Secular Intolerance

[Nick_A]

Nick wrote:

You are referring to secular interpretations of religion

"Secular" , and scientifically rigorous, interpretations of religion are impartial. A man can be impartial as to beliefs and also sure as to personal , felt, experiences like satori.

Experiences like satori and cognitive impartiality are not mutually exclusive. You have heard of insight. Insight into one's own experiences comes from impartiality. True, spontaneous joy or sorrow and so on do change the mood in which we view what happens to us. To serve truth we have to respect reality which trumps moods, reason, and mystical insight.

There is evidence for inborn sense of justice. Very young children, almost babies, have shown that fairness is not learned but is inborn. That being the case any man who has mystical experiences under his belt may have more experience than the man who lacks it, but the mystic is not better than or wiser regarding justice than the man whose learning from experience is not mystical i.e. other than, as Greta says it, "metaphysical".

Here is one of many reports from a variety of sources regarding the experiment (cross cultural)about inborn sense of justice.

https://www.bu.edu/research/articles/ch ... -fairness/

The research is ongoing.
“Right now, we have a good measurement of behavior but no in-depth understanding of cultural patterns, socialization, or anthropology,” says Warneken."

If you are seriously averse to "edu" in addresses there are popular reports too. Google "Babies' inborn sense of fairness."

_______________________

Nick , I think you and I are on the same page about secularised religion. We don't like it. Whare we differ is that you are more optimistic about religion than I am. You think that religion can be pure and unadulterated by learned prejudices and the shadow side of men. I am pessimistic about that possibility and I think that religion is always man made and therefore not from God; moreover as man made institutions go, religions are peculiarly liable to corruption and self seeking.

Mystical experience in its pure form,if such is possible , does not have to be attached to any belief whatsoever. The fact that you attribute your mystical experience to Platonic ontology and gnostic spirituality is an accident of the culture which you have absorbed.

Belinda

Secular" , and scientifically rigorous, interpretations of religion are impartial. A man can be impartial as to beliefs and also sure as to personal , felt, experiences like satori.

How can they be impartial when all we have to go on is selective facts favoring our subjective conception of impartiality? Do you think that any of those experts insisting on the deaths of Jesus and Socrates were capable of impartiality? They were learned men full of facts with an acute sense of subjective societal impartiality.

To serve truth we have to respect reality which trumps moods, reason, and mystical insight.

But respecting truth first requires understanding why we are incapable of it but how many are willing to do it? Have you ever thought what would be necessary for you to respect truth? If we don’t know, then we cannot be expected to respect truth.

There is evidence for inborn sense of justice. Very young children, almost babies, have shown that fairness is not learned but is inborn. That being the case any man who has mystical experiences under his belt may have more experience than the man who lacks it, but the mystic is not better than or wiser regarding justice than the man whose learning from experience is not mystical i.e. other than, as Greta says it, "metaphysical".

What good are mystical experiences if we cannot respect truth? If a person does have a genuine experience it is quickly interpreted into fantasy by the lower parts of the soul and adopted by what are called “experts” in the art of expressing imagination for the purpose of self justification.

Nick , I think you and I are on the same page about secularised religion. We don't like it. Whare we differ is that you are more optimistic about religion than I am. You think that religion can be pure and unadulterated by learned prejudices and the shadow side of men. I am pessimistic about that possibility and I think that religion is always man made and therefore not from God; moreover as man made institutions go, religions are peculiarly liable to corruption and self seeking.

Acquiring the psychological awakening necessary for conscious evolution must originate with a conscious source which by definition is not man made. Man made religious interpretations lack the potency and quality of teaching necessary for conscious evolution. Esoteric schools exist. Card carrying secular intolerants wouldn’t know of them since they don’t need them. Have you heard the old expression: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears?” Secular institutions are easy to join and hard to leave. Esoteric schools are hard to join and easy to leave. They answer a human need more important then arguing. The horror of secular intolerance is its success in crushing this basic human need in sensitive young people too intimidated to tell them what they can do with their secular intolerance..

[Belinda]

Nick, there is too much dishonesty in your reply. Simply, you don't want or intend to learn anything.

[Nick_A]

Nick, there is too much dishonesty in your reply. Simply, you don't want or intend to learn anything.

Give me one example of dishonesty

[Harbal]

Card carrying secular intolerants

I haven't got mine yet, where do I apply for one? Do they do T shirts?

[Nick_A]

Card carrying secular intolerants

I haven't got mine yet, where do I apply for one? Do they do T shirts?

Go to City Hall and demand an official ID card identifying you as a Secular Intolerant in good standing with Great Beast INC. If they ask for a referral just say nick_A approved my acceptance. Then give them an administrative fee of $100. and you will receive official proof of what you are.

[Greta]

The horror of secular intolerance is its success in crushing this basic human need in sensitive young people too intimidated to tell them what they can do with their secular intolerance.

The horror of religious intolerance is that, by definition, it ignores reason and logic - the tools of peace. I suppose in that sense it has the purpose of "scouring" excess human lives, which must occur from time to time or we end up with the current unsustainable population growth.

Unlike secularism, which is a relatively new approach to governance and remains to a fair extent untested because most so-called secular societies are in fact low intensity theocracies, eg. only theists may be President of the US, and whose polities tend to be 80%+ theists promoted by long established Catholic and Protestant power networks.

So it is difficult to speak about secular intolerance when secularism is so rare. Even so-called secularist totalitarian Communist states were immersed in mystical thinking with some of the most intense cults of personality seen since Popes and Pharaohs.

I would love to see more atheist/agnostic scientists and fewer religious lawyers in power, although I suspect that most would be too sensitive for the job. Politics is brutal and the most durable survivors are ideologues, powered by a raging fire in their bellies. This suits theists and other severely blinkered thinkers.

So secularism remains a theoretical possibility that is yet to be tested. The world has always been some kind of theocracy or other, but it seems that change is finally afoot with the advent of AI and transhumanism, where societies may in the future be governed by logic rather than ideology, hence this thread.

[Nick_A]

Greta

Will the Great Beast become the ultimate God and offer the greatest secular expression in the cause of peace? Let me present the other side in the words of Simone Weil

The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.

Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect.

This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.

The Great Beast will oppose such recognition of humility with all its great powers of self serving imagination. After all, if people were to become realistic and collectively awaken to to what their imagination deprives them of, it would become intolerable. But the Great Beast is a powerful god and has no intention of sacrificing its domain. It has become so powerful that it will win and become supreme for a period of time. Then the lies sustaining its existence will give way as they must and the slaves of the beast will hit bottom. Only then will the reconstruction begin on a human foundation with the promise of “never again.” Of course the resurrection of the Beast and the loss of consciousness will begin again as it must as a lawful part of the human condition.

As always there will be an underground of people who have not become psychological slaves of the Beast and remain consciously human by not losing their connection with the inner direction of their source. The survival of our species may well depend on the influence of this minority regardless of how the Beast despises it

[Arising_uk]

Will they be whinging as much as you?

[Nick_A]

Will they be whinging as much as you?

Bob Marley: “Only a foolish dog barks at a flying bird.”

Quit barking.

[Greta]

Will the Great Beast become the ultimate God and offer the greatest secular expression in the cause of peace?

You are a funny bunnykin. "The Great Beast", "ultimate", "greatest" - your posts sometimes read like a Marvel comic.

If you are asking whether the currently emerging collective intelligences of humanity will be the "greatest" and "ultimate" [whatever], then I would say no. As with human intelligence, the emerging collective minds will be one more milestone of development towards more complex and sophisticated forms of awareness.

I've just started re-reading Colin Wilson's Beyond the Occult book. I think you'd like it because he bangs on about issues with the human condition too, with his Ecclesiastical observation about how when we get what we want, it almost immediately becomes passé. Bummer, eh? I would think calm acceptance not the worst response to the fact that the journey tends to bring more joy than the destination. Maybe we expect too much of life anyway because we already take so much for granted? Being able to breathe, to enjoy eating and drinking, to have the motivation and energy to do things - the basics that we take for granted until those things become a struggle.

The wise have always recommended gratitude as a path to happiness, and it is closely connected with attention. Noticing.

The combination of these two facts — the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it — constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality.

Numerous passionate cosmologists, astronomers, theoretical physicists and even random vagabond thinkers like me do exactly that - directing much attention and love to a reality both in and beyond the world and we receive good from it in the form of more understanding.

This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.

I do not see this as an "in the club" v "not in the club" thing. People change throughout their lives.

I personally think there is a time in a person's life when it's often advantageous to put the blinkers on and pretend that the subtle bubbling of the Earth's surface is the be-all-and-end-all of reality. Later on comes the need to peek at what's outside of the blinkers. By the time you've retired there's a good chance that you really don't give a shit about all the things that mattered most in earlier times and eternity becomes more compelling as it looms.

[Greta]

Bob Marley: “Only a foolish dog barks at a flying bird.”

Ah Nicky, so you like a bit o' the 'erb, mon?

Legalise it, don't criticise it

[Harbal]

Go to City Hall

We don't have City Halls where I live.

and demand an official ID card identifying you as a Secular Intolerant in good standing with Great Beast INC.

Won't I look a bit silly when they say they don't know what I'm talking about?

If they ask for a referral just say nick_A approved my acceptance.

But Nick_A doesn't know anything about me. Nick_A's knowledge of people is imaginary and fictitious.

Then give them an administrative fee of $100.

They don't accept Dollars here.

Maybe I'll not bother with the card, after all, it sounds like too much trouble.

[Belinda]

Nick wrote:

Bob Marley: “Only a foolish dog barks at a flying bird.”

Better find something worth barking at.

Why have you not persuaded anyone here that your Bete Noire is grounded in reality?

[Arising_uk]

We're sick and tired of your ism schism game

Thing is Nick you show no evidence of being airborne.

Woof!

[Nick_A]

Nick wrote:

Bob Marley: “Only a foolish dog barks at a flying bird.”

Better find something worth barking at.

Why have you not persuaded anyone here that your Bete Noire is grounded in reality?

This really is a good question. It isn’t me that is rejected but rather what Simone Weil called the third direction of thought and the “hidden third elaborated on by Basarab Nicolescu.

https://parabola.org/2017/07/30/the-hidden-third/

“The greatest responsibility of all: the transmission of the mystery.” —Basarab Nicolescu

At the same time all such efforts are despised by secular intolerants. Why?

It is easy to say that it is the natural result of the human condition and the fact that man on earth lacks inner unity and instead lives as a tripartite soul in which the appetites described by Plato are dominant. Under these conditions the hidden third necessary for a growth in consciousness remains hidden.

However One would think that the absurdity that the human condition produces would prove unacceptable after a while. But in these times of advanced technology, the greater the absurdity the more it is considered normal. Why

I’ve been trying to understand the following article on mimetic theory. I dislike considering that this species I am a part of is actually a reacting creature dominated by habit and imitation capable of justifying the most obvious absurdities. But it does seem reasonable when I consider what goes on around me and the complete ignorance of the hidden third or what Simone called the third direction of thought.

https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/

Mimetic Theory originated with Rene Girard, a French polymath whose seminal insights into the nature of human desire bridges diverse fields such as anthropology, literary criticism, religious studies, psychology, ethnology, sociology, philosophy, and others. One of the marks of genius is to notice something vitally important and seemingly obvious but which never before had been recognized as important. Rene Girard’s great discovery is a potential Rosetta Stone for the human sciences. The theory is based on the observable tendency of human beings to subconsciously imitate others and the extension of this mimesis to the realm of desire. The consequences are staggeringly profound. (My Plato interpretation draws heavily on Girard’s insight into the mimetic origins of desire.) The following is my attempt to summarize the basics of Mimetic Theory:

Mimetic theory would explain the attitude and the need to perpetuate and defend secular desires in the absence of the hidden third. Defending a mime by secular intolerants becomes a hostile act and in the case of the young opening to the hidden third, it can be a real spirit killer.

The conclusion of the article offers a possibility:

24. THE SOLUTION FOR MIMESIS WILL BE MIMESIS
Girard holds that human beings cannot escape their mimetic nature and that (romantic) attempts to outflank mimetic influences (e.g. Rousseau, Heidegger) are ultimately scandalous — we just end up playing the same mimetic games at a higher level. The cure for mimetically produced violence will be a mimetically transmitted desire for peace. The model/cure will have to be someone who has transcended the lure of scapegoating violence, but who?

These will be the ones the Great Beast will need to kill either physically or psychologically in one way or another in order to sustain its mimetic programming of secular dominance which must lead to the results of hypocrisy.

Rather than a man, I believe we need an awakening movement that enables those who can to experience the hidden third. I cannot see any other way to minimize the degenerating effects of secular intolerance and it mimetic programming that glorifies the Great Beast as opposed to seeing it for what it is..