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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 26, 2018 - 05:55pm PT
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Why it's so hard (apparently) for you a) to see that religious systems are evolving (that they are subject to evolutionary pressure like anything else) and b) to see that religion no longer has a monopoly in the 21st century on the very qualities or features you like to describe as important... continues to escape me.
You assume the automatic superiority of the future. It is an assumption that ignores the powerful nature of myth from the past, myth that lives deep in our consciousness and addresses the natural psychological states common to all no matter their political or religious belief.
It's important to remember that so called "movement forward" in the western tradition is likely to be predicated on a long look to the past. Our greatest social achievements like the Enlightenment and the Renaissance have their foundation, their base in antiquity and classical antiquity. There's a reason the Supreme Court looks like a Roman Temple and it has very little to do with science and everything to do with human reason.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 26, 2018 - 06:20pm PT
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You should talk as your diet is flaming hot coals ......
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 26, 2018 - 06:39pm PT
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I don’t think technology is going to change the fundamental nature of homo sapiens.
It can if you do it intelligently.
Not like fruitloops who tries to force it artificially .....
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 26, 2018 - 07:12pm PT
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There are also powerful natural tendencies from our past that drive us to crave fat, sugar, and salt. Come to think of it most people who cling to outdated religions also seem to cling to outdated diets... at least in this country. Evolution will take care of it.
Those tendencies were vital to survival in a world where the commodities of fat, sugar and salt were necessary for survival but limited, hard to find.
Unfortunately we are oversupplied with those foods now and they are easily acquired.
And, unfortunately, reconciliation to existence is still very hard to come by so your comparison doesn't make much sense.
Evolution just is. It doesn't take care of things the players have that responsibility or not.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 27, 2018 - 07:45am PT
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And why does your argumemt not hold for religion? Having a coherent story that gave peeps a sense of belonging in the world was adventageous as consciousness evolved. Now we have an overabundance of information that not only contradicts but mostly disproves 99.9% of religious bullsh#t... yet people keep stuffing their fat heads with the outdated sugar and salt... and you justify their bronze age bullshit with absurdities like "reconciliation to existence is still very hard to come by"
Here's what you just don't get:
those stories aren't bullshxt, they're metaphors for psychological realities that we all experience.
You want to read them as to whether or not they were historical realities or as if they were some kind of competing science which they are not.
You don't read something like Aesop's Fables and dismiss it because animals can't really talk.
You take away the moral of the story as a real truth. The problem on this thread is the stubborn and absurd inability to understand what a metaphor even is.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 27, 2018 - 01:48pm PT
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Anti-Christ: Having a coherent story that gave peeps a sense of belonging in the world was adventageous as consciousness evolved.
You mean like how science gives people a coherent stories today?
It’s all stories, my friend. Get beyond that apparent need, and you might discover something that narratives cannot provide.
Metaphors and allegories. If you can’t see them, then you’ll think they are concrete and serious—you know, real.
(On another thread today, Lynne wants to know why people hate so much. Reading this thread, she should ask folks here.)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 27, 2018 - 06:39pm PT
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On another thread today, L wants to know why people hate so much. Reading this thread, she should ask folks here - MikeL
MikeL, care to elaborate?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 27, 2018 - 08:12pm PT
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Many people here have more than a dispassionate evaluative view of religion. I get the sense that people have been hurt or feel as though they've been hurt, and now they are angry. After many years of anger, it turns into hate, and now it's a doctrine, a principle that one needs to stamp out.
If you give way, then other people will give way to you.
There is not a right. There is no right answer. No one has found it--at least not by the means of empirical research methods.
Give way.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 27, 2018 - 09:41pm PT
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What you don't seem to get is that some of us came to the conclusion that those were metaphors by the time we were 8... and still don't give a sh#t.
Can't help you. Sounds like a personal problem. Maybe a chat with the chaplain.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 28, 2018 - 08:17am PT
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Can't help you. Sounds like a personal problem
But all the push back, Paul, should make it clear to you that not every one is as smitten*** with ancient myth and archetype as you are.
Good luck to you.
*** Perhaps better... enthralled.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 28, 2018 - 08:38am PT
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AntiChrist: only the big difference is science changes it's story to fit the data, rather than the other way around. Surely you can see the advantage to that my friend.
Hi,
The devil is in the details.
All interpretations are inexact, incomplete, and never final.
If you know something about statistics (which is the means to analyze measurements in modern research studies), there is never a complete or final finding. Technically, the explained variance of a model (especially in social sciences) is far below what a normal person would expect: 20%-25% would probably lead to a publication in a peer-reviewed journal. In a few sciences, what’s claimed or found is that outcomes are not really causal, but to some degree only probable.
You know, when I was on the street, I used to meet players who seemed to forever have a new story to tell (sell) me. I listened and nodded, but not much else.
I’m not here to claim any view is right or factual. I generally like them all: all of them have something to provide to seeing a bigger and more insightful picture.
I like your statement that puts a focus on data. I’d say any data set supports more interpretations than you can shake a stick at. They seem to be limited only by one’s creative imagination.
Be well.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 28, 2018 - 10:37am PT
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But all the push back, Paul, should make it clear to you that not every one is as smitten*** with ancient myth and archetype as you are.
Perhaps if you'd take the time to read and understand it. Read the "Masks of God" all three volumes and get back to me. If by smitten you mean attracted to insight and illumination that might not otherwise be realized, I agree.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 28, 2018 - 12:15pm PT
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Compare that to the heaps of scientific data, rigorous statistical test, and state of the art experiments and the religious claims are laughably juvenile.
The equivalent of saying Hamlet's bunk because it's a fiction. Sad.
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Norton
climber
The Wastelands
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Oct 28, 2018 - 12:38pm PT
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I always thought Hamlet was a play not really having anything to do with religion.
But then it has been some 50 years since I last read it.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 28, 2018 - 06:28pm PT
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Not only are you st00pid, but you are a certified nutcase also ....^^^^
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 29, 2018 - 09:43am PT
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Paul Kedrosky: If something has a 60% chance of not happening, but it happens, and so you say “What went wrong that this happened?”, the main thing that went wrong is you were never properly taught statistics and probabilities."
Charles Mann: I couldn't begin to tell you how often I have had this conversation. Especially, in recent years, around elections.
...
"Even the best human intellect has not imagination enough to envisage what might happen when we push far into new territory. … To an outsider the tactics of the argument which would justify running even the slightest risk of such a colossal catastrophe appears exceedingly weak." -Percy Bridgman
Race to the first nuclear chain reaction
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/race-first-nuclear-chain-reaction
“There was a greater drama in the silence than if the words had been spoken. Everyone was thinking—if we did it, haven’t the Germans already achieved the chain reaction?” -Leona Woods
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 29, 2018 - 01:00pm PT
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Race to the first nuclear chain reaction
Yeah, I wonder which is worse the Catholic church running all those hospitals or those
wonderful scientists giving us the atomic bomb. No question I suppose, we've got to shut those churches down.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 29, 2018 - 01:33pm PT
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But yes, the church at the same has built hospitals so that nullifies their horrors
*
Thankfully science has achieved nothing but good as in the H-bomb and 20 minute delivery systems for those bombs and nerve gas and biological nightmare weapons and any number of horrific weapons designed to ruin the planet and technologies that are now warming the planet into a human apocalypse and drug companies over medicating and addicting the population...
and oh yeah science has given us vaccines for diseases so I guess that nullifies all the horrors that are the products of science and scientists.
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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Oct 29, 2018 - 02:03pm PT
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True, but science also gave us stone tools and agriculture. Just imagine how primitive we'd be if all we had was religion.
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