Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Bushman
Social climber
In this form at present
|
|
I agree Ed, absolutely.
Emotionalism does not need to be sanctified.
Sanctifying and elevating with spiritual definitions emotional states appears a backwards step to cognitive thinking.
Also, I haven't chosen to live a life free of outdated religious ideas only to have it described and interpreted by such limiting and tedious religious terms as purity, self-transcendence, and sanctification.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
Meanwhile...
Jesus n Mo enroute to the latest miracle sighting...
.....
Jan, thanks for the link, I'll check it out.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
Ed and Bushman, with all due respect, most people on this planet are not going to be as rational as you are - ever. The question is how to guide their emotions into more positive directions.As Ive said before, one doesn't replace a bad idea with nothing. One replaces it with a better or at least equally appealing idea that's headed in the right direction.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
If rationality really were capable of lording over evolution then human population demographics wouldn't be what they are.
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
Bushman: Emotionalism does not need to be sanctified.
Nothing needs sanctification, my friend. Not logic, not science, not philosophy, not religion, not data.
Reading Brooks’ article as a position that sanctifies emotion is more than a bit of a stretch. It betrays biases. Brooks vaguely referenced lots of work in cognitive science that would tend to show just how fundamental and necessary emotions seem to be. I think both of you missed that reference. I’d submit that no one can get to become a rational human being without emotions that have been met and understood. You seem to imply that emotions are irrational. In only the narrowest senses are they.
Again, focus on the object of conversations, not simply the denotative meaning of words. That will only get you all tied up in definitions.
DMT: You seem put off by this notion.
Not at all. I’m trying to point out that there is no “right.”
I’m also noting that using “success” (population procreation) as a metric and then backing into a theoretical stance is backward reasoning and illogical (if you care about such things). I’m questioning how a modeled physical dynamic (evolution, as a theory) now seems to tell us what is good, right, and appropriate.
|
|
dave729
Trad climber
Western America
|
|
Push the tricky existence-of-God issue aside, and just stipulate that
in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this
planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other,
either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves,
or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored.
Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the
universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate
After about three billion years of this sometimes zany, frequently
tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, you were born.
Like every other creature now on the face of the earth, you are,
by birthright, a stupendous badass,
albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that you can trace your
ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved
stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo-
-which, given the number and variety of its descendants, we humans can
justifiably be described as the most stupendous badasses of all time.
Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass has
no living descendants.
T-Rex not a badass. Tiny little mammals that survived the meteorite impact
definately badasses.
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
if secularism is going to be a positive creed, . . . (Brooks)
And there's the rub: Why must secularism become a creed?
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
Because most people are not academics who like to ponder theoretical minutiae endlessly?
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
^^^^^^^
Aye. There is no doubt that Mr. Brooks is an intellectual. A thoughtful and knowledgeable one, but nonetheless.
Shakespeare’s take on sweet things:
“They surfeited with honey and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.”
(Henry IV Pt. 1)
|
|
eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
|
|
So, I'm with Jan on this one. I've always liked David Brooks as a compassionate apologist for someone to the right of me. I look forward to the Mark Shields/David Brooks bits on PBS. (Elizabeth likes to call it a bromance, btw). As I see it, he brings up at least two good points.
One, and it's been recognized by both Dawkins and Dennett in their writings, atheism does not provide a suitable replacement for things like pomp and pageantry and a common set of rituals. These are at the heart of any good religion, and seem to satisfy a human need (evolved, of course). These things are particularly good at bringing communities together. Best we got is the Super Bowl (now, like a year away), best the Romans got was Gladiator Saturday. I can just imagine the pride I would have felt as a father bringing my son for the first time.
Two, most living human beings do believe in a religion of some sort, and most of them live in poor countries. As Jan brought up, rational arguments, by themselves, are clearly not going to cut the mustard, not in the short to medium term at least, not when you're talking the world. I'm one of the lucky ones - I was born in the United States, only 12 miles from Mount Woodson. I can be right in my atheism but wrong in what is the best approach forward at this time based on everything we know (which will be less than half we know 20 years from now).
Of course, I would hope that, over the longer-term, the Super Bowl and certain Beyoncé videos, together with some of our best Netflix, HBO, Showtime, YouTube, let's see, regular movies, the Beatles, everything we know about science,... will win out in capturing the hearts and minds of the world at large.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
The wealthiest countries in the world are the most religious.
America is one of the poorest countries in the world.
Money, greed, vanity, capitalism, war, misguided technology, scientism, and lies, lies, lies, and more lies etc, etc etc, rule in America.
Americans are very very poor and getting poorer and poorer.
All their good intelligence is being taken away ......
|
|
crankster
Trad climber
|
|
This is not true. Not one word.
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
Ed and Bushman, with all due respect, most people on this planet are not going to be as rational as you are - ever.
Jan
i wondering how you came to this conclusion?
or maybe what ur idea of rationality is?
don't you find the chinese to be rather rational? or the swedes,icelanders,english,russians,japanese,germans,etc?
isn't rationality just a thoughtout concise move from one's beliefs?
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
|
|
Let's put above quote into context, lab coats
Congratulations, Mike! You've been promoted.
Good to see you in the ranks.
;>)
Because most people are not academics who like to ponder theoretical minutiae endlessly?
Hey, if I didn't like to "ponder theoretical minutiae" endlessly I would take the default position of creed-seeking. Viz., Russia in the early 1900s and Germany in the 1930s.
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
I couldn't disagree more with Brooks' willy-nillisms. His assertions and conclusions are both baseless and biased; some atrociously so.
But you have to hand it to the guy for sticking to his moderate conservative roots when all the other moderates are being hunted down and exterminated by members of their own party (wearing Reagan masks as they pull the trigger).
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
Re; Brooks
It seems to me that if secularism is going to be a positive creed, it can’t just speak to the rational aspects of our nature. Secularism has to do for nonbelievers what religion does for believers — arouse the higher emotions, exalt the passions in pursuit of moral action. Christianity doesn’t rely just on a mild feeling like empathy; it puts agape at the center of life, a fervent and selfless sacrificial love. Judaism doesn’t just value community; it values a covenantal community infused with sacred bonds and chosenness that make the heart strings vibrate. Religions don’t just ask believers to respect others; rather each soul is worthy of the highest dignity because it radiates divine light.
well you got things like the Superbowl, and Vegas to hold ur church in. But you don't really seem to show any empathy for the losers? Maybe ur holyspirit is competition? Which would be only natural. Survival of the fittest!
Us and them
GOOOOOOOOO Secularism
|
|
Klimmer
Mountain climber
|
|
Quotes about G-d to consider if you think Science leads to Atheism
http://godevidence.com/2010/08/quotes-about-god/
“The more I study science, the more I believe in God.”
–Albert Einstein
(The Wall Street Journal, Dec 24, 1997, article by Jim Holt, “Science Resurrects God.”)
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
Einstein: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
He wasn't religious in the sense you are or wish he was...
|
|
Bushman
Social climber
In this form at present
|
|
'The Road Scholar on Route 103'
The horn blared by without refrain,
He believed that God would save his soul,
And rescue him,
And keep him from,
All the mortal suffering,
And save from him all the pain and agony,
Of eternal damnation for an infinite eternity,
And carry him to heavenly bliss,
With the greatest love,
And he would see,
And he would kiss,
All his loved ones who had passed,
And standing at their righteous post,
The Father Son and Holy Ghost,
But then he died and didn't see,
Anything at all so he,
Came back to be,
Lying prone,
Lying on route one o three,
The horn blared by without refrain,
Face down he woke in the passing lane,
"Please don't holler,"
He cried less at the car than at his brain,
His head it ached and throbbed as he,
Saw where he'd slept was most insane,
And noting so his folly such,
He found his feet exiting thus,
He howled once then twice,
An ode to the place,
His drunken state,
And highway death,
The catalyst,
So painfully and in disgrace,
He sauntered off at a quickening pace.
-bushman
02/05/2015
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
respectfully asked, will profess to no faith in god, herself
God is never ever female.
God is eternally, male.
You = purusha, your body = prakriti
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!