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WBraun
climber
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Nov 20, 2018 - 05:45pm PT
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My roommate years ago was scientist and atheist and PhD.
One of my best friends ever and super good guy and wasn't insecure like the wannabee nutcase so-called scientist, Malemute.
I don't fuk with peoples souls.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 20, 2018 - 07:51pm PT
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I like Brauny, but I would never climb with him for fear he may try to free my soul... which would quickly be lost amongst the millions of tiny biotite specs.
My understanding is you have to have one (soul) in order to lose/free it.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 21, 2018 - 06:26am PT
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Jim,
I simply summarized Nitobe's book on Bushido. I wasn't saying it was good or bad, right or wrong. It seems to me that every community gets to decide what provides its basis and how it organizes. What I was simply attempting was to provide more substantial fodder to consider what the bases for communities, societies, and cultures might be. My argument is that those bases *cannot* be rationalism or even reason because both those approaches put objectivity and analyses first before anything else. IF there was a community based only on reason or rationalism, what would be its first paramount principle from which everything else derived? What comes to mind is Skinner's arguments (see, Walden Two), Nietzsche, and maybe Hobbes' description of the "war against all" that finally leads to society. If the only real purpose of community and society is to avoid the pain and suffering of all-out war, where each person is at war with every other person, then what human beings are (and their condition) seems to offer no great purpose other than survival. (Isn't this what the contemporary evolutionists are saying?) Again, we are just meat; nothing special, nothing profound, and certainly nothing sacred.
I'm done with this. There's no conversation here.
Be well.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 21, 2018 - 11:16am PT
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I don't know the backstory but this is billed as Carl Sagan's 1994 "Lost" Lecture.
In the 1990s and in my thirties, I was something of a Sagan scholar in that I systematically read/studied all of his writings of a general science and philosophy of science nature. So I was pretty pleased to discover this on youtube a few days back.
It didn't disappoint, happy to say.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://youtu.be/6_-jtyhAVTc
For a cleaned up audio version (audio only) a Sagan fan uploaded this...
https://youtu.be/snFWUAlNBFY
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 21, 2018 - 02:29pm PT
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(Isn't this what the contemporary evolutionists are saying?) Again, we are just meat; nothing special, nothing profound, and certainly nothing sacred.
Certainly seems that way. And it seems to go against the one great desire of humanity and that is to find meaning.
What is the meaning of our lives and why is that so important to us?
The idea that I’m a “hardass” and therefore accept the reality of my existence as without meaning or purpose granted by the accident of evolution (a misnomer if ever there was one since it implies some sort of teleological achievement or progress) and I haven’t attained an evolutionary position that allows me even a comparison to a complex microbe with whom I share a kind of evolutionary equality, well this all seems a bit of non-sense.
Science distracts itself in the search for knowing but that knowing is a function of how things work rather than what those things mean. Where is there meaning to be found in that kind or knowing? The satisfaction of requited curiosity? I can know the speed of light; I may be able to know the constituents of matter or the distance to the next galaxy but that yields little in the way of answers that enable me or compel me or give me reasons to live a virtuous life.
Meaning is a reason for the pursuit of a potential; it is a reason for virtue. Meaning is the reconciling factor in the tragic nature of life. The search for meaning is the foundation of religious thought that goes back at least to the Paleolithic. Humanity searched/searches for it because it had and has remarkable benefits for the human spirit. Meaning turns tragedy into acceptance and eventually grace. It allows life to continue in the face of devastation.
Cancer doesn’t prove there isn’t a god; it proves there’s a need for god!
Nature is the great uroborous devouring itself with incredible cruelty. Not easy to find meaning in that but many have managed just that: a triumph of the human spirit.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 21, 2018 - 05:09pm PT
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Looking thru the doorway of life itself all you saw was the doorknob hit you in the head once too many times.
No wonder you are so st00pid ......
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 21, 2018 - 11:17pm PT
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Seeking some bogus "higher" meaning of life is the cancer of consciousness.
The cancer of consciousness is the inability to have any sense of empathy or understanding for or of the human condition and its needs and any sense of the remarkable structure of reconciliation humanity has created that we generally call religion. Religion isn't fantasy it's a link to what might sustain us in the presence of the grave and constant in our experience. You don't need it, you're above it, too smart, too strong, too wonderful: how nice for you.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Nov 22, 2018 - 12:53am PT
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You know Paul it’s okay just not to want religion leave the “need” out of it.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Nov 22, 2018 - 01:14am PT
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Religion isn't fantasy it's a link to what might sustain us in the presence of the grave and constant in our experience. You don't need it, you're above it, too smart, too strong, too wonderful: how nice for you.
Well said, Paul. Atheists, at least the born-again variety, are too often guilty of unbridled hubris. I have far more respect for agnostics.
I believe in God. And the years I have spent studying both science and philosophy--far more than most here, I suspect--have not led me to discount my faith. But I certainly don't look for one to inform the other.
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Jim Clipper
climber
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Nov 22, 2018 - 08:02am PT
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anyone who claims they have/can are more insane than Brauny's mad scientist with a stick of dynOmite up his ass.
Mad, maybe. Certainly at times.
No god? Meh?
No dynamite, good god.
"Brauny's", no. My own "mad scientist", again maybe. Still, if I had kids and they met the Marlboro Braun, I'd ask them to call him uncle.
Jim Brennan quote by Lituya. Good first sentence, but maybe lost it in the second, IMHO.
I've heard for some, it can be a way you find. Maybe for some it can be a meaning you find. It's not all bad. Sorry if you're there. Anything to help?
Finally, Aesop's fables still seem to be a part of the human fabric....? Mean anything?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 22, 2018 - 10:01am PT
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A lot of posters here should this book - then maybe they wouldn't make childish statements.
Elaine Pagels: "Why Religion? A Personal Story."
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 22, 2018 - 10:20am PT
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What's ignorant is the notion that someone here is denying science.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 22, 2018 - 11:41am PT
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Fascinating: you're surrounded by intelligent design that is flawed/imperfect in one way or another from your toaster to your car and yet a lack of perfection is enough to deny its possibility. Go figure.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Nov 22, 2018 - 01:16pm PT
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Malemute, you seem to just go on and on and on posting anecdote after anecdote without ever really engaging anyone in conversation or review. This resembles the very behavior you complain about. Even more ironic, perhaps, is that no one in recent posts is discounting science.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 23, 2018 - 06:30pm PT
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Evolution is a fact. A little study of the fossil record will show that to anyone who can read. The mechanisms aren't all understood, but it is an absolute fact that it happened. Species have changed over time. They come and go. I've sat at least 200 wells, and I look at samples gathered every ten feet. It is mainly marine microfossils, but with experience you can tell what age of rock you are drilling through. Dating methods have become exquisite, given proper minerals. Granites contain zircons. Basalts don't. Or very many, anyway. U-Pb dating of zircon inclusions has been shown to be very precise.
It wouldn't be an issue if it didn't trouble the evangelical waters, and the unerring view of scripture.
I read a good article today. It looks at how elites (basically anyone with a college degree) are not trusted anymore, and how the right is easily misled by fake news. It is pretty interesting:
http://religiondispatches.org/the-religious-origins-of-fake-news-and-alternative-facts/
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Nov 23, 2018 - 07:02pm PT
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Looks like any real conflict between religion and science is mostly imaginary.
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/22/science-and-religion/
Less than one-third of Americans polled in the new survey (30%) say their personal religious beliefs conflict with science, while fully two-thirds (68%) say there is no conflict between their own beliefs and science.Moreover, the view that science and religion are often in conflict is particularly common among Americans who are, themselves, not very religiously observant (as measured by frequency of attendance at worship services). Some 73% of adults who seldom or never attend religious services say science and religion are often in conflict. By contrast, among more religiously observant Americans – those who report that they attend religious services on a weekly basis – exactly half (50%) share the view that science and religion frequently conflict.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 23, 2018 - 08:32pm PT
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"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"
Here's what you don't get:
Dragons exist as metaphors. They have a reality as metaphors.
In Christian thought the dragon is slain by St. George. What is St. George really slaying?
Dragons live where? Oh yeah caves. And what do dragons keep in their caves? Oh yeah gold and maidens.
And what use do dragons have for gold and maidens? Absolutely nothing.
So what is St. George slaying when he kills the dragon? Greed, avarice, one of the seven deadly sins. Reading that story literally is silly, reading it as the metaphor it is, is a revelation of the notion of greed and the ridiculous possession of what is perfectly unnecessary to our lives.
I bet the question "do you believe in evolution" would be NO for MUCH more than 50% of the religiously observant.
You can bet all you want but you just assume too much. Your prejudice based on stereotypes
and predilection. Plenty of folks both celebrate religion and understand evolution.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Nov 23, 2018 - 08:44pm PT
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I bet 80+% would answer "ABSOLUTELY" to the question "are there repeatable experiments or verifiable observations that support the existence of God as portrayed in your religion."
I'll bet very very few if any of them would. And I'm surrounded by them.
Your conclusion is built entirely on assumptions. Just how scientific is that?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 23, 2018 - 10:11pm PT
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Here's what you don't get...
Malemute, thank goodness we have Paul here to set us all straight on Sagan's misunderstanding of metaphor.
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