Trouble is, most religions have made God in mans image. I think that religion is the greatest fomentor of hatred the world has ever known. Maybe it's time for a new conversation on what "God" is? It's clear, the " old time religion" doesn't work.

Posted by: Ben | Jul 20 2008 18:55 utc | 1

@ben - you may be right - I personally find any religion that strictly adheres to some old interpretations of even older texts about even older tales quite ridiculous. Such is usually used for other means btw.

But that position is not one that might be successful to understand people who do believe in such interpretations of a god.

It is certainly not a position that allows to sincerly discuss with them and to maybe one day change their view.

That was the point of the above.

Posted by: b | Jul 20 2008 19:38 utc | 2

The majority of people I know in higher education would argue that there is nothing wrong with religion for people who feel they need it. "You have your religious convictions, I have mine. Let's acknowledge our differences and agree to disagree with one another within the confines of polite debate."

This is a rather odd apposition of statements. In the realm of (modern) higher education, yeah -- peeps have different relgions and are generally capable of debating politely.

Problem is that when your religion teaches you that it is the only True Faith, and you believe it literally, then witnessing to others and refraining from real debate that might shake your faith becomes the priority; indeed, the this is a pre-written commandment that you are taught.

This template for discussing religion and faith is fundamentally flawed. It presumes that different groups of faithful people approach their religions in the same way football fans approach their favorite teams: .. For people of faith, religion isn't like that.

The hell it isn't. I speak from the experience of involuntarily overhearing many a 'football' argument (on public buses for example) between an Evangelical and a Jehovah's Witness, an Atheist and a C.S. Lewis-ian Protestant, etc.

Just sayin'.

I do agree with your overall point here though. The US's adventurism in the Middle East ought to go down in history as more patronizingly stupid than the British Empire's patronizingly stupid adventurism in Africa, which at least didn't involve fake democracy as far as I've read.

Posted by: Cloud | Jul 20 2008 19:56 utc | 3

Really good and insightful post, b.

As someone with strong religious faith myself with liberal leftist political beliefs, I have become hardened over the years to the frequent sheer arrogance, rudeness, and downright nastiness of many "liberal" aetheists and secularists. They have precisely the same angriness and bigotry they denounce in religious people. Tolerant they ain't.

Posted by: johnf | Jul 20 2008 20:28 utc | 4

People without faith have their subjective rational. For them it is difficult to 'get' the subjective rational of people with intense faith. Vice-versa probably applies. That is not an argument for or against following a religion.

Faith and religion are usually tied, but not always. We need to be careful. Some atheists and not all theists participate in religions. Some religions are atheistic. (I am not making the argument that atheism is a religion at all.)

Similarly, there are a number of religions who do not see themselves in competition with other religions. For example, within Christianity: "God is bigger than a book."

To make matters even more confusing - I think that the nature of religion is changing within the west, with religion viewing itself in a secondary role within society - a moral conscience outside of government as opposed to the correct form that government should take.

Posted by: edwin | Jul 20 2008 21:29 utc | 5

In the coastal nations of West Africa, Christians & Muslim co-exist & inter-marry like its no big deal. But much less so in Ethiopia or India or the Balkans or Lebanon. Plus Jews had a different experience in Russia than they did in Western Europe. Religion & culture have fused into each other to varying extents across the map. The most significant extents of such fusion are those of Arabia with its deep Islamic legacy as well as Western Europe with its just-as-deep legacy via the Roman Catholic Church.

The territory now known as Palestine/Israel would probably be a peaceful garden but for the external religious influences projected into it.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Jul 20 2008 22:50 utc | 6

yes, I often hear atheists issue death threats over crackers

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 20 2008 23:19 utc | 7

An interesting US radio program discusses many of these issues:

Speaking of Faith Website

Posted by: Paduba | Jul 20 2008 23:22 utc | 8

sorry, but i have no patience for christian supremacy and the cultural imperialism of the west. i have no patience for proselytizing or active attempts to convert others. i think gnosticism is interesting, but that's about as far as i'll go. our military is becoming more "faith based" and i think that is scary as "hell."

faith is a personal relationship with the divine, and that's fine. religion is a scam that plays on our mortal fears to extract money and spiritual fealty. if you are a christian telling me that my good friends who happen to be gay are sinning against god, i would like you to explain to me why the good book doesn't make a big deal about two young girls getting their dad drunk so they can fuck him in order to get pregnant (Lott in the cave with his daughters after escaping Sodom and Gomorrah)

Christ is a metaphor for the divine spark that exists in all of us. Jesus is not the son of God and he is not coming back to save us from ourselves.

i want nothing to do with a religion that creates despicable bastards like Fred Phelps, who leads his family around the country protesting soldiers funerals because fags have destroyed amerika's morality, or hypocrites like Ted Haggard, who was caught smoking meth with a male prostitute, the same Ted who once led tens of thousands of blind worshipers in a mega-church in Colorado Springs, a scary place in amerika where the military (NORAD) and christianity (Focus on the Family, Christian Coalition) enjoy a most unholy union.

i have no beef with people of faith. most in my extended family are good, non-judging christians who lead good lives. but the people who show up on saturdays at our local farmers market to yell and proselytize ruin people's otherwise pleasant day by rubbing their righteous godstink on us lowly sinners buying locally grown food.

sorry if this perspective appears offensive to anyone. on my personal, admittedly subjective ledger, christianity has a lot of really nasty shit done in its name to consider before its adherents can persuasively claim the good book is any kind of definitive answer, because it's not. it's got some goods stories, some pretty music, some weird laws about shellfish and cattle and not eating with the hand you use to wipe your ass, and all kinds of great proverbs pastors and priests can cherry pick from to fit their warped and restricted world view, but that's about it.

oh, and the rapture. can't forget about the rapture, considering so many people seem to want to see it so badly. i don't know about flying up into the sky with angels to be with jesus, but there are lot's of powerful people working hard to make sure they at least get that armageddon thing right.

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 20 2008 23:29 utc | 9

Is it hopeless for there to be two-way understanding?

When the atheists "understand" religious fundamentalists on their own terms, aren't they no longer atheists? I mean, doesn't understanding at that level also mean believing?

What is the opposite of brainwashing? Braindirtying?

Posted by: J. Ott | Jul 20 2008 23:56 utc | 10

few threads ago, Uncle $cam pointed out that human problems are not political, neither economical nor ideological, they are philosophical

my feeling is that we are all in deep shit... and that some kind of solution/evolution shall be in between rational and spiritual visions of the world (with lots of feminine grains of salt)...

Posted by: rudolf | Jul 21 2008 0:06 utc | 11

@7
what kind of crackers do you refer to??

[ just for the sake of understanding the joke ;) ]

Posted by: rudolf | Jul 21 2008 0:18 utc | 12

Of the many reasons US decided to wage war on Iraq (from '91 continuing with the sanctions and occupation of air space and flowing on to invasion and occupation - a total of 17 years),it could not have included a support Islam, of any stripe.

The most non-religious government with the most secular institutions in the mid-east was invaded for what amounts to a hodge podge of righteous moral reasoning. The invasion was a set back to "enlightenment" a victory for a theocracy or as now see government organized on basis of religious sects. As despotic a regime that existed, there was probably a better chance for democratic institutions to develop out of an educated and successful Iraq of Sadam and sons enterprise than from destruction and power vacuum created by war.

The same thinking is now looking at Iran. One would almost suspect that this time around it is a war against Islam or at least one instance of a theocracy. But no, it would appear even less a rational construct.

Posted by: YY | Jul 21 2008 1:24 utc | 13

I am of the opinion rather that human problems are evolutionary. We're built and programmed for a nomadic existence, but the adaptability of our intelligence allowed us to forge a more powerful paradigm, that of agriculture-cities-slavery and its attendant suffering, which has ruled ever since.

That said, we can't un-learn agriculture, gunpowder or the atomic bomb, so any solution/evolution will indeed have to be philosophical-intellectual. Barring intervention by an Outside entity, that is.

Posted by: Cloud | Jul 21 2008 1:32 utc | 14

The human condition includes forever dragging outmoded mythologies, outmoded stories about who we are as individuals and as a species, into a rapidly evolving technological view of reality.

Our morality cannot keep pace with our curiosity, and that is going to spell trouble.

We can't just give up our mythologies. A human cannot function without an inner story going on -- they need to see themselves as so and so from somewhere, here for the following purposes, and destined for the following accomplishments. Our story has to mean something, or we can't function.

A human who has no story is known as a psychotic. They have broken with reality, and a new story about reality needs to be constructed for them if they are to relate to the world around them. They are useless without an internal myth to live within.

Whether your story of who 'we' are includes a God or does not, you cannot not have a story, a world view. You may feel as if you're in a play. You are anyway.

Our species needs a mythology that rewrites itself on almost a daily basis. A mythology that could deal and adapt smoothly to the discovery of cold fusion and endless cheap energy on a Monday, plus the arrival of a friendly alien species to our solar system on Wednesday, and then the announcement of a Grand Unified Theory of Everything on Saturday. No big deal.

The only reason humanity will ever develop such a mythology, such a religion, such a world view, is that it will be forced to by a flood of just such discoveries about reality.

But it will feel like a psychotic break with every step taken in this direction. It will feel like rewriting your internal programming while the program is running.

This may be why there are so many nutjobs running around loose.

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 21 2008 2:20 utc | 15

Thanx for yet another thought provoking post B.

Nietzsche asked:"Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?"

Having also bounced this rhetoric question of God - Yes/No? through my Hall of Thoughts on various occasions, I came to the conclusion that the one almighty God is a human concept born in the hope for equalising justice and a life after death, an omnipotent being that can be used as universal explanation for what is and isn't happening.

I can't understand why so many people are like sheep in their approach to ideas about the afterlife and how the fabric of life is knit. My guess its due to either one of the following (or any combination):

* lack of fantasy
* the human group/herd instinct
* early childhood indoctrination
* thinking of "might as well"

I almost wrote

* simplistic world view

but then, just in time, I realised that it could also be my assertions that are steeped in naivety, it's not that my theory is all too complex either.

I personally redrew my picture of where we come from, who/what runs the show while we are here and where will we go to. I think it sort of started in my early teens, when (out of all people) my religious education teacher made a remark in class along the lines of

What if Jesus came back today, after 2000 years of Christianity? We, Christians or not, would stick him into a mental institution or jail, not the cross anymore, no, we have finally moved on from that after burning people alive for 16 hundred years, but we'd declare him a fraud, a loony, an extremist.

Jesus would be living as an itinerant, hang out with people our society classes as "loosers", he'd be a rebellious activist with a record for trespassing and being a nuisance in public. I couldn't explain this paradox much better than the Australian singer/songwriter Kev Carmody (I recommend his albums, essential listening):

He was born in Asia Minor,
a colonized Jewish man.
His father the village carpenter,
worked wood in his occupied land.

He was apprenticed to his father's trade.
His country paid it's dues;
to the colonial Roman conquerors,
He was a working-class Jew.

Though conceived three months out of wedlock
the stigma never stuck.
He began a three year public life
but he never made a buck

because he spoke out against injustice;
saw that capitalism bled the poor.
He attacked self-righteous hypocrites
and he condemned the lawyers' law.

But they've commercialised his birthday now;
the very people he defied,
and they've sanctified their system
and claim he's on their side!

But if he appeared tomorrow,
He'd still pay the highest cost,
being a 'radical agitator'
they'd still nail him to a cross.

You see He'd stand with the down trodden masses,
identify with the weak and oppressed.
He'd condemn the hypocrites in church pews,
and the affluent, arrogant West.

He'd oppose Stalinist totalitarianism;
the exploitation of millions by one,
and 'peace' through mutual terror,
and diplomacy from the barrel of a gun.

He'd fight with Joe Hill and Walesa,
Mandela and Friere;
Try to free the third world's millions
from hunger and despair.

He'd stand with the peasants
at the pock-marked walls;
They'd haul him in on bail.
He'd condemn all forms of apartheid,
and he'd rot in their stinking jails.

He'd denounce all dictatorships
and Mammon's greed,
and the exploitation of others for gain.
He'd oppose the nuclear madness,
and the waging of wars in His name.

He'd mix with prostitutes and sinners,
challenge all to cast the first stone.
A compassionate agitator,
one of the greatest the world has known.

He'd condemn all corrupt law and order,
tear man made hierarchies down.
He'd see status and titles as dominance
and the politics of greed he'd hound.

He'd fight against the leagues of the Ku Klux Klan,
and the radical, racist right.
One of the greatest humanitarian socialists
was comrade, Jesus Christ.

So, if there was a Jesus of Nazareth, a powerful and kindhearted man who died in the belief that his cruel end would help us having our sins forgiven on judgment day, then he would be disgusted with the lip service morale of his followers. I am not an historian, far from it, so I can't really say if Jesus ever lived and what he was up to, but I am very much inclined to say that he was not the son of God, but God himself. And he appealed to the Gods within each of his fellow humans to wake up and show compassion towards all other beings sharing time and space with us. The following quote pretty much sums it up.

"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself."
Peter O'Toole

That's it, not much more to say. IMHO we are all Gods/Goddesses, and because being a God means existing forever, and eternity being pretty boring after a while, we invented life, to escape the boredom of being a God. When we die we go back to being Gods, catch up with other Gods in Godland, and when we are fed up with godliness, we line up and parachute into a creature being born at that moment.

IMHO it's all about gathering different kind of experiences, see the world from many angles. I am a spiritual being who is having a human experience.

Any belief someone holds, as crazy as they might sound to some, has the same chance of being the truth as the christian, muslim, hindhu or any other faith has. It can be calculated with the following formula:

A person's belief / Never-ending possibilities = 0.000period01 %

Pretty slim I must admit, but not any less either. And now, just to introduce another possibility, what if whatever one believes would happen to one's soul at the time of death, will actually happen to this soul?

In other words, if you approach death and are worried that all your bad deeds will lead you straight to some kind of flamin hell, then that is where you'll go. Or if you believe you'll get reborn as a cow, you'll actually be reborn as a cow, and so on. The options are endless, but just in case, on my deathbed I'll be thinking of a nice situation I want to spend eternity in, like living with a nymphomaniac who owns a grog shop.

In terms of international relations, religion has always been a disaster. For millenia, it was almost the sole reason for abhorrent wars between nations. The unfolding slaughtering in Iraq and Afghanistan being no exception. The problem lies in the element common to almost all religions, their followers conviction that it is the one and only, the best, the supreme set of believes. This in turn leads to self-righteousness & arrogance, even though it might not be expressed as such, deep down the feeling of superiority exists. The missionaries, with their desire to convert the heathens, rescue them from eternal hell, are the worst. I mean, people are allowed to believe in what or whoever they want, but it gets annoying when they try and push their religion on others. And Christianity specialises in 'rescuing' sinners and lead them on the path to the "real" God, the one who wants to be praised all the time. Gotta love it, in one hand the bible, in the other a gun.

Posted by: Juan Moment | Jul 21 2008 3:22 utc | 16

I was privileged and took my architecture at Notre Dame - speak of your football allusions. I retain a total love and reverence for that place and that experience. So very special.

Other than a few weddings, baptisms and funerals, I haven't been in a church since.

I think we all carry a spiritual sense with us constantly, the more of which we're aware the less the need for a fixed dogma. Approach Omega.

Posted by: Allen/Vancouver | Jul 21 2008 4:11 utc | 17

I was privileged and took my architecture at Notre Dame - speak of your football allusions. I retain a total love and reverence for that place and that experience. So very special.

Other than a few weddings, baptisms and funerals, I haven't been in a church since.

I think we all carry a spiritual sense with us constantly, the more of which we're aware the less the need for a fixed dogma. Approach Omega.

Posted by: Allen/Vancouver | Jul 21 2008 4:13 utc | 18

Antifa: good stuff! as a skeptic prone to entertaining theories of conspiracy, my mythology includes a cabal of shadowy elite who hide behind shifting names and ever evolving allegiances.

and all that anti-christian bluster up top was probably just a subconscious cover up of my own hypocrisy, because as a believer in conspiracies i try to tell people about what i know, so that they may be converted to my paranoid world view of global events.

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 21 2008 5:08 utc | 19

abolishing the notion of universals would be a start. and from there rewrite history.

Posted by: b real | Jul 21 2008 5:09 utc | 20

Wasting energy on old superstition would make sense if it provided any insight at all into the actions of those members of the elites who wrap a few pages of their favourite book of superstition around them before they shit on the rest of humanity, but it doesn't. Why? because like the UN Charter: the bible koran and torah all provide enough specious bullshit for any occasion that a corrupt pol - democrat or prince can find justification for whatever action suits their own selfish needs the best. Once they have found that the relationship between the religious leader and a following of believers is simply for the believers to believe what they are told to believe.

So for an unbeliever such as myself the only way a religious person will ever get on board with what I'm saying is if their preacher/pol (all to frequently one and the same person) tells them to.
There is no point in trying to enter into a dialogue with a person of superstition they have entered into a cop-out handing over responsibility for their fate to the manufactured 'god', or so they convince themselves, but in reality to some hypocritical abuser of others intentions, good and bad. If you wanted to get the bible thumpers of South Carolina on side it was a waste of time and energy to talk directly to any of them. There are only a handful of South Carolina peeps who could effect a change in the thinking of the fools of that state.

One of them was Jesse Helms and if you went to him armed with photos of a young boy sitting on Helms' knee then he might agree with what you said and maybe even tell the fools of South Carolina to believe what was said, if he couldn't get you killed or put in prison first.

At some level the followers know that is the deal even if they never consciously acknowledge it. They allow the leadership to be as corrupted as is necessary until definitive proof of that corruption can no longer be avoided. This is the trade off. They get to go through life without having to make the tough decisions as long as they stick to everything they are told to do and in return they avoid soiling their hands with that which scares them.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 21 2008 6:34 utc | 21

"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself."
Peter O'Toole

Ah, "The Ruling Class" a strange little movie worthy of a boo - invite some buds and a jereboam

I understand the faithful all too well and am not a western interventionist by any stretch, I would rather not see the rest of the planet look like Big Box North America. I like that it is different

and while western interventionists are pushing some bastardized form of seculigion outward, the chances of any of them being driven solely by atheism is pretty slim:

America's Most Hated

Bush, Blair, Harper, hell we almost had a PM that thinks the world is 6000 years old and we now have an evangelical heading a science council/panel whatever - all hardly darlings of atheism

Conversely, people move from their culture across the planet to another and attempt to force their traditions upon their gracious hosts

Where I live can't really be called secular either. We publicly fund Catholic schools - and now all are clamouring for the public teat to my eternal bliss

Of course there are nasty atheists, they are people

People that don't claim to be perfect

And don't claim to have a perfect deity on their side like religious folk

as for fundies

what's to understand about people who wish for theocracy?

No matter how much piety you reasonably religious MoA patrons might think you have

you will be up against the wall with the rest of us when fundies come to power on little cat feet

over a childish fear of death

salved by an empty promise of eternal life

at the side of a god

That apparently hates amputees

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 21 2008 7:33 utc | 22

"They get to go through life without having to make the tough decisions as long as they stick to everything they are told to do and in return they avoid soiling their hands with that which scares them."

beautiful

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 21 2008 7:36 utc | 23

I'm not sure that we're talking about a differential between "faithful" people and "western secular" people, when it comes to international relations between such. People inside the U.S. rank pretty high on the "faithful" disposition chart themselves, and as you know, many would be just fine a with Pat Robertson overwatching the U.S. government ala-Ayatollah Khaminei, if given the opportunity. For much of this mentality, just within earshot of the dog whistle marching band, it's really a religious war that we're fighting in the ME, with the Muslims being the new springtime for Hitler or infidel Commie stand in. Statements such as "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." by Ann Coulter, typify the hard nut center of war support in the U.S.
At least as compared to the support generated by the ironic neo-liberal official explanation for U.S. foreign policy interventions aimed at establishing democratic secular societies in the ME.

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 21 2008 8:07 utc | 24

in essence, the difference twixt atheists and believers comes down to the ability to say "I don't know" and when it comes time for the big sleep, "hasta la vista babies"

for a respectful, insightful analysis, I do recommend - Why God Won't Heal Amputees despite the loaded moniker and a valid question, none the less

atheism shows me and many others just how precious 30000 days are, indeed all life

we are very lucky and likely going to squander our chance

for that is all it is

isn't that amazing

the conditions of this universe, our home

gave us a chance to go and discover ourselves

while the universe is huge

the conditions required of life, complex life like us "fucking talking monkeys" (Christopher Walken)

could make for a very rare earth indeed

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 21 2008 8:36 utc | 25

Of course, neither the "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" nor the ironic neo-liberal explanation suffice to account as the driving force for actual foreign policy, but both instead serve to shore up domestic (the former) and international (the latter) support for intervention. While the latter also serves to emasculate domestic liberal resistance as being impotent in the face of standing up (fighting for what you believe in) for something. None of which is lost on the receiving end of the policy as a whole. For them its a duel threat against both their cultural identity, tradition, social order and their religion.

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 21 2008 9:03 utc | 26

I remember, when I was a child a profound disappointment that the ending culmination of the Wizard of Oz amounted to some vain stupid man behind a curtain working a bunch of levers and gages that controlled everything. It still bothers me.

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 21 2008 9:56 utc | 27

i've gotten myself in some deep shit here laying out my concepts on this topic, as a result i will try to step lightly.

antifa #14 The human condition includes forever dragging outmoded mythologies, outmoded stories about who we are as individuals and as a species, into a rapidly evolving technological view of reality.

i'll jump off from this point. i think the core differences on perceptions of reality are based on right brain left brain capabilities. early man relied more on right brain and w/the 'evolving technological view', beginning w/language and communications/survival render us less reliant on instinct. man's left brain capabilities evolving at this faster pace probably came at the expense of diminishing those right brain capabilities.

i have long stipulated belief in god is a result of fine tuning in one's dna. i can find no other explanation why some people have complete certainty, while others total denial. (i'm not referencing religions per se, but belief in spirituality or a 'cosmic knowingness' of higher being or something). the fact remains tho that brains are divided and each of us has this wiring for comprehension in 2 completely different realms. it really does no good to deny either realm however there seems to be a cultural need to prove one's superiority over the other.

what could be more superior for those convinced(due to their own right brain experience) the spiritual world is more powerful than the idea of an all knowing all encompassing being? who then could claim this all knowingness can do virtually anything???

and for the left brainers who, knowing everything can be explained by science completely deny an abundance of the capabilities of man thru access of a developed right brain.

then we have those who both right/left are very active.

i watched a tv special recently (can't remember 20/20 or something) about a brain specialist who was in an accident that rendered her left brain functions paralysed. as a result she found herself completely relying on her right brain and observing her life thru her right brain as she healed and was then able to incorporate the power of those abilities into her scientific studies.

i think there is a lot science has yet to discover but i think it is a mistake to assume that which has not been mastered is either impossible and resides solely in the imagination of crazy people. i also think for those people who have so much faith in their reality of knowingness or instinct to transfer this idea into a belief in an all knowing being to explain everything is equally as foolhearty.

however i do believe the capabilities to perceive by both the right/left are of equal valuable as navigational tools offering us (potentially) the clearest vision of reality.

Posted by: annie | Jul 21 2008 16:33 utc | 28

#26 anna missed, me too! i thought, is this all we get?

Posted by: annie | Jul 21 2008 16:34 utc | 29

Oz needs a rewrite! Me too.

Posted by: beq | Jul 21 2008 17:10 utc | 30

lang - They are likely to change at their own pace, influenced by the flood tides of information in the world today, but they will strongly resist change at anyone else's pace.

The belief that outsiders can "manage" that change is as destructive today as it has always been.

change is inevitable, of course, for everyone, but why the belief that the ME or muslim world needs to change? is it premised on the idea that they have to change in order to keep up w/ so-called modern societies? to accomodate us? to fit in w/ us?

If we can accept the paradox that the real humanity of people is understood through cultural differences rather than cultural similarities, then we can make profound sense of our differences. It is possible that there is not one truth, but many; not one real experience, but many realities; not one history, but many different and valid ways of looking at events.
...
We see the world in terms of our cultural heritage and the capacity of our perceptual organs to deliver culturally predetermined messages to us. We possess no closer, less fallible hold on reality. Yet among politically concerned people there is a good-natured insistence that all peoples are fundamentally the same.
...
Liberal people have been polarized by the atrocities and inequities of history -- especially the incredible cruelties of our own times. They want to do away with human misery even if it means the destruction of the realities of other cultures. What they fail to take into account is the great variety of ways in which the members of a single culture respond to the same things, let alone the vaster differences that exist between cultures. There is no question that all people feel sorrow and happiness, but the things that evoke these responses and the manner in which such feelings may be expressed socially and privately can be highly dissimilar from culture to culture. The Mexican poet and scholar Octavio Paz has stated: "The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us."

-- jamake hightower, the primal mind: vision and reality in indian america

diversity is a prerequisite for sustaining all life. unfortunately, under the banner of a monotheistic worldview, what is commonly refered to as the western world has run roughshod over the planet & the peoples encompassing it.

monotheism --> monopoly

be it (1) the idea of the brotherhood of man -- one dog. one love. one whole community - abstract projections of an ideal utopia that emphasizes select similarities while it's our very differences that make our communities stronger & our experiences more rewarding

or (2) the universal economy -- economic globalisation disguised as 'free trade' - aided by the invisible hand of the supreme divine - forcing a narrow 'rules of the household' framework on 'the other' everywhere, anywhere

that's what monopolies are supposed to do - suppress/eliminate the competition

and it's all done under the theoretical pretense that it's to the benefit of all

if we don't work to change our existing epistemological understandings of the world & our place in it, both consciously and physically, as in challenging the authoritarian institutions that destroying diversity and ultimately our very chances for survival of our offspring, the human experiment will be but a temporal blip.

new, better stories & storytellers, yes. but also more militant librarians.

Posted by: b real | Jul 21 2008 18:21 utc | 31

i can find no other explanation why some people have complete certainty, while others total denial.

There is a section of christianity that experiences faith as something having come out of doubt. Faith is not necessarily a simple thing at all.

On the other hand, as this thread shows, the all or nothing simplicity inherent in many fundamentalists, and some atheists is quite popular. I don't think that the reasons for - religion is evil - atheists are evil - the complete certainty and total denial is anything other than the human condition. The exact same simplicity is present in modern conservative political thought. Simple solutions usually involving violence are what is deemed to be required to set the world right. The left wing is by no means immune from simplification. That is the danger in trying to simplify the world in order to make sense of it.

Posted by: edwin | Jul 21 2008 18:29 utc | 32

and there's nothing more simple than a omnipotent talking monkey in the sky that saves you from death and considers women property

It made no sense at age six, none now

same tired old arguments void of facts

I was talkin with my neighbour aboot a new fence

Somehow, he started in on Muslims, gasp, building a mosque

How dare they invade cottage country - where his brand of god bothering (assuming Polish Catholic) already had a nice church and community

With a "wealthy one" buying up lakefront properties for "them"

You shoulda seen the look on his face when I told him I hadn't fallen for all that junk since I was a kid and didn't understand his argument

While you hear of plenty of people being saved - Paroled to Sin again

You won't see heartwarming, fuzzy feel good, stories of those whose scales fell from their eyes, like Da

They don't sell copy

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 21 2008 20:29 utc | 33

In addition to right brain-left brain differences ...

Incident ...

Was working as a museum volunteer with an ex-priest. Making conversation while sorting sherds he happened to say, "God is absolute other." Until that moment I would have said that such matters were of no concern to me because they were above my ontological paygrade. But my response was a lightning beserker, barely contained, and with NO thought, "Is NOT!!!!!" (which I managed not to say). I have no idea where that thought came from. I would not have recognized it as my own. This response was limbic. Had we been sitting around the fire in front of the cave, knapping flints for our stone axes I would have done him bodily harm.

We don't understand limbic responses: (1) They do not circuit through the processing centers (too slow), and (2) we rarely observe or experience them. When we do, we repress the incident because it is so inexplicable and incongruent with our rational versions of how-things-are.

Not well expressed. Hope the statement is clear. Bottom line - this religion business also has roots in the lizard brain. I have no idea why that would be. It is not like territory or food or reproduction, but proceed with caution. The heart has its reasons that the reason knows not.

Posted by: rjj | Jul 21 2008 21:41 utc | 34

Hell: state/place/consciousness after the physical disembodiment of spirit (a/k/a death) in which the remaining consciousness realizes it had this beautiful unique timebound opportunity to be physically embodied and alive...to love in every possible sense and range of the word, to bask - just in the physical beauty of a physical world...to act with volition and make another embodied consciousness experience happiness or pleasure; and did not do so.

Heaven: state/place/consciousness after the physical disembodiment of spirit (death) in which the remaining consciousness dwells in the awareness of having had the opportunity of physical embodiment and sensation; loved expansively; given to others when not made to do so under duress; basked in the beauty of the ordinary world around.

Same place/state-of-being.

A line of thought with me the past couple of years, unbidden.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Jul 22 2008 1:18 utc | 35

You know, I've always figured one good way to get people talking gibberish is to bring up the topic of religion. And by people I don't mean religious people, but secular people. The original post here was thoughtful and decent. So, I turned to the comments. And what a load of nonsense. My goodness, religion was around ages before any of us were born, and it will be around ages after all of us are gone. Moreover, it has inspired some of the greatest minds and noblest hearts in human history. Just to speak of our own time, and from within Christianity--who are any of us compared to, say, Karl Rahner, Teilhard de Chardin, Edith Stein, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero? You all sound so petty. And before you start talking about how much violence and bigotry religion has brought to the world, remember that we've just completed a century that brought us Nazism,Stalinism, and Maoism. Next to those the Inquisition was a walk in the park.

Posted by: dacvs | Jul 22 2008 3:15 utc | 36

dacvs: sure, us secular people are talking gibberish. if that is how you need to respond to protect your world view, fine. b's post was indeed thoughtful, but maybe some of the responses were crass because that's what organized religion does to spirituality. it takes the innocence of youth and fucks it. it takes your neighbors and turns them into infidels and gentiles. christianity isn't even original, it's just repackaged paganism turned toward the justification of capitalism.

and i don't think the people tortured and burned at the stake would refer to the Inquisition as a walk in the park.

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 22 2008 4:10 utc | 37

Annie @27, have you read this?

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 22 2008 4:36 utc | 38

dacvs,

Maoism and the other isms of the 20th Century don't cancel out the negatives of organized religion, they just prove that the negative impulses that organized religion has always evoked, to the detriment of humanity, can be evoked equally well by secular - so called - forces as well, if indeed that's even true. The Holocaust was ancient religious prejudice wearing a secular mask, and as for Franco...

I doubt anyone here's arguing that anything produced, written or said by a Christian, a Muslim etc etc is to be discounted out of hand due to the faith of that person. All manner of marvelous thought and culture has come out of religion. Of course. But from the 'organized' component of organized religion has tended to come nothing much more than rules of behaviour, penalties for transgressing, and lists of transgressors, and doesn't that sound familiar. Big religion has always been as much about the organizers and the organized as it has been about the believer and the Beloved.

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 22 2008 4:51 utc | 39

thank you tantalus for using the tact i cannot seem to muster when it comes to this topic.

and i hope both you and annie are familiar with this interesting take on the effect of the alphabet on right/left brain dynamics.

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 22 2008 5:25 utc | 40

risking overkill, here is fred phelps trying to use the story of lott to go after the comedic pundits john stewart and stephen colbert. of course freddie uses just the first part of the story, sidestepping where lott offers his virgin daughters to quell the angry, horny mob of sodomites. i would love to see pastor fag hater take lott's story just a little further, to the sex cave where daddy gets wined then boned by his daughters, on successive nights no less. i mean, it's in the bible, and god saved lott, so it must be cool to get down with daddy's baby batter if there's no one else around, right?

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 22 2008 6:44 utc | 41

Tantalus, no i haven't, yet the reviews are intriguing. one review:

The novelty or "god" portion (on the right) kicked in to interpret unexpected situations and provide "advice" from a stored set of cultural wisdom presumably provided by parents, elders and other authority figures, and all of it unconscious. Jaynes suggests that this half of the brain spoke to the person like a voice in his head, and was accessible only by means of hormonal biofeedback during stress.

reminds me of psych dream study (and my own dream experience) of the 3 selves in dreams. 1, looking on as an observer watching the scene unfold. 2, being an active participant, an actor (so to speak) in the dream. 3, a voice of interpretation during the dream.. 'watch out!'.. or 'she looks like my mom but isn't really'.. or.. 'the red in the cloak is like blood'. (providing an instant reality check on dream interpretation.. the interpreters best friend)

this 'advice', can be as astounding/clear as rjj 33's "Is NOT!!!!!". as edwin 31 points out I don't think that the reasons for - religion is evil - atheists are evil - the complete certainty and total denial is anything other than the human condition. the converse is also true that religion is truth - atheists are truth , the complete certainty and total acceptance is also the human condition. for we are programmed to believe/accept our experience!

jcairo It made no sense at age six hella me too. my mom bribed me @ 3 not to out santa because my sister was a believer. i was in the firm camp of 'there are no flying deers'. you can imagine how antagonistic i was towards the man in the sky. luckily i was raised in not only a secular home, but a father from a long line of ministers who broke the chain, big time. he wasn't outwardly anti religious (in the 50's, pleeeease), he was silent. he had manners and respect and upbringing which meant he didn't dish his family. the only thing he ever said (literally, no kidding) about being raised as the preachers son is he was sick of chicken on sundays and what a huge embarrassment it was for his father when he joined a barbershop quartet. my mom, she hardly said a word except how disgusting it was little babies were considered born in sin and why the hell whenever anything good happened in life jesus got credit for it.

none the less i had an inquiring mind. it was hard to ignore hesse and the beatles hanging out in india and the emerging 60's thing coupled w/my own peyote experiences. i wanted to get to the bottom of the whole god thing at around the age of 14. so.. i set about to create my own interpretation of reality. i still have my notes.

i won't bore you with the totality at this juncture but i started w/what i knew was real. i stared w/the elements earth water fire air and ether w/the assumption every physical thing is a manifestation of energy and therefore contains the properties of that energy. i assumed everything that exists (including my feelings) was connected to properties manifested in physical form.

i found a way in incorporate the concept of god, or everything, into my reality.

most of all i want to make use of all my capabilities. whwn we close doors we limit our potential. we use so little of our brain.

Faith is not necessarily a simple thing at all.

no. it isn't. not in the least. but sometimes i have very strong instincts driving me in certain directions that i may not understand why, but when i feel something strongly, i trust. what other option do i have? most people instinctively go w/their gut.

i simply cannot discount the collective consciousness of so many participants in the history of my species. if nothing else, they provide a roadmap into who we are today.

certain facts/conditions remain constant. humans do have 2 sides to their brains. why? humans, in order to remain sane spend on an average 1/4 of their lives emmersed in sleep/dream/unconscious thought. why?

Posted by: annie | Jul 22 2008 7:03 utc | 42

jesus lizard did you really watch that whole youtube? i lasted 1:32 minutes! lol. lordie bee.

Posted by: annie | Jul 22 2008 7:07 utc | 43

"The Holocaust was ancient religious prejudice wearing a secular mask"

This is disingenuous

"Gott mit uns"

Simply because a society appears secular in no way means the male dominated authoritative heirarchy putatively leading it isn't driven by religious ideology - an atheist will never be US prez

I woe the dawn of a majority Harper gov't

Secularism isn't some magical happy place, where all the streets are paved with gold

It is fraught with all the same dangers, such as the psychopaths that seem to run for office, talking out of their festerings gobs and arses all at once

The orifi will harmonize a different tune is all

ya know annie, you make it sound like you were into peyote before you were 14...

and that stuff doesn't do anything other than reveal more of yourself and make your imagination seem real - if you're already bound by superstition, you'll only get more of it in a groovy way

earth/fire/water/air/ether - are not elements (one of the certain facts you mention) - therefore the basis of your thesis is flawed from the get go - therefore all that follows is nothing more than wishful thinking

- ether is whatever, perhaps dark matter?

- earth is a complex compound composed of weathered rock and decomposed flora/fauna

- water is a colourless, tasteless liquid

- air is a colourless, tasteless gas

- fire is a reaction, rust the same only in slo-mo - oxidation

all involving or composed of the elements of the periodic table - another "certain facts/conditions" that "remain constant" - The Periodic Table of Elements

So while you were able to work god into your thesis, you seem to have missed a few "constant" "facts/conditions" - willfully or not, another glaring flaw

"we use so little of our brain"

A variation on a tired old canard - we only use 10%

Do we use 100% of our brains 100% of the time? Well, no. Modern measurements of brain activity have shown that at any given time, only about 5% of the neurons in a human brain are typically active — which is a good thing, since the unchecked torrent of electrical activity resulting from the simultaneous utilization of too many neurons in your brain could cause a seizure. But this is very different from saying that the neurons that are currently inactive are unused — they are used, just not at this instant, and as such, their potential is not "untapped."

Using common sense — and a little education — you can logically deduce that the idea of humans using only 10% of their brains is ridiculous. Your brain makes up about 2% to 5% of your body mass, yet it consumes 20% of the body's resources, such as oxygen and glucose. If such an organ worked at only 10% capacity, that would be a highly inefficient system. It is unlikely that such an organism would be fit enough to survive natural selection and generate offspring that would evolve to be the dominant species on the planet. Additionally, a sheep's brain is approximately 10% the mass of a human brain; if we only used 10% of our brains, we wouldn't be much smarter than a sheep...

Faith, in the religious sense, is fear of death, fear of the unknown

Can't be any simpler

It is quite interesting how quickly facts become unimportant when some magical pet notion is involved - god, psychics, Obama, globalization, NAFTA ...

When it becomes an article of faith, thought all too easily falls by the wayside

Plenty of people still have faith in the male dominated authoritative hierarchy of Chimpoleon

Yet many of you think the heirarchy belongs in the dock

Because of certain facts

Or rather the factless ramblings of a male dominated authoritative hierarchy

Which is exactly what religion is asking me to do

Abandon all reason and just go with the imagninative ramblings of a male dominated authoritative hierarchy

like a certain teutonic volk rambling lemming-like actoss the face of Europe a coupla times recently

and this "thinking" is to be commended?

Why anyone puts stock in their emotions as organs of thought is beyond me

Murder and mayhem in general are caused by emotionally out of control people - psycho/sociopaths being broken exceptions

Emotions are all well and good and bad, but they are not for thinking

Most of what politicians do is appeal to emotions, hence the vague platforms and squishy aphorisms - "Change you can beleive in" - just don't think about my doubletalk

They count on your gut, so you won't ponder their actions

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 22 2008 10:00 utc | 44

I woe the dawn of a majority Harper gov't

There are worse things in the world.than Harper. (slight pause)...

You know - like Stockwell "Doris" Day...

umm never mind.

Plenty of people still have faith in the male dominated authoritative hierarchy of Chimpoleon

Yes. We create god in our own images.

Faith, in the religious sense, is fear of death, fear of the unknown

Can't be any simpler

No. People are more complicated than that. Fear of death is a biggie, but it is not all. Another component of faith concerns the desire for goodness. I am not quite sure how to state it. This idea has strongly been expressed in the faith of people like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr.

Abandon all reason and just go with the imagninative ramblings of a male dominated authoritative hierarchy

Religion reflects the world we live in. It has all the complexities of the differing views of the underlying society, and if it works it can lead to a broadening of ideas. In Israel, the dominant religion has modified itself to reflect the nature of society (a form of apartheid) - the two are now intertwined. There are other religions and other ideas present within religion. The same process occurs in the US. Change is happening though. The spread of atheism and religious tolerance is well known. A further aspect of that change is, I think, that religion is beginning to re-define itself. Actually this redefining has been occurring for quite some time - and goes beyond the influence of atheism. The protestant reformation also was a time of redefinition.

Religions reflect the full range of human experience - including non-hierarchical variations. For example, the religious society of friends abolished the laity. In this way, each person is responsible for speaking their own faith. There was concern that during worship services for business, women would acquiesce to their husbands. This lead to divided meeting houses. During regular worship people would sit together in one group. During worship for business the meeting house would be divided and two separate worship services to conduct business would take place. Emissaries would go back and forth as necessary.

By forcing worship services for business to be segregated they forced women to speak in their own voices, not their husbands. This is not to say that they got rid of sexism. Sexism was in many ways deeply ingrained as it was (and of course is) also dominate in the regular society. They did, though, create conditions where their, and society's sexism could bee seen and challenged.

What is god?

God is a white man with a long flowing beard in a white gown sitting on a marble throne.
God is the king of kings. To be obeyed and honoured.
God is a father guiding and protecting his family.
God is a friend who offers advice and is always there for you.
God is a force in the universe.
God is that voice you hear in your head - "Perhaps what you are going to do is not the best thing."
God is love.
God is the ideal of good that we strive for.
God is a fantasy.
God is ourselves reflected in our hopes, dreams, and fears.

Faith is our belief and reaction to god. For better or for worse.

Posted by: edwin | Jul 22 2008 13:23 utc | 45

Lizard @39,

Thanks for the recommendation. Reflects the line of inquiry I've been following for a while. Once you abandon the notion that 'God' is a white man, I've found that the fog starts to lift.

I'm in the interesting position of rediscovering religion after having been a non-Christian agnostic, basically an atheist, all of my adult life. Now I find myself able to have religious experiences, as I would certainly describe them, while keeping my secular critical faculties in play at the same time. I've also retained my extreme suspicion of religious people and their congregations, oddly enough, which is both encouraging and inconvenient. At the moment it seems as odd and counter-intuitive to reject a metaphysical rationale to life as it does to accept it. jcairo's hyper-rationalism is not an easy intellectual and emotional path - speaking as one who utterly rejects any simple interpretation of 'God,' by the way. It's definitely easier - much, much easier - to wrap your head around, say, non-questioning religious fundamentalism than pure science bereft of the supernatural. But when you start to explore matters such as nonduality, which question the validity of experience itself...

But it appears that we're stuck with the paradox which dictates that religion and politics, which could hardly be more incompatible, are still inextricably combined. Personally I'd rather vote for an average atheist than an average person of faith any day, because it seems very obvious that belief without intellectual effort leads to extremely mediocre thinking. Ask an atheist what Jesus' message to the world was, and they'll probably tell you it boils down to social equality and an obligation to love our fellow beings, no matter what their faults might be. Ask the average Christian and they'll start blathering about the evils of gay marriage and abortion. Gibberish?

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 22 2008 14:20 utc | 46

typepad ate my homework

oh well, shoulda been usin firefox

edwin, a lovely appeal to emotion

i'll be in church on Sunday

But what I don't want is public money spent on Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, CoE, Presbyterian, RC, Scientologist, Zoroastrian, snake biting,...,n "education"

That is forcing religion on others

If that is what you want, put your arse in the pew and your cash in the plate

And as we all know, apartheid is one of the more desirable arguments for religion...

An evangelical does not leave the love, the desire to proselytize at the door when elected...

But that's what you're doing!!!!!

Nope, merely stating and requiring facts - including the ugly ones

I can't force you to un-drink the koolaid

when uncomfortable fact avoidance is conditioned from birth into people

-30-

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 22 2008 14:35 utc | 47

asked:

"Ask an atheist what Jesus' message to the world was, and they'll probably tell you it boils down to social equality and an obligation to love our fellow beings, no matter what their faults might be"

answered:

very astute, exactly yes

Socialist Number 1 in my book

that likely never existed...

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 22 2008 14:38 utc | 48

Lizard and Tantalus, Thank you for your response to my comments. I didn't think anyone would bother.
Interesting. I didn't use the expression "organized religion" because, well, I'm never quite sure what it means. Is Buddhism an organized religion? Is Judaism? Are they organized in the same way or differently? One might assume that the episcopalian church is an example of organized religion. But what about a storefront church on the other side of time? Of course, religion is historical and embedded in cultural and society. Who would want it not to be? But does that mean that there's something called organized religion other than just the plain old religion we find pretty much everywhere we turn. I presume that in using this expression what people are doing is trying to distinguish spirituality and religion. But I think that's like trying to distinguish poetry from language--wanting to write poetry while making up one's own language.
Of course, one can define religion as broadly as one wants, so as to include Nazism and Stalinism and every other ideology in the book. But I don't think that's helpful. It's the midnight where all cows are black.
Lastly, the point about naming great religious figures--like Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, one could include Martin Luther King--is that we tend to admire these people for their convictions, moral integrity, prophetic vision, their ability to inspire, and yet think them deluded when it comes to their religious faith and beliefs. And my question simply is--why? Why don't we admire them as religious figures as well? It seems presumptuous on our part.

Posted by: dacvs | Jul 22 2008 15:29 utc | 49

ya know annie, you make it sound like you were into peyote before you were 14...

i was not 'into it'. but i started hanging out @the family dog/avalon ballroom on monday nights in 67 and was influenced by a guy named steve gaskin. a product of my environment. i also fell in w/a group of poster artists around this period. where i grew up , mill valley, was at the center of the 60's storm. a very small town heavily influenced by the music scene happening there, along w/the merry prankster crowd, mine troop, grateful dead, airplane, janis etc. the haight was 30 minutes away and mt tamalpais (called the magic mountain) was literally in my back yard. this scene didn't happen in a vacum. these people had brothers and sisters i grew up with. we didn't have a prom, we had be ins. starting around 65 so by 67 i was in full swing. the generation of kids i grew up with, we were the original flower children. so yes, i first ate peyote (and acid) when i was fourteen.

Faith, in the religious sense, is fear of death, fear of the unknown

what about faith that is not 'in the religious sense'. are you saying faith is fear?

and this "thinking" is to be commended?

lol. whatever jcairo. it is simply my personal roadmap.

Why anyone puts stock in their emotions as organs of thought is beyond me

own them, they're yours. just like your arms and legs and brain. they are a reflection of who you are. everyone has them and they operate in patterns replicated in nature. they are as much a part of us as the air we breath and one can find answers about who we are as a species by studying them, or looking within yourself. the closest relationship we have to the 'big picture' is the roadmap inside your own head. that is the way we are designed. take it or leave it. they are intrinsically connected to learning right from wrong. pain hurts, whether it is emotional or physical. this isn't a matter of coincidence or simply a random throw of the dice. this is how we are hard wired. when someone experiences emotional reactions that oppose this pattern (ie experiencing 'joy' thru self mutilation) they are considered 'sick'. the same word to describe having the flu. emotion and thought are organs of the same body. there is probably a reason why we can't easily just shut either of them off at will. when we sleep they often merge and shift/change and can hold the same 'value' resulting in answers that heal us.

i find it a little odd how much you have invested in being right about all this. we all have logic and instincts. they can work together or not. i think its dangerous and threatening the idea of one becoming so powerful as to extinguish the other. they aren't enemies of eachother, they don't have to be in constant competition.

it seems very obvious that belief without intellectual effort leads to extremely mediocre thinking.

just as there are levels of intellectual thinking (we all accept this and society as designed ways to measure it) there are also degrees or levels of faith. a person w/a high intellect w/no appreciation for, or attachment to, or understanding of, or a deformed sense of what is considered to be 'normal' reactions of the right brain may be deficient experiencing common emotions such as empathy.

empathy is no more limited to people of faith as intellect is limited to atheists. i think we make a mistake in considering our options when we apply the 'all or nothing' in terms of attributes. the extremes of both are much worse than "extremely mediocre thinking". i don't think the pathway to the torture wikileak can be attributed primarily to people of 'faith'. i think evil minds of high intellect divorced from little instinctual emotions like empathy helped create that outcome. in fact scientists were used to create torture techniques. you're setting up a false equation when you take the results you don't like and attribute them to the 'side' you abhor.

Posted by: annie | Jul 22 2008 16:48 utc | 50

Ask the average Christian and they'll start blathering about the evils of gay marriage and abortion. Gibberish?

actually i think you may be doing the 'average' christian a disservice w/this statement. no different than people who assume 'average' muslims are radical. don't confuse people who scream the loudest as representing the mainstream. no different than assuming aipac represents the average jew. just because the dominate the world stage doesn't mean they represent the masses.

i am not a christian and i just don't 'get it' how or why people of faith buy into institutionalized religion. we had this conversation before here, but i still think religion came about by 'thinking man' taking advantage of the 'faith' in people in order to control them. but i don't think the average person of faith is a fanatic any more than i think the average atheist is emotionally deformed.

Posted by: annie | Jul 22 2008 17:05 utc | 51

Annie, you misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about being intellectual, I was simply talking about using one's brain for something other than accepting the prevailing dogma. I can think of many great spiritual teachers who weren't intellectuals by any stretch of the imagination - Ramakrishna, for instance - but who looked beyond convention and found something out there. Just as there are plenty of intellectuals - so-called - who are guilty of mediocre thinking - Hitchens, anyone?

Not many of us are intellectuals, but we all have an intellect.

I don't know about 'average,' but to give you an entirely subjective answer I'd stick my neck out and say that the majority of religious people I've met over the years - and most of them would be Christians - hold at least some moral/societal beliefs they derive from their faith that run contrary to basic humanism (eg anti-gay, anti-abortion). They aren't bad people and they aren't 'radicals' or 'fanatics.' But they are more heavily invested, emotionally and intellectually, in dogma as opposed to what I probably ought not to call 'spirit.' So I'm not sure that faith and spirituality are necessarily very closely connected.

Just my tuppence in the collection plate, though...

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 22 2008 17:50 utc | 52

dacvs But does that mean that there's something called organized religion other than just the plain old religion we find pretty much everywhere we turn. I presume that in using this expression what people are doing is trying to distinguish spirituality and religion. But I think that's like trying to distinguish poetry from language--wanting to write poetry while making up one's own language.

a better analogy might be that while the language used is the same, the syntax isn't. and there are no limits on how one uses those words.

as far as your question about organized religion other than plain ol religion i definitely think one can distinguish between spirituality and religion. religion (common syntax) is an organized form to digest spirit. spirituality is a direct result of an experience of 'faith' that is instinctual for people who experience it. many people forming together to share a common way to express this faith is not necessarily 'fixed' in the same way poetry is not 'fixed' into a particular syntax.

Of course, one can define religion as broadly as one wants, so as to include Nazism and Stalinism and every other ideology in the book. But I don't think that's helpful. It's the midnight where all cows are black.

i think one can define spirituality as broadly as one wants. i think organized religions pigeonhole spirituality, directs it in often very weird ways. however man's instinct to incorporate 'meaning' to 'experience' (combine right/left brain) predates religion and probably enhanced man's ability to survive in the same way birds fly south in the winter. while there is a scientific explanation chances are the birds experience this as a 'knowingness' and rely on their own 'faith' of their 'experience in the certainty of their mind' to follow a migration path. just because this 'certainty' coincides w/nature/science does not divorce it from an interpretation as spirit or 'force' of nature. in this way science can be a considered a confirmation of faith.

Tantalus, point taken.

So I'm not sure that faith and spirituality are necessarily very closely connected.

hmm, that's interesting. are you referring to faith in the broad sense? because i am.

Faith is a belief in the trustworthiness of an idea that has not been proven.....Informal usage of the word "faith" can be quite broad, and may be used standardly in place of either as "trust," "belief," or "hope". ... As with "trust," faith involves a concept of future events or outcomes.

i don't think it is a coincidence that the word 'faith' which is usually associated w/religion actually means something very broad most people experience and utilize continually.

Just my tuppence in the collection plate, though...(i like that. you don't mind of i steal it?)

i find questioning where in the mind this comes from fascinating.

Posted by: annie | Jul 22 2008 18:26 utc | 53

Annie, steal away.

You ask: Faith in the broad sense?

I find myself agreeing with Augustine of Hippo that we exist (outside the sphere of religion) in a world stitched together with faith in the sense of trust.

I'm not so happy about being required to accept, on trust, belief systems that consist largely of dogma which in turn is made up of rules and accumulated superstition.

I'm finding these two concepts a bit fascinating at the moment: Kashmir Saivism and Advaita. Slightly embarrassed to give Wikipedia definitions of this stuff, but it's a start...

dacvs, the interconnectedness or otherwise of religion and spirituality is fascinating. If you think of a religion as the temporal means of disseminating a particular spiritual teaching, then it becomes the vehicle of spirituality but not spirituality itself. And if the belief system - ie dogma - dominates the core teaching, then I'd argue that religion, while it becomes more and more identified with the core teaching, smothers the spiritual in favour of the temporal.

But I agree it's a mistake to take figures who combine vision/integrity/compassion with faith, and try to detach them from that faith. I'd just argue that its their vision/integrity/compassion that's more important, for practical reasons, than their faith, until such time as it can be demonstrated that the faith in question does generally give rise to broadly noticeable conditions of vision/integrity/compassion. So far I don't see that as being the case.

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 22 2008 19:04 utc | 54

no energy

to refute

all

logical fallacies presented as facts

such as argument to the future, where one relies on some future event as proof of something now

then there's the quote mining, half truths, lies, aphorisms, sophistry...

truly inquiring minds would be reading the links I provided, but I doubt that'll happen

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 22 2008 20:04 utc | 55

I said - ya know annie, you make it sound like you were into peyote before you were 14...

i was not 'into it'. but i started hanging out @the family dog/avalon ballroom on monday nights in 67 and was influenced by a guy named steve gaskin. a product of my environment. i also fell in w/a group of poster artists around this period. where i grew up , mill valley, was at the center of the 60's storm. a very small town heavily influenced by the music scene happening there, along w/the merry prankster crowd, mine troop, grateful dead, airplane, janis etc. the haight was 30 minutes away and mt tamalpais (called the magic mountain) was literally in my back yard. this scene didn't happen in a vacum. these people had brothers and sisters i grew up with. we didn't have a prom, we had be ins. starting around 65 so by 67 i was in full swing. the generation of kids i grew up with, we were the original flower children. so yes, i first ate peyote (and acid) when i was fourteen.

wow, just like I said

probably not the best thing to have happened to a developing inquiring mind

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 22 2008 20:20 utc | 56

jcairo,

I did read your links. I like the amputee one. It doesn't muck around. Obviously there's no sleight of hand God magic. And much of what we understand by 'religion' is the apparatus of trying to explain why magic does exist, of course it does, just not in the situation that might apply to any particular supplicant, eg someone missing a limb.

in essence, the difference twixt atheists and believers comes down to the ability to say "I don't know" and when it comes time for the big sleep, "hasta la vista babies" Who, in your opinion, is saying "I don't know:" atheists or believers? And for the sake of arguing I'd say that the incredible chance of life on our planet as per your link is lovely enough, even as pure science, to elicit the kind of wonder it might be quite easy to confuse with spirituality. And, lo and behold, it turns out there areSpiritual Atheists.

Meanwhile you're right: we're not going to solve this little conundrum or resolve it to anyone's satisfaction, but it's fun to chew over in good company. Cheers!

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 22 2008 20:46 utc | 57

"you make it sound like you were into peyote before you were 14"

"i was not 'into it' ... i first ate peyote ... when i was fourteen"

"wow, just like I said"

???

Posted by: b real | Jul 22 2008 21:21 utc | 58

jcairo, you are such a feisty fellow

i don't consider experiencing something as being 'into it'. i had friends who were 'into drugs', i wasn't.

such as argument to the future, where one relies on some future event as proof of something now

i think you are extrapolating meaning that is not there to make your argument, or to prevent you from comprehending my meaning. the instinct of 'knowing' (referred to later as 'recognition') in understanding the way i am using the term faith in a broad sense is not in the occupation of 'relying' or 'looking' for 'proof' it is more akin to having no thought regarding either but incorporating a concept of acceptance of self. as a very simple example a child goes to bed at night assuming (or having faith) they will wake up in the morning being loved by their mother in a similiar fashion they were loved the morning before and the morning after and so on and so on. 'a concept' of a future of experience akin to the present. one does not seek proof in this on a timely daily basis, nor does one necessarily 'rely' on this unproven 'truth'. as a matter of faith one doesn't give it any thought at all. however , if that faith were absent one might perceive the void as fear. it just so happens we reside in a universe where our natural world resembles who we are, therefore that recognition brings with it a familiarity that allows one to hold a concept of what the future will bring.

tantalus, from your spiritual atheist link nothing that exists or happens violates the nature of the universe; they believe that all such things only further define the nature of the universe sound's like something Augustine of Hippo would say.

thanks for the links! your first @ 54 under "Classification of the written tradition"

refer to the simplest and most direct modality of spiritual realization.... means "recognition" and refers to the spontaneous recognition of the divine nature hidden in each human being

absent the words 'divine' and 'hidden' i think this is pretty straightforward.

also from the link

Matter is not separated from consciousness, but rather identical to it. The world is not an illusion ... rather the perception of duality is the illusion.

from the second link

"For each means of knowledge.. has a valid domain. The domain of the scriptures .. is the knowledge of the Self. If the scriptures say something about another domain - like the world around us - which contradicts what perception .. and inference..the appropriate methods of knowledge for this domain tells us, then, the scriptural statements have to be symbolically interpreted..."

also reminds me of Augustine.

Posted by: annie | Jul 22 2008 22:24 utc | 59

@#56: "...probably not the best thing to have happened to a developing inquiring mind..."

Well, I don't know what "best" would be, but Annie's family dog/avalon experience certainly wasn't the worst. At around the same age and time I was deeply immersed in our local christian fundie church, where they handed out books like "None Dare Call it Treason" to young impressionable people. Ha ha...feed your head on that in your youth and see where it leads you.
Took many years to get beyond it.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Jul 22 2008 23:31 utc | 60

it might sound strange, but i give a lot of credit to mind altering drugs for getting me out of the vulgar capitalist dead-end suburban presbyterian indoctrination of my youth.

science (empirical knowing) and magic (intuitive knowing) are destined to meet because they were never mutually exclusive. there's a chance a lot can be explained and no one will lose much on either side.

it's time to open up the circuits so we can see what these bone-encased hemispheres of flesh and electricity are actually capable of.

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 23 2008 0:10 utc | 61

...but before that happens, the totalitarian suppression of of the human spirit through sycophants, priests, politicos, and the soulless zombification of consumerism should probably be adequately addressed.

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 23 2008 0:19 utc | 62

Again, Annie and Tantalus, thank you for your responses. You have made this a more interesting discussion than I expected.
Tantalus, I certainly agree. Your description of how religion can carry spirituality, yet with the risk of overwhelming or stifling it, seems an apt way to describe the question. I'd put it this way:

Religion is the collective, communal, social, historical, cultural context for spirituality and spiritual experience. It is the foundation of meaning and purpose and even personality upon which spiritual experience rests. Without religion spirituality and spiritual experiences are daydreams, passing fancies, quirks of brain chemistry, a story to share over drinks. But with religion spirituality can produce Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King.

Of course, religion without spirituality is not only empty--a matter of mere dogma and ritual like so many empty words and actions--but religion can become downright dangerous. As a form of collective, communal solidarity among persons, it can degenerate into something demonic, a tool for ideological control, tyranny, and all the abuses that come with power. The same, of course, can be said for all significant structures of human communal solidarity and action. The dark shadow of all collectivities is the demonic, and religion can turn demonic, as can nations and societies and indeed any kind of group, like the local country club in its own little way.

The thing to hope for is that the potential good in religion, when it is authentic and imbued with spirituality, outweighs the bad--the use of religion to maintain power and privilege. Yes, that's the thing to hope for. Is it a futile hope? I don't think so. Besides, I don't see how simply throwing out religion is going to help, just as I don't see how throwing out the reality of government is going to help improve things, even though there are and have been a lot of devilish states in human history.

Posted by: dacvs | Jul 23 2008 1:56 utc | 63

religion can turn demonic. Religion, of course, provides us with the definition of 'demonic.'

The thing to hope for is that the potential good in religion, when it is authentic and imbued with spirituality, outweighs the bad--the use of religion to maintain power and privilege. Yes, that's the thing to hope for. Is it a futile hope? I don't think so. I think it probably is futile, but not unworthy... Quixotic. We're all desperate, in the end, for hope and trust.

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 23 2008 3:14 utc | 64

Tantalus @ 46 - "I'm in the interesting position of rediscovering religion after having been a non-Christian agnostic, basically an atheist, all of my adult life. Now I find myself able to have religious experiences, as I would certainly describe them, while keeping my secular critical faculties in play at the same time."

Some of it may be aging. It starts around age 40. What do you think those anandamide/cannabanoid receptors in your brain are doing there. Old people are naturally stoned on endogenous cannabinoids. That's why they move reeeeeal sloooow and stare at flowers and rocks - or light on a wall - in short-lived fits of ecstatic distraction. The "senior moments" are probably analogous to the recall problems one has with cannabis. Artur Rubenstein mentioned in an interview that one day he was practicing something he had done thousands of times when all of a sudden "the music rose out of the piano like perfume."

J cairo: Earth Air Fire and Water are elements in one classification system, those of Mendeleev's table, a different one.

WRT "Emotions are all well and good and bad, but they are not for thinking .... They count on your gut, so you won't ponder their actions"

The entire gut from asshole to izzard is hardwired into the lower brain via the vagal afferents. This system is millions of years older and in many ways smarter than the thinking brain which is still being beta tested.

Posted by: rjj | Jul 23 2008 3:43 utc | 65

should have written "hundreds of millions of years older"

Posted by: rjj | Jul 23 2008 3:51 utc | 66

annie,

I lived on Sutter St. one block from the Avalon for a while in 67 - used to hang there all the time then - hey, maybe we've met before! Saw Arlo Guthrie do Alice's Resturant before it was a record, must have been sept - oct 67, quite amazing for the times. Crazy times .

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 23 2008 4:53 utc | 67

G.O.D. Grow Or Die...

But of course,we are talking faith,eh?
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." --Nietzsche

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? – then He is not omnipotent.
Is He able but not willing? – then He is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing? – then whence commeth evil?
Is He neither able nor willing? – then why call HimGod?
--Epicurus

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 23 2008 5:26 utc | 68

Uncle: i'll tip one back to that!

...and to think d@63 didn't expect to find any interesting discussion here after the apparent gibberish and nonsense us rowdy secularists spouted. i guess best not judge the herd by its knee-jerks.

seriously though, after this many comments, with faith and international relations as the prompt, and the worst it's gotten is some "reptile" obsessed with biblical incest and fred phelps?

that alone is some kind of miracle, eh?

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 23 2008 5:56 utc | 69

The Pharmacratic Inquisition

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 23 2008 6:16 utc | 70

as the erythrocyte said, "all I do is rush around and pass gas - surely there's more to life than this."

Posted by: rjj | Jul 23 2008 9:50 utc | 71

Epicurus had a parochial perspective. Try Heraclitus (mostly because there is less to read so one can make shit up and attribute it to him). You want to see evil? These fuckers damn near sterilized the planet with their toxic waste.

Posted by: rjj | Jul 23 2008 10:05 utc | 72

if religion reflects society

What was the prevalent society and religion:

2000 years past - should be fairly easy

20,000

250,000

2,500,000 years ago?

This is the origin of religion, when our fuzzy little ancestors were huddled around each other, not a fire, for warmth and the safety that numbers provide from predators in the night

All the time wondering why, and praying for the warmth and safety of the sun = son of god, eventually

I find it hard to fathom people would think 14 year olds taking heavy psychedelics is a good thing for developing brains and mental acuity, people that would likely turn around and lambaste big pharma (quite rightly, imho) for prescribing the same to children. I knew some other pedant would pick up on that faux pas of mine - snide aside: maybe I am psychic - mea culpa, I should have worded it better, but unless it really is quite HUGELY different for a 13 year old developing mind to bathe itself in lsd/psilocybin/mescaline rather than a 14 year old, I don't see your point

Atheism is not the truth, it is not perfection - just ask my lovely, gorgeous, good lady wife of 25 years, she deserves the redundancy

I simply claim not to have a perfect god/satan combo:

- guiding/watching my every move
- as the reason for any of my own accomplishments/failures/set backs
- as a reason for existence (remember, I don't know? We may NEVER know, oh well enjoy the ride)
- as a convenient excuse for gaps in our knowledge (remember the unknown?)
- as a shiny, happy dirt nap (FRIGHTENINGLY UNKNOWN)
- as a moral/ethical compass

To claim atheism is truth/religion is truth is just rampant political correctness and no less ridiculous than claiming LGF is truth/MoA is truth

Speaking of LGF, why is it that most consider that type of faith unacceptable?

I had an epiphany last night and accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour.

He told me that all my criticism of Our Leader of the Free World and his faithful followers is indeed unfounded.

The penance for the sin of doubting his angel on earth is starting to take some skin off my back, but God's love is sometimes painful

All your unwarranted criticism of the finest President of the greatest nation ever is just godless, liberal, anti-Americanism and does nothing but give ammo to the other side... Why do you hate America so?

To understand fundamentalism is to be fundamenatlism, atheism is Satan talking to me

Now, the Lord tells me to find abortion clinics, some fertilizer and a cube van, preferably diesel...

No different than believing in therapeutic touch (TT).

In 1996, a nine year old girl devised an excellent random test of the central premise to TT - they have a special ability to feel auras or the human energy field with their hands

Without the efficacy of this central, core claim, the rest of their claims about the ability to heal are also false

And a pretty good number of local practicioners readily lined up to prove THEIR CLAIM

all no better than chance, all of them, to a person

Meaning, these "specially gifted" or "trained pros" did no better than you would

Shouldn't they do better than you or maybe even your dog?

And this is the same kind of test expected of PharmCo to pass and be honest about the results... hmmm

It isn't about me being right

It is about having a healthy respect for facts and what they show you not what you want them to be - including all the inconvenient ones like the elements no longer being imaginative human constructs from past ignorance - and now known quite inarguably to be, as previously stated, composed of the real elements - fact like the UFT

To argue otherwise, exposes wilful ignorance

Why does this irk me?

lives
resources
money

Why must I accept this kind of thinking when people are regularly killed for it - war, Maori exorcisms, Christian exorcisms, the Hale-Bopp bunch, Jonestown,...

Why must I accept this kind of thinking when so many resources are wasted on literally nothing. As but one example, homeopathy. There is literally nothing in those "remedies" for reasons that people may have learned in high-school - without the very dubious benefits of mescaline on young developing brains. According to the central premise, you could drink tap water for the same "claimed effect". Think about all the water used to make highly diluted sugar pills. All the petrochemicals burned or converted to make/ship/store/advertise/buy/take. All the other resources used to make/ship/store/advertise/buy/take... what amounts to 1 molecule in more than 6 Olympic pools of water or far, far less even

Public monies are wasted on this empty, factless idea, and many more like it - we are endlessly told to tear down a highway because we can't see the lake, it cuts us off - fact is, there is a long line of pricey condos abutting the highway on the lakeside and the toney reznits don't like the noise and smell

I have to pay out of pocket to have an eyecare pro test my eyes, but some credulous bint can get accupuncture paid for with our tax money... ad infinitum

Global TV regularly runs miracle stories and we're lucky if we get two minutes on the Middle East

But, no. Not for the Miraculous DreamHealer - 15 jaw dropppingly credulous minutes spread over three nights - it amounted to free advertising

They showed him doing some phony hand jive - with a low light camera to give it a spooky, mystical vibe and MADE HIS EYES GLOW WITH AN EERIE POWER

Sure, this guy will heal you AFTER you pony up some florins for his book and DVD and then you can send him a colour (no B/W) photo at his palatial digs in BC

Donnez moi, une break

These people prey on the sick, the dying and the grieving just when people are most weak

They disgust me and their abuse of the vulnerable angers me

Why is this so hard to grasp?

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 23 2008 14:24 utc | 73

The entire gut from asshole to izzard is hardwired into the lower brain via the vagal afferents. This system is millions of years older and in many ways smarter than the thinking brain which is still being beta tested.

some examples please

otherwise you are equivalent to Colon Powell before the UN in Feb '03(?), counting on how people feel about him

rather than they give his highly dubious claims and the dearth of facts supporting them

any due consideration or thought

and it worked

but not with me then (thanks to the WB/MoA, largely and truly - none of the causus belli made any logical, reasonable, factual sense, the info - facts - gleaned confirmed my fears) and not now

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 23 2008 14:58 utc | 74

and it worked - it made people afraid

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 23 2008 15:01 utc | 75

i picked the name because I fake a passable Peter Lorre

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 23 2008 15:07 utc | 76

it's a better handle than the old one - which no doubt was a loaner

Posted by: b real | Jul 23 2008 15:14 utc | 77

apparently

to understand fundamentalism, is to spel lighke won

having spent time trolling fundie sites when Harry Potter first flared up

I'm not far off, unless you ask my wife

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 23 2008 15:16 utc | 78

b real, not quite sure what 77 means, the old was a silly acronym

feeling kinda thick today

but, I have a photo book aboot the movie and was reading it on the can one day...

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 23 2008 15:21 utc | 79

jcairo It isn't about me being right

that's a relief

I find it hard to fathom people would think 14 year olds taking heavy psychedelics is a good thing for developing brains and mental acuity

i take it you didn't go thru any rites of passage/vision quest in your puberty. i think mankind has a history of psychedelic rites of passage starting around this age. why is it so hard to fathom our ancestors thought this was a good thing?

dacvs It is the foundation of meaning and purpose and even personality upon which spiritual experience rests.

not sure i agree w/you on this. i don't think spiritual experience need rest on a foundation of religion.

Without religion spirituality and spiritual experiences are daydreams, passing fancies, quirks of brain chemistry, a story to share over drinks.

i don't think it is helpful to create any measure of 'value' or 'value judgment' on spiritual experience. the idea of denigrating a 'day dream', which is nothing more nor anything less than our imaginative mind (complete w/all it's facilities) experiencing free thought while not sleeping seemingly without the benefit of of our conscious direction. how is that worthless ? how many inventions came from 'quirks of brain chemistry'?

anna missed, 67, quite amazing for the times. Crazy times .

no shit sherlock. did you ever make it up to mt tam? , bolinas? muir beach?

Posted by: annie | Jul 23 2008 16:30 utc | 80

constantines sword

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jul 23 2008 19:42 utc | 81

why is it so hard to fathom our ancestors thought this was a good thing?

Why is it so hard to think that maybe they stunted their mental development by introducing their children to these drugs

Kinda explains the child-like quality to your posts

And explains your trusting your gut to tell you to outright lie to support your fallacious arguments

That's right, you LIE

You shamelessly just make shit up to support your verbal diarrhea

Is this rude?

Is it outrageous?

Is it uncalled for?

Is it fact?

Why yes, yes it is fact.

If you'll remember, you completely fabricated what it means to toss aboot a "straw man", just pulled it whole from your sphincter and presented it as fact to bolster yet another fallacy filled post (iirc - including a tortured attempt to explain that no matter the subject being discussed, any facts brought to the table are unimportant)

On that basis alone, why should I, or anyone for that matter, listen to anything you have to say

You do not argue in good faith

I'm done with this

Those sites I linked to provide all the info needed to answer any question anyone might ask of me

Go ask them, they will answer

Although, the TwoPercenters, like me, call a spade a spade and will call one a credulous asshat if the poor quality of the argument particularly shines through

I have heard all these arguments before, my entire life in fact

No one here brings anything new to the table

not even the "god isn't Jeffery Hunter" (especially the one I worked with) routine

sigh

here come the ad hominems

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 23 2008 20:07 utc | 82

great discussion, folks.

'religion is for those afraid of hell, spirituality is for those who have _been there_' (anon)

and yes that counts for children too, for no matter how cosy the love they suckle from, eventually arrives the day when true independent appraisal of the powers that be becomes necessary, and the faith of the fathers needs to give way to something more empirical_...

the only 'religion' i've found that sticks to the basics is tibetan buddhism, the roadmap to the afterlife...(that's what we call it this side of the veil, from the other side it's all one projection).

the myth of jesus is the death/rebirth of the sun, as said upstream.

as a cautionary tale the telluric story of jesus is clear....doesn't matter how magic you are, or how many poor folks you help out, the man will get you in the end, so you may as well try to go out with some dignity...

the fact that is that jesus was a martyr, (if he existed,) a DFH, who crossed the bosses and built up too much revolutionary steam.

his mild (mostly) acceptance of that hatred has the horrific fascination of watching a sheep walking freely into the abbattoir, and so the story stuck through millennia, as a supreme example of....learned helplessness? fuck-you courage? passive aggression?

personally i would have found the story more satisfying if he had married, worked a job, raised kids and led an exemplary life as a 'normal' human being, paying tax to caesar and attention to god, he would have stuck around longer and reached more peeps with his brand of love, perhaps.

but would that have made a story that stirred the MLK's, the Teilhard's etc?

i mean, who's that noble? ultimate sacrifice is not for everybody!

aim for the moon, make it over the trees?

i love this shit, it's such a nice break from politics...

Posted by: melo | Jul 23 2008 20:17 utc | 83

jcairo, for an atheist you're coming across as a touch Inquisitorial. And you owe Annie some sort of an apology.

Those sites I linked to provide all the info needed to answer any question anyone might ask of me. You can do better than those sites, surely? Don't act the martyr just because a thread about faith ended up with some of us debating the nature of - surprise sur-fucking-prise, faith. So far, you're the only one doing any aggressive prosletyzing.

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 23 2008 20:42 utc | 84

This is the story of Hezekiah Jones...

Hezekiah Jones lived in a place... in Arkansas.
He never had too much, except he had some land,
An' he had a couple of hogs and things like that.
He never had much money
But he'd spend what he did make as fast as he made it,
So it never really mattered that he had much money.
But in a cupboard there, He kept in the cupboard... he kept in the cupboard books,
He called the books his "rainy season."

The white folks around the county there talked about Hezekiah...
They... said, "Well... old Hezekiah, he's harmless enough,
but the way I see it he better put down them goddam books,
Readin' ain't no good, for nigger is nigger."

One day the white man's preacher came around
Knockin' on doors, knockin' on all the doors in the county,
He knocked on Hezekiah's door.
He says, "Hezekiah, you believe in the Lord?"
Hezekiah says, "Well, I don't know, I never really SEEN the Lord,
I can't say, yes, I do..."

He says, "Hezekiah, you believe in the Church?"
Hezekiah says, "Well, the Church is divided, ain't they,
And... they can't make up their minds.
I'm just like them, I can't make up mine either."

He says, "Hezekiah, you believe that if a man is good Heaven is his last reward?"
Hezekiah says, "I'm good... good as my neighbor."

"You don't believe in nothin'," said the white man's preacher,
You don't believe in nothin'!"
"Oh yes, I do," says Hezekiah,
"I believe that a man should be indebted to his neighbors
Not for the reward of Heaven or fear of hellfire."

"But you don't understand," said the white man's preacher,
"There's a lot of good ways for a man to be wicked..."

Then they hung Hezekiah high as a pigeon.
White folks around there said, "Well... he had it comin'
'Cause the son-of-a-bitch never had no religion!"

-Bob Dylan

It's the books whut duz it.

-beq

I enjoy all the discussion when it isn't rude.

Posted by: beq | Jul 23 2008 20:51 utc | 85

Damn: proselytizing...

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 23 2008 20:57 utc | 86

i think you're taking this a little personally jcairo.

the absurdity of thinking anyone can win this argument that has been going on for centuries is nuts. just accept that people regard this differently due to their personal experience (or if you prefer mental capacity). if you think i stunted my mental development because i ingested peyote and other hallucinogens once apon a time i will just have to live w/that. perhaps all these years i have been suffering the consequences and didn't even know it.

i think i'll go ponder how much more fruitful my life could have been if i'd only had a brain.

a least i didn't get a tattoo.

Posted by: annie | Jul 23 2008 22:01 utc | 87

jcairo, thank you for links #25, "rare earth" one has this:

"The existence of a large, nearby moon [may be required for a radio emitting civilization to develop]. Apparently Luna, Earth's moon, is atypically large and close. Both of Mars's moons, for example, are minor rocks by comparison. What does this have to do with life? Well, it turns out that Luna kept (and still keeps) Earth's tilt stable. Without Luna, the tilt would have changes drastically over time, and no stable climate could exist. If the tilt would have stabilized on a too-large or too-small value, the results could also be disastrous; Earth's tilt is “just right”."

Very interesting when put together with idea that Luna is hollow, from http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/01jan/moon.html>observations that it rings like bell and of peculiar orbit synchronized with earth's 24 hour one, so always the same side faces us. And I'm not talking about God, for Uncle's #68 Epicurean reasons and those on your amputee link.

(have been out of town and off computer. Also think brain is always developing, at 14, 40 and 84, just develops in different directions. annie's always seemed pretty good to me.)

Posted by: plushtown | Jul 24 2008 14:49 utc | 88

#88, I should have written "peculiar rotation", not orbit, and obviously is in addition to hollow possibility, not part of it.

Posted by: plushtown | Jul 24 2008 15:16 utc | 89

@82: air tight logical supremacy; must be lonely up there. maybe, jcairo, you should invite the magical winds of altered consciousness into your life, and you can take a wondrous journey where your micro (mind) can transcend the limits imposed on consciousness and tap into the macro (universe).

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 24 2008 16:54 utc | 90

@Lizard, 90

You said magical...

Posted by: Tantalus | Jul 24 2008 18:19 utc | 91

fine

Theere are plenty of people that believe, nay have the strongest faith, that what the US does is right and good and godly

All the facts, and arguments here otherwise presented nothwithstanding.

Therefore, according to your own logic, you're own reasoning, take your little politcal suitcases just go home.

Their faith outweighs all your facts, all your "air tight logical supremacy" showing the Bush admin is full of it.

"magical winds of altered conciousness"

Love the assumptions made, I see your gut instincts are spot on again, but then guts are for digesting not thinking

I owe annie an apology for her fabricating information?

Fuck off

Posted by: jcairo | Jul 25 2008 7:31 utc | 92

It's the materialism more than the atheism that repels me; the whole universe is deadened and consists of nothing but matter. Simone Weil said that atheism can serve an important function of purification; but presumably it's a stage of development.

You might as well pray for a Mercedes Benz than to ask for an amputated limb to be restored. But that's not my idea of the spiritual or the magical either. The Divine exists in relation to spirit. The flesh has its place of honor; but the spirit holds a higher honor.

Posted by: Copeland | Jul 25 2008 8:40 utc | 93

the whole universe is deadened and consists of nothing but matter.

could you elaborate on this. is it really what you meant to say? it opens a whole range of ideas for consideration. the idea of no thing and non existence. the idea of existence being linked to essence and if something exists w/out essence it essentially exists in the realm of non existence. and yes i believe non existence exists in the same way one can create reality from non reality thereby starting a chain of events (to materialize) all based on falsehood. origin of evil?

Posted by: annie | Jul 25 2008 14:39 utc | 94

Theere are plenty of people that believe, nay have the strongest faith, that what the US does is right and good and godly........Their faith outweighs all your facts, all your "air tight logical supremacy" showing the Bush admin is full of it.

faith does not 'outweigh' fact. for example if someone tells a lie no amount of faith in that lie will turn it into fact (or reality) which for the sake of argument i will call 'existence'.. however, the lie does exist. it exists in the realm of non existence for there is no fact or reality supporting it. and something existing in this realm of 'non reality (the realm of materialism or matter i think copeland is referring to) generates a reality of 'events' based on non existence.

how man enters the equation is interesting because unlike nature or natural phenomena is that nab has the ability to create from non existence, or to lie. something nature can't do alone (as far as i know).

when i consider the idea of man being made in the 'image of god' i can't help noticing how an image, while seeming identical in reflection, is also the opposite, everything is reversed. if nature (or science) is god (existence) how does the opposite (non existence) apply to man? faith in non existence ('no fact', or matter created as a manesfestation of 'non' energy) is the culprit. but faith in and of itself is not the culprit. we all have faith in our own reality just as you have faith in science.

anyway the concept of faith outweighing fact seems a little squewed to me because it is like saying an idea weighs more than an apple. or a perception weighs more than an apple. what one would have to do is look at the manifestation of the faith, or the idea and weigh it against the apple. faith based on lies can manifest in something like the iraq war, and yes, that can certainly weigh more than an apple. but the proof is in the pudding. one of them is good for you and the other isn't. the apple is more likely a reflection of god than the war.

you may think i'm crazy, but it makes a lot of sense to me and my 'child like' brain.

Posted by: annie | Jul 25 2008 15:28 utc | 95

sorry 'nab' typo, man

Posted by: annie | Jul 25 2008 15:32 utc | 96

jcairo: i don't really understand what you are trying to argue or why this thread has you so pissed off. you seem disgruntled. i would like to understand where you are coming from, but your enraged posturing repels rather than attracts. i think anger is clouding your esteemed logic.

you are the one assuming ingesting psychotropic substances has adversely affected our friend, Annie, without citing any definitive examples of said substances causing discernible brain damage. from there you argument continued to degrade into tantrum-like flurries of rage, which is ironic considering you accused Annie of child-like posts.

suggesting you invite the magical winds of altered consciousness into your life wasn't an assumption, just an apparently failed attempt to lighten the mood a little. Christ, step back a little and see that we are all star children experiencing a limited, finite existence in this material realm.

human potential is stunted by design. we have a chance to evolve, but that evolution is a direct threat to the outdated power structures conniving fiendishly to maintain control. tell them to fuck off why don't ya. your anger is sadly misplaced.

Posted by: Lizard | Jul 25 2008 15:38 utc | 97

jcairo, could you please say where annie has lied, because this from #82 doesn't qualify:

If you'll remember, you completely fabricated what it means to toss aboot a "straw man", just pulled it whole from your sphincter and presented it as fact to bolster yet another fallacy filled post (iirc - including a tortured attempt to explain that no matter the subject being discussed, any facts brought to the table are unimportant).

After reading that, I searched and found this:

#42 from "Reprocessing Air in a Vacuum":

the process of degrading someones argument to the point of requiring them to argue the absurd is called a strawman - behold the wisdom of annie (thanks to whomever penned that originally)

what the rest of the world knows is a straw man argument:

"A straw man argument is a logical fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent.

At worst, her phrasing's sloppy, ("process", "degrading" and "requiring" are a little off, like your using "is" for "as"), but if you're disagreeing on what a straw man argument actually is, please tell me how. Also please quote some lies.

Posted by: plushtown | Jul 25 2008 15:41 utc | 98

Maybe some here need to reread the original post:

People without faith have their subjective rational. For them it is difficult to 'get' the subjective rational of people with intense faith. Vice-versa probably applies. That is not an argument for or against following a religion. It is to point out that one needs to leave ones on subjective rational to understand the other. That is neither easy nor without fear. It also takes time.

Than again I had my own experiences with psychotropic stuff, mainly LSD and mushrooms between age 14 and 18. Good stuff. If you haven't tried it do so but only in an environment where you have time and feel secure. Having people you trust and know this stuff nearby may help.

It will not degrade your intelligence like frequent alcohol consume does. Instead you will learn that your brain functions are not deterministic and can change. The big lesson from these drugs: Perception is subjective. The colors, taste, sound, though, association you experience in a "normal" state may be different to someone (even yourself) in another mental state. It is a valuable lesson in relativity and I recommend it to everyone who is mentally stable.

I also coached my ex-girlfriends boy through his 12 to 18th year. He started to experiment with drugs at 14. We didn't mind but took care it didn't screw up his obligations, i.e. school stuff. We made sure he had the trusted environment that would ensure against horror trips. He was the usual noisy and obnoxious teen but turned out quite well, intelligent, strong and successful.

I don't see why this ought to be bad at all. Especially in the personality forming years of puberty some experience that things are relative is, in my view, helpful.

Posted by: b | Jul 25 2008 18:58 utc | 99

Annie, if telling a lie means to substitute an illusion of value in the place of real value, then it is in some sense like theft. "He who steals my purse steals trash; but he who robs me of my good name..." A lie has an origin, a derivation, and an end, or outcome.

But placing a lie in the framework of non-existence seems like a thornier proposition, to me. The person who is deceived is damaged to a degree; and so the liar's art is something like assault as well. A malicious lie is hardly distinguishable from violence. Being lied into a war is, on some level, like being mugged, raped, and left for dead. Please reign me in, if I exaggerate.

What God would not wish to exist without, is I believe, what is fashioned as essence into us, when we are made. This I take it, is what is meant by "created in the image of God".

Man can't resist the temptation, sometimes, to subjugate nature and the beliefs of other human beings, using abstactions and the power of words, which are themselves abstract structure. The deadening I spoke of arises from a severely circumscribed way of looking at things. In contrast to this, is the notion that existence and essence are linked. When you read a sublime or powerful poem, the link is established, even though the medium, language, is abstract.

But surely essence permeates the universe, and the universe cannot actually be divorced from essence, without ceasing to be the universe. The deadening in western thought is not the scientific method, which I think is marvelous, and reflects another aspect of our childlike curiousity, which I believe is one of the absolute goods.

No, the deadening I spoke of is the materialistic outlook. It is far removed from the subtle, creative transformation the Greeks made from religion to theater and philosophy. "To the white man everything is dead, this stone is dead", the old chief says, in the film Little Big Man. This materialism is the lifeblood of corporations, the dialectic of human perfectability, the idolatry of the brand and the trademark, the subduction of labor into commodity, the objectification of the body, the Anglo-Saxon deed to property,...the list goes on and on. From primitive animism to dogma in a few easy (or not so easy) centuries.

Posted by: Copeland | Jul 25 2008 19:13 utc | 100