Philosophy Now Forum

Gee wrote:

Ginkgo wrote:That was probably my fault. In the beginning of the discussion "resides within the brain" was a term used by one of us (probably me). I took this up because I thought it was useful for an explanation. In hindsight it was a mistake. It is better to stick to definitions that convey the correct meaning. On this basis I should have said that consciousness from a scientific point of view necessitates a physicalist monistic explanation.

No it is not your fault. If there is fault, it lies with religion and science not being able to communicate with each other, and philosophy not sticking strictly to philosophy. Why do you think they called the Higgs Boson the "God particle"? Because we all know that "God" is about consciousness. We also know that the brain is about consciousness. Life is about consciousness, and physics is learning that the universe may also be about consciousness. This is a language problem where each discipline uses their own interpretation without consideration of the other disciplines.

At one point I was so frustrated with this language problem that I stated: Religion and science will not even communicate enough to clarify what they think consciousness is, but will fight over who owns it, like two dogs fighting over an invisible bone.

Ginkgo wrote:We can say that philosophy deals with truths, but as I have said many times before some of these truths and not provable.

Many "truths" have been proven by logic, and been wrong. Many "truths" have been proven by physical evidence, and been wrong. I am not sure that we can prove truth absolutely. I think there is a reliability factor that must be considered when dealing with "truth", and that this reliability factor must include consideration of perspectives and time. If the "truth" considers all relevant perspectives and lasts through time, then I consider it proven.

Ginkgo wrote:Consider these dualistic philosophical theories of consciousness

(a) Double aspect theory ( parallelism)

(b)Substance dualism

(c) Property dualism

(d) Occasionalism

All four of these theories offers a solution to the problem of consciousness. The problem is that all four cannot be correct. Can you name the theory that is correct? No one can because there is no way of determining this. All exhibit a consistency in their own right.

Perhaps all are incorrect so, we might need to look at monism.

Well, I did not look up all of those theories, but I did state earlier in this thread that I think the dualists need to learn to count higher, and the monists need to stop getting their panties in a twist.

Tell me. Do any of these theories include consideration of religious interpretations, the paranormal, and science's contributions? Because if they don't, then they have not considered all perspectives, so by my understanding, it is unlikely that they have found more than a "piece" of the truth.

This is the reason why I want to learn more about Greylorn's theory, because at least he is looking at the entire problem of consciousness -- and I know that he has some things right.

Ginkgo wrote:

Gee wrote:If science does not deal in "proofs", then what the hell is all of that testing about?

This appears to be a sticking point so I will try and explain. Science is not like the law when it comes to evidence and proof. A legal background probably leads you to use the word "proof" as a stronger version of the word "evidence". Science does not deal in proofs, it only deals in evidence.

Testing in science is all about finding evidence to support or reject a theory.

Again we have a partial truth from the perspective of science. Science is not like anyone with regard to evidence and proof. They have their own rules. I do not begrudge them these rules because I know that science could not be what it is, or do what it does, without these rules.

Science does not prove theories, but it does prove evidence. That is what the testing is about, proving evidence. The good part about this is that it provides science with a very exacting discipline that we can trust; the bad part is that any "evidence" that can not be proven, is therefore not evidence. This is the reason that science can dismiss testimony, witnesses, the subjective mind, and religious interpretations, as not being evidence. Science must be able to reproduce or test the "evidence" in order to accept it, so their evidence ends up being mostly physical or mathematical.

This seriously undermines their study of consciousness because consciousness is subjective, which would be why consciousness is mostly studied by philosophy. Anyone who doubts me regarding the definition of evidence, just Wiki "evidence". There is physical evidence, the realm of science; and there is the evidence that the rest of the world uses.

G

There is a fair bit in this post that I can agree with. Yes, science does have its own rules. As we can all appreciate without the scientific method there would be no computers and the steam engine would never have been invented. Two thousand years of metaphysics did not give rise to one machine that could fly. Without science another two thousand years would yield the same result.

In relation to dualism and monism we could basically say that dualists postulate the existence to two types of stuff. Physical stuff and mental stuff. Substance dualists such as Descartes label this as mental substances and physical substances.

Other dualists claimed that the idea of substances is of little value, so they want to talk about about the mental and physical as exhibiting certain types of properties. Property dualism would be an example of this. Without going into too much detail here I would say that some dualists do allow for God and other paranormal explanations.

Again, without going into too much details we can say that monists allow for only one type of substance. Mind and body are not distinct entities. The idea being that eventually science will resolve the problem of consciousness in favor of a physical explanation.
Monism is the preferred philosophy of the sciences. We could say that if dualism was on trial, science would be a hostile witness. Science cannot and will not allow for a dualist explanation for consciousness for the reasons outlined earlier.


In relation to your earlier question about the type of God that the ontological argument proves--why, the God that cannot not exist, of course.


P.S. I have been in and out of this thread over time so I have lost some continuity but I get the impression you are some type of property dualist. That's ok, because so am I.

Greylorn Ell wrote: Enough already. You get the idea. Notice that your own interest in philosophy is shaped by other studies, and that your focus upon consciousness is perhaps the consequence of non-ordinary experiences. You are a philosopher, and an insightful one, because of cross-training. Kindly consider yourself outside my category of useless and unimaginative pedants, and thus non-insulted.

Greylorn;

Explanation accepted; your humor helped. There are a lot of people, who hold degrees in Philosophy, but are not philosophers. There are also people, who have no training in Philosophy, but are philosophers. I think the problem lies in the assumption that we can train people to be philosophers, but doubt that this is so. We can enhance and expand someone's thinking with training and education, but this does not make them philosophers. It only gives them knowledge.

I just finished a thread in another forum about the question of whether or not philosophers are born philosophers. I think they are. Just as a Degree in Art would probably make me capable of drawing a better and more animated stick man, which I can not do now, that Degree will not make me an artist. Studying music will not make me a musician, who can create valued music. The most I could learn is how to replicate music that someone else created. I suspect that there are natural innate talents that cause us to be philosophers, musicians, artists, teachers, healers, etc. We can teach people skills, but we can not make them good at it.

I think that I was seven when I decided to be a philosopher. My mother was telling stories of Solomon's wisdom, and I was amazed. Solomon could actually pull truth right out of lies, which impressed me more than any magician. That was what I wanted to do; learn to find truth, because I was already in love with it. One might think that my Mother was a philosopher because she loved wisdom, which was why she told the stories. But Mom never tried to create wisdom or understand truth, she just used it. She used wisdom like a dancer uses music. A dancer does not have to know how to make the music, just how to find it, so s/he can dance.

Although I enjoyed law, because it is not boring, I was taking apart legal contracts at age 15, well before I had any training in law. I think that I study consciousness, because it is not boring. It is a challenge.

I owe you a post from way back, and I think that it is about the second division of consciousness. I also owe Blaggard a post, which involves religion. These two ideas are connected in my mind, so I will have to consider how I want to address these issues and in what order. They will both be long posts, so I will take some time to put them together. I am tired now--it's an MS thing.

I also noted that Blaggard invited you back into the Junior High Boy's Locker Room with his last post. Hopefully the thread will not have devolved into "Your Mama" jokes before I return.

G

Gee wrote: Science does not prove theories, but it does prove evidence. That is what the testing is about, proving evidence. The good part about this is that it provides science with a very exacting discipline that we can trust; the bad part is that any "evidence" that can not be proven, is therefore not evidence. This is the reason that science can dismiss testimony, witnesses, the subjective mind, and religious interpretations, as not being evidence. Science must be able to reproduce or test the "evidence" in order to accept it, so their evidence ends up being mostly physical or mathematical.


G

Gee,
Your view of how science works is not mine. Here are the differences.

Science talks about evidence as if it was important, but in practice, evidence is but part of what makes science, and is secondary to theory.

Evidence of an empirical nature often provides the impetus for a theory. Whatever, at some level, science begins with a theory, which is derived from one man's curiosity about certain observations.

For example, Galileo founded the methods of science by studying mathematics and Aristotle's goofy theories about physics. Aristotle echoed common-sense knowledge and declared that heavy objects fell faster than light objects. Galileo wondered if this was true. He applied math and logic and deduced that if heavy objects fell faster than light objects, wood would sink in water and iron would float.

He had developed a theoretical disproof of a long-accepted belief, and chose to put it to the test by conducting a set of experiments, rolling balls of different mass down inclined planes, carefully measuring their time of passage with a simple water-clock. He found that heavy balls and light balls rolled down the same inclined plane at the same rate. He also found that the rate was not constant, and put his information into a "law" of physics that became Newton's 2nd Law.

(BTW given the small interval between Newton's birth and Galileo's demise, I like the idea that they are the same beon, different bodies, completing the same work.)

Regarding evidence, your perspective is not that which science uses. Science does not "prove" evidence. It validates evidence by repeating experiments. It does this because experimenters are human beings who cannot be fully trusted, for good reason. Mendel's famous genetic experiments, the first experimental validation of Darwin's theories, were clearly falsified, and have never been reproduced. They cannot be reproduced. Human agendas always interfere.

Moreover, experiments never produce the identical result. (Experiments measuring the allegedly constant velocity of light have, over their history, shown a continually changing number suggesting that the speed of light is slowing down. http://www.speed-light.info/measurement.htm)

Proof is a theoretical thing, applicable only to logic, whether mathematical, philosophically formal, or common sense. Experiments cannot be proven. (I can prove by virtue of witnesses and videos that I performed an experiment, but that is clearly not your meaning.) Experiments can be repeated, and if enough repetitions produce an approximately same result, the experiments validate (or invalidate) a theory.

Moreover, while experiments are sometimes performed for the fun of it (e.g: the black box radiation studies that eventually led Max Planck to the discovery of quantum physics), many others are performed in the context of a theory, and would not have been performed in absence of that theory.

A classic example is the early 20th century expeditions to various eclipse sites around the earth to measure the position of stars whose light would be passing near the sun at the moment of eclipse. These difficult experiments (I believe that one expedition was arrested) were undertaken to validate Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which predicted that the trajectory of light would bend in the vicinity of a large mass.

Look at science, philosophy, and religion as separate mechanisms for validating theories.

Religion validates its theories by means of agreement, belief, and authority.

Philosophy validates its theories using logic.

Science validates its theories by incorporating all of the above--- agreement, belief, authority, logic (especially mathematical logic)--- plus experiments.

Nonetheless, most humans (thus, most religionists, philosophers, and scientists) rely upon theory, first and foremost. However, very few humans can actually understand deep theory, or serious mathematical proofs. Therefore they end up relying upon authority figures, some who actually comprehend theories, and many more who merely claim to understand them. The "many more" are typically relative nitwits, glib talkers like Carl Sagan and Dr. Caca on the TV documentary channels, who would ideally be relegated to teaching high school science classes. Actually that's what they do, except that "high school" now includes documentary/educational TV.

Gee wrote:This seriously undermines their study of consciousness because consciousness is subjective, which would be why consciousness is mostly studied by philosophy. Anyone who doubts me regarding the definition of evidence, just Wiki "evidence". There is physical evidence, the realm of science; and there is the evidence that the rest of the world uses.

All evidence is subjective. No matter how technologically complex an experiment might be, whether it involves the chemical analysis of soil samples from a Mars rover, or deep field observations from the Hubble telescope, or a child's curiosity about refrigerator magnets, at the end of it there are human beings looking at numbers or images or abnormal actions, and doing their best to make sense of them.

That sense of why things look or work the way they do always requires a theory. Watch some detective stories or read some Sherlock Holmes tales-- the evidence piles up, leads hither and yon, until it is finally consolidated by a good detective who understands how it fits together and develops a theory to correctly explain it.

Humans can and have experimented on themselves in their search for the understanding of consciousness. They have experimented on others. (Check out Wilder Penfield's mid-20th century experiments involving open-skull probes into the brains of conscious patients.) The experiments have already yielded enough results to produce an effective theory of consciousness, but so far, the theory has not appeared from within the ranks of credentialed scientists. After I'm dead, one of those nits jwill take credit for my ideas and get a Nobel prize.

Gee wrote:

Greylorn Ell wrote: Enough already. You get the idea. Notice that your own interest in philosophy is shaped by other studies, and that your focus upon consciousness is perhaps the consequence of non-ordinary experiences. You are a philosopher, and an insightful one, because of cross-training. Kindly consider yourself outside my category of useless and unimaginative pedants, and thus non-insulted.

Greylorn;

Explanation accepted; your humor helped. There are a lot of people, who hold degrees in Philosophy, but are not philosophers. There are also people, who have no training in Philosophy, but are philosophers. I think the problem lies in the assumption that we can train people to be philosophers, but doubt that this is so. We can enhance and expand someone's thinking with training and education, but this does not make them philosophers. It only gives them knowledge.

I just finished a thread in another forum about the question of whether or not philosophers are born philosophers. I think they are. Just as a Degree in Art would probably make me capable of drawing a better and more animated stick man, which I can not do now, that Degree will not make me an artist. Studying music will not make me a musician, who can create valued music. The most I could learn is how to replicate music that someone else created. I suspect that there are natural innate talents that cause us to be philosophers, musicians, artists, teachers, healers, etc. We can teach people skills, but we can not make them good at it.

I think that I was seven when I decided to be a philosopher. My mother was telling stories of Solomon's wisdom, and I was amazed. Solomon could actually pull truth right out of lies, which impressed me more than any magician. That was what I wanted to do; learn to find truth, because I was already in love with it. One might think that my Mother was a philosopher because she loved wisdom, which was why she told the stories. But Mom never tried to create wisdom or understand truth, she just used it. She used wisdom like a dancer uses music. A dancer does not have to know how to make the music, just how to find it, so s/he can dance.

Although I enjoyed law, because it is not boring, I was taking apart legal contracts at age 15, well before I had any training in law. I think that I study consciousness, because it is not boring. It is a challenge.

I owe you a post from way back, and I think that it is about the second division of consciousness. I also owe Blaggard a post, which involves religion. These two ideas are connected in my mind, so I will have to consider how I want to address these issues and in what order. They will both be long posts, so I will take some time to put them together. I am tired now--it's an MS thing.

I also noted that Blaggard invited you back into the Junior High Boy's Locker Room with his last post. Hopefully the thread will not have devolved into "Your Mama" jokes before I return.

G

Gee,

Thank you for the delightful tidbits of personal history.

Here are some thoughts that may or may not be relevant, in the context of what consciousness is all about.

My observations, based upon myself and four siblings, plus several offspring, are that interesting people are born with predilections toward specific interests. A few are born with an intense focus. Beon Theory claims that the mind/soul/beon or whatever one wants to call the essential component of human consciousness cannot learn enough in a single human embodiment to be of much use to itself, or to the universe that brought it into consciousness. Therefore it reincarnates in different bodies, in different times, various sexes and in-between states, so as to gain perspective. That is because beon is inherently both stupid and ignorant, which is exactly what one might expect of a non-created entity that has the potential to acquire self-awareness.

Beon can only become intelligent by making the choice to learn that which it does not know, to consider the merits of ideas that frighten its dreadfully stupid brain (which, after all, is a machine), and to practice invention. While this might seem simple, it is the most difficult challenge a human-embodied beon will face.

I have no trouble accepting the idea that you were born to be a philosopher. You have the predilections. Your analysis of Solomon's expertise transcends the customary level (appreciative) and moves to the insightful, the finding of truth within lies. This ability appears in some of the posts you've made on this thread.

Your dancing analogy is excellent. I cannot produce good music, but I can dance to good music. As I observed once again last Saturday night, I cannot dance to shitty music, nor can I dance with a partner who refuses to accept a lead.

A few months back I informed B that I would ignore his posts, and I've been true to my statement. I ignore all of his posts, and abort posts in which someone else attempts to take him seriously. Your post is my first exception, and I'm not grateful for it. Whatever that hopeless ass might have invited me to do, I neither know nor care about. The boy has no class, poor manners, and cannot communicate competently. If I wanted to talk with such people, I'd hang out in my local scruffy tavern on Friday nights and try to engage drunken nitwits in serious discussions. No thanks.

I don't even read your posts to that abscess, having learned as a teenager that there is no accounting for or correction to the personal tastes of others, particularly those of females. (I fathered three daughters.) That is an observation, not an insult. It applies to all of my wives and to a number of male friends who made bad choices. Oops! It also applies to me. Go figure.

Ginkgo;

I am going to answer you first because your post is the easiest and fastest to answer.

Ginkgo wrote:There is a fair bit in this post that I can agree with. Yes, science does have its own rules. As we can all appreciate without the scientific method there would be no computers and the steam engine would never have been invented. Two thousand years of metaphysics did not give rise to one machine that could fly. Without science another two thousand years would yield the same result.

Since there seems to be a subtle challenge in this thread regarding the three disciplines, religion, science, and philosophy, it would be remiss if I did not point out the obvious. There have been statements that imply that philosophy is not all that it should be, and of course, people are always willing to state that religion is responsible for many atrocities, such as the Spanish Inquisition, the Dark Ages, and wars in general. But science is not perfect either. Consider that religion is tens of thousands of years old, philosophy is thousands of years old, but science is barely 1,000 years old and has already managed to create weapons of mass destruction and pollute almost the entire planet. So one has to wonder what another two thousand years will yield with science, and whether or not we will be around to note it. Reality is all about balance.

Ginkgo wrote:In relation to dualism and monism we could basically say that dualists postulate the existence to two types of stuff. Physical stuff and mental stuff. Substance dualists such as Descartes label this as mental substances and physical substances.

This is mostly a division of the tangible and intangible, so it looks like a validation or understanding of God hidden within theories. This looks like a false dichotomy because in reality thought and emotion (mental stuff) is about as interchangeable as blood and bones (physical stuff). The truth is there are more than two types of "stuff", so I don't see how these theories could possibly teach us anything.

Ginkgo wrote:Other dualists claimed that the idea of substances is of little value, so they want to talk about about the mental and physical as exhibiting certain types of properties. Property dualism would be an example of this. Without going into too much detail here I would say that some dualists do allow for God and other paranormal explanations.

This makes more sense to me. So do these theories "allow" for God and other paranormal explanations, or do they actually explain God and the paranormal? Because my thinking is that a valid theory of consciousness would explain what "God" is, why we believe in "God", and what the paranormal is and how it works.

Ginkgo wrote:Again, without going into too much details we can say that monists allow for only one type of substance. Mind and body are not distinct entities. The idea being that eventually science will resolve the problem of consciousness in favor of a physical explanation.
Monism is the preferred philosophy of the sciences. We could say that if dualism was on trial, science would be a hostile witness. Science cannot and will not allow for a dualist explanation for consciousness for the reasons outlined earlier.

Hostile indeed. Monism seems to be the same as dualism as it is an unrealistic explanation that does no good. It is like when people state that everything is energy -- so what! I still need batteries for energy because I certainly can not plug my cell phone into reality to use it.

Science needs to deal with some realities about mind. The rational mind (Ego) deals with the senses and helps us to navigate physical reality; the unconscious mind (SuperEgo) has no understanding of time and space or cause and effect, so it seems to be very much non-local; the instinctive mind (Id) is the only aspect of mind that clearly understands and instigates the chaotic balance that reflects the true nature of "raw" consciousness. Raw consciousness being the consciousness that is a natural part of reality before it is influenced by thought and mind.

Ginkgo wrote:In relation to your earlier question about the type of God that the ontological argument proves--why, the God that cannot not exist, of course.

G

Blaggard wrote:The Piranha don't a South American tribe who lack any sort of religious or spiritual belief,

I very seriously doubt this. In order for the Piranha to have no religious or spiritual belief, they would have to have had no spiritual experiences that needed explanation, or no ability to understand that these experiences happened. In order to not have spiritual experiences, they would have to be devoid of emotion; in order to have no ability to understand that these experiences happened, they would have to be devoid of rational thought. In short, they would have to not be human.

I suspect that whoever originally made these statements about the Piranha, had no true understanding of religion, spirituality, or the Piranha. This looks like the kind of thinking that had all people, who were not Christian, believed to be primitive heathens. How old is this information? I think that someone needs to go down there and talk to the Piranha. Or study them if this is actually true.

Blaggard wrote:but that's beside the point in ancient times people believed the world was flat, a myth that had no basis in reason,

Not true. There is a good deal of basis in reason. We all know that if we stand on a basketball, we will have to balance; we can not live our lives that way. We need to stand on something flat, so reason is not the culprit here. You are confusing myth, spirituality, reason, and knowledge.

We have innate knowledge that we are born with, and reason is part of this; but there is also learned knowledge. If you want to see the difference, then go to an elementary school with a very large globe of the world. First take it to a kindergarten class and explain about where we live on the globe, then bend over to look at the bottom and ask the children how they think that the people on the bottom stay on the Earth. You will get some fun and inventive answers that the children "reason" out. Then do the same thing in a sixth grade class, and you will get some information about gravity.

If all knowledge was lost and only a few people were left on Earth, they would go back to thinking that the world is flat. The idea that the world is round and gravity holds us to the planet is not innate knowledge; it is learned knowledge. This also has nothing to do with religion.

Blaggard wrote:Vikings believe thunder is Thors hammer Mjolnir striking the clouds and lightning is his mighty bolt of justice. Christians believe in many likewise miracles, no religion is above challenge. It's easy to see why in ignorance people looked to something above humans to explain the ineffable, this does not make religion, any religion either true or remotely based in fact.

That might be because religion is based on interpretation -- not on fact. Apparently you have no understanding of what religion is, how it gets started, or it's purpose. I will be writing about this soon, maybe it will enlighten you.

Blaggard wrote:There is no supernatural only natural, if there is a supernatural it lies in religion and science has no basis to discuss it.

Well, it is good that we are in a philosophy forum, so science does not have to "discuss" it.

Blaggard wrote:I don't see religion as ever going away either, and I am not opposed to spiritual beleifs, but if those beliefs make claims that are at odds with reality they need to be challenged.

Well, Blaggard, I am not a bull moose looking to mate and challenging all other bulls, so I have other options besides challenge. I thought maybe understanding religion might be useful.

Blaggard wrote:Fundamentalists though have talked so much utter nonsense for so long to create an issue that needn't of existed. All people have every right to believe in whatever they will, be it a pink unicorn that is invisible or scientific method.

Except Greylorn????

Blaggard wrote:I am not a troll, I have never indulged in that sort of juvenile behaviour, and I hope I never will.

This may be true. But I KNOW that you lied about me. You stated that I was Greylorn, and you stated that I was just trying to validate my religious beliefs. These are LIES.

Since I know that you lied about me, why would I believe that you are not lying about others? Why would I trust your word at all? When you just make shit up, there has to be a reason. I guessed that the reason was that you wanted attention, so I called you an attention-seeking troll. If I am wrong, I apologize. But this does not change the fact that you lied, and does not explain why.

G

Gee wrote:

Blaggard wrote:The Piranha don't a South American tribe who lack any sort of religious or spiritual belief,

I very seriously doubt this. In order for the Piranha to have no religious or spiritual belief, they would have to have had no spiritual experiences that needed explanation, or no ability to understand that these experiences happened. In order to not have spiritual experiences, they would have to be devoid of emotion; in order to have no ability to understand that these experiences happened, they would have to be devoid of rational thought. In short, they would have to not be human.

I suspect that whoever originally made these statements about the Piranha, had no true understanding of religion, spirituality, or the Piranha. This looks like the kind of thinking that had all people, who were not Christian, believed to be primitive heathens. How old is this information? I think that someone needs to go down there and talk to the Piranha. Or study them if this is actually true.

Blaggard wrote:but that's beside the point in ancient times people believed the world was flat, a myth that had no basis in reason,

Not true. There is a good deal of basis in reason. We all know that if we stand on a basketball, we will have to balance; we can not live our lives that way. We need to stand on something flat, so reason is not the culprit here. You are confusing myth, spirituality, reason, and knowledge.

We have innate knowledge that we are born with, and reason is part of this; but there is also learned knowledge. If you want to see the difference, then go to an elementary school with a very large globe of the world. First take it to a kindergarten class and explain about where we live on the globe, then bend over to look at the bottom and ask the children how they think that the people on the bottom stay on the Earth. You will get some fun and inventive answers that the children "reason" out. Then do the same thing in a sixth grade class, and you will get some information about gravity.

If all knowledge was lost and only a few people were left on Earth, they would go back to thinking that the world is flat. The idea that the world is round and gravity holds us to the planet is not innate knowledge; it is learned knowledge. This also has nothing to do with religion.

Blaggard wrote:Vikings believe thunder is Thors hammer Mjolnir striking the clouds and lightning is his mighty bolt of justice. Christians believe in many likewise miracles, no religion is above challenge. It's easy to see why in ignorance people looked to something above humans to explain the ineffable, this does not make religion, any religion either true or remotely based in fact.

That might be because religion is based on interpretation -- not on fact. Apparently you have no understanding of what religion is, how it gets started, or it's purpose. I will be writing about this soon, maybe it will enlighten you.

Blaggard wrote:There is no supernatural only natural, if there is a supernatural it lies in religion and science has no basis to discuss it.

Well, it is good that we are in a philosophy forum, so science does not have to "discuss" it.

Blaggard wrote:I don't see religion as ever going away either, and I am not opposed to spiritual beleifs, but if those beliefs make claims that are at odds with reality they need to be challenged.

Well, Blaggard, I am not a bull moose looking to mate and challenging all other bulls, so I have other options besides challenge. I thought maybe understanding religion might be useful.

Blaggard wrote:Fundamentalists though have talked so much utter nonsense for so long to create an issue that needn't of existed. All people have every right to believe in whatever they will, be it a pink unicorn that is invisible or scientific method.

Except Greylorn????

Blaggard wrote:I am not a troll, I have never indulged in that sort of juvenile behaviour, and I hope I never will.

This may be true. But I KNOW that you lied about me. You stated that I was Greylorn, and you stated that I was just trying to validate my religious beliefs. These are LIES.

Since I know that you lied about me, why would I believe that you are not lying about others? Why would I trust your word at all? When you just make shit up, there has to be a reason. I guessed that the reason was that you wanted attention, so I called you an attention-seeking troll. If I am wrong, I apologize. But this does not change the fact that you lied, and does not explain why.

G

Well I didn't lie I was honestly asking to try and see if you were one and the same user, because it's something I've seen from people selling stuff before.

I now appreciate I was completely wrong, if Grey could stop his trolling me at the very mention of my name even in passing that'd be champion too, I quould say quid pro quo, but since grey seems to hold me in abject contempt since I logically showed where his biology was bs, it's more quo pro plus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EprQGmZ3Imw

I know no one watches links as it's too hard, but this is very apposite, and it's very much what Grey is trying to pass off, sincere or not, on the gullible. People who try to enslave others by using poor reason and even worse logic, are common place though and hardly new. We've been doing that for at least since the rise of civilisation and probably since we left the trees. That doesn't make it right though.

Proselytising to make money off of religion is evangelism in its ugliest guise, and I for one do not think it is au fait or what forums should be about.

"Jesus he knows me and he knows I'm right."

Or whatever faith based nonsense you pass of in the name of the holy dollar, it sickens me.

Grey is nothing but a snake oil salesman, a con man, and he knows it. What he's doing is cynically trying to manipulate people into buying into a cult for his own profit. I for one think he should be banned for it, but meh he's as harmless as the schizophrenic on a street corner with John 3:3 on a cardboard sign so...

It doesn't even matter if he is sincere or not, either way this sort of behaviour would of got him banned on every other philosophy forum on the internet, so coming the holier than though on me is really beyond the pale.

Except Greylorn????

Straw man Greylorn does indeed have the right to believe whatever he wants but proselytising, especially for financial gain or advertising a religion in the name of making money, is ethically wrong. And cult mongers like Grey are ten a penny, luckily he seems to be just about the money not the cyanide cocktails and a run in with the FBI.

Passing it off as some exploration of consciousness does not make it morally right. In fact if anything that is worse, because religions like Scientology do that and that sort of psychological manipulation is horrendous and in fact illegal in my neck of the woods.

"Dig deep into your hearts and pocket books people and hear the truth!"

Put a Charlie Chaplin Moustache on grey and a brown uniform and I can be sure he is no different from any other facist.

Incidentally that is why Hitler wore that moustache because he was a huge Chaplin fan. Useless information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvjoWOwnn4

I am not so sure he would of approved of Chaplin's satire though...

"I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost....

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. .....

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!."

Nice speech Chaplin.

"there's one born every minute."

P.T.Barnum.

I am pretty sure it's more every second these days but the point is just the same, live your life and live it your own way. You're all individuals no matter what some half baked prophet from pickety wick tells you. No matter what they assure you is the truth, and no matter how many beons or voices they listened to. Cynical manipulation is all it is, one man has found a faith, and now he wants you to find the same faith, but you can't find logic at the bottom of a well, any more than you can find your purpose at the behest of a spell from The Necromancer someone trying to breathe life into death, into mindless slavery, such people are Sauron.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKXv4Qqgceo



"Even a wise man can be reasoned out of logic, even a fool can believe his own wisdom is truth, even an idiot can believe he has found the truth and hence his farts don't stink."

Some guy.

Now don't get me wrong I am not bob evenson trying to claim that Morgoth the Devil will take your soul in the name of his arch demon Sauron in the end times. But as many have found Greyhorn is little more than a demon of conformity in a sad world of conformists, who never learnt half of what it was to be free from such slavery. Now I don't begrudge him his beliefs or even claim he should not hold them, nor do I chastise his will to pass off "literature" based on his beliefs on anyone, but and let me make this very clear proselytising is but another fall of man. There's only one way of life and that is your own...

I do though see grey like I see the Mouth of Sauron, a man who speaks the words of such and evil master that his teeth rot at their telling and their form, mortal as such a man is, and he is, he has only corruption on his tongue and his visage shows his filth.

It's not a religious thing though, I just think the mental image is apt for Grey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To_RJ_mPNqM

Incidentally in the book The Mouth of Sauron comes to Minas Tirith to treat, and as all diplomats are afforded diplomatic immunity he is allowed to leave unharmed and returns to Minas Morgul, Peter Jackson was using artistic license their, and it was one of the more egregious times he changed the books.

That said he obviously dies after the fall of his master, so the Black Numenorian who like the Dunedain is blessed with long life, even after his 600 years of speaking Sauron's vile evil, is eventually brought to ruin by his own foulness. Which is I think quite apt, he dies in Minas Morgul along with all his black kind.

Ginkgo wrote:In relation to dualism and monism we could basically say that dualists postulate the existence to two types of stuff. Physical stuff and mental stuff. Substance dualists such as Descartes label this as mental substances and physical substances.

Gee wrote:
This is mostly a division of the tangible and intangible, so it looks like a validation or understanding of God hidden within theories. This looks like a false dichotomy because in reality thought and emotion (mental stuff) is about as interchangeable as blood and bones (physical stuff). The truth is there are more than two types of "stuff", so I don't see how these theories could possibly teach us anything.

Yes, this is the problem that Descartes encountered with his substance dualism. Descartes himself, was unable to give a satisfactory explanation as to how the mind and body actually interact. This problem gave rise to different types of solutions in order to overcome the problem. Hence, Leibniz, Melebrache, Spinoza. These theories probably don't teach us anything because we cannot test them in any scientific way. One is just as logical as the other, even though they might contradict.

I think it is ok to say the reality is that there is more than two types of stuff, but how are you going to prove this?

Ginkgo wrote:Other dualists claimed that the idea of substances is of little value, so they want to talk about about the mental and physical as exhibiting certain types of properties. Property dualism would be an example of this. Without going into too much detail here I would say that some dualists do allow for God and other paranormal explanations.

Gee wrote: This makes more sense to me. So do these theories "allow" for God and other paranormal explanations, or do they actually explain God and the paranormal? Because my thinking is that a valid theory of consciousness would explain what "God" is, why we believe in "God", and what the paranormal is and how it works.

Yes, property dualism makes sense to a lot of people, because it overcomes some of the problems associated with substance dualism.

You probably can say that property dualism does allow for paranormal explanations such as panpsychism, but this would require a fair bit of explanation. Perhaps it would be better to say that property dualism doesn't exclude panpsychism.

Substance dualism for the most part does explain how God works in the physical world

Gee wrote: Hostile indeed. Monism seems to be the same as dualism as it is an unrealistic explanation that does no good. It is like when people state that everything is energy -- so what! I still need batteries for energy because I certainly can not plug my cell phone into reality to use it.

It may well be unrealistic, but reductionism is an important methodology for science.

Gee wrote:
Science needs to deal with some realities about mind. The rational mind (Ego) deals with the senses and helps us to navigate physical reality; the unconscious mind (SuperEgo) has no understanding of time and space or cause and effect, so it seems to be very much non-local; the instinctive mind (Id) is the only aspect of mind that clearly understands and instigates the chaotic balance that reflects the true nature of "raw" consciousness. Raw consciousness being the consciousness that is a natural part of reality before it is influenced by thought and mind.

What you have here appears to be a combination of psychology, quantum mechanics and philosophy. Fair enough, but you would need to come up with a working hypothesis in order to try and explain the theory.

Ginkgo wrote:Yes, this is the problem that Descartes encountered with his substance dualism. Descartes himself, was unable to give a satisfactory explanation as to how the mind and body actually interact. This problem gave rise to different types of solutions in order to overcome the problem. Hence, Leibniz, Melebrache, Spinoza. These theories probably don't teach us anything because we cannot test them in any scientific way. One is just as logical as the other, even though they might contradict.

I think it is ok to say the reality is that there is more than two types of stuff, but how are you going to prove this?

What do you mean? We already know that there are more than two types of "stuff". There are lots of types of physical stuff, so are you saying that I would have to prove that there is more than one type of mental stuff? Thought and emotion are not the same thing -- two types of mental stuff.

Ginkgo wrote:You probably can say that property dualism does allow for paranormal explanations such as panpsychism, but this would require a fair bit of explanation. Perhaps it would be better to say that property dualism doesn't exclude panpsychism.

Panpsychism is not paranormal. I am talking about the paranormal/supernatural -- ghosts and spirits and Gods and auras and reincarnation and near-death experiences and ESP -- the paranormal. A valid explanation will also explain these. And yes, I think that a real explanation is possible. One must bear in mind that subjective interpretation plays a major role in these experiences. It is my hope that a valid explanation and understanding of consciousness will help us to understand delusion and help many mentally handicapped people, whose disability is related to a chemical imbalance.

Ginkgo wrote:Substance dualism for the most part does explain how God works in the physical world

I was thinking about how "God" is interpreted in our minds, but will look up substance dualism to see if they have any ideas that can help.

Ginkgo wrote:What you have here appears to be a combination of psychology, quantum mechanics and philosophy. Fair enough, but you would need to come up with a working hypothesis in order to try and explain the theory.

The Ego and SuperEgo are already well studied, so this information is not new. The only new information that I presented is that the Id reflects the natural self-balancing chaos of reality, and I think this is also known. Maybe people are just not looking at it.

G

Blaggard;

In responding to my post, you did not address a single issue that regards consciousness or religion. What you did was fill up almost two feet of page with your complaints about Greylorn.

It is clear that you do not like Greylorn. It is well noted by all posters in this thread, and most members of this forum, and maybe the entire planet. You can give it a rest now. I really don't care about your opinion of Greylorn.

Please note that this thread is about "Pure Consciousness?", not about "What Do We Think Of Greylorn?" YOU ARE OFF TOPIC.

G

Oh right so it's fine when Greylorn trolls but when I respond to it you need to step in.

Honestly why not just marry the self styled Messiah and prophet already, end all the speculation.

Guru Greylorn Ell B.A. wrote:A few months back I informed B that I would ignore his posts, and I've been true to my statement. I ignore all of his posts, and abort posts in which someone else attempts to take him seriously. Your post is my first exception, and I'm not grateful for it. Whatever that hopeless ass might have invited me to do, I neither know nor care about. The boy has no class, poor manners, and cannot communicate competently. If I wanted to talk with such people, I'd hang out in my local scruffy tavern on Friday nights and try to engage drunken nitwits in serious discussions. No thanks.

I don't even read your posts to that abscess, having learned as a teenager that there is no accounting for or correction to the personal tastes of others, particularly those of females. (I fathered three daughters.) That is an observation, not an insult. It applies to all of my wives and to a number of male friends who made bad choices. Oops! It also applies to me. Go figure.

Come on this is blatant trolling I reported it and informed Greylorn I would be doing so, the only result of which is that they deleted the post where I pointed out he was trolling and ignored his blatant troll. Meh shit happens. So I just decided to respond in kind since it was apparently all the rage and so in with the cogniscenti.

I love the way he is so self absorbed, that even when he hypocritcally points out that I have no class, it is done with such little class that you'd think it was simply ass. How can you defend this person, it's beyond me, he's nothing more than a shameless self promoting con man, who trolls up any thread he can get his hands on with proselytising which would of seen him banned on pretty much every philosophy forum on the web bar this one.

That is an observation, not an insult. It applies to all of my wives and to a number of male friends who made bad choices. Oops! It also applies to me. Go figure.

The only real point here is that unfortunately Grey has bred progeny, let's just hope they are not anything like him, but it's nice to see he ignores all the people in his life who argue with him, though, because let's face it I suspect he has ignored basically anyone and anything who disagrees with his dictatorship, at least some people who revolve around the planet Greylorn, centre of the universe and divine prophet get some peace though which is nice.

I didn't respond to your questions because there was nothing to respond to except your clear bias, as I have said numerous times there is no point talking to a religious devotee about his cognitive dissonance, any more than there is trying to reason grey out of his bunker in imaginationland.

I suspect that whoever originally made these statements about the Piranha, had no true understanding of religion, spirituality, or the Piranha. This looks like the kind of thinking that had all people, who were not Christian, believed to be primitive heathens. How old is this information? I think that someone needs to go down there and talk to the Piranha. Or study them if this is actually true.

Take this for example do you even know who it was who discovered the Pirahã and their oddly evolved language?

It was a Christian missionary seeking to convert them, who on learning their language and world view later posted several papers on their language, how it contains no numbers, no spiritual or divine references and no religion whatsoever, he has since spent 30 years studying them and talking to them about their beliefs and conceptual views of the world. But no of course he's a liar, A missionary and evangelist Christian with a clear agenda to promote the fact that somewhere on Earth someone didn't feel the need to explain away nature and reality with some imaginary mythology. It's beside the point but this sort of plea bargaining away reality is why its a waste of time talking about consciousness with people who believe in magic. I'll respond to posts which aren't Christian apologetics, but any post that contains nothing but faith based arm waving is not worth anyone's time, same goes for Grey, he's so lost in his own fictions and fantasies its not worth even indulging him, you are wasting valuable time which could be spent doing something productive rather than indulging a clown with delusions of grandeur and a complete disregard for reality, logic and reason one can only assume was a product of some sort of psychological episode or mental pathology. You'd as well spend half an hour trying to explain to bob evenson why the voices he hears and his schizophrenia mean he should probably up his dose of anti-psychotics before believing in some fantasy game that has rules divined by the voices in his head. And that is all beon theory is, Grey has spent too much time listening to the voices in his head, and not to whatever psychiatrist manages his delusions.

Was a time you could walk down any street and listen to soap box preachers banging on about sin and death and the end of the world, now the pathologically insane have access to the internet and you would do well to be warned they are quite, quite mad, and there is little or no value trying to reason a lunatic out of his or her particular brand of psychotic delusion, by the same vain it is pointless to try to discuss religion and or religious beliefs, both are a sort of self induced pathology a result of years of denial, bias, and apologetics.

I've met people like grey in real life, people who dig to deep into physics and maths and end up running out off the rails, it happens to people who are imaginative and or science trained, it's not something magical, it certainly is why schizophrenia developed as a disease at the same time we reached the apex of our intelligence as a species, but it is entirely ordinary and does not need a 500 page manual on how a persons particular pathology played out and the resultant clear etiology of people who are subject to mental breakdowns with a penchant to take fantasy and fantastic beliefs to the extremes of their delusional psychoses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... 7Spzjh9QgA

You should probably watch this it is a discussion with people from the Pirahã tribe, you wont, but never mind.

Interview: Out on a limb over language

Linguist Daniel Everett went to Brazil as a young Christian missionary to work with the Pirahã indigenous people. Instead of converting them, he told Liz Else and Lucy Middleton, he lost his faith and his family, and provoked a major intellectual row.

We hear you've had some unusual visitors recently.

Two Hollywood producers flew out to see me - with a letter from Larry Turman, who produced The Graduate. They're interested in the story of my life. I'm also waiting to hear whether the Brazilian government will permit PBS Nova and the BBC to make a documentary about the Pirahã, who live in the Amazon basin. They want to go to the village where I've lived and worked for nearly 30 years.

How did you get involved with the Pirahã?

My wife Keren and I set out to become missionaries, but it didn't work out that way. We had to learn the language to work there but I became more and more fascinated by it, and eventually studied linguistics at "real" universities. After many years of living with the Pirahã I've learned a lot about their language and the problems it poses for linguistic theories. Their concept of truth also changed my entire religious persona. I went from being a Christian missionary to an atheist.

When did you stop believing?

In various stages. I arrived in Brazil in 1977, and by 1982 I was having serious doubts. Probably by 1985, after I had spent a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I had no more faith, but I didn't say anything about it for another 19 years.

Did you really not tell anyone - not even your wife?

No. When I did, we ended up getting divorced.

How did being with the Pirahã change your thinking?

They lived so well without religion and they were so happy. Also they didn't believe what I was saying because I didn't have evidence for it, and that made me think. They would try so hard to understand what I was saying, but it was obviously utterly irrelevant to them. I began to think: what am I doing here, giving them these 2000-year-old concepts when everything of value I can think of to communicate to them they already have?

Working with the Pirahã has landed you in hot water professionally as well.

Yeah. I'm in trouble for putting forward theories based on my studies with the Pirahã that challenge the established order. One of the most publicised is my claim that they don't really have fixed words for numbers or colours. Worse still, I cannot find recursion in their language - the way we embed sentences containing other statements or concepts within sentences.

This seems to conflict with the views of Noam Chomsky, one of the fathers of linguistics.

Yes. Chomsky and I have had long discussions, and somewhere in the conversation he's going to say: if you're right, there's no difference between my granddaughter and a rock; rocks don't learn language, so obviously the ability to acquire language is inbuilt. Chomsky's approach is that we have innate knowledge of a basic grammatical structure, or syntax, that is common to all human languages. Using a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms, we can produce an infinite number of sentences, including ones that have never been uttered before. For him, the killer argument is that without it, children could not acquire their native languages very quickly - hence the line about his granddaughter and the rock. Recursion is the reason that there are unlimited possible utterances in any language, so it must exist in all languages.

Why does it matter if Chomsky is wrong?

If he is wrong, it shows that the human ability to communicate is not reducible to the kind of "mathematical" system that Chomsky envisions. It means that language is something we gain by interacting with our fellow human beings, people who share our culture with us. I'm claiming that culture shapes grammar, that it can even affect the nature of what Chomsky called "core grammar" - the part of grammar that's supposed to be innate. If it's innate, it can't be affected by culture. I say it can.
Are you a lone voice?

No. Geoffrey Pullum and Barbara Scholz of the University of Edinburgh, UK, wrote a recent paper where they laid out what they consider to be severe confusion in the approach of Chomsky and his adherents. They argue that no one can, in principle, demonstrate that any human language is infinite - a core attribute of human language for Chomsky and his followers. All we can say is that for many languages, such as English, the most efficient grammar acts as though the language were infinite. That doesn't mean the language is in fact infinite.

It is my hope that a valid explanation and understanding of consciousness will help us to understand delusion and help many mentally handicapped people, whose disability is related to a chemical imbalance.

Are you trying to direct Greylorn to start taking his medication again, if so it's a good idea.

Certainly couldn't hurt...

That might be because religion is based on interpretation -- not on fact. Apparently you have no understanding of what religion is, how it gets started, or it's purpose. I will be writing about this soon, maybe it will enlighten you.

Au contraire mon ami I am well versed in the history of most of the major religions and some animist religions like shintoism and the Celtic pantheon. I know why religion developed and the cultures that fostered it and why even they believed that thunder was an angry god called Thor chucking his hammer Mjolnir about and Odin sacrificed himself on the tree of life to learn wisdom and lost an eye to the crows. I know about The Morrigan a Godess of the celts who commonly is accompanied by a crow avatar who tempts men with gifts which often sting them in the tail. She often appears on The Battle field tempting men with promises of glory which are likewise double edged.

For example Cu Chulain the Irsh King asks for fame and he does indeed get it but he almost is killed by a bear in the process, and he only survives through the intervention of a witch who offers here magic up as a gift if the Godess will save him and so on...

Neanderthals had burial rights, they would bury bodies covered in red or yellow ochre for example and with carved ivory trinkets and symbols, and indeed ceremonial burial is meant to be the foundation of most of the modern religions, excluding Eastern ones. Questions about what happens when we die, morality and ethics are what produces a religion - as well as an attempt to explain nature which usually ends up being animist type religions or Shaminism such as those of North and South America which invoke the spirits of animals as protectors - for example the Egyptians believed that if a man died his heart was weighed and if it was heavier than a feather it was cast into the flames, if it was lighter he passed on to an after life, they also believed their leaders The Pharoes were Gods and Imhotep you'll remember from the Mummy films, who was his high priest, an Amanhotep fathered the first monotheistic Egyptian religion which was short lived but later revived under Akenatan.

Amun (also Amon, Amen, Greek Ἄμμων Ámmōn, Ἅμμων Hámmōn) was a local deity of Thebes. He was attested since the Old Kingdom together with his spouse Amaunet. With the 11th dynasty (c. 21st century BC), he rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Monthu.[1]

After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I, Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra.

Amun-Ra retained chief importance in the Egyptian pantheon throughout the New Kingdom (with the exception of the "Atenist heresy" under Akhenaten). Amun-Ra in this period (16th to 11th centuries BC) held the position of transcendental, self-created[2] creator deity "par excellence", he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety.[3] His position as King of Gods developed to the point of virtual monotheism where other gods became manifestations of him. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods.[3] As the chief deity of the Egyptian Empire, Amun-Ra also came to be worshipped outside of Egypt, in Ancient Libya and Nubia, and as Zeus Ammon came to be identified with Zeus in Ancient Greece.

Egyptians believed in a very moral life, they had relatively little crime, and were aside from being a little war faring quite enlightened, it's easy to see why the Jews developed Judaism after stays in Egypt and Babylon as captives, for example the story of Noah was first recorded in Sumeria that which was later to become Babylon which resided in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates near Modern day Baghdad, Iraq the only difference is they had a pantheon of Gods so it is the gods that decide to flood the Earth to teach mankind a lesson, aside from that the stories are almost identical it is hence no great surprise that the Jews originated in Northern Babylon.

"By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, and where we wept when we remembered Zion.(The Kingdom of Israel)"

Earth, Wind and Fire.

And as a further addendum most cultures have flood myths some which are global some which are local, but it is interesting to note that the mediterranean was once dry and had a large lake at its center, and flooded a few million years ago through the straits of Gibraltar and then eventually caused the black sea, a flood near Modern day Istanbul and its isthmus with modern day Greece, that you might remember from the greek myth of the golden fleece, and or from herodotus's accounts of the persian invasions of Greece which would later lead Alexander to conquer much of the Middle East and India and Egypt from Macedonia; Mount ararat is in Northern Turkey, the supposed landing place of the ark. Also Atlantis which is mythical is mentioned by I think Socrates as a nation that was flooded and destroyed by a great Tsunami, the Minoans were destroyed in such a way, when a volcano literally exploded 200 miles off shore creating a massive tidal wave that obliterated their capital on Crete. The Minoans aka Phoenecians aka Philistines and also associated with the Carthiginians who had probably founded Minoa as a trade concern for it's location as much as anything else. They were said to be an advanced seafaring nation that dominated mediterranean trade for a millenia. They had a religion based on female divinities, which is quite odd, also the Philistines had a similar religion, which was polytheistic, and mainly revolved around fertility, the Roman tried to disparage Carthage for example as Barbarians who burned their first born child and in the same way tried to destroy the Druids of England to supplant their religion, but the Rome was very much a conquest orientated society, when the conquest and expansion ended Rome inevitably fell, being a slave state for the most part, which interestingly lead Constantine the first Christian Roman Emperor to Roman Catholicism... And the rest is history with Constantinopal aka as Byzantium aka Istanbul splitting of from Roman Catholicism and becoming orthodox and Jerusalem likewise, religion that was to spread into Russia and the baltic and to Greece over time under Ottoman rule, which is ironic considering they were Muslims.

And of course so Christianity spread...

"Shall we now worship this white Christ, called Christ Jesus, perhaps he can free us from our curse lord?"

Beowulf an Anglo Saxon myth.

n the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the aid of Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall (in Heorot) has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland.

Hroðgar pronounced Rothgar a Danish King famed throughout Christendom to this day. It's interesting to note that the only surviving copy of the poem resided in an English monastery at the turn of the first millenia, when England was Christianised previously by Alfred the Great and Ethelred the unready the first kings who would later be accorded title of high king of what would later become England, eventually converting the Vikings by treaties in North England and thence to Scandinavia by missionary work and those dreaded Celts in Scotland, Ireland and the English "county" of Cornwall where they still resided. The Celts of course had been superceeded by the Franks and Germans who had for a time had the Holy Roman Empire in French/German lands under Charlemagne, and Normans, lit Northmen who were from Danish lands or Scandinavia and invaded Northern France.

Long rambling story short I am well aware of religious history, even though I am an agnostic atheist, I do not however see that as a contradiction, anthropology like biology fascinates me.

If you read this far which is doubtful you really do need to get out more, seriously this post is way to long to have read. :S

Blaggard;

Please consider my following responses:

Blaggard wrote:Oh right so it's fine when Greylorn trolls but when I respond to it you need to step in.

You do not respond to it; you escalate it. This takes my thread off topic, so of course I step in. I also requested that Greylorn stop escalating the personal argument.

Blaggard wrote:Honestly why not just marry the self styled Messiah and prophet already, end all the speculation.

Speculation? Are you serious? You sound like a jealous suitor or a protective big brother. Trust me on this, I do not require either and prefer to stick to the subject matter.

Blaggard wrote:Come on this is blatant trolling I reported it and informed Greylorn I would be doing so, the only result of which is that they deleted the post

As I reported some of your posts that were deleted and/or partially deleted.

Blaggard wrote:How can you defend this person, it's beyond me, . . . which would of seen him banned on pretty much every philosophy forum on the web bar this one.

As you were banned from the Science Forum? I would not have to "defend this person" if you would stop attacking "this person". Greylorn does not dismiss the paranormal, as most people do, so that makes his input valuable to me. I can't even discuss the paranormal with most people, because they like to pretend that it does not exist.

Blaggard wrote:The only real point here is that unfortunately Grey has bred progeny,

This is an example of your very offensive behavior. Philosophical argument is about logically pointing out the flaws in someone's theory or building a case for your own ideas. It is not about personal attacks, insulting, or bad manners. There is also an unwritten rule that a person's family is exempt from attack. The above is one of the reasons why I think you are acting like an ass.

Blaggard wrote:I didn't respond to your questions because there was nothing to respond to except your clear bias, as I have said numerous times there is no point talking to a religious devotee

After reviewing your post, it is clear that you have spent a great deal of time studying religions, but if I study religions, then I am a "religious devotee" or "apologist". Your logic escapes me. This would be an example of why I stated that following your logic is like trying to plot the flight path of a rampaging butterfly.

Blaggard wrote:

Gee stated: I suspect that whoever originally made these statements about the Piranha, had no true understanding of religion, spirituality, or the Piranha. This looks like the kind of thinking that had all people, who were not Christian, believed to be primitive heathens. How old is this information? I think that someone needs to go down there and talk to the Piranha. Or study them if this is actually true.

It was a Christian missionary seeking to convert them, who on learning their language and world view later posted several papers on their language, how it contains no numbers, no spiritual or divine references and no religion whatsoever,

Well, I certainly got the "Christian" part right. It appears that I also got the "study them" part right.

Blaggard wrote:And that is all beon theory is, Grey has spent too much time listening to the voices in his head, and not to whatever psychiatrist manages his delusions.

Again, a personal attack, rather than an argument against the theory.

Blaggard wrote:by the same vain it is pointless to try to discuss religion and or religious beliefs, both are a sort of self induced pathology a result of years of denial, bias, and apologetics.

it certainly is why schizophrenia developed as a disease at the same time we reached the apex of our intelligence as a species, but it is entirely ordinary

Your opinions on religious belief are just that -- opinions. I doubt that your conclusion that religious belief is "a sort of self induced pathology" is valid, and wonder if it is a projection of your own issues.

Schizophrenia is not a "disease". I seriously doubt that it developed in conjunction with our intelligence as much as it developed in conjunction with the development of our consciousness. My studies indicate that schizophrenia may well be an abnormality in consciousness/mind, which pretty much bites the "God"-dropped-in-the-soul idea in the butt. Of course, religious people would say that "God" had a reason for dropping in a defective soul/mind, but that is BS.

Blaggard wrote:

Interview: Out on a limb over language

I'm also waiting to hear whether the Brazilian government will permit PBS Nova and the BBC to make a documentary about the Pirahã, who live in the Amazon basin.

So they are being studied. Good. There is much we could learn.

Their concept of truth also changed my entire religious persona. I went from being a Christian missionary to an atheist.

I would be interesting in learning more about "their concept of truth".

Yeah. I'm in trouble for putting forward theories based on my studies with the Pirahã that challenge the established order. One of the most publicised is my claim that they don't really have fixed words for numbers or colours. Worse still, I cannot find recursion in their language - the way we embed sentences containing other statements or concepts within sentences.

This seems to conflict with the views of Noam Chomsky, one of the fathers of linguistics.

Chomsky's approach is that we have innate knowledge of a basic grammatical structure, or syntax, that is common to all human languages. Using a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms, we can produce an infinite number of sentences, including ones that have never been uttered before.

Recursion is the reason that there are unlimited possible utterances in any language, so it must exist in all languages.

Innate knowledge is not well defined, but always interesting. More reason to study the Piranha.

Why does it matter if Chomsky is wrong?

If he is wrong, it shows that the human ability to communicate is not reducible to the kind of "mathematical" system that Chomsky envisions. It means that language is something we gain by interacting with our fellow human beings, people who share our culture with us. I'm claiming that culture shapes grammar, that it can even affect the nature of what Chomsky called "core grammar" - the part of grammar that's supposed to be innate. If it's innate, it can't be affected by culture. I say it can.

I am not sure that the statement that something innate can not be affected by culture is true. Innate means that you are born with it, but also assumes a "God" or other mechanism gives you these innate properties intact. I don't think that it is this simple, and suspect that our DNA, our history, and the people and lives around us all influence innate knowledge. So this concept does not conflict with my understandings. But Chomsky's ideas might conflict with mine.

Geoffrey Pullum and Barbara Scholz of the University of Edinburgh, UK, wrote a recent paper where they laid out what they consider to be severe confusion in the approach of Chomsky and his adherents. They argue that no one can, in principle, demonstrate that any human language is infinite - a core attribute of human language for Chomsky and his followers. All we can say is that for many languages, such as English, the most efficient grammar acts as though the language were infinite. That doesn't mean the language is in fact infinite.

True.

Blaggard wrote:

Gee stated: It is my hope that a valid explanation and understanding of consciousness will help us to understand delusion and help many mentally handicapped people, whose disability is related to a chemical imbalance.

Are you trying to direct Greylorn to start taking his medication again, if so it's a good idea.

Certainly couldn't hurt...

Again, a personal attack. You are convincing me that you are a mean, and probably angry, person.

Blaggard wrote:

Gee stated: That might be because religion is based on interpretation -- not on fact. Apparently you have no understanding of what religion is, how it gets started, or it's purpose. I will be writing about this soon, maybe it will enlighten you.

Oh contraire mon ami I am well versed in the history of most of the major religions and some animist religions like shintoism and the Celtic pantheon. I know why religion developed and the cultures that fostered it and why even they believed that thunder was an angry god called Thor chucking his hammer Mjolnir about and Odin sacrificed himself on the tree of life to learn wisdom and lost an eye to the crows. I know about The Morrigan a Godess of the celts who commonly is accompanied by a crow avatar who tempts men with gifts which often sting them in the tail. She often appears on The Battle field tempting men with promises of glory which are likewise double edged.

For example Cu Chulain the Irsh King asks for fame and he does indeed get it but he almost is killed by a bear in the process, and he only survives through the intervention of a witch who offers here magic up as a gift if the Godess will save him and so on...

Neanderthals had burial rights, they would bury bodies covered in red or yellow ochre for example and with carved ivory trinkets and symbols, and indeed ceremonial burial is meant to be the foundation of most of the modern religions, excluding Eastern ones. Questions about what happens when we die, morality and ethics are what produces a religion, for example the Egyptians believed that if a man died his heart was weighed and if it was heavier than a feather it was cast into the flames, if it was lighter he passed on to an after life, they also believed their leaders The Pharoes were Gods and Imhotep you'll remember from the Mummy films, who was his high priest, an Amanhotep fathered the first monotheistic Egyptian religion which was short lived.

Amun (also Amon, Amen, Greek Ἄμμων Ámmōn, Ἅμμων Hámmōn) was a local deity of Thebes. He was attested since the Old Kingdom together with his spouse Amaunet. With the 11th dynasty (c. 21st century BC), he rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Monthu.[1]

After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I, Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra.

Amun-Ra retained chief importance in the Egyptian pantheon throughout the New Kingdom (with the exception of the "Atenist heresy" under Akhenaten). Amun-Ra in this period (16th to 11th centuries BC) held the position of transcendental, self-created[2] creator deity "par excellence", he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety.[3] His position as King of Gods developed to the point of virtual monotheism where other gods became manifestations of him. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods.[3] As the chief deity of the Egyptian Empire, Amun-Ra also came to be worshipped outside of Egypt, in Ancient Libya and Nubia, and as Zeus Ammon came to be identified with Zeus in Ancient Greece.

Egyptians believed in a very moral life, they had relatively little crime, and were aside from being a little war faring quite enlightened, it's easy to see why the Jews developed Judaism after stays in Egypt and Babylon as captives, for example the story of Noah was first recorded in Sumeria that which was later to become Babylon which resided in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates near Modern day Iraq the only difference is they had a pantheon of Gods so it is the gods that decide to flood the Earth to teach mankind a lesson, aside from that the stories are almost identical it is hence no great surprise that the Jews originated in Northern Babylon.

"By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, and where we wept when we remembered Zion.(The Kingdom of Israel)"

Earth, Wind and Fire.

You have clearly studied your religions, but what you are talking about is history, dogma, and political structure. That is not what I am talking about. I study consciousness. So religion is only of interest to me as it relates to consciousness. My studies have led me to believe that religion relates to consciousness through the supernatural/paranormal. Since you do not believe that the supernatural/paranormal exists, what are you doing in this thread? If you want to argue about the history, dogma, and political structure of religion, you would be better served by the Religion Forum.

Yes I read to the bottom of your post, even after you added more, twice. It is all very interesting, and I would probably enjoy learning about it and even discussing it IN ANOTHER THREAD. Focus!!

I don't get out much. I am house-bound with MS (Multiple Sclerosis)

G

Gee wrote:
What do you mean? We already know that there are more than two types of "stuff". There are lots of types of physical stuff, so are you saying that I would have to prove that there is more than one type of mental stuff? Thought and emotion are not the same thing -- two types of mental stuff

I see the misunderstanding. When talking about dualism philosophy puts everything under two umbrellas. Physical things can include anything that has extension in space and time. It can be a chair or a brain. Such things as Ego, Id and Super ego are all regarded as mental stuff. No distinction required. If one to were to make distinctions then this would be a pluralist theory, not a dualist theory.

Gee wrote:
Panpsychism is not paranormal. I am talking about the paranormal/supernatural -- ghosts and spirits and Gods and auras and reincarnation and near-death experiences and ESP -- the paranormal. A valid explanation will also explain these. And yes, I think that a real explanation is possible. One must bear in mind that subjective interpretation plays a major role in these experiences. It is my hope that a valid explanation and understanding of consciousness will help us to understand delusion and help many mentally handicapped people, whose disability is related to a chemical imbalance.

This is a difficult question to answer. If you don't count panpsychism as paranormal then I think property dualism doesn't stretch far enough to include ghosts and spirits.

Gee wrote: The Ego and SuperEgo are already well studied, so this information is not new. The only new information that I presented is that the Id reflects the natural self-balancing chaos of reality, and I think this is also known. Maybe people are just not looking at it.

G

It depends what you mean by well studied. The Ego, Id and Superego are all mental stuff. This would probably come under the umbrella of psychoanalysis. This creates a problem as to the aspects of clinical psychology that can be regarded as scientific. It is a very complicated issue.



I made an edit because I didn't think the term "behaviour" was an inadequate explanation. I changed it to psychoanalysis

Gee wrote:Blaggard;

Please consider my following responses:

Blaggard wrote:Oh right so it's fine when Greylorn trolls but when I respond to it you need to step in.

You do not respond to it; you escalate it. This takes my thread off topic, so of course I step in. I also requested that Greylorn stop escalating the personal argument.

It didn't work.

Blaggard wrote:Honestly why not just marry the self styled Messiah and prophet already, end all the speculation.

Speculation? Are you serious? You sound like a jealous suitor or a protective big brother. Trust me on this, I do not require either and prefer to stick to the subject matter.

No but why are you defending him is more the question, what has he done to deserve it?

Blaggard wrote:Come on this is blatant trolling I reported it and informed Greylorn I would be doing so, the only result of which is that they deleted the post

As I reported some of your posts that were deleted and/or partially deleted.[/QUOTE]

So be it.

Blaggard wrote:How can you defend this person, it's beyond me, . . . which would of seen him banned on pretty much every philosophy forum on the web bar this one.

As you were banned from the Science Forum? I would not have to "defend this person" if you would stop attacking "this person". Greylorn does not dismiss the paranormal, as most people do, so that makes his input valuable to me. I can't even discuss the paranormal with most people, because they like to pretend that it does not exist.

You can discuss the paranormal with me, I have spent years as I said amongst parapsychologist learning their means and hence their science. I know full well how various groups both Fortean and those more biased.

I was never banned from the science forum, and I am not sure what you mean there, I have never been permanently banned from anywhere, although I have been temporarily banned from many forums, as no doubt have most people.

I have as I said attended conventions devoted to the paranormal, watched many lectures from many people under that remit and know the subject well. It fascinates me.

I don't dismiss it out of hand I have spent years looking into it, what I might dismiss is only the reason why people think there is a supernatural, I personally think everything is natural, but am more than willing to discuss those things that are considered by some outside of nature.

Blaggard wrote:The only real point here is that unfortunately Grey has bred progeny,

This is an example of your very offensive behavior. Philosophical argument is about logically pointing out the flaws in someone's theory or building a case for your own ideas. It is not about personal attacks, insulting, or bad manners. There is also an unwritten rule that a person's family is exempt from attack. The above is one of the reasons why I think you are acting like an ass.[/QUOTE]

You should perhaps point that out to Grey, who has put me on ignore, not for making good arguments. and not for attacking him purely because I destroyed his science. And that's a good point why have you not pointed that out to him? Why do you continue to leave him in some protective bubble so that he can do whatever he likes, troll as much as he likes and you neither admonish him or take him at issue for it. What are you trying to do here, and hence what is it you want? A circle jerk where only people who agree with you may post such as Grey or a discussion because frankly you claim you are interested in a discussion but your methods show everyone otherwise where your real interests lie.

Blaggard wrote:I didn't respond to your questions because there was nothing to respond to except your clear bias, as I have said numerous times there is no point talking to a religious devotee

After reviewing your post, it is clear that you have spent a great deal of time studying religions, but if I study religions, then I am a "religious devotee" or "apologist". Your logic escapes me. This would be an example of why I stated that following your logic is like trying to plot the flight path of a rampaging butterfly.[/QUOTE]

Well I said if you use religious apologetics there is no need or remit under which I can challenge you. Take that as you will...

Blaggard wrote:

Gee stated: I suspect that whoever originally made these statements about the Piranha, had no true understanding of religion, spirituality, or the Piranha. This looks like the kind of thinking that had all people, who were not Christian, believed to be primitive heathens. How old is this information? I think that someone needs to go down there and talk to the Piranha. Or study them if this is actually true.

It was a Christian missionary seeking to convert them, who on learning their language and world view later posted several papers on their language, how it contains no numbers, no spiritual or divine references and no religion whatsoever,

Well, I certainly got the "Christian" part right. It appears that I also got the "study them" part right.[/QUOTE]

You got nothing right you just jumped to a conclusion based on your own biases which is not your fault, you have spent your entire life doing that at any time and without reasoning at any time, kneejerk conclusions is all you expect from religious apologists. And indeed it is all you will get.

Blaggard wrote:And that is all beon theory is, Grey has spent too much time listening to the voices in his head, and not to whatever psychiatrist manages his delusions.

Again, a personal attack, rather than an argument against the theory.

Blaggard wrote:by the same vain it is pointless to try to discuss religion and or religious beliefs, both are a sort of self induced pathology a result of years of denial, bias, and apologetics.

It is a personal attack but I nonetheless do believe he is pathological, there I said it, he's not right in the head. So sue me.

it certainly is why schizophrenia developed as a disease at the same time we reached the apex of our intelligence as a species, but it is entirely ordinary

Your opinions on religious belief are just that -- opinions. I doubt that your conclusion that religious belief is "a sort of self induced pathology" is valid, and wonder if it is a projection of your own issues.

Schizophrenia is not a "disease". I seriously doubt that it developed in conjunction with our intelligence as much as it developed in conjunction with the development of our consciousness. My studies indicate that schizophrenia may well be an abnormality in consciousness/mind, which pretty much bites the "God"-dropped-in-the-soul idea in the butt. Of course, religious people would say that "God" had a reason for dropping in a defective soul/mind, but that is BS.[/QUOTE]

Schizophrenia is a disease it is a pathology induced by chemical imbalance which is of course the very definition of both disorder and disease, don't get me wrong I feel very sorry for people who go through mental illness, I myself suffer from seasonal affective disorder for which I have to take SSRIs just to remain somewhat balanced over the winter months. I have real sympathy for people who are pathological but pathological means disease, let's not dress it up in fancy semantics.

Schizophrenia seems to be related very much to the same genes that make us intelligent, which explains why either people with sub normal intelligence tend to be more prevalent to it and geniuses likewise. I am not making this up the same genes that created imagination and forward thinking and sentience seem to be the same genes that make you more likely to be schizophrenic and I am more than willing to link the research if you want me to.

Search Results

pathological
paθəˈlɒdʒɪk(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: pathological; adjective: pathologic
1.
relating to pathology.
"the interpretation of pathological studies"
2.
involving or caused by a physical or mental disease.
"glands with a pathological abnormality"
synonyms: morbid, diseased More
"a pathological condition"
3.
informal

Blaggard wrote:

Interview: Out on a limb over language

I'm also waiting to hear whether the Brazilian government will permit PBS Nova and the BBC to make a documentary about the Pirahã, who live in the Amazon basin.

So they are being studied. Good. There is much we could learn.

Their concept of truth also changed my entire religious persona. I went from being a Christian missionary to an atheist.

I would be interesting in learning more about "their concept of truth".

Yeah. I'm in trouble for putting forward theories based on my studies with the Pirahã that challenge the established order. One of the most publicised is my claim that they don't really have fixed words for numbers or colours. Worse still, I cannot find recursion in their language - the way we embed sentences containing other statements or concepts within sentences.

This seems to conflict with the views of Noam Chomsky, one of the fathers of linguistics.

Chomsky's approach is that we have innate knowledge of a basic grammatical structure, or syntax, that is common to all human languages. Using a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms, we can produce an infinite number of sentences, including ones that have never been uttered before.

Recursion is the reason that there are unlimited possible utterances in any language, so it must exist in all languages.

Innate knowledge is not well defined, but always interesting. More reason to study the Piranha.

Why does it matter if Chomsky is wrong?

If he is wrong, it shows that the human ability to communicate is not reducible to the kind of "mathematical" system that Chomsky envisions. It means that language is something we gain by interacting with our fellow human beings, people who share our culture with us. I'm claiming that culture shapes grammar, that it can even affect the nature of what Chomsky called "core grammar" - the part of grammar that's supposed to be innate. If it's innate, it can't be affected by culture. I say it can.

I am not sure that the statement that something innate can not be affected by culture is true. Innate means that you are born with it, but also assumes a "God" or other mechanism gives you these innate properties intact. I don't think that it is this simple, and suspect that our DNA, our history, and the people and lives around us all influence innate knowledge. So this concept does not conflict with my understandings. But Chomsky's ideas might conflict with mine.

Geoffrey Pullum and Barbara Scholz of the University of Edinburgh, UK, wrote a recent paper where they laid out what they consider to be severe confusion in the approach of Chomsky and his adherents. They argue that no one can, in principle, demonstrate that any human language is infinite - a core attribute of human language for Chomsky and his followers. All we can say is that for many languages, such as English, the most efficient grammar acts as though the language were infinite. That doesn't mean the language is in fact infinite.

True.

Blaggard wrote:

Gee stated: It is my hope that a valid explanation and understanding of consciousness will help us to understand delusion and help many mentally handicapped people, whose disability is related to a chemical imbalance.

Are you trying to direct Greylorn to start taking his medication again, if so it's a good idea.

Certainly couldn't hurt...

Again, a personal attack. You are convincing me that you are a mean, and probably angry, person.[/QUOTE]

No actually genuinely concerned about Greylorn's mental health I have a friend who went through much the same delusions and for an extended period and he was later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, so I see his etiology as very close to those of people whom I have known who went pathological he seems to be on the same path, if you see it is as mean for pointing that out so be it, but people who think they have found an overiding knowledge who hence try to proselytise it on others are not usual sane, see that as mean if you want but it is a pattern I have noticed in the deranged. If you or he takes that ill so be it, but it is true that schizo types tend to live in a sort of fantasy over a long period of time, that no one and no person an break them free from. That sort of delusion is not healthy over any time period let alone a life time. It amazes me he never got proffesional help for his psychosis as clearly and I don't men this in a demeaning way he is quite pathologically unhinged.

Blaggard wrote:

Gee stated: That might be because religion is based on interpretation -- not on fact. Apparently you have no understanding of what religion is, how it gets started, or it's purpose. I will be writing about this soon, maybe it will enlighten you.

Oh contraire mon ami I am well versed in the history of most of the major religions and some animist religions like shintoism and the Celtic pantheon. I know why religion developed and the cultures that fostered it and why even they believed that thunder was an angry god called Thor chucking his hammer Mjolnir about and Odin sacrificed himself on the tree of life to learn wisdom and lost an eye to the crows. I know about The Morrigan a Godess of the celts who commonly is accompanied by a crow avatar who tempts men with gifts which often sting them in the tail. She often appears on The Battle field tempting men with promises of glory which are likewise double edged.

For example Cu Chulain the Irsh King asks for fame and he does indeed get it but he almost is killed by a bear in the process, and he only survives through the intervention of a witch who offers here magic up as a gift if the Godess will save him and so on...

Neanderthals had burial rights, they would bury bodies covered in red or yellow ochre for example and with carved ivory trinkets and symbols, and indeed ceremonial burial is meant to be the foundation of most of the modern religions, excluding Eastern ones. Questions about what happens when we die, morality and ethics are what produces a religion, for example the Egyptians believed that if a man died his heart was weighed and if it was heavier than a feather it was cast into the flames, if it was lighter he passed on to an after life, they also believed their leaders The Pharoes were Gods and Imhotep you'll remember from the Mummy films, who was his high priest, an Amanhotep fathered the first monotheistic Egyptian religion which was short lived.

Amun (also Amon, Amen, Greek Ἄμμων Ámmōn, Ἅμμων Hámmōn) was a local deity of Thebes. He was attested since the Old Kingdom together with his spouse Amaunet. With the 11th dynasty (c. 21st century BC), he rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Monthu.[1]

After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I, Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra.

Amun-Ra retained chief importance in the Egyptian pantheon throughout the New Kingdom (with the exception of the "Atenist heresy" under Akhenaten). Amun-Ra in this period (16th to 11th centuries BC) held the position of transcendental, self-created[2] creator deity "par excellence", he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety.[3] His position as King of Gods developed to the point of virtual monotheism where other gods became manifestations of him. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods.[3] As the chief deity of the Egyptian Empire, Amun-Ra also came to be worshipped outside of Egypt, in Ancient Libya and Nubia, and as Zeus Ammon came to be identified with Zeus in Ancient Greece.

Egyptians believed in a very moral life, they had relatively little crime, and were aside from being a little war faring quite enlightened, it's easy to see why the Jews developed Judaism after stays in Egypt and Babylon as captives, for example the story of Noah was first recorded in Sumeria that which was later to become Babylon which resided in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates near Modern day Iraq the only difference is they had a pantheon of Gods so it is the gods that decide to flood the Earth to teach mankind a lesson, aside from that the stories are almost identical it is hence no great surprise that the Jews originated in Northern Babylon.

"By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, and where we wept when we remembered Zion.(The Kingdom of Israel)"

Earth, Wind and Fire.

[/quote]

You have clearly studied your religions, but what you are talking about is history, dogma, and political structure. That is not what I am talking about. I study consciousness. So religion is only of interest to me as it relates to consciousness. My studies have led me to believe that religion relates to consciousness through the supernatural/paranormal. Since you do not believe that the supernatural/paranormal exists, what are you doing in this thread? If you want to argue about the history, dogma, and political structure of religion, you would be better served by the Religion Forum.

Yes I read to the bottom of your post, even after you added more, twice. It is all very interesting, and I would probably enjoy learning about it and even discussing it IN ANOTHER THREAD. Focus!!



G[/quote]

I don't get out much. I am house-bound with MS (Multiple Sclerosis)

Oh wow that's tough you have my every sympathy and I hope you will find some cure soon if not in science or religion, it is a disease that so needs a cure.

I would like to end by saying that you make assumptions about people based on nothing, which is only human, and of course it is by being wrong we progress more aptly to being right.

I see people who just wont take criticism wont indulge in arguing with others who do not believe their religion is anything more than absolute, as nothing more than assholes in the world. Such people are fine if they want to skim and glide through life ignoring anyone who is not part of their religion, but don't expect me to find them pleasing to my aspect or their arrogance and coneceit either justified or righteous, there is nothing worse than an idiot who claims he knows it all. For me such a person is just stating that he is a massive cnut, and has no more right to be on any planet than any animal because he has spent his life avoiding being wrong by only ever being right. Such people are place holders for better people, and probably why the world is in such a funked up state.

I as I say and said think there is only one way of life and that is very much your own, people who try to place you in a box, proselytise and make you subject to their own mental slavery are but another fall of man.

Good lord though that quote function could be easily cleaned up by a decent programmer so that all quotes were tied correctly to the members, do that hence you don't need rules on forums that make quotes hard, I am not sure why bbs and various bulletin boards can't be assed to do some very simple code. Probably because they can't be assed, and such human beings often can't.

Meh I would explain the code in 5 minutes to solve the quote problem to anyone anywhere and it would not be for money, but, would they take my advice produce decent code, would a Christian hence take such advice, I thin k the point is well represented if not well made, making life simpler for people is not what we seem to do, ok over time that happens but in general we seem to spike every person on Earth by sticking a big log in his wheels..?

Greylorn;

I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I have been working on a post about religion, and it is taking some time. My Aunt is also in the hospital, so that is a distraction. Please consider the following and be patient with the long awaited post on religion.

Greylorn Ell wrote:My observations, based upon myself and four siblings, plus several offspring, are that interesting people are born with predilections toward specific interests. A few are born with an intense focus.

Agreed. There is a great deal of speculation regarding child prodigies, and a possible explanation is reincarnation. Of course, one does not have to be a prodigy to have an abundance of talent.

Greylorn Ell wrote:Beon Theory claims that the mind/soul/beon or whatever one wants to call the essential component of human consciousness cannot learn enough in a single human embodiment to be of much use to itself, or to the universe that brought it into consciousness. Therefore it reincarnates in different bodies, in different times, various sexes and in-between states, so as to gain perspective. That is because beon is inherently both stupid and ignorant, which is exactly what one might expect of a non-created entity that has the potential to acquire self-awareness.

The above paragraph reflects many of the ideas in Eastern religions/philosophies that accept reincarnation, so there is at least some agreement. I don't really understand the point of what has to be learned, and also have a question. One of the things that I have noted in most theories is that they excludes lower life forms. I see this as a problem.

So does your theory explain how lower life forms are conscious, or does it only consider human consciousness. If you only consider human consciousness, then can you explain why it is different for humans? It is my thought that consciousness would evolve the same as physical life evolves.

Greylorn Ell wrote:Beon can only become intelligent by making the choice to learn that which it does not know, to consider the merits of ideas that frighten its dreadfully stupid brain (which, after all, is a machine), and to practice invention. While this might seem simple, it is the most difficult challenge a human-embodied beon will face.

I know that everyone thinks that intelligence is a goal, but I do not share that view. Why would "beon" need to become intelligent?

G