Religion as an Invention by AnthonyT

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Religion as an Invention

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Friday, April 15, 2011 15:53
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Thursday, April 14, 2011 12:00 PM

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Thank you for the definitions, Rose: Right on.

As to the other, I'll hang onto my beliefs if you don't mind. IF one strives to become self-aware, those things cannot exist. What you're talking about, in my opinion, are thsoe who have NO desire to become self-aware, so of course they'll never grow out of their sickness. How many of the people you describe have any desire to become self-aware? If they DID, self-awareness would affect them the same as what you call decent people, but they never WILL. Unfortunately, FEW will, good people or not, so the same patterns continue. But the decency I spoke of is something attained by striving for self-awareness; without that, there can be no guarantee of decency or knowledge of right and wrong. See what I'm saying?

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, April 14, 2011 12:29 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

I do, Niki, and I am a proponent of awareness, and I wouldn't want you to think otherwise. I refer to Ignorance as the most poisonous of the Poisons, it really is my least favorite thing.
Some brains are broken, though, pure and simple. I'm not talking about sickness or illness or imbalance, but literal missing brain tissue, missing function, entirely missing pieces. Something can be built up to a certain extent, even a great extent, but when something is actually missing it's more than just a roadblock, it's a chasm. Compassion, to such people, is much like the color green to a man with no eyes. They may have heard of it, they may have some idea of its meaning, but it isn't something they can experience. Of course they don't have the desire to meditate, become aware, or become compassionate, because those things do not exist in their world. I don't think this is true of a majority of people, or even a majority of the people who do terrible things, but it is something that exists. Unfortunately, there really are some who are not created equal. I'd like it to not be true, but there's too much evidence for me to ignore it.

Speaking of science, though, you may find this interesting:
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2011/01/21/mindfulness.meditation.tra
ining.changes.brain.structure.8.weeks

What reason had proved best ceased to look absurd to the eye, which shows how idle it is to think anything ridiculous except what is wrong.

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Thursday, April 14, 2011 12:49 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I understand what you're saying. But I'll hold my own beliefs. Can't be unproven, since those you speak of will never seek self-awareness, right? So I'll go on believing that if they DID, they WOULD. Besides, in general the comment is mean to indicate REGULAR people, not those crppled by brain disorders.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Thursday, April 14, 2011 1:04 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Well, if those movies really are floating around whatever, I don't look back and say that there was ever a perfect society, there are flaws in every decade in history, they may fluctuate with time and what's popular but I don't really think that much changes in the world in regards to behavior. What does change is people's opinion and acceptance of certain behaviors.

I'm so done with Libya, we shouldn't be in there. I think that people complain more about war if it is the candidate they didn't support who puts us into one. That's why I hear fewer people around me complaining about Libya, because the candidate they voted for chose it, note that my city is very democrat-based/liberal and sometimes people here care more about the candidate than the values being practiced.

DT, you're thinking of Bathsheba, the beautiful and married woman that David saw bathing on her roof down the road. Unfortunately, as has been the case throughout history with kings and rulers, they get whatever they want and they go power crazy and do whatever they have to do to get what they want, whether its good or not. I think that's one of the apparent lessons to be learnt from this incident: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Satan is a high up angel who got deposed. When you are farming you often work a lot, especially at harvest time. My dad works six days a week (not a farmer but self employed). I see that commandment as meaning something like that working hard is important but we have to take time to rest because if we don't it is bad for us, God thought the Israelites needed it spelled out further because they were prone to disobeying in the desert. I feel that obeying and honoring are not always the same thing. Sure with little ones obeying and honoring are taken to be similar, but I don't think God would want you to obey your parents if they were telling you to do something bad or harmful, then clearly your parents aren't thinking straight, you can still respect them without obeying their bad commands. Then there are of course parents who are just trash and then its tough, maybe you can find someone else to be your substitute parents and honor them. The Bible also says "Parents, do not exasperate your children.".

I have to side with Rose on this one, some people are missing those pieces and they have to learn them in another manner, or at least to conform to a society that has them. If a person has antisocial personality disorder (sometimes serial killers have this) they don't understand on a feeling level these concepts, so you have to approach it differently, instead of saying "You can't hurt others because it harms them, makes them upset and is wrong for the general good" you have to say something like "If you hurt someone else you get consequences and then you get the shaft, so if you want to stay out of inconvenience and trouble you have to follow the laws or else you get creamed".

Of course you want to try your best to raise them with good morals, this above approach is my idea of what you do once they're grown if they haven't been able to asimilate the information the normal moral way.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Thursday, April 14, 2011 3:31 PM

DREAMTROVE

ETA: This rant was based in part on a misunderstanding, I'm considering it for deletion.

Those who do not see radical and rapid shifts in societies moral values are not seeing the world as it is, they are projecting their own values onto the world, and then seeing that reflected back at them.

I find the changes so fickle as to be completely meaningless by any moral compass. Just a couple decades ago, a man could spend life in prison for having sex with another man, in Georgia, perhaps he still can, but now if a father were to protest that he did not want this same man to teach his son in gym, that father could be accused of hate speech.

What about terrorism, where we also have lists and laws that seem arbitrary and to change weekly. It seems to be enough to condemn you that you are "suspected" of being "associated" with someone who is "suspected" of being "associated" with a group that has been "designated" as terrorist. That's pretty vague. Punishments include everything up to torture and assassination. Obama had an American citizen assassinated for blogging pro-islamic views last year was it? This is not a coherent legal structure, it's law du jour.

What next, illegal aliens? What if you're just suspected of being an illegal alien. They can shoot you, right? Lately, suspect=guilty.

What about the medicine you take. If you maintain your health with some supplement, tomorrow it might be an evil illegal drug. You might have a choice of die or go to jail.

What if the school says your kid must take a drug? This is a new one. No one responded to that, I notice. This idea that you can drug children is a new moral value, completely repugnant to that same society of not very long ago.

What if you refuse? Apparently, you can be charged with a crime. This is a new concept. If you don't give a health drug, you are potentially a murderer. I suppose the same logic would say that if you do not give your child the recommended psychoactive drug this would constitute child abuse.

A friend of mine recently responded to my comments on statistics of the United States and its internal enforcement staff and budgets that we had radically surpassed Nazi Germany in fascism. I've thought about that a lot lately.

People are dying right here right now from what we now think is okay, we are dying. And someone is afraid of how people are portrayed in movies?

Our moral values are made from the mid 1990s, Our religions were written in the 1880s and 1890s, and for some "new christians" maybe as late as the 2000s, but in the age of television, no one has any memory passed what the box said yesterday.

War is peace, double plus good.

Quote:
Riona: What does change is people's opinion and acceptance of certain behaviors.

Thank you. Exactly. That's what I mean. That is their moral value set, they learned it yesterday from the brainwashing box, and now they spout it out, they don't even remember their own lives, as witness.

PR,

I don't think this is where psychopaths come from. I used to, but I've known many people with brain abnormalities. Really severe ones. It doesn't affect their moral judgment, not so much. I've known many more people who had severe imbalances. It's no determinant of values.

Now I'm pretty much convinced it's neither structural or chemical, that it is in fact psychological.

People learn behaviors, such as "A will cause B"

They become invested "If I believe X, then I'm not to blame for Y"

They construct goals for themselves "I should have 1 2 and 3, and a chance at 4, I was meant to control 5 and avoid 6"

They develop their views of relations with other people "What they want is important, and I should sacrifice," or "What I want is important, and I must help them so they will help me" or "What they want doesn't matter, I must make them help me" or "If they help me they are useful, otherwise they are not" or "I am the only one who can help me, others might as well not exist."

All of these things go into the human psyche, and create a logical set of rules by which we determine our actions.

I've been in almost every chemical state, because of the guinea pig thing, and I can tell you that they are very different from one another, but they only alter so much, even at the extreme.

I've worked with a number of people with severe brain damage. It's generally just harder for them to think, but doesn't define their belief system.

The only thing I've found in this direct is that people who lose their parts of their prefrontal lobe can lose their "moral center" and this makes them stop searching for alternatives, and simply select the default "greater good" option on all items. Those with a fully functional brain seem to reject the greater good in favor of searching for a yet undiscovered option.

I'll give you a change in my own judgments of others:

I used to value the input of those I considered "Intelligent." Then I studied a lot of animal and insect behavior and decided that intelligence was cumulative of a community. Thus, the intelligence of the individual was less important. This led me to seek a wider ranger of opinions from a wider audience, I become more interested in hearing everyone's take, rather than favoring those that I considered "more intelligent." My understanding of the way animals think changed, and it changed the way I valued other humans.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Thursday, April 14, 2011 3:52 PM

DREAMTROVE

My apologies.

I often edit my posts because I tend to write long rants, and as a result, I deleted some segues, so what I posted, upon reflection, didn't make any sense.

I hold that moral values are very fickle, and at the whim of whomever is in power.

Anyone remember "The black guy always dies?" That was a media standard for a long time.

How about Willie Hays? 1931-1968. A moral value set was constructed, and then disassembled. Deal with those radical shifts for a second. 1930, you have tarzan and jane gone wild and naked in the jungle, within a few years, no girl would dream of premarital sex, or even mention it, that slowly is starting to falter in the 1960s as more foreign films come to the US, the code is repealed and within a year you have Satan raping Sharon Tate on screen.

The moral code of acceptable and unacceptable changes every couple of years, and the sheeple take it in and reflect it on society, and stranger yet, they seem to, as they do it, believe that it was always so.

Anyway, sorry for the mix up, I didn't mean movies about gays. I actually don't remember any movies about gays until recently. There were probably a couple foreign ones, or John Waters, but I don't think that's mainstream.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Thursday, April 14, 2011 6:58 PM

PHOENIXROSE

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I've known many people with brain abnormalities. Really severe ones. It doesn't affect their moral judgment, not so much.

Which proves only that not every single brain abnormality leads to the moral compass being broken. It does not prove that broken moral compasses do not stem from certain brain abnormalities. Damage to the right frontal lobe, the right temporo-parietal junction, and certain deeper brain structures that affect emotions and mirror neurons, will produce a change in behavior. Tumors, accidents, and birth defects have all shut down the moral compass. It doesn't always lead to murder, necessarily, but it always leads to dangerous behavior, sometimes right alongside a declaration that they know it "isn't right" but that doesn't affect them in any real way. There have also been tumors, accidents, and birth defects that lead to a happy, sunny outlook and abiding enjoyment of life. Some have rendered people incapable of logic, or deprived them of language, or just turned them vegetative. I never said that all brain abnormalities would produce a psychopath, but that psychopaths were missing certain key elements of brains structure. They are different statements.

BTW, I think drugging children is repugnant. I don't know where you first brought it up, I didn't see it until your recent posts, but I am definitely not okay with it.

What reason had proved best ceased to look absurd to the eye, which shows how idle it is to think anything ridiculous except what is wrong.

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Friday, April 15, 2011 8:14 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

I’ll start out with drugging children. I think we discussed that, and were all pretty much in accord that it is repugnant and wrong. I leave exception (teeeeny ones in reality) for children who are VERY obviously suffering from a serious disorder...and I mean VERY. Other than that: shame on them! I know most p-docs and those of their thinking consider things “very” which I would not...not by a long shot. But I think you know what I mean.

DT, you are, of course, welcome to your opinion. I disagree. From what I have seen over 60 years, moral values have steadily IMPROVED in America. Slowly, incompletely, but I see more tolerance these days for more and more people, whatever their “difference” is from what is considered society’s norm. I’ve seen persecution COME from things society hasn’t learned to accept---like women in the workplace, which prejudice came with women joining the work force, but the prejudices of most things (and even that, slowly) have lessened over time. When you think of it, overt prejudice against Jews has minimized to the point of almost complete acceptance; Black people are on the way; and more and more these days, homosexuals. I don’t see prejudices coming and going as much as slowly going.

I see prejudices coming into BEING, in other words, in reaction to society---or to manipulation of society’s interests or things becoming an issue for one reason or another. Things like the New York Community Center and that expanding to mosques, for example, which wouldn’t be an issue at all if it weren’t for a few people making it one and society picking it up. But homosexuality, as far as I know, has always been a taboo in our culture, as have illegal aliens, etc.

In other words, I think morals PROGRESS as time goes on and more becomes known. Two steps back sometimes for one forward, but forward nonetheless.

I agree, Riona, to a point, as I agree with Rose to a point. People with true Antisocial Disorder and Psyopathics literally AREN’T capable of empathy, and no amount of teaching can change that. The only thing that can be done, unfortunately, is to let them know what society and the law doesn’t tolerate, then if they can’t function within society, incarcerate them. “The good of the many...” as it were. I was never suggesting that anyone attempt to “teach” them about compassion or tell them what they do might hurt someone else, I hope you didn’t get that impression. People like that can learn to cope within society, if they choose, but empathy is simply impossible for them. Rose said it for me; that having a brain abnormality doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with morality. Yes, bipolars in psychotic manic phases, schizophrenics, and others can LOSE their recognition of what’s moral, but they’re not like that all the time. There are those Rose and Riona spoke of who are physically incapable of morality, but many of those aren’t diagnosed with anything. Aside from those they mentioned, I don’t think moral values and mental difficulties are exclusive.

Is it in the book that “you have tarzan and jane gone wild and naked in the jungle”? Because I never saw it on the screen, it was a fantasy which was pretty tame—-within the context of our particular society and nudity, and even then, I think the “belly button rule” was in existence. There’s a difference between what society either accepts quietly or finds titillating (or both), but where society in the larger sense finds it moral or not doesn’t necessarily reflect that. “Morals” about dress have slowly progressed, quite drastically, from long ago—-yes, there were small portions of society which were okay with it, but not society at large.

Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off

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Friday, April 15, 2011 3:53 PM

DREAMTROVE

Quote:
From what I have seen over 60 years, moral values have steadily IMPROVED in America.

Which is why we now openly endorse torture as a nation.

I'm sorry Niki. The moral decay of the USA is as bad as any I've seen in the annals of history. I'm not talking about gays and whatever weird sex hangups the xtian right has, I mean just basic respect for humanity, life and the planet in general.

I feel like we're living in Jello Biafra's nightmare dystopia right now.

DKSF. I'm going to follow CTS's lead and bow out for now. Too much going on.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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