...doing what you're told, no matter what's right."
Henry Louis Mencken, an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. 1880-1956

+schrodingerscat:
That’s right.
A religious person is not actually a moral person if he is told that he has to help the poor, he has to help old people cross the street, etc or else, he will not get the carrot.
In that case, the religious person is an obedient soldier. He is also a selfish soldier.

Remove the religion from society and you would be removing the mask and looking behind the real face of people. Do they really want to help the poor? Do they really want to stop crimes?

Maybe they do and maybe they don’t.

~~~~iceman9090

Then there are those who manipulate or even create religion to justify immoral behavior.

olderelder Wrote:
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> Then there are those who manipulate or even create
> religion to justify immoral behavior.

^ Pretty much all of them that I have ever heard of.

I know good and bad people of every ideological ends of the spectrum between Mormon to Buddhist or any thing in between, including no belief.

It seems like "Nones" have no representation in public policy, since there are no "Nones" anywhere in the three branches of government. They ALL believe in the personal God of the Bible, or at least they identify themselves in terms of the God they worship, always, White Male God. A patriarchal, racist fairy tale. Any wonder why patriarchal white supremacy has taken such a firm grip of our government? And we, "Nones" who represent the majority, have zero representation in our Federal Government?
And we keep getting these old white guys who keep funding perpetual war and the war on drugs?
And we have no choice in the matter?
Why do we keep getting handed the lesser of two evils in this country of 330milion people?
Don't you know some people who'd do a hell of a lot better job than either of the crooks we had to choose from?

Why is that?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2020 09:06PM by schrodingerscat.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
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"And we, "Nones" who represent the majority,"

==I have heard that the "nones" group is something like 10 to 15% in the USA.
So, "nones" are not a majority.
The majority decides whether you are a human being or not. (I’m not talking about biology.)

"They ALL believe in the personal God of the Bible"

==That's normal. Christianity is the religion that gets passed around.
1. The parent has the book called the Bible.
2. The parent reads the Bible to his children.
3. The parent teaches his children how to pray.
4. The parent takes the children to church every Sunday. It becomes part of the routine to put on a Sunday clothes, get into the car and go to church.
5. When the children grow up, get married, have kids, the cycle restarts.

The solution to this is to teach people how to be skeptical of claims. Also, a huge dose of science helps. Throw in philosophy as well.
You have to teach the kids. For the adults, in my experience, it is too late. The chances of changing an adult christian’s mind is in the range of 0% to 0.0000001%.

“Why do we keep getting handed the lesser of two evils in this country of 330milion people?”

==Are you talking about republicans and democrats? I don’t know why the USA is a 2 party system. I don’t know why you have chosen to give veto power to just 1 guy, the president.
The canadian system is much better. We have a prime minister and he doesn’t have that kind of power.

~~~~iceman9090

iceman9090 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> schrodingerscat Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> "And we, "Nones" who represent the majority,"
>
> ==I have heard that the "nones" group is something
> like 10 to 15% in the USA.
> So, "nones" are not a majority.
> The majority decides whether you are a human being
> or not. (I’m not talking about biology.)

23% actually. As big as Evangelical Christians and Catholics, which were the biggest. Now it's about a 3 way tie, or was last year. I've read it's bigger than that in the US now especially with Covid. Alot of people have probably lost faith in a god that would allow somebody like Putinswhineylittlebitch to kill a 1/4million people?

https://religionnews.com/2019/03/21/nones-now-as-big-as-evangelicals-catholics-in-the-us/

>
> "They ALL believe in the personal God of the
> Bible"
>
> ==That's normal. Christianity is the religion that
> gets passed around.
> 1. The parent has the book called the Bible.
> 2. The parent reads the Bible to his children.
> 3. The parent teaches his children how to pray.
> 4. The parent takes the children to church every
> Sunday. It becomes part of the routine to put on a
> Sunday clothes, get into the car and go to
> church.
> 5. When the children grow up, get married, have
> kids, the cycle restarts.
>
> The solution to this is to teach people how to be
> skeptical of claims. Also, a huge dose of science
> helps. Throw in philosophy as well.
> You have to teach the kids. For the adults, in my
> experience, it is too late. The chances of
> changing an adult christian’s mind is in the
> range of 0% to 0.0000001%.
>
> “Why do we keep getting handed the lesser of two
> evils in this country of 330milion people?”
>
> ==Are you talking about republicans and democrats?
> I don’t know why the USA is a 2 party system. I
> don’t know why you have chosen to give veto
> power to just 1 guy, the president.
> The canadian system is much better. We have a
> prime minister and he doesn’t have that kind of
> power.
>
> ~~~~iceman9090

I agree 100%. Same with Australia, where I served a mission for 2 years. It's awesome. It doesn't have nearly the problems the US has, especially with homelessness. When I was there if you wanted a house, you had a house. There was zero homelessness.
I grew up in Seattle and there was always homeless people, but it's way different now. Never seen it like it is now. And it's not just Seattle, it's EVERY big city on the West Coast. Even small cities, like the one I live in. Tent cities are growing by the day. It's a huge downward spiral, fueled by hopelessness. And Covid has just really exacerbated the problem, ESPECIALLY with poor people.
Capitalism has failed a lot of people.
the Ironic thing is that the areas that have been hit hardest by the pandemic, are all areas that are ravaged by Covid.
Why is that?
Because you don't have statewide precautions where the majority of the voters reject science.
In South Dakota, where the pandemic is spreading like wildfire, the governor still has not imposed a statewide mask mandate. There was a video of a nurse went viral talking to a dying patient who swore Covid was a hoax and refused to acknowledge it until her final breath.

Because right is objective and agreed upon by all.

Morality is connected to control. Over what? The limbic system. The fall severed many connections. The most civil and decent thing is to develop a capacity to control the limbic system through the neo cortex system.

The ultimate thing is that it is all out of control. That is up to belief to solve. The God sent his son to pay for all of our sins.

Cauda Wrote:
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> sent his son to pay for all of our sins.

What for?

~~~~iceman9090

God is helping us.

Romans 7 explains the circumstances.

Cauda Wrote:
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> God is helping us.
>
> Romans 7 explains the circumstances.

All that Romans 7 tells us is the inner working, the intimate thoughts of Paul. It is basically like reading his diary.

It also talks about dicks.

Romans 7:5 KING JAMES VERSION
For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. {7:6} But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not [in] the oldness of the letter.

^^^^^did work in our members

This doesn't tell me why the decision was made by the jewish god to just standby and watch as Jesus is killed.
Who was payed?

~~~~iceman9090

You mean the limbic system God created? So is it a design feature or a bug?

Before the fall the limbic system was not active. Humanity needs every support to make sense of the world after the fall.

According to evolutionary biology, the limbic system came before the higher brain functions. So why wouldn’t it be active before the fall? Maybe the fall occurred 12,500 years ago with the annihilation of the higher civilizations of Atlantis and those of its kind. That’s not very long in evolutionary time.

I think the fall can be reversed given the Earth’s present environment. Maybe an ultimate ascension will have to happen, or is planned to happen, due to extinction level climate change.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> According to evolutionary biology, the limbic
> system came before the higher brain functions. So
> why wouldn’t it be active before the fall? Maybe
> the fall occurred 12,500 years ago with the
> annihilation of the higher civilizations of
> Atlantis and those of its kind. That’s not very
> long in evolutionary time.
>
> I think the fall can be reversed given the
> Earth’s present environment. Maybe an ultimate
> ascension will have to happen, or is planned to
> happen, due to extinction level climate change.

Maybe "The Fall" was when Eve interbred with a caveman (Neanderthal in Europe) and created Europeans and then Asians when they mated with Denisovans.
And Australian aboriginals were already in Australia by that time as were the Papua New Guineans, the modern day Denisovans.

What was the fall, really? Terence McKenna postulated a fall into language. Development of language created a subject-object split, which is an essential part of Maya. If that rift can be healed with technology, we might have a shot at undoing the fall.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What was the fall, really? Terence McKenna
> postulated a fall into language. Development of
> language created a subject-object split, which is
> an essential part of Maya. If that rift can be
> healed with technology, we might have a shot at
> undoing the fall

LOVE Terrance McKenna, but I think "The Fall" was a way to saddle us all with "Original Sin" so we'd feel like we needed a 'Savior' to save us, so we'd be indebted from birth to "The Church" and we'd spend the rest of our miserable lives paying 'tithes and offerings' in a futile effort to absolve ourselves of our 'original sin'. IN reality, we had morals before religion came along. Even animals have 'morals' or social laws they follow, like co-operate with one another, to survive.
We're not much different from the animals in that regard.
Religion just codified morality we were all born with and packaged it as if we can't have morals without religion.

Original Sin was also a great excuse to treat women as less than.

Susan I/S Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Original Sin was also a great excuse to treat
> women as less than.

True, the entire narrative of the ideology of Judeo Christianity lays blame on women for Eve's 'Orginal Sin' of partaking of the forbidden fruit from a talking snake. It's absurd.
There's a really great book that I read called, "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image" where the author discovers in his travels around the world, that prior to Christianity being adopted as the state religion by the Roman Emperor, Constantine, in 300BC, almost every culture prior to that worshipped goddesses along with gods. The temples that existed prior to Christianity came along were dedicated to Godesses. But once Monotheism came along, all the goddesses were banished and no longer worshipped. It was after that that women were subjugated to 2nd class citizenship.
In ancient Greece, philosophers like Epicurus treated women as equals and had them as students along with men and slaves alike.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> in his travels around the world, that prior to
> Christianity being adopted as the state religion
> by the Roman Emperor, Constantine, in 300BC,
> almost every culture prior to that worshipped

I think you means AD, not BC.

Also, it looks like Contantine I did not quite sign up totally to christianity. He was a half and half. Part christian and part roman religion.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great

Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.[notes 2] Although he lived much of his life as a pagan, and later as a catechumen, he joined the Christian religion on his deathbed, being baptised by Eusebius of Nicomedia. He played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which declared tolerance for Christianity in the Roman Empire. He convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which produced the statement of Christian belief known as the Nicene Creed.

It became a state religion in 380.
Constantine I died in 337.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity

On 27 February 380, Theodosius I, Gratian, and Valentinian II established Nicene Christianity as the State church of the Roman Empire.[183]

The first country/kingdom to accept christianity is Armenia, in 301.

"King Tiridates III made Christianity the state religion in Armenia between 301 and 314,[82][177][178] thus Armenia became the first officially Christian state. It was not an entirely new religion in Armenia, having penetrated into the country from at least the third century, but it may have been present even earlier.[179]"

Now you know and knowing is half the battle.

~~~~iceman9090

Christianity has been horrible for women. Other religions and cultures varied but when Christianity took over it was systemic and lasting. Women had few rights above a slave. I think many forget it has only been 100 years that we have had the right to vote in America! There are still huge disparities in how girls and boys are treated when it comes to STEM learning. Hell, I am not THAT old and I was told repeatedly not to be "too smart" in front of the boys.

The book looks quite interesting. I may give it a whirl. I see it comes in a digital format, a lot easier for me so I can pump up the font!

Very good response!

Your example is referring to a concrete example.Inside a framework of epistemological realism, that there is a truth. Your example implies a critique against the dimension of superrealism in my statements and opinions. In many ways I can agree with you that realism is important, that there is a truth we can discover. The problem in our times is that antirealism is a stronger force than both superrealism and realism. People rather have the unargumented opinion that there is no truth than discover it. Personally I sense that this tendency is making room for superrealism problem. When it comes to down choosing between superrealism and antirealism I choose the first. It is of great importance to have the correct faith and that means which faith preceded the modernism epistemological realism. Christianity did. My perspective comes from a clincial psychology perspective. My personal opinion is that humanity is not rational. I seen it, lived a life with people who do not see the difference between addiction and taking a power walk. But there is a truth. Even if our opinions differ when it comes to what is the denominator. My choice in life to walk in faith started of in religion and it has taxed my life in reality. So has the antirealism in our times. There is a world to discover. But in the endmy belief is that the world is to finite and heaven is a greater place.

Cauda Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Before the fall the limbic system was not active.
> Humanity needs every support to make sense of the
> world after the fall.

Where did you fall from?
How do you know that the limbic system was not active? When was it not active?
The limbic system is at the core of the human brain and every other mammal. It most certainly is and was in a functional state.

Your religion is pushing you into a world of fantasy that doesn't concord with the reality ...that reality is that you are an animal, you are a mammal, you are a biological machine.
Committing a crime is not going to change the functioning of that machine.

~~~~iceman9090

Morality is doing the right thing when no one knows about it.

Religion has people do the right thing to glorify the religion or if you look farther back in history, to further the government. It is easier to get people to accept "because god said so" than "because the government says so". Plus there is the great big bonus that people expect quantifiable results from a government where from god they can just play the "when you die" card. No one has ever come back to say if that card means a hand full of spit. It works off warm fuzzies instead of facts. Just look how Christianity borrowed/stole from so many religions. Doctrine, characters, even holidays.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...doing what you're told, no matter what's
> right."
> Henry Louis Mencken, an American journalist,
> essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar
> of American English. 1880-1956
A very good example of this is The Spanish Inquisition