I also don’t like the legislation of morality by bureaucrats and the label “Christian” doesn’t limit me in the ways that you might think that it does.
Certainly there are countries that are devoid of any active state religions. They have good economies and high standards of living. The Scandanavian countries are an example.
mswas, I don’t seem to fit into any of the categories you described, but you didn’t respond to me. Do you see only what you want to see?
I also used to teach communication. When you have organized your thoughts and genuinely wish to share them, you will use words that have a common meaning with the rest of us. Until then, you will be either deliberately or unintentionally obtuse.
In the meantime, beware of “deep philosophical thinkers” who say things like:
He skipped all assigned reading between Socrates and Bertrand Russell.
You probably would be better off telling us what is not a religion. Boy Scouts? NFL Football? Bass fishing? Politics? Sado-masochism? Pet ownership? Shopping?
If I could you get your head around one concept it would be this: Atheism is not monolithic.
It is not a set of principles. It is not a system. It is simply the denial of a particular god. Before the assertion “God exists” was first made the concept of atheism would have been incoherent. That is why your refusal to define God in a thread you started about God was dishonest, and perceived by many to be merely baiting.
I’m open to enlightenment. Describe a god to me that I can live with.
I’ve rarely met such an attitude, but be one if you like.
Where there are few given facts or definitions, assumptions are all is that is left. Sorry to break your bubble but assumptions = postulates = beliefs. What is one to do…
You defined yourself as “CHRIST” and would bring about “THE RAPTURE” with 7 years until “The End”… How clear must any of us be. One of your claims was that you were a professed savior of Jews (ok, I could stretch it to other people too) and that you claim to be “annointed” as such. I disagreed obviously with the second condition and placed the horse-race on. Again, I don’t know where you get your definitions from, but any othe definition of the words above is clearly made up recently (possibly by you) just tellus! – it’s ok to make it up even, if you ACTUALLY tell what you mean, and then we find out it is truthful.
To my knowledge, I’ve made no claims about religion other than I don’t think you have presented proof that you are the “savior of the world”, or that science is against religion (though that would be a another good thread). Having influence (if Gooftroopag has informed me correctly) , doesn’t mean good will come of it – only that you may be influencing. You being the absolute good has also to be determined, but I am highly skeptical by what appears to me to be lack of experience.
Now THIS may, in fact, be your good idea! Present it with connections, logic, (possibly cites) and some degree of humility and people like myself will listen intently and discuss peacefully.
Only BEFORE I cr@p on your last statement. I have not tried to sway anybody of anything, except your “Christ” status and your insistance that the study of what actually happens when things actually happen (science) is a farce (politics within aside)! I certainly might be up for a rational debate with you on the assumption bases and politics of scientists – but you make no claims about that – your claims have been about the reality bases.
Sound’s like yet another great thread! - Do it - Plenty of people may be up for a peaceable discussion about that!
No, you labeled yourself “Christ”. If that is not a tactic, I don’t know what is. Even if Aeschenes is correct about you joking about it, it was still a tactic.
I have red ejection buttons on nearly every single bias… They can be pressed, certainly… I don’t have many hard-wired biases.
And… in my claim, “Christ”, whether used truthfully or jokingly.
It is easy to be skeptical (especially for atheists who were born in horribly broken and defunct religious sects). It is hard to be convinced. It is very easy to convinceshallow people, but for people who have been thinking about everything their whole lives, it is much harder - if it has been easy to convince people of things in the past, maybe you were around the wrong crowd. IMHO, to understand the keys to people, you just have to be better at mimicing their own methodology (at least temporarily - I’ll have to spill my story some time). I’ve been a salesman and THAT was the most important thing I learned. Otherwise, you will convince the shallow and all others will meet you with anger and suspicion.
Ah, so you didn’t grow up Catholic… heh! In the end it doesn’t matter, and I am NOW stating an opinon based on my own bitter experience - people can be smart, stupid or just plain ignorant - but nealry all of them are still rational within themselves - find each key and you can converse with each person. It is a HELL of alot of work, believe me. What appears to me as Sophistry has always been an agry point for me, so I am stuck outside the walls.
While it is a good idea, its a narrow view of the definition of a religion that does not encompass the big picture of what a religion is. As defined by Wikipedia:
While atheism may have a belief system (if you consider a lack of belief a belief system) concerning “the supernatural, sacred, or divine” it does not have a set of “moral codes, practices, values, institution and rituals” that are associated with their lack of belief in “the supernatural, sacred, or divine.”
The difference between atheism and Buddhism is that Buddhists have a moral code (sila) and practices (samadhi).
AHHH, Thanks… I see the post. But “need a religion be monolithic to be a religion” is the question he brings up, that I am referring to. I might be willing to concede that atheism and secularism may be orthoganol to the concept of “religion”, but what about other things that people (not holding to a recognized religion - and might be atheist) do not commonly call religions – The football thing, Star Trekism, for some vague examples.
With Football – it turns into idol worship… people actually say “he is a god” – I’ve heard it repeatedly out of people who watch way too much college football. Fanatics invite friends over for the weekly football worship on Sunday (or Monday night). They scream, yell, bet, drink and comraderize based on how well they know the stats and how the game is going. Their whole week (neglecting work and wife) revolves around the exact letter of the rules and ethics of the game and when the next meeting will be… and when the favored team wins the superbowl, “It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven”.
With Star Trek, there are hard ethics, constant discussions of morality, odd fundamental truths and respect for things above planar obvious existence. Yes, I’m a trekkie and I did find some of this slightly annoying. But Picard (STTNG) leaves the question open, while they discover (quite like Scooby Doo) that many of the spooks on these planets are technologically driven. Also, Q – the omnipotent – “All-knowning, All-seeing”, sort of like an evil Santa Claus with horrible bed-side manner and liked torchuring little children. Q has many of the same attributes as any deity in any religion - he’s not benevolent, of course, but you can’t win every batte.
Other celebrity “fan worship” seems to me to achieve such levels sometimes - you form a shrine around a celebrity’s existence. You spend ungodly amounts of money to see them in concert, make your house reflect their existence, buy their books, stalk them, steal their things, etc. I would call that a (rather misled and potentially psychotic) religion. They worship people - those people hold a divine place. With Elvis, I heard women (speaking in hind-site, of course) - “I could have died right then and there and been happy forever”.
A Quote from Ace Ventura, Pet Detective [Miami Dolphins head coach]: “I got a linebacker who has not washed his jockey strap in over 2 years, because he thinks flies are lucky.”
CitizenBob You seem to think I believe a lot of things I don’t. For one, that there is anything wrong with Science.
As for Creatively defining “christ”. I dispute that there is a cogent enough definition of “Christ” for me to be definining it any more or less creatively than anyone else.
How would Christ show himself to you? Would he need to buy a donkey and walk through some gate in Jerusalem at sunset or some shit?
I haven’t really taken the whole Christ thing on this board all that seriously, as I think the dogma is not WORTH taking seriously. Whoever Christ is, is whoever Christ is, and as Polycarp said, will reveal himself in a way that is unexpected, EVEN TO HIM! That Christ won’t fit into the dogma, and that many christians won’t accept Christ because he cannot fit that dogma. So don’t act like there is somet workable definition that one can go with.
As far as the rapture goes, I just think the hwole idea of aliens wiping out a whole bunch of people and then having everyone go apeshit because they got ‘left behind’ is fucking hysterical.
I did not take this thread seriously at all if you must know.
Dogma occurs when one person makes shit up, and then somehow it passes a couple generations, makes it into the culture and becomes part of the mythology of that culture, and then people act like it has more bearing because someone was making shit up 2000 years ago, than it does when someone ‘makes shit up’ today. I dispute that the average person has any CLUE what Christ is, and yes I do think I have an inkling. Do I think I am the only one who has an inkling? No, but I do have an inkling. First thing that I think is gonna throw people is that Christ is NOT going to be named Jesus. Just like they don’t recognize that Christ is Mithras. Christ is “The King”. The King of the whole world. I believe that Elvis was Christ. If you’ll note, Rock and Roll had a pretty fucking big impact on the entire world, and it has changed the makeup of all of human civilization, I would argue as dramatically as Christianity.
Christ and Satan are opposing poles. Christ heals and Satan destroys, however they are both NECESSARY and part and parcel to one another, in fact they are the same being, in my not so humble opinion. It’s like Shiva the Destroyer and Vishnu the Creator. The cycle of creation and destruction that we like to call “Entropy”.
The Christ story talks about overcoming the “destructive” force, or defeating satan. Christ defeated his enemy, by LOVING his enemy. By doing so he transcended the creative/destructive cycle into immortality which is the consciousness where one can understand a manifestation into eternity, that the being, need not be attached to any of the transient bits and pieces that are his/her temporary identity. If part of your identity is that you are “Dying” then of course you will die. If that is not part of your identity than you are “immortal”. However, for those that think that the soul is a figment of people’s imaginations, this is a rather difficult one to accept. However, evolution being what it is, those that are fixated on dying will die, and those not fixated on dying will continue on in immortality. These are the enlightened ones, or “The Illuminati”. There are multiple variations on the theme immortality. You’ve got physical immortality, immortality of the soul, moving from one plane to another, living on through one’s genetic legacy, through their social legacy, whatever. The transcendence is being able to grasp and understand one of those aspects of immortality that applies specifically to YOU, and then you will never enter into oblivion.
My sophistry is in response to faux skepticism where people assume that something is UNTRUE because it is UNPROVEN. Show me a true skeptic, and I will show you someone who I will take seriously. Show me someone who isn’t claiming to be a skeptic, and I will show you someone who I will take seriously. Generally, I don’t like hypocrites. If you want to hold others to an ideal, you’d better be at least attempting to uphold that ideal yourself.
I do not believe that is what Citizen Bob was referring to in his post. If I’m not mistaken it would be the following comment, made here:
If I’m not mistaken, you’re referring to Christ as messiah, where a messiah is “a professed or accepted leader of some hope or cause.” If you referred to yourself as the messiah of a particular cause, I think people might have less trouble following you; rather than using a term that is more frequently associated with Jesus.
This is the problem and why people think you believe a lot of things you don’t; if you don’t want people to make incorrect assumptions about you, then you should joke less in forums where people are attempting to be serious.
Both of these appear to be inconsistent with things you have previously said - that hate and love are not opposites. Could you clarify what you meant?
Well being any (insert title hear) limits you in some way. You are choosing to adhere to what you believe is a certain method of self-identification. So I don’t know how it limits you or doesn’t, but choosing an external identifier DOES limit you, as that is the purpose of such identifiers. I’m not judging either way on it.
Perhaps, I have never been to a scandinavian country. I don’t know enough about them to truly comment effectively.
I am sorry if I ignored you. What did I miss that you feel I should respond to?
Unless of course you are arguing about semantic bias, and trying to get into what those words mean, and where the difference in bias of a particular word is in order to figure out miscommunications.
I was talking about people abusing science as some way of ‘winning’ a debate and discrediting someone who is trying to communicate, as opposed to people who use science as a way to verify physical processes. I do not have a problem with science as most people believe. I think the idea of being against “Science” is kind of silly, kind of like being against knowledge. What I am against are the false dichotomies.
Perhaps, I didn’t use the word Messiah however. I used the word Christ. Perhaps it’s not an useful term. I am not looking for followers. I am looking to break apart misconceptios, to open up the chrysalis of the overall macro-consciousness in preparation for the next phase. We are all part of the organism called the Earth, and I am tied to everyone else, so my ability to reach out is limited by that of the entire organism, I cannot simply detach from part of myself to reach farther, so the lowest common denominator must be raised. I am fighting against analytical barriers being misapplied by people who think they are applying them correctly. These people mistakenly assume I am against rigorous analysis, in fact I am for rigorous analysis, but my ideal of rigorous analysis is much more precise and exact than I see in a lot of people on this board. Don’t take this to mean that I live up to my own expectations all that time, because I don’t that’s part of the process, but there is a level of rigor that is missing from the people who hold it up to almost ar eligious reverence. The best example is assuming that something is untrue merely because there isn’t evidence to support it’s truth. The next example which is the one that people have less trouble understanding, is how their usage of words can limit them, and if they are using words in a way that keeps them from being able to overcome their own biases, then they will become stuck until they come to that conclusion, and their advancement will be impeded. So I am not trying to convince people of anything that is true, I am trying to get them to question that which they hold as being unalterably true, not even based upon their belief system, but by their word choice, and a strict adherence to a particular word choice.
For instance the idea that the BEST way to talk about things is in an analytical mindset. I disagree with this notion, and often people who are in love with critical analysis will deny the existance of something they don’t even understand, and take a pompous air that they are somehow being more ‘skeptical’. It is this that I dispute. I am disputing the way that people use particular words, and not trying to replace the definition with another. Basically I am trying to unwrite the doublespeak dictionary, or at least get people to realize that it’s use is limited.
Because people are connected to the way they are using the words, they sometimes lose the meaning of the words by strictly adhering to it’s definition. If thoughts are physical processes, then words are the machinery by which we guide them. So words have definitions that are tools that help us figure out what the limits of those words are, but the definitions are not the ultimate representation of what that word accomplishes. The characters and phonems themselves have meanings of their own, but the meanings have to do with energy flows and processes. Words are encodings of meaning, but they also shape our perceptions, and I am disputing that certain of these limitations placed upon perception that I see prevalent on this board are as logical as their purveyors think that they are.
In some ways confusion can be progress, because uncertainty is superior to incorrect certainty. I do not wish to HAND people the answers because this would be more of the mechanistic programming that has passed for pedagogy in western culture, and while I am attempting to work within a western system, I do not wish to propagate that primitive form of learning.
We are living in a time where America is becoming it’s own culture. This is an amalgam of the East/West the Earth is Flat and SubSaharan Africa is full of savages only Eurasian paradigm, along with the addition of Southern American Imperial Religious Authority, and North American Tribal Animism. So we need to cultivate a system that is eastern organic, American Tribal Dream culture, as well as allowing for western materialist seperation, so that we can bring about the understanding that will create the new order for the ages. Our technology is reaching a point where we are going to be able to create any form that we find necessary because we understand the intersection of organic structure/mechanistic structure and the intersection of information with the physical world.
Hate and Love are not opposites. Though I used Creation/Destruction as my example. Emotions are not in diametric opposition, they are an amalgam of energetic forces that we contain within our metaphysical essence. They interplay with the physical where polarity is a more important issue than it is in the metaphysical. Love has no opposite, it is the life energy, that which causes life to thrive. The other emotions regulate Love, and while Hate might diminish love in some cases it also helps it in others. For instance, a mother might hate the predator that wants to eat her young. This is propagating one life over another, but it is not opposite love, it is working WITH love. This is why people have seen Christ as God’s Right hand and Satan as God’s left. I find it is most useful to have usage of both hands. Our right hands are connected to the left analytical brain, that which verifies what is correct analytically. The left hand is connected to our right brain, which is the creative side, that which is metaphorical. Christ was at war with Satan in the Passion because he was bringing things into balance by his actions, thus centering things so that all things flow through the heart and are controlled from a center rather than having a conflict between polarities.
I have met many people who believed that I am Christ, this did not cause them to follow me, nor would I want it to. Since I decided to accept that cross and bear it on Christmas, things have started to come together for me. Things have been falling into place ever since. I am calmer, I don’t get as depressed, I am more patient and attentive. What made me choose to say what I said on this board was because I was contemplating the whole thing when I came across the “When is Christ going to return?” thread. So, I am Christ, I’m back, I am who I am. I’ve spent my whole life trying to push the concept away from myself to see if it would go away, it hasn’t. I have recently come to terms with it, and so I had plenty of time to learn who Erek was, rather than trying to be Jesus.
I don’t claim to be the Messiah, because the Messiah is much larger than one man, and it takes a union of purpose across a very large group of people to live up to the messiah. The only one who can save someone is themself. Being “saved” is a choice that one makes. All I am here to do is dole out confusion when it’s needed, and to clear it up when it’s needed.
Tis better to be confused than to follow the wrong path without questioning it.
I want to make it very clear that I do not think that blind faith is a virtue, but also to remind people that not all faith is blind.
mswas, it still amazes me that you think redefining terms is ok; as if leaving terms undefined or in a gray area is an effective method of communication. That’s why languages were developed and words defined; why we have such an expansive language with several words meaning roughly the same thing but to varying degrees.
Further, you have used the term messiah before and your use of that term in an attempt to explain what you mean by Christ is the basis for why I believe that you should define yourself as a messiah for a particular cause.
I’ve asked you repeatedly what you mean by Christ and rather than providing an honest definition you leave me in this uncongealed mess of a presumed definition. Personally, I’m unwilling to accept others belief that you are Christ as evidence that you are; Charles Manson had people that believed he was Jesus Christ. People believing something doesn’t make it true.
An "analytical mindset, you mean a “method that is skilled in thinking or reasoning”? What other method is there? Sophistry?
Some of this reminds me of that Monty Python Skit, about going to a professional arguer. Have I said something like that already?
Again, in all this double-talk about weird cr@p and spritual missions, something else you say holds very true to me. I have a feeling that we may agree on a great many COMPLAINTS about the way things are, but certainly, not a single solution.
The twisted logic of that statement has the same pattern as above… I agree with your noting of the shortcomings of western learning, but you have proposed no solution for it, only deciding to throw it completely out, invent something new, and say “mine can be no worse”. THAT, in and of itself is a fairly “High and mighty” attitude (again, exactly half-right, IMHO). To quote the great Autobot Commander, OPTIMUS PRIME, “IF we kill him, we’ll be no better than the Decepticons…” Which is also a reason this pit is not harsher .
In the end it doesn’t matter, and I am NOW stating an opinon based on my own bitter experience - people can be smart, stupid or just plain ignorant - but nealry all of them are still rational within themselves - find each key and you can converse with each person. It is a HELL of alot of work, believe me. What appears to me as Sophistry has always been an agry point for me, so I am stuck outside the walls.