Society/Culture Nobody has anything new to say about God.

[HARKER]

You haven't come across as someone interested in seeking out any info that is directly in conflict with your own view, so I doubt you will give this a shot. But maybe I've got you wrong and you'll find it interesting or worthwhile.
I have found the video lectures of Jordan Peterson that I was discussing earlier with someone. I can't recommend these highly enough. To be clear, they aren't advocating the existence of the biblical God or anything like that; they are in-depth analysis of the bible and its significance to the development of society, the psychological significance of biblical stories and the exploration of archetypes and social order within the context of religious stories.
Give it a shot.

Sorry, two and a half hours of someone trying to make any excuse for or portray any useful significance for the bible (any bible) is way too long.

We'll never truly know what we may be like today without having been hand-cuffed by superstition, but surely the worse thing one can to do themselves is to sabotage their minds and then others' minds with lies. What a s**t way to live.

 

[ShanDog]

Sorry, two and a half hours of someone trying to make any excuse for or portray any useful significance for the bible (any bible) is way too long.

We'll never truly know what we may be like today without having been hand-cuffed by superstition, but surely the worse thing one can to do themselves is to sabotage their minds and then others' minds with lies. What a s**t way to live.

Bad news - its actually 2.5 hours x 13 lectures.

That's what actually happens when you study things closely.

Did you listen/watch any of it, or just dismiss instantly because it doesn't conform to your ideology?

 

[HARKER]

Bad news - its actually 2.5 hours x 13 lectures.
That's what actually happens when you study things closely.
Did you listen/watch any of it, or just dismiss instantly because it doesn't conform to your ideology?

Summarize it for me/us. No one is going to put in any effort on the strength of what you've put forward and for the reasoning.

BTW: Isn't two and a half hours the same as 2.5 hours?

 

[ShanDog]

Summarize it for me/us. No one is going to put in any effort on the strength of what you've put forward and for the reasoning.

BTW: Isn't two and a half hours the same as 2.5 hours?

Yeah mate, I'll just summarise 32 hours of someone else's ideas and do it justice. Also, * off with your condescension and double check if you speak for everyone before claiming it.

Here's an interesting idea: take the equivalent time that this back and forth could likely take on the subject, and instead invest it in actually watching to the lectures. Let's call it half an hour? Then decide if it's worth investing any more time into. Like a grown up big-boy.

 

[HARKER]

Yeah mate, I'll just summarise 32 hours of someone else's ideas and do it justice. Also, **** off with your condescension and double check if you speak for everyone before claiming it.

Here's an interesting idea: take the equivalent time that this back and forth could likely take on the subject, and instead invest it in actually watching to the lectures. Let's call it half an hour? Then decide if it's worth investing any more time into. Like a grown up big-boy.

So you can't summarize it and now we have two and a half hours multiplied 13 episodes?
What are his critical points/main arguments. What does he say? No one is going to watch that dribble otherwise. I watched 2 minutes. Salesman.



I've been taken by this guy lately

 

[RupieDupie]

Speaking of God, do you know who the Devil is? RupieDupie stated to no one in particular, somewhat consignently and recognising that talking to no one is a sign of insanity. But this preps the answer.

You see, Descartes dreamed up an evil Daemon and this beast is the trickster that provides us with the false reality in which we live.

Who is the evil Daemon?

The evil Daemon cannot be God because God is... <RupieDupie chuckles to himself> God is truthful and good <RupieDupie laughs out loud>.

So who is this evil Daemon?

Well, when the fog of the false reality is cleared away we find the evil Daemon is ourselves. Just like when Kung Fu Panda looks at the Dragon Scroll <spoiler alert>. The choices we make in our life create us and creates the ills against us.

 

[Snake_Baker]

This thread is getting far too intellectual for my liking.

It's time for another meme

 

[ShanDog]

The choices we make in our life create us and creates the ills against us.

I'd like that to be true, but sometimes existence is arbitrarily terrible.

 

[Total Power]

Still, I don't have a big problem with the metaphorical approach to religion. I think we are trying to achieve the same thing, how to be good humans. How to be good to other other humans and cut out the selfish and destructive parts of individual behaviour that undermine society. For me it is just easier and cleaner to think of it in direct terms.

You are on the right track, do not get sucked into fundamentalist christianity.

You can view the Bible as a source of the physical creation or "magic" which is what the ignorant does, or you can view it for what it is, and that is a book entirely about the consciousness and upright action (or dogma).

Fundamentalists have difficulty understanding the concept of myth - a myth can contain profound truths without being historically accurate.

Genesis mythology is not the only spiritual works we have. The OT is a book of myth but to presume it has a mortgage on Truth is laughable (like christian fundies assert here). If you expand your view to other religions you will come to an understading that all documents ever written on the subject are merely signposts, and that the only true religion that anyone can follow, is their own!

For example, the assumption that Judaism states that "Man is made in the image of God", is an incorrect assumption. People are relying on the literal translation of the Bible, which would be that God is a humanoid (probably with a white beard ) and who is separate from, and overseeing us and wears a white robe.

Fortunately for the point of this argument, we also have great Jewish works such as the Zohar, which expand on the concept of "God" (which does not even need to have this label). They explain that Ain, is the unmanifest absolute. It is the Absolute and it is without form. In Hindu religion, it is known as Sat.

The reason for the mythological Jesus is to intertwine critical symbology into the teachings. The symbological meanings can only be comprehended within the superior levels of consciousness as explained in detail in the Kabbalah's 'Tree of Life'. The Christmas Tree you will see today is an ancient Germanic symbol for the 'Tree of Life', which manifests itself in different forms in 'all' religions.

 

[chelseacarlton]

If we rewound humanity back as little as 100000 yrs and pushed play,most probably judaism christianity and islam would not exist and something else would,but the laws of nature and the scientific method would and always remain unchanged yet,most likely be far more advanced!
Sigh

 

[HARKER]

If we rewound humanity back as little as 100000 yrs and pushed play,most probably judaism christianity and islam would not exist and something else would,but the laws of nature and the scientific method would and always remain unchanged yet,most likely be far more advanced!
Sigh

There were several paths to take and as you say, play the game out again and it would no doubt be very different today.

All being well with the world, generations in the future won't be indoctrinated into mumbo jumbo and the only books that will have any relevance, insight, awe and 'hope' will be science books. What a good day that will be.

 

[chelseacarlton]

There were several paths to take and as you say, play the game out again and it would no doubt be very different today.

All being well with the world, generations in the future won't be indoctrinated into mumbo jumbo and the only books that will have any relevance, insight, awe and 'hope' will be science books. What a good day that will be.

We will have capabilities beyond death.
I always thought we would evolve into a bio-mech civilisation,but I think we are not too far away from growing our own failing body parts and easily replacing them.
Once we turn off the aging facilitators in our genes,we will become immortal.
Then we will colonise the universe.
The revelations from the books of abraham will be discarded apart from small sects that will surely cling to these preposterous notions that only a divine being has the above ability to negate death.Many people still love the master slave relationship,they yearn to be ruled over,told what to think and how to do it,we will probably never totally eradicate it sadly.
You only have to look at Pakistan and its continuing attempts at the U.N to globally criminalise blasphemy.A country or State that was carved from another to allow its religious beliefs freedom from another!
Pakistan is a not very humorous joke!
They cannot stop progress and progress we shall,regardless of their backward stupidity!

 

[skilts]

There were several paths to take and as you say, play the game out again and it would no doubt be very different today.

All being well with the world, generations in the future won't be indoctrinated into mumbo jumbo and the only books that will have any relevance, insight, awe and 'hope' will be science books. What a good day that will be.

All books not pertaining to the scientific method must be burned.

 

[Total Power]

I beginning to wonder who the bigger freaks are; the organised religion pushers, or the organised science pushers!?!

 

[HARKER]

I beginning to wonder who the bigger freaks are; the organised religion pushers, or the organised science pushers!?!

Where and who are these organised science pushers?

Shouldn't we all be privileged with truth or ideas based on truth?

 

[Total Power]

Where and who are these organised science pushers?

Shouldn't we all be privileged with truth or ideas based on truth?

Truth? really? I'm not sure exactly what the science freaks are "believing in". Many of them have stated that they don't believe in God!

True science freaks like Einstein and Hawking aren't stoopid enough to rule the possibility of God out. And why would you??

Scientific process will always explain everything except for the creation of scientific process itself.

There is a difference between God from a scientific point of view and God the almighty cloud sitting dude who knocks up universes in a week that is readily found in the Bible.

Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohm, Plack Einstein, Hawking etc are/were of a greater scientific mind than yours. They utilise the concept of God with reference to a number of things. For example:

Why did time/space and matter come into being?
Why did any creation of energy simply 'spit out' and disperse itself evenly.
Why are there four fundamental forces with significantly different properties guiding the Universe to be as we see it today.
etc.
etc.

As Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe". This is in reference to his contention that the Universe is geared to be like this and not just an accidental orgasm of energy. It is not a scientific point, just an opinion, and why would you begrudge the man of his opinion. So he's not a "true scientist"?? neither was Bohm etc.

Then you have the "organised scientific cult" i meant guys like Dawkins and the neo-atheists who are selling science as an objective truth, without realising that scientific process is not the only process neither it is "truth" or reflects reality. It wasn't too long ago we believed that our galaxy is in the centre of the universe.

 

[HARKER]

Truth? really? I'm not sure exactly what the science freaks are "believing in". Many of them have stated that they don't believe in God!
True science freaks like Einstein and Hawking aren't stoopid enough to rule the possibility of God out. And why would you??

Scientific process will always explain everything except for the creation of scientific process itself.

There is a difference between God from a scientific point of view and God the almighty cloud sitting dude who knocks up universes in a week that is readily found in the Bible.

Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohm, Plack Einstein, Hawking etc are/were of a greater scientific mind than yours. They utilise the concept of God with reference to a number of things. For example:

Why did time/space and matter come into being?
Why did any creation of energy simply 'spit out' and disperse itself evenly.
Why are there four fundamental forces with significantly different properties guiding the Universe to be as we see it today.
etc.
etc.

As Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe". This is in reference to his contention that the Universe is geared to be like this and not just an accidental orgasm of energy. It is not a scientific point, just an opinion, and why would you begrudge the man of his opinion. So he's not a "true scientist"?? neither was Bohm etc.

Then you have the "organised scientific cult" i meant guys like Dawkins and the neo-atheists who are selling science as an objective truth, without realising that scientific process is not the only process neither it is "truth" or reflects reality. It wasn't too long ago we believed that our galaxy is in the centre of the universe.

Stephen Hawking makes it clear: There is no God

Did Einstein Believe in God?

I guess it just depends on what one cares to cherry pick.
I didn't know Einstein nor Hawking to ask them personally, so we can go about finding the odd quote/story we care to interpret, to suit our agenda.

It doesn't matter as everything falls under the banner of science eventually.
Just because something hasn't an explanation today it will tomorrow and then it will still fall into the realm of science........science, not myth.

 

[RupieDupie]

If we rewound humanity back as little as 100000 yrs and pushed play,most probably judaism christianity and islam would not exist and something else would,but the laws of nature and the scientific method would and always remain unchanged yet,most likely be far more advanced!
Sigh

Ahh! But you seem to be missing out on God in your scenario. Most societal or religious doctrine / dogma are benign, until we get the eejits that run the show in power. Then they are brutal.

If you ever get the chance, I recommend you reading 1001 days that shaped the world. I'm not sure if it was intentionally written as such, but there are repeating patterns in the book, here are a few examples,

A person unifies an empire / kingdom / religion etc against the 'evil guys' of the day
The unification is successful
The person dies and leaves the combined empire / kingdom / religion to their >=2 successors
War ensures between the >=2 successors with mass casualties

A person / country in power puts 40,000+ people to the sword. People don't like this person / country as a result

Here's another one
Cyrus allows the displaced Jewish people to return to their homeland in 539BCE, they find other people have settled there in the interim...

Check this one out
The ruling class cause inflation / high taxation etc
Civil war ensues

Behold! God exists!

 

[RupieDupie]

Human history = On the ontogeny and natural history of God

 

[Total Power]

Did Einstein Believe in God?

I guess it just depends on what one cares to cherry pick.

.

You just brought up a random website nowhere it says he was an atheist. (Einstein).

You are right about Hawking, but not about Einstein. Einstein did not believe in the "personal god" the god of organised religion. Nowhere he said he is an atheist. But cherry picking a random website will get you nowhere but even if i check your website, nowhere i can find a quote where he said he doesnt believe in a god, he said he doesnt believe in a "personal god". The god of religion. You realise that you can be spiritual without believing in religion?
from your link:

On Spinoza, Einstein said, "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."[31] Some – like Dawkins – think Spinoza equated God with the material universe (pantheism), but Spinoza himself made clear this is mistaken. Spinoza wrote, "The view of certain people that I identify God with nature is quite mistaken."[32] The French philosopher Martial Guéroult suggested the term panentheism, rather than pantheism, to describe Spinoza’s view of the relation between God and the universe. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘panentheism’ as the theory or belief that God encompasses and interpenetrates the universe, but at the same time is greater than, and independent of it. So panentheism is similar to pantheism, but crucially in addition believes that God exists as a mind or a spirit. The idea that God is both transcendent and immanent is also a major tenet of both Christianity and Judaism.

If you read back on all that i have said before i said i am a pantheist, spinozist. I cannot disagree with Einstein here, Spinoizm got nothing to do with a literal and personal god and your link proves my point. This is why i said above, dont fall into the trap of organised religious believers, i am not one and i am not going to defend catholicism (for example)

This is also explained in the book here

https://books.google.de/books?id=Y-6yuiaZj20C&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=I+am+not+an+Atheist.+I+do+not+know+if+I+can+define+myself+as+a+Pantheist&source=bl&ots=l5zDGbyoq7&sig=-fLqk2wbhkNJXVfWloZW-yf282I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiio_6o_fLWAhUIRY8KHWQ2A9AQ6AEIdDAS#v=onepage&q=I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist&f=false

It has einstein's direct quotes, he said several times he is NOT an atheist. He is not sure of his position but NOT an atheist.

Call him whatever you like but don't call him an atheist which he said several times himself.

It doesn't matter as everything falls under the banner of science eventually.
Just because something hasn't an explanation today it will tomorrow and then it will still fall into the realm of science........science, not myth.

Bollocks, total bollocks. Some scientists professing to understanding "truth" through observation are kidding themselves. They may be just like the prisoners in Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

"We have observed, named forms and reached concensus...we know the truth!"

It is why I much prefer David Bohm's humility in explaining the role of perception in science (specifically quantum mechanics).

Bohm states:
The more views we can get, the deeper our understanding of the reality there is. The essence, or what I call the true being, we can never get hold of. Every view is limited, it’s like a mirror looking this way, or that way.

Theories do not give final true knowledge, they give a way of looking at something. The very word “theoria” in Greek means “theatre” so it is the theatre of the mind which gives insight into the thing.

Science is primarily a perceptual enterprise, and not in gaining knowledge, though knowledge appears. Knowledge is a by-product. By understanding something, you can have contact with it, so long as it is coherent. It shows that our perception is correct. So we must distinguish between correct appearances and incorrect or illusory appearances.

Our thinking process should be called an extension of our perceptual process when done rightly, and not primarily the accumulation of knowledge.




Max Planck the father of Quantum mechanics (which you atheists love to cite) said the exact same thing about mind being the matrix of matter and the nature of perceptive reality. I can quote many other brilliant scientists, but as i told you do not sell science as an objective reality, which it doesn't claim to be. Its the atheists who make it sound so, but it doesn't become so and will never become such.

“As a physicist, that is, a man who had devoted his whole life to a wholly prosaic science, the exploration of matter, no one would surely suspect me of being a fantast. And so, having studied the atom, I am telling you that there is no matter as such! All matter arises and persists only due to a force that causes the atomic particles to vibrate, holding them together in the tiniest of solar systems, the atom.

Yet in the whole of the universe there is no force that is either intelligent or eternal, and we must therefore assume that behind this force there is a conscious, intelligent Mind or Spirit. This is the very origin of all matter.” (Planck, as cited in Eggenstein 1984, Part I; see “Materialistic Science on the Wrong Track”).

Anyone can blindly follow whatever is preached to them, including atheism.

I am not against science i am citing science. There is no "reality" as such, QM says so. Reality is a product of consciousness. But as i said: As I said, I love science. I simply recognise that it has severe limitations and that the Universe does not run on observation.

This is why i said organised religion and organised science, its 2 sides of the same ******* coin. Both selling **** as objective truth.

 

[HARKER]

Total Power We're spending a lot of time on what Einstein thought and now it doesn't matter what Hawking thought. What's your point?
I've said all along that I wouldn't discount the possibility of a creator.......call that a God if you want, but I just can't subscribe to any of mans gods without empirical evidence that simply doesn't exist, nor will it likely ever exist. That would be somewhat daft wouldn't it?

Albert Einstein's religious views have been widely studied and often misunderstood. Einstein stated that he believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza. He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naïve. He clarified however that, "I am not an atheist", preferring to call himself an agnostic, or a "religious nonbeliever." When asked if he believed in life after death, Einstein replied, "No. And one life is enough for me."

​

So what exactly are we arguing about here?


Of course science has flaws but other than for the odd rogues, it does search for objective truths, does it not? How is that bollocks?
If we don't subscribe to science, to which quantum physics is a part of, what's the alternative?


Do you think that science is a conspiracy? If so, why and who is driving it?


BTW: I'm not an atheist as I've said many times before. That's only a term developed because of religion as without religion, we wouldn't have the term.

 

[Total Power]

I don't "deride science". I encourage it. The only thing I have against science, is that I consider that it is not the only way to obtain knowledge.

Not every piece of knowledge is going to be publishable of Wikipedia. There is personal knowledge. Personal knowledge does not not exist, just because you can't duplicate it in a fricken particle accelerator.

The dream I had last night about an amusement park ride happened to me. Now you ask me for proof of that dream. I know it happened to me. KNOW IT! But I couldn't proove it to you scientifically in a month of Sundays...so therefore it didn't happen?? Hmmm...

People who've had Near Death Experiences know their experiences were real too. In fact scientists don't dispute that they happen. You ask for proof, go and read the near death sites. Read all of their accounts like I have. Stop looking for differences and start seeing the synergies. They are remarkably similar despite the fact that they are muslims, christians, hindus, atheists, mormons!

Practicers of meditation also experience similar conditions to Near Death Experiencers. Past life regression hypnosis yields similar traits to both NDEs and profound meditation.

Now having said that i will be considered as delusional, yet the scientists who are talking about multiverses, string theory, parallel universes simulation hypothesis are clearly genius'. Clearly double standards.

 

[HARKER]

Why so defensive TP? Who said you're delusional?
You may be right and you may be wrong, no more and no less than any other person that gives the bigger questions in life, their own 'free-minded' time.

Frankly, I'm not particularly interested in others' quotes, whether they be Einsteins, Plancks, Hawkings, Sam Newmans or Eddie McGuires.
I'm much more interested in how people come to their conclusions, but only if they own them their thoughts/ideas.

I've had what you'd call a near-death experience too and for some time I wanted to make something more of it, than for what I now recognize could have been a simple matter of my bodily chemicals playing tricks on me.
I'm very interested in psychedelics and the doors they can open up. I'm particularly interested in DMT though, as many who have partaken of it, share similar experiences. It blows me away with the places they go and the 'beings' they meet.

All I'm putting forward is that, as has been the case since the year dot, all the things that may have been previously labeled miracles, god interventions, magic, revelations, you name it, are slowly being explained by science, so why shouldn't near death experiences, dreams etc. (Actually they are explained) and discussions of multiverses, string theory, multi-dimensions, travel faster than light etc etc sit within the realm of science. Don't they? They do to me, anyway.

 

[Total Power]

Frankly, I'm not particularly interested in others' quotes, whether they be Einsteins, Plancks, Hawkings, Sam Newmans or Eddie McGuires.
I'm much more interested in how people come to their conclusions, but only if they own them their thoughts/ideas.

This is the point i am trying to make. Why should science be the "only" tool available to us as an "accepted" method of arriving at a conclusion? fundamentalist atheists see no other way, its science or nothing forgetting the fact that science is a study of the material world, its a quest, nothing more. Things exist outside of observation as well.

I've had what you'd call a near-death experience too and for some time I wanted to make something more of it, than for what I now recognize could have been a simple matter of my bodily chemicals playing tricks on me.

So assuming its those "chemicals" playing tricks on you, how come every single NDEer is prone to the SAME hallucinations? even if i concede the fact these are hallucinations, why are we prone to the same hallucination of religious nature? if i get high on alcohol tonight and start to hallucinate its highly unlikely that i will hallucinate the same as you yes? then howcome every single individual is prone to the SAME experience and assuming its those "chemicals" even, why are we "geared" to have such experiences of mystical nature?

All I'm putting forward is that, as has been the case since the year dot, all the things that may have been previously labeled miracles, god interventions, magic, revelations, you name it, are slowly being explained by science, so why shouldn't near death experiences, dreams etc. (Actually they are explained) and discussions of multiverses, string theory, multi-dimensions, travel faster than light etc etc sit within the realm of science. Don't they? They do to me, anyway.

There are no miracles in Gnosticism. You are talking about organised religion here again, in pantheism/gnosticism there are no miracles as god doesnt exist as a father figure like it does in catholicism. We are all subjected to the laws of the material world, hence there are no miracles. Hence stephen hawking is wrong when he is talking about religion and science being incompatible, problem is organised religion has given us a bad name and i am not going to defend it.

String theory by name talks about strings. We cannot observe strings, yet we talk about it. We cannot know about other dimensions or test or verify it yet we talk about it. We cannot even have a half decent hypothesis if its a simulation we are living it, yet most scientists are convinced by it. But if i bring mysticism up then fundie atheists are up in arms. I am not being defensive, its the same as organised religion!

 

[HARKER]

You may not like this and it goes against what I said earlier, but these were my thoughts years before I saw this video and deGrasse will get it through quicker than I would and ever so much more eloquently.

Just the first minute alone is hard to argue against, but deGrasse has made errors in some claims he has put forward.......there's one in here also.
Did you find it?