Ozzy Osbourne told him to kick it down a few notches and he's just cackling away as he weaves through traffic at 150 mph with you on board. You certainly don't seem to be that sort (and that's a nice break from the usual!) but they do seem to be the supermajority so responses tend to be crafted with them in mind. I suppose it's not really fair but when identical vocabulary is being used, and there's little to no sense that any special meanings are intended for the words as distinct from their most common use, it's pretty hard to sort things out without more conversation.
Bro, you really got me wrong in my paragraph beginning "Me? Willful obscurantism...". I am talking about philosophy and the limits of cognition. Biology in no way describes feeling, it explains feeling. Those two are not even the same. Also, everyday physics uses "metaphor" models. There are so many of them I can't believe you think I want to talk quantum physics. Think, my friend, think--your job not mine. And exercising a muscle barely even has enough in common with understanding and mental models to be considered a hair thin analogy.
Now I concede that my ideas here are not air tight or fully formed--I know this because a philosophy prof had a kick at them after reading a paper I wrote a way long time ago. But you're not even following me there or maybe you don't want to. Or maybe you just like shooting at stuff. I don't know.
Samnell. What does love feel like? Can you signify the feeling, the experience, the feeling, so that I understand?
And for atheism. You are now changing your tune but claiming you are still right--I admire your audacity. To borrow your analogy, calling chocolate ice cream just "ice cream" is simply not precise in the sense that the word precise is commonly used. And your exact words are "my use of atheism is laser-precise".
The rest, well, were I to take a general stab at it I think we reasonably see many things the same way while disagreeing on the importance of how important our perception is of things around us in relation to what we can more objectively quantify. No big deal.
There's no Santa?
Then who was that I sold my soul to?
Rat Race Incorporated.
Bro, you really got me wrong in my paragraph beginning "Me? Willful obscurantism...". I am talking about philosophy and the limits of cognition. Biology in no way describes feeling, it explains feeling. Those two are not even the same.
Feelings are biology. There's nothing more to them. You may as well say your hand isn't biological or your blood is made of green cheese and fairy dust.
Now I concede that my ideas here are not air tight or fully formed--I know this because a philosophy prof had a kick at them after reading a paper I wrote a way long time ago. But you're not even following me there or maybe you don't want to. Or maybe you just like shooting at stuff. I don't know.
My agenda is always the same in these conversations: share information, develop an increasingly accurate picture of the universe, and maybe help others in doing the same.
Samnell. What does love feel like? Can you signify the feeling, the experience, the feeling, so that I understand?
Love is simply a species of cognitive event, all neurotransmitters and ions shooting across synapses. I would describe the experience of the event as something akin to euphoria but with attachment, dependency, and sometimes lust included. But those are all more neurotransmitters too.
And for atheism. You are now changing your tune but claiming you are still right--I admire your audacity. To borrow your analogy, calling chocolate ice cream just "ice cream" is simply not precise in the sense that the word precise is commonly used. And your exact words are "my use of atheism is laser-precise".
A well-specified, simple dichotomous definition is somehow vague now? Clearly we have different notions of what constitutes being precise.
The rest, well, were I to take a general stab at it I think we reasonably see many things the same way while disagreeing on the importance of how important our perception is of things around us in relation to what we can more objectively quantify. No big deal.
Probably. I don't think our perception of things in the universe is worth anything at all without it being objectively verified, preferably as much as we are able to do so. (Obviously we have to sleep sometimes.) Otherwise we cannot distinguish hallucination from fact.
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Feelings are biology.
It's a question of what one is trying to describe.
Everything that you've said is true, but it comes up painfully short in trying to describe the experience in any meaningful way. People use words like "spiritual" and "soul" because "my neurotransmitters produce a positive reaction when I experience X" isn't really adequate to the task.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Wow, I read a really interesting article the other day about a guy who is trying to map his own consciousness through a whole array of fascinating experiments. I wish I could post the link but I can't remember where I found it. Maybe BBC news. Maybe he'll kick back the boundary a little farther so I can engage in some willful obscurantism in my denoting of things that don't really exist (except in my own consciousness).
Please do post if you find it. I'd love to read that.
Everything that you've said is true, but it comes up painfully short in trying to describe the experience in any meaningful way. People use words like "spiritual" and "soul" because "my neurotransmitters produce a positive reaction when I experience X" isn't really adequate to the task.
How so? I understand people might find it aesthetically unsatisfying, but that's not really an argument that it's inadequate. It's only a statement that one doesn't like it.
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Everything that you've said is true, but it comes up painfully short in trying to describe the experience in any meaningful way. People use words like "spiritual" and "soul" because "my neurotransmitters produce a positive reaction when I experience X" isn't really adequate to the task.How so? I understand people might find it aesthetically unsatisfying, but that's not really an argument that it's inadequate. It's only a statement that one doesn't like it.
Wow... that's honestly the saddest and most pittiful thing I've ever read. Dude are you so jaded that you don't even hold love in reverence? What in the heck happened to make you this way? And don't give this crap about how you are just wise enough know better, despite what you have suggested people who believe in God are not stupid, or at least no more so than anyone else.
Bro, you really got me wrong in my paragraph beginning "Me? Willful obscurantism...". I am talking about philosophy and the limits of cognition. Biology in no way describes feeling, it explains feeling. Those two are not even the same.Feelings are biology. There's nothing more to them. You may as well say your hand isn't biological or your blood is made of green cheese and fairy dust.
Two things.
First of all, I've never denied the reality of biology. Rather, I am distinguishing biology from our perceptual experience of it as Celestial Healer has just reiterated. I find distinguishing things is often helpful to discuss and understand them when sharing information and developing an accurate picture of the universe.
Second, my contentions have nothing in common with those who falsely make claims that the moon, my blood, or your brains are made of smegma. Reductio ad absurdum. Not nice. Bad rhetoric. didn't even make me laugh. Fail.
My agenda is always the same in these conversations: share information, develop an increasingly accurate picture of the universe, and maybe help others in doing the same.
Share your information, yes. Listen, no. Distort my statements to defend at all costs your reductive truth, clearly established and on record. Being reasonable in the pursuit of truth? Fail.
Love is simply a species of cognitive event, all neurotransmitters and ions shooting across synapses. I would describe the experience of the event as something akin to euphoria but with attachment, dependency, and sometimes lust included. But those are all more neurotransmitters too.
Describe love? Fail. Explain love? Excellent! But I asked for the former.
And for atheism. You are now changing your tune but claiming you are still right--I admire your audacity. To borrow your analogy, calling chocolate ice cream just "ice cream" is simply not precise in the sense that the word precise is commonly used. And your exact words are "my use of atheism is laser-precise".A well-specified, simple dichotomous definition is somehow vague now? Clearly we have different notions of what constitutes being precise.
Chocolate and strawberry being species, calling them ice cream is clearly not specifying. Spong and Samnell being different species of atheist, signifying both of them as atheists is clearly not specific.
Atheism, clearly specified by the wiki I think, is not a tidy dichotomy. And besides, dichotomizing is not synonymous with precision... lol... what's funny about this is that it's usually the Christians that get accused of dualism.
Precision. I'd look it up in a dictionary or two myself but I'm not the one who needs to. Precise: Accuracy as in the number of decimal points. Accuracy as in how well a statement or idea is made discrete from dissimilar concepts, or how much it is distinguishable or detailed. Precise as in how well the awesome glass on my new Canon DSLR resolves.
When we say precise during our blah blah we're not talking about a precise surgical instrument that cuts reality into halves--because the halves are, in and of themselves, non-homogeneous and that’s_not_precise.
Again, dichotomizing is neither specific nor precise. Precise here is being used in the context of communication, just as if you were writing a description, a college paper, or describing an experiment.
You and Spong both atheists? Not precise and you said it yourself. Spong is an atheist(?) yet he believes in God and the divine. You don't. (ED: sorry for being redundant.)
That's about as precise as I can get, offhand, in defining precise.
Your usage of the word precise? Fail.
… deap breath.
Having said all that, it's more painfully obvious every time you post that you are not interested in discussion. I’ve gone to a great effort to make myself clear simply so you can understand my contentions. I’ve never demanded that you adopt the importance I place on perceptual experience. What do I get? You make fun of me with an ad absurdum from behind a thin veneer of civility.
If you've got something else to say, don't address it to me and have the decency, at least, to actually be funny so that someone may derive some pleasure from your blathering.
And these two are my last words to you: epic fail.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Wow, I read a really interesting article the other day about a guy who is trying to map his own consciousness through a whole array of fascinating experiments. I wish I could post the link but I can't remember where I found it. Maybe BBC news. Maybe he'll kick back the boundary a little farther so I can engage in some willful obscurantism in my denoting of things that don't really exist (except in my own consciousness).Please do post if you find it. I'd love to read that.
I read it again and it's not so interesting this time. It did make me hungry for more, though. I'd really like a more detailed article about his work, like a Scientific American article or something like that.
Then who was that I sold my soul to?
Lol. My daughter prays to Santa. Drives my wife crazy.
How so? I understand people might find it aesthetically unsatisfying, but that's not really an argument that it's inadequate. It's only a statement that one doesn't like it.Wow... that's honestly the saddest and most pittiful thing I've ever read. Dude are you so jaded that you don't even hold love in reverence
Really? That's pretty surprising to me. I don't see why it would be a sad thing to say at all. In fact, I see it as the opposite.
Why would one revere emotional states? I can see how one may prefer to experience one emotional state (lust seems fun) over another (agony seems less so) but revere them? I don't think it's a wise idea to revere anything at all. Certainly it seems wasted on trivial mundanities like human emotion. Isn't that a bit like revering bipedalism or having ten fingers? It's been my experience that doing so tends to impede the use of critical faculties upon the subject in question. This is giving up too much for no gain that I can see.
What in the heck happened to make you this way? And don't give this crap about how you are just wise enough know better, despite what you have suggested people who believe in God are not stupid, or at least no more so than anyone else.
What in the heck happened to make you otherwise? :) I can't point to any especially traumatic events in my past which have turned me into a horrible cynic or some cold, emotionless machine. I'm certainly not beyond emotion, though that would be nice. I do have friends (I know: 'some of my best friends have emotions!') and laugh and cry just like anybody else. I enjoy my amusements. I have a very low tolerance for frustration. I'm horrified by atrocities and injustice. I enjoy beauty. I don't perceive myself as especially different in my inner life from anybody else, except that I seem to be in the small but growing minority of people who can enjoy these things without requiring them to be somehow other than what they are.
Well ok, one more thing. I don't like mystery. Not one bit. Keats wrote about how Newton was an awful man for figuring out how prisms work and thus de-mystifying the rainbow. It couldn't be so beautiful now because we knew how it worked. I read of this and was stunned. What had gone so wrong for Keats that he came to love ignorance and hate knowledge? What kind of twisted human being does that? The rainbow looks no differently now that we know how it works. Its beauty is at the least unchanged. I in fact find it more beautiful for knowing how it works. Mysteries are only good for solving, in my book. Einstein said something to the effect that the most beautiful thing we could experience is the mysterious. I differ. The most beautiful thing we could experience is eliminating the mysterious.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Ok. I didn't set out to frustrate you but have apparently done so. I'll leave it be.
Then who was that I sold my soul to?THIS GUY!!!!
So cool. I love that costume in the jpeg on the right.
<kruelaid then imagines himself in that getup, dancing rabidly to NIN - Just Like You Imagined, while a bunch of hot nude women kneel and feverishly worship before him.>
Ok back to work.
SHEEEEESH!
Post it like you do it all the time, man.
Wow... that's honestly the saddest and most pittiful thing I've ever read. Dude are you so jaded that you don't even hold love in reverence?
While I disagree as to Sam's insistence on its relative unimportance, I fail to see why it couldn't be a bioneurological phenomenon, without a God overseeing it.
Why are natural things "not worthy" of being held in awe? The fact that love exists inspires me deeply. Whether it's natural or supernatural in origin really makes no difference.
Why are natural things "not worthy" of being held in awe? The fact that love exists inspires me deeply. Whether it's natural or supernatural in origin really makes no difference.
Awe maybe. To me reverence denotes more than that, and I think it's generally helpful to try to keep a little bit of healthy skepticism about one's more intense emotions. It's sure not easy.
Why are natural things "not worthy" of being held in awe?
An awesome question. I was thinking this over earlier when I was writing about spirit not being ghosts.
And it goes both ways.
On the religious side there seems to be a defensiveness, as if somehow a biological process invalidates a spiritual experience--so there's consequently some need to ascribe it to the supernatural, to a god's direct violation of what we know to be physical phenomena.
And on the scientific side the conclusion that if it can be biologically explained, then our experience of it is somehow trivial or irrelevant or wrong or just a hallucination.