Jordan Peterson, the Shepherd Affair, and LGBT Rights

With reference to youtube´s "The Lindsay Sheperd Affair" by Jordan Peterson ***

"Should" is a word that can be used in the high integrity Christian AND scholarly sense to disabuse abusive notions. Informed social views would blot out bigotry like yours, for one, eliminating the very antagonistic version you pose. That is, your bigoted stance should never exist. ***

AI: 1."Should" is a word that can be used in the high integrity Christian AND scholarly sense to disabuse abusive notions."<< A reasonable intro. 3. " Informed social views would blot out bigotry like yours, for one, eliminating the very antagonistic version you pose. "<< Then immediately contradicting the entire canon of your original appeal to authorities, both of faith and secularism in the context of biological gender reality, by asserting another appeal to authority in that of "Informed social views" in some failed attempt at defending the usurpation of biological gender reality by "informed social views", amounting to the systemic political correctness of androgyny and the subsequent inevitable depravities that follow, which is a hallmark of the end of the civilization and/or culture in question. ***

1. It´s rather amusing to have to use “responsible scholarly form” to cite your superficial and formulaic stuff. So, look, “biological gender reality” is already reductionistic. So, please do yourself a favor and look up that term. BGR is merely an elementary component in the complexity of the psychosocial and cultural processes that operate on a theoretical spectrum including, say, Scots wearing traditional kilts and Ivy League theater actors performing in drag. That´s oversimplified, but dealt with more depth in a moment.

2. As for your phrase “ systemic political correctness of androgyny,” the issue is pluralism and Civil Rights, while label seeks to hide your bigotry and denialism, to say the least. I have actually employed my educational and professional experiential competence to research psychological journals. See pop source link at end. I confirmed what I already heard as an undergrad years ago, psychosocial gender identity formation involves a broad spectrum template. Particularly relevant is abusive behavior in the formative environment. That´s why I not only address the masquerading hate of victimizers like your lot, but refer to both Civil Rights and Abuse Victim Rights. I don´t support general neologic terms of address, just simple inclusive ones especially “their.” “Androgynous” is one possible description, and your discomfort and hostility around it demonstrate your own need for anger management, sensitivity, and other appropriate forms of training. As for your redundant and here edited reference to “subsequent inevitable depravity,” you certainly cite no authority.

Transgender identities don´t nullify sex-crime laws, exposing a basic fallacy of your kind. In fact, “pedophilia” is a crime as is statutory rape and child sex abuse, yet the US itself is crude in many of its “child bride laws that defend perpetrators. That´s a diifferent target, however that you all are missing. As faith goes, traditional Christian doctrines are faced with their antiquated and reactionary crudeness and still basic deviation from Jesus´ teaching of “Do not judge” and “protect the least of these.” Vast economic abuse linked to diverse forms of victimization is inherent in US-led corporate profiteering, which JP and you all don´t question. As civilization and culture go, you better ask why the Religious Right cuddles with corporate profiteer idolators, berates and judges “the least of these,” and só on. You should check with the Evangelical Environmental Network for a little more integrity and redemption. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-us/201812/sex-gender-roles-identities-and-orientations

. 3. “Your bigoted stance” I cite my own term to highlight your own overwrought, distorted, and unself-conscious response. You parrot prejudicial labels, regurgitate them hollowly, and commit basic logical fallacies. My strengths sustain themselves. Yours are simply as derivative and undiscerning as they are poorly informed and monomaniacal. Jesus is the Savior, and truly unmistakable in the truth of his teachings. Free yourself from your hateful teachers and doctrines and learn why Jesus taught “God wants mercy not sacrifice” and “Do not judge. *** SO "i'm a historian of medicine" that just means he reads what others have written about medicine and then writes about what he has read, he is not a scientist or a doctor. He is a humanities instructor. *** Me: Uh oh. And guess what the uncertainties and complexities of any "science," and medical practice (trying to use "science") mean, in particular dealing with humans, not robots or machines as your kind has been misled to prejudically presume? Laws regarding medical malpractice, preventable deaths (enormous numbers), and that little detail of medical ethics. And patient care? Seems they should give you Harlow´s wire-mommy gerbil water bottle for baby monkeys. No huuuumanities-ewww, "woo," and that´s all you´re down to, little coddled cogs. Mmm, just savor the metal straw tube, glub-glub, and start the autistic rocking and anti-social deprived screeching. Wait, you already have, collectively in an abuse of airbrushed, muscle-bound, quick-fix, flying monkey (how about that, Primates?), arrogant pro-profiteering logic. Oh, yeah, and there´s always that Jesus-theism thing that JP assumes in the cold apostate pose. It should go without saying that your kind are followers of Judas, not Jesus, and repentance and redemption beckon you like Dicken´s ghosts of Scrooge. *** TM: "You teach TRANS Studies." A sentence that should never exist. ***

*** Me: "Should" is a word that can be used in the high integrity Christian AND scholarly sense to disabuse abusive notions. Informed social views would blot out bigotry like yours, for one, eliminating the very antagonistic version you pose. That is, your bigoted stance should never exist.

*** CW: "Informed social views" Informed by who? Have you checked the bias of your assertions before laying "bigotry" at the feet of your opponents? ***

Me: Uh, yeah. I go to the UN UDHR. Do you kiss your US flag at night? ***

That explains a lot, except my question... unless you meant to answer "Informed by the UN/UN Human Rights division" which as far as I'm concerned, are a joke. How is the UN doing with the pedophile/child predator problem in the division of Human Rights? Not so great last I checked. Ironic you would then claim I own and kiss a US flag at night- I never made a claims to my nationality, nor where my opinions were formed. Should I expect more erroneous presumptions from this conversation? ***

*** Me: You should stop projecting your "erroneous presumptions" is what you should do. As to what the UN UDHR "explains," that´s actually your inverted projection of the issue, cravenly disguised in your cynical and egotistically distorted personalizing and reductionism of the issue. You falsely equate the institution and principle to the resistant and antagonistic response by what? Whom? The "respectable? Uh, the crass and victimizing, more like it, as human agents committing a vast scale of abuses who need to learn to choose appropriately. Apparently that´s not working out for your kind and your, well, anti-humanitarian and anti-Jesus chosen values, to be polite for the moment. Your "expectations" "as far as you´re concerned" are notably left murkily implicit as you twist and turn in your attempt to pretend you´re invisibly nested in your mightily airbrushed "Muscle-for-Brains" profiteering role models. Your preferred identification with anti-Human Rights, i.e. anti-democratic, anti-social, and otherwise control- and dominate inclinations, "creep like magma," so to speak. And no less are you snared by your own shifty snideness, "non-American." Whether you´re just British, or some other nationality designation, words are fishing nets in the utility belt of God´s love and informed intellect, not dry sticks snapping in your kind of flying monkey viscous oil slick, as it were. The UN is an institution, there, Slick, that has first of all taken FD and Eleanor Roosevelts´ modern high integrity Christian visions and metaphorically planted a huge flag and beacon that is/are the UN principles. Just like wayward hypocrite and apostate Christians, or their reactionary secularized fellow wayward herd, it is the US-led profiteering ideology that is your god. Pedophiles? Try child sexual abuse in general, there, Slick-o the puppet. Personally, I also advocate Abuse Victims Rights and Anti-Offender Denial analysis to deal with your kinds´ perpetrating "False Memory" toxic denialism. Your kind who try to kill human rights and suck up to socioconomic injustice try to blame the UN for what your kind drives by pushing anti-social profiteering? The Catholics have further institutional problems due to their archaic qualities, but then, it is your ever-lovin´ profiteers who are still waving the prevailing post-colonial "magic wand," isn´t it? Now, you insert all the flags you need on top of the US flag that leads whichever one you kiss in idolatry. For fun, there is almost no chance that it is Danish or Social Europe with your fluency. That´s how to have fun with intellectual firepower for Jesus and his high integrity legacy, in the face of your stale pretzel expectations. You slip right passed that class. Unsustainabilty, however, is creeping up your creepy, oily rear end, because oil isn´t just slippery, it´s gooey and toxic, too...."Clean the cup within" Slick-o, as per Jesus and Freud and Jung no less. That´s when intellect shakes off its shackles. And you are in heavy ones. Clank, clank, clan......

Christianity, interfaith, & Scientific Frameworks of Prayer?

JB: I was not trying to present a case for any particular religion, be it liberal Christianity or any other specific theology (Buddhism, Sufi Islam, etc.) that I might like without necessarily identifying with it. A panentheistic faith …See More ***

Me: The framework has important intellectual breadth, I grant you, as secularism itself has made possible with such Enlightenment accomplishments as the "Freedom of Religion" and later formulations of Civil, Human, and Sustainability rights. However, the Muslims have given a very concrete angle demonstrating my point in part. Forty plus Muslim countries have refused to acknowledge the UN Universal Dec of Human Rights because it has unacceptable Christian features. They have instead developed the 1990 Cairo Dec of Islamic HR based on Sharia Law. It privileges Muslims and men, for example. Historically and Sociologically, for starters, your framework isn´t merely "scientific" and disconnected from Christianity. That´s an artificially constructed assumption that reflects the anti-Christian atmosphere of the corporate-funded Religious Right most strongly, but also Scientism ideology that "Science is the Absolute path to truth." Well, it can be if done completely, which means interrelating all applicable component features. Sustainability provides a second concrete context. Corporate profiteers manipulating the secular and religious right wing have negated the emergency that is the conclusion in sustainability reports like the IPCC and 2005 World Bank and UNEP Eco Assessment. Science is a form of Philosophy controlled at large by profiteers, who have supported those who bend Jesus out of shape. Good scientists of the IPCC are handcuffed by Science´s pretenses, meanwhile. Failing to acknowledge Jesus´ psychosocial and cultural legacy in Scientific Philosophy means Science doesn´t have to help the poor and victimized. And that means anybody the corporate profiteers can victimize and hold hostage with their ideological arguments using Science their way: "it´s lousy jobs or the environment!" Jesus legacy is the mohastic schools that became the modern Universities, where Christian scholars took Aristotelian and Archimedic Philosophy and used such principles as "God´s omnipotence and Freedom" to overcome Greek limiting assumptions. As unsustainability shows, the key elements of Jesus´very unique, specific, and highest integrity with its real legacy, "Love thy neighbor as thyself, until thy enemy" needs to be reclaimed urgently. Like Gandhi showed, nobody needs to abandon their religion, but they do need to address Jesus´ authentic point about the poor and victimized in the face of profiteering lying, cheating, and manipulating of "Science" and its idolatrized reputation, and Jesus as a white, nationalist profiteer ***

Everything one wants to say cannot be fit into a two-page article. I need to send you the detailed outline that I had prepared for my three-session UU Youth Group course titled “The Moral Teaching of Jesus of Nazareth” which was based on the Jefferson Bible. I think that is only available as a PDF file on my tower computer and my laptop and not anywhere on my iPhone and so I will send it when I log back into one of those systems. ***

You use the term "Everything one wants to say," but the truth is that your perspective does not assert Jesus´ importance, nor that of other great spiritual teachers, like mine does. If you think that you do, then it is you who doesn´t see how to do that. Having been an academic high achiever, I studied the very foundations of semantics in college so I can´t let anyone think that all individuals have the same level of insight as everybody else. They don´t. For example, treating Jesus as merely a moral teacher is a merely philosophical view of Jefferson´s that itself is presumptuous. It ultimately ignored the reality of religious experience and much of its meaning. It´s a good start in beginning to approach the significance of Jesus, but to state that "moral teacher" is a fully adequate treatment is a rationalist approach. It is untenable in light of an interdisciplinary analysis. Even Jefferson had access to the history of the Saints, or knowledge of their historical existence, and George Fox and the Quaker Friends, who exemplify high integrity progressive Christianity and the role of religious experience. He relied on the rationalist Unitarian J Priestley, however. Again, which is fine if it their limiting assumptions are made clear. That´s ultimately an issue of clarity and authenticity facing you. *** ***

Me: You use the term "Everything one wants to say," but the truth is that your perspective does not assert Jesus´ importance, nor that of other great spiritual teachers, like mine does. If you think that you do, then it is you who doesn´t see how to do that. Having been an academic high achiever, I studied the very foundations of semantics in college so I can´t let anyone think that all individuals have the same level of insight as everybody else. They don´t. For example, treating Jesus as merely a moral teacher is a merely philosophical view of Jefferson´s that itself is presumptuous. It ultimately ignored the reality of religious experience and much of its meaning. It´s a good start in beginning to approach the significance of Jesus, but to state that "moral teacher" is a fully adequate treatment is a rationalist approach. It is untenable in light of an interdisciplinary analysis. Even Jefferson had access to the history of the Saints, or knowledge of their historical existence, and George Fox and the Quaker Friends, who exemplify high integrity progressive Christianity and the role of religious experience. He relied on the rationalist Unitarian J Priestley, however. Again, which is fine if it their limiting assumptions are made clear. That´s ultimately an issue of clarity and authenticity facing you.

*** JB- I am also an academic high achiever. I was the valedictorian of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_College which is one of the most selective high schools in the world. I realize that you attended Harvard but I actually earned a Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard. As you can see from my CV https://www.polymerexpert.biz/dr-bicerano, I am the author of a comprehensive 800-page textbook and dozens of scientific publications, as well as inventor in dozens of patents. We were having what appeared to be a collegial dialogue on religion when you turned it into a rat race about who is smarter by claiming that you are an academic high achiever with a higher level of insights. The scientific method is the only way to discover objective truths about the physical universe. We can exercise our intuitions to try to answer questions that extend beyond the capabilities of the scientific method. I am quite satisfied with the regard that I have for Jesus and the other great moral teachers of the past and think that my perspective is quite realistic. What is presumptuous as well as ridiculous is you telling me that you are an academic high achiever and therefore have better insights, apparently not realizing what my credentials are. Image may contain: 1 person, sitting and indoor ***

JB Fr. Dr. Richard W. Kropf is a respected liberal Roman Catholic priest and theologian in Michigan, interested in the interface between science and Christianity. I invited him three times to give sermons at my local UU church. We became good friends and spent a huge amount of time over the years discussing a broad range of topics related to our mutual interest. Our discussion was always collegial, with nobody claiming to be a higher academic achiever and to therefore have better insights. He wrote a wonderful brief book as a result of these discussions. He starts in the Acknowledgements by recognizing that this book owes its existence to the discussions we had. He then starts the book itself by posing the key question I had asked him, with only a small amount of paraphrasing. https://www.amazon.com/FOREVER-Evolution.../dp/B01F3U8LQQ *** And the extent of your formal educational level and statistical details of your professional papers means what when you blow up like a blowfish? My credentials, like Harvard grad and author, ecological activist Bill McKibben´s, have been used in ways that reflect my dedication to Psychology and Spiritual Development, Social Services, and Social and Environmental Justice Activism. Meanwhile, the keenness of my intellect in service to God through interfaith UU spiritual integrity and Jesus allows me insights that you can´t grasp, and attempt to ridicule or ignore in your pride. My points remain, and you have demonstrated amply the issue. I didn´t need to enter into details about my background to address a psychological and semantic issue, the one embedded in your reply suggesting that their is no identity difference and insight difference existing between you and me. That simple and powerful distinction and truth also relates to authenticity and spiritual wisdom in relation to God. You like "Rev Dr." Kropf? Great. Now, my Harvard Freshman History of Science class with IB Cohen included the rise of Sociology and Psychology, which you clearly have little appreciation for. Yet, while I am a kind of prophet referring to the urgency of sustainability and reclaiming Jesus as pluralistic, you go apesh*t because you think I can´t tell you anything? My Bio Anthro undergrad clearly links me to the bio-psycho-social and spiritual-theological nexus in ways you don´t grasp. You are codependent, Mr. "PhD in Physics." Try following Fritjof Capra the Physicist-cum-Systems Theorist, and Jack Kornfield the Buddhist Psychologist who did Peace Corp and became a monk. I went to Africa to teach (through Harvard´s Philips Brooks House), worked in Soc Svc with substance abusers, and volunteered with the homeless, for starters. You, meanwhile, get my very capable and rather revolutionary message about Jesus, Science, and a sustainable planet. Collegiality requires adequate interpersonal individuation (Jung). I´m not limited by Catholic doctrine like your Rev Dr friend, nor do I depend on a PhD in Physics in a world heading for worse ecosystem degradation all the time, and needing to learn that Science has been inappropriately idolatrized. It is in fact secularized Christian Philosophy, not God´s truth itself, and needs to be linked to spiritual practice and social responsibility, and that not so "coincidentally" means reclaiming the progressiveJesus. That is my view, clearly, and not yours, but your degrees and presumptions haven´t led you to simply acknowledge rudimentary disagreement or interpersonal differences

America the Corporate and Resurgent Christian Integrity

..the US became a corporation in 1871 after bankruptcy from the civil war...in order to borrow off the Crown Banks the US became the United States Of America INC....since then the US has become a franchise of the Crown Banks....each state is a franchise of the United States of America Inc...each state is a corporation, you fire department is a corporation...everything is a corporation including you...and your strawman....you have British Legal systems in the states called the Bar...British Accredited Registry...which is a Crown Banking system bill collector....and as for Henry the VIII, hes not the Crown Templar Banking system....the US constitution...believe it or not was approved by the pope in order for the US to do trade internationally....you Americans don't seem to know your history to well

*** Many people don´t know their history that well, and by referriing to the Pope and confusing his role, you demonstrate why Psychology and Sociology are important, among other disciplines. If the Pope represented Catholic countries overall, that is more a comment on Catholicism than the US Constiitution. The Corporate business model was significantly developed by Great Britain, but the World Wars and the rise of the American economy and into corporate imperialism and militarism certainly limit the significance of your assertions. The rise of the petrochemical industry, right wing think tanks, Reagan and the profiteering neoliberal GOP, and the Military-Industrial Complex emerged from and are the source of public interest advocates like Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore and groups like Greenpeace and Oxfam, along with socal business models like cooperatives. ***

The Corporate business model comes from Rome, an upscale version of Babylon....thus Roman Maxims in law....to this day....these Maxims come directly form the bible....why in the story of the birth of Christ that Joseph had to go to his home town to register where he was born.....so that story tells you alot more than just a birth or Berth.....heres a picture of the Vatican....and when you look at the painting around the obelisk you will see the outline of the British Flag.... ***

Me: Mark Rego Monteiro Brian De Paolo Your comments blur significant distinctions, so that where you mentioned "the Pope", you now mention "Rome" while apparently referring to classical pagan imperial culture. There is the Justinian code as well, from Christianized imperial Rome. That is perhaps not an uncommon leap, but commits a basic and crucial oversimplification and anachronistic fallacy in the process, a secular extremist fallacy no less, just like the assertion that "democracy comes from Greece." You also miss the influences of Luther´s Reformation, and as someone else here already noted,Henry VIII and the broader English movement and its combination of University developments and otherwise. As represented by the importance of Christian monasticism from St. Anthony of the Desert to Thomas of Aquiinas, Francis of Assisi just before Aquinas, and Alcuin of York in Charlemagne´s court at Aachen, modern Universities reflect the community power of Christian devotion in resurgent high integrity based on Christ´s core teachings. Petrarch, a landmark humanist, valued Augustine´s introspective Christian spiritual musings, no less. The community capacity made possible by Christian culture was heavily transformed by authoritarian religious institutions, with a wedge inserted significantly by Luther. The University of Paris was itself incorporated in 1150, just after Bologna, and followed shortly by Oxford and Cambridge. Dutch and British takings after the Spanish Armada then demonstrated their distinct ability to multiply and leverage advantages through their Protestant Christian and freer individualized cultures. The indulgence by businesspeople is less specifiically the direct descent from classcal Greece and Rome, but the human biopsychological tendency to INDULGE and ABUSE POWER. It is then the Christian core values capacity for community that then responded in the UK (Locke) and Dutch/French (Grotius) appearance of Religious Tolerance. George Fox who founded the Quaker Friends was an indirect resurgence of high integrity Christanity outside the Universties that lead to Slavery Abolitionism and subsequent Social Movements. All this shows Christian individuals rising in unprecedented ways in their community capaciities. Ancient Greek philosophers never came close, and were relegated to ghosts on paper and filtered into monasteries and Islamic library channels. Human beings greedily formulated profteering corporatiions iin complex scientific, rationalizing, and secularizing University-based society. Social Movements best reveal why Gandhi credited Jesus, and studied some Christian dissidents like Thoreau, Ruskin, and Tolstoy as he lead a Non-Violent Spiritual interfaith Muslim- Hindu-centric Independence Movement that lead to the civilized British withdrawal despite Churchill once calling Gandhi a "Hindu Mussolini." Oh, my. Gandhi, by the way, inspired MLK in the US. The Gracchi and Caesar are very much history, and it is in Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology, and Bio Anthro that you can learn to understand the subtler details. Try Huston Smith´s The World´s Religions and study the importance of Social Justice in Jewish prophetic history and Sociology, etc.

Religion and Spirituality

Me: People like to blame "Religion" for the problems of the world, as if Hitler, STalin, and Mao don´t count. Their cases of iideologiical opportunism each shows the immense problem of secularism and human "nature." Siince secular opportunistic business profiteers and militarists have driven the unsustaiinable iinequality and pollution of the Industrial Revolution, and industrial weapons development, two modern practices implicate all kinds of people in secularized Christian Western Civilization´s history. It also enters into the meaning of Christianity, which is unusually complex because of the immense power of its core integrity teachings, which make the terms "hypocrisy" and "integrity" meaningful in unique ways. ***

Mark - religion (as opposed to a spiritual belief) , is a tool, like a gun. It can be used for good or evil. ***

Me: Yeah, this stuff can be seriously analyzed to achieve significant understandiing. Religion and spirituality are in related knowledge areas, and actually foundational to human behavior, which helps in dealing with ant-theists and their usual reductionistic Scientism, and Fundamentalists and their doctrinaire petrification. Religion, however is a mere "tool" I might agree mostly from the point of view of a spiritually-awakening individual in secularized constiitutional democratic society, which has articulated the Freedom of Religion, and therefore spiritual practices and beliefs. More formally and conventionally, however, Religion is a human institution and its organizations with their traditions. UUism itself has created quite an advanced form and example, but requires individual spiritual research and practice to understand the larger meaning and implicatons of the institution. Christian Catholic monasticism is an interesting study, with their modern dissident explorers like Thomas Merton, Matt Fox (who drew a bloodhound named Ratzinger), and Karen Armstrong, maybe even Hans Kung, for example. As with the UU and democratic pov you mention, the very definition of "good" requires definition as iin Jesus´ very clear examples and specific teachings to identify how their instructions for spiritual development have been deemphasiiiized or ignored. The implications of the recurrent historical resurgence of high integrity spiritual Chrstianity, from Thoreau´s Hinduism to Alan Watts Eastern practices, the Jewish Ram Dass, up to the modern "supermarket" pot pouri that is merely a shadow of its potential. Interfaith Power and Light for renewables is another level, as is Equal Exchange co-op Corp´s organic and Fair Trade Interfaiith Partner program.

Normal Psychopaths, Neurobiology, and Activist Social Science and Therapy

A: Nope. Genetics account for malignant narcissists and sociopaths. My father, my daughter. Good parenting, no trauma. It's a neurological abnormality. They cannot love; they cannot experience being loved. Those of us born amongst them who do have compassion, are surrounded by evil. Actual evil. ***

A: This was my LIFE not some opinion. Also, I was a neuropsychology researcher, so I know the science behind it. It is a heartbreaking condition. My father ran over my kitten on purpose in my presence when I was 4. My daughter gave me an overdose of digitalis, which I had no access to, and was enraged when I didn't die. That's not arguing an opinion.

*** B: This is definitely an interesting tangent. My mother is a sociopath, and although my grandparents were kind, the cultural practice of “respecting your elders” meant she was around my great grandfather, who was an incredibly violent man. My grandmother also didn’t have the resources at the time to recover from the trauma of growing up with my great grandfather either. I think in my mother’s case it was very much a mix of nature/nurture. I’ve chosen to not allow my mother around my children because not only do I not want them to be her targets, I don’t want them seeing her behavior as normal. The presence of people who are pretty malicious and deliberately hurtful to others because they find it thrilling sometimes clashes with my UU values. I think there is a tendency to want to pretend people like that don’t really exist, but they very much do. Sorry about the tangent-it just made me think a little bit. ***

A: I appreciate your sharing. It gets very isolating when other people and the mental health profession just claim it's all coming from inside you that it's your problem, and not the stress and trauma of being surrounded by evil. ***

I know your kind of pain, since my mother was born in Nazi Germany, and my dad came from Latin America pursuing advanced and well-rounded education. As an outsider growing up in modest dysfunction, I began to perceive toxic dysfunctional America when my friend supported nukes and Reagan inspired people more than Carter. It has been your life, but when you interpret it involves your opinion. You were a neurologist, and not a biosocial Anthropologist, which highlights how Sciience iitself iis merely an opinion iin a larger sense. I already read your comment on mental health professionals, who also get "opinion" status in your favor. Besides my study of much neglected materiial in Bio Anthro, my stint in Soc Serviiiices with Afro Am/Latno substance abusers broadened my knowledge base, as did my actiivism experience and study of International Relations and sustainabliity/socal justice theory. Do you know just the study of orthodox economics made people more narcissistic iin a study? See the moviie The Corporation by Achbar et al based on a lawyer´s book. it does a reasonable analysis of the psychotic behavior of "corporations" (Uh, their EXECUTIVES, thank you), spending, is it BILLIONS? on child ads. See Marj Kelly´s book Diviine Right of Capital, too. UUism is special in the first place for its embracing culture encourages spiritual seeking. There´s more to it, but blaming people´s "Biology" is reductionist Scientism. Indulge in spiritual and other economic activism Buddhism and internal Kung Fu practices offer profound development, especially to cultivate or deepen high integrity Christianity. Do you know that the Buddha´s meditatiive Nirvana protected him from a murderer iin a detailed account, St. Benediict was protected from poison, and there are many Chriistian testimonies of similar kinds of protection, including one experienced wiith my wife and two kids. It all jumped into a higher gear for me with holistics and psychosomatics. And Greenpeace/Oxfam type stuff.

Fair Trade Organics: The Bible and World Government, Jesus, Gandhi, V Shiva, the UN and NGO

In a new type of world government, the real solution lies. Yet flawed, greedy men can't run such a government for the world agonizes for an unselfish and just sovereign. Did you know that the Bible reveals that such a world government has been designed by God for humanity? • ***

"The Bible" comes to us because of Jesus, and we converse halfway between anonymity and intimacy because of his multi-layered and vitiated, but fusion-integrity-powered legacy in the globalized, hi-tech, University-based and profiteering-controlled economy, along with the Christian-inspired and highly responsibility oriented UN community of nations. Jesus taught, "Clean the cup within where there is wickedness" Matt 23:25, which St. Anthony of the Desert modeled this spiritual growth training well enough more extensively over thirty plus years than Jesus´ forty day "graduation" in the desert. Followers of God through Jesus have been buried in vain doctrines and dead faith. Flawed, greedy men aren´t actually the´problem. It is the need to reclaim modern culture through spiritual modernization for God´s love through the Freedom of Religion and learning what Jesus really taught, meant, and wanted. The Good Samaritans today include Hindu Yoga instructors, Buddhist practitioners, and Therapeutic Psychologists, for starters. That´s how we can stop and drain the flawed, greedy men as Jesus instructed us to do in part. "The will of my Father in Heaven" also means doing "greater things than these (that Jesus did)" John 14:12, and that means being able to learn. That is the power of "Love thy neighbor as thyself" as Gandhi showed, as Vandana Shiva shows, among many others. That includes doing good by breaking unfair rules as Jesus taught in Matt 12:1 by gathering grain on the Sabbath. However, faith without works is dead (James), that is why I have joined food co-ops, supported Greenpeace- and Oxfam Fair trade-type NGOs in my time, and buy organics and local as possible.

Atheists Against WL Craig´s Kalam Cosmological Argument

Atheists Against WL Craig´s Kalam Cosmological Argument Posted on May 12, 2019 by Rebekah K The Kalam Cosmological Argument There are a handful of famous arguments for the existence of a god. Some have been around for centuries, and new arguments are popping up every day. One such argument is the kalam cosmological argument. A classic which has recently been re-polished and re-popularized, it has withstood the test of time in its field. The kalam cosmological argument sounds a lot more complex than it really is. There’s not much more to it than a simple, yet flawed, syllogism of three steps. They are: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. A bit of a stretch as it is, apologists usually stretch it even further to infer that this cause is a personal god who happens to have also revealed himself in whichever holy text it is that the apologist chooses. In the early days of this argument, that holy text was the Quran. Muslim theologian al-Ghazali is known for his role in shaping the kalam argument in his work The Incoherence of the Philosophers around the year 1000 A.D. “The Philosophers” were Plato and Aristotle, who believed that the universe had existed eternally. Al-Ghazali not only believed that the universe had a cause, but that God is the cause of every event with a cause. In recent years, the argument has gained a new face: that of Christian apologist William Lane Craig. He published a book named The Kalam Cosmological Argument in 1979 which caused al-Ghazali’s old ideas to resurface. Admittedly, I have not read this book myself, so it’s not quite clear to me how it differs from al-Ghazali’s original proposition. After doing some online research as well as reading Lee Strobel’s interview with Craig in The Case for a Creator, I do know one thing: Craig is very interested in the non-existence of the infinite regress. Craig repeatedly says, and actually give a coherent argument for, the fact that time itself cannot go in any direction forever. Thus, the universe can’t have existed eternally. In his words, “The idea of an actual infinity is just conceptual; it exists only in our minds. Working within certain rules, mathematicians can deal with infinite quantities and infinite numbers in the conceptual realm. However—and here’s the point—it’s not descriptive of what can happen in the real world” (Strobel 2004). As the mathematical amateur that I am, this logic seems sound to me. It begins to break down, however, when you consider where Craig is going with it. He uses this logic (indeed, it’s what he is known for) to extrapolate the idea that there must have been some supernatural entity which caused the beginning of the universe and of time. Is his god not infinite? As a matter of fact, is not the everlasting experience of an afterlife in heaven or hell eternal? Why can his god exist infinitely before time did, when an infinite existence is logically impossible, even according to Craig himself? Asinine as it may sound at first, there’s a reason why you hear the question “Who made God?” from atheists so often, even when theists tend to always have some (however poorly) cobbled together answer ready. It’s the same reason why you’ll probably never stop hearing atheists ask, “Why does a loving God allow evil?” Because we have yet to hear a sufficient answer to these questions. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t understand how the Big Bang happened. All I know is what I’ve read about it from Stephen Hawking. Even if I don’t know what would absolutely satisfy my desire to understand the answers to this big question, I do know that “God did it” does not satisfy, and I don’t think that it ever will. I’ve seen Occam’s Razor being used by both theists and atheists in order to defend their reasons for believing one argument or explanation over another. The idea that the simplest explanation is probably correct is appealing, and most often it is true. And it is also certainly true that the simplest answers to “Where did the universe come from?” and “Where do we get our morals from?” are “God made it” and “From God.” But just because the answers are simple does not mean that they’re both correct. In fact, I find that the greatest flaws in both of these explanations are that they are too simple. These questions in both physics and psychology are incomprehensibly complex. Scientists and philosophers have literally been trying to figure both of them out since humans could think symbolically. This would not be the case if “God did it” was the answer. There have been countless times in which religious apologists have accused atheists of being close-minded because we won’t take supernatural explanations as possibilities when trying to answer questions like these, but indeed every venture in so many fields would be unnecessarily cut off if we were to accept the simplest answer just because it was the easiest. ***

Your initial praise of Craig to me seems unfounded because as you rightly point out, you can’t argue that infinity only exists in our minds, while at the same time make claims that an infinite being does objectively exist. The important part comes when we consider, what does it mean to begin to exist. The Big Bang may have occurred 13.8 billion years ago, but that only means that this current version of the universe began then. What if, the universe is oscillating…expanding and contracting…in such a situation it may have thus always been existing just at different sizes and values of entropy. Clearly there is little evidence to support the “The Big Crunch” at this point, but we simply don’t have answers for how we got to the state of the big bang. I think it’s also fair to ask, what does it really mean to begin? If time itself did not begin passing until the moment of the big bang, when we think of words like begin, before, after…we do with a conception of time that is passing. Begin might make sense for things that come into existence within spacetime…but this is quite different. Consider that, whenever you consider a human life to exist, the fact remains that all parts of that human, exist already…just in a different form. Those chemical elements already exist and the ingredients are just being put together to make a human. This is not the case necessarily for the universe in the sense that there was no passage of time initially and time did not exist as we conceive it now. This is a wholly different situation than anything we might say “began” anytime after the big bang. ***

Craig is a serious philosopher, and knows the scientific material in great detail. Your thinking that the Universe´s cause is limited by the operations of this Universe is where you make an unexamined assumption. Craig does refer to God as a Transcendent cause. You, meanwhile, default to an eternal Universe. Craig likes the Borde, Guth, Vilenkin Model of no eternal past. One commenter cites Vilenkin preferring to avoid theological speculation. And that´s just what a scientist might prefer. That is also where the theologians benefit by understanding that Science itself is in fact a form of Philosophy. Science fans are content to do their philosophizing within the confines of existing Physics, basically. Multiverses, eternal Universe with varying entropy values, and so on. And so the science fans idolatrize, uh, are entranced by the admittedly impressive qualities of the physical Universe and the dynamics of the Physics discipline. Except that, it is all nothing if not forms of Philosophy. Physics is an exciting form of it with fun astronomical pics to go with it. And diagrams Yet Physics is a subdiscipline of Philosophy. I majored in Bio Anthro in college, and I love Science. Biological Evolution, moreever, leads into stuff that isn´t just Physics Philosophy. However abiogenesis happened, it seems, it involved chemistry, which seems like just a fancy form of Physics. Sort of. And, not so much. Chemistry demonstrates emergent properties, including for example, the four types of chemical bonds. And so on in Biology, which is based on cell theory, and then to human biopsychology and sociocultural phenomena. None of these disciplines is strictly reducible to the disciplines underlying it. Gretchen Thunberg´s depression was diagnosed with a psychiatric label, but was not merely any kind of chemical imbalance. She and her parents demonstrated that inspiringly as Gretchen swayed her parents to take the environmental crisis seriously. Emergence. Each human philosophical discipline and subdiscipline has identified layers in reality, and how Philosophy can grasp it. General Systems Theory looks at how that works, as a part of Epistemology, I think it´s safe to say. Emergence. If Physics maps onto, or is “emerged from by” Chemistry (C emerges from P), and Chemistry into Bio, Bio into BioPsych-Socioculture, then, what did Physics emerge from? That´s what this is about, and why Craig is basically right.

Gretchen Thunberg´s Diagnosis and the Obnoxious

" do like Greta Thunberg" Do you mean attend a school for the children with mental retardation? ***

− Yes, indeed, Holy Man! All the "retards" that have made it possible to advance from ancient Greece and Rome, as Christianity rose and transformed those cultural ashes in the spiritually diligent like St. Anthony of the Desert and invading "barbarian tribes," that have made the Indian and interfaith Hindu Gandhi the ace modern "retard" champion of Christian high integrity. Fortunately for you, such language is so much hot air for constructive poetic justice, while your crassness is revealed for the projection fallacy that it is and the psychoanalytic childhood trauma that haunts you. In all your attempts to redirect your hurt, pain, and tears from a dysfunctional family upbinging, the healthy vocabulary of emotional self-awareness and intelligent self-management simply elude you in your habitual psychological defense mechanisms. Gretchen, actually, already transcended the very dubious limited context of that medical diagnosis. Her actual precocious brilliance as a youth prodigy has led her as she convinced her parents and has spoken with a passion in key events in the public interest. Freethinking and highly trained professionals have long recognized the inadequacy of psychiatric labels and treatment, as with Fromm, Laing, and others mentioned in the OP. You, however, appear to have emotional blocks that make being obnoxious and using ad-homs your MO, and demonstrating as usual the nature of projection. It is your own unacknowledged feelings and self-esteem complex that you project. Adler talked about the inferiority complex, Jung about the shadow, and Bradshaw about "healing the shame that binds you." Not that you are able to let you guard down for a minute. But it´s not Gretchen that´s eating the dust you´re kicking up. ***

I have recently taken preliminary tests that show I am autistic, along with everything else that’s me I have to thank Greta for being what I am not. She isn’t sick, she’s normal. I hope you all get that. She is F-ing normal!

Perspective is a huge issue, and society´s own dysfunction is no joke. My dad was a well-rounded political scientist, and I had an early start recognizing education as a value. That included Psychology. I was able to get by with a little bit of Marx, Freud, Maslow, Subliminal Seduction by W B Key, a critical letter about the US Contras in Nicaragua (at the time), until in college I flirted with Dem Socialists of America, the Outdoors Club, Taoism and Zen, a little therapy, self-help books and workshops, and the like, until I worked with the PIRG´s a bit (Ralph Nader´s legacy), and so on. Thus, I know how you feel, and totally recommend tapping into authentic values up and down. Every psychiatric diagnosis is subject to a second opinion, and Clinical Psychology in general is more sane than pharmacological psychiatry. John Mack MD at Harvard helped found Ecopsychology, while Bruce Levine and Ann W Schaef have written powerful books as Psychologists like BL´s Resisting Illegitimate Authority and AWS´s When Society Becomes an Addict. Be well. Raise Hell. Discreetly, as necessary. With a food co-op membership if possible, practicing yoga and tai chi perhaps, or sipping organic, Fair Trade tea and lemon, say. ***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mha8IQe7YtI ***

So younger people are supposed to eschew all new technology and trends? Also literally anything in those amazon boxes is going to be more useful to a new mom than some incense and rocks. ***

That s a rather defensive take, as if there is no questioning modern trends, and no spiritual life and values provide wisdom and insights. Gretchen Thunberg showed that a precocious child prodigy like herself can overcome the very questionable assumptions of a psychiatric diagnosis without even getting a second opinion from a doctor member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance like Lise Van Susteren MD. Her mom, by the way, shifted her career due to her daughter´s clarity and concerns. Louise Hay cured her cancer, no less, by refusing doctors intent upon surgery and pursuing self-care as she shares in her book You Can Heal Your Life. In six months her docs agreed that she had no more cancer. The Simonton Clinic has a related approach. Gretchen means Green.

Gods, Dogs, and Demons

"The gods can talk to us in multiple ways." .............. after one imagines that gods exist. One guy even imagined that his neighbour's dog was possessed by a demon and it was talking to him. People can imagine all kinds of strange things, but that does not mean those things exist outside the imagination.

*** A dog with demons, reminiscent of the Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz from years back, took place in a context, and one with very little elaborated decent structure. He was given up for adoption by his mother, and his adoptive parents lived modest lives. More than one psychological professional has observed the relationship between schizophrenia and genuine shamanic intelligence and ability. Schizophrenics, however, never received adequate training as they normally haven´t in industrial society. Berkowitz may not even have been schizophrenic, however, since his psychotic break happened after time in the army, and his researching his birth mother. He did become a Christian in prison, and has been called a model prisoner while refusing parole inquiries. The informed discussion of God´s existence, and the nature of gods more generally, is done intelligently in the Philosophy of Religion and Comparative Religions. Asserting that gods are merely imagined, and equating the dysfunctional and pathological manifestation with the functional and traditiional is your own confusion of your opinion with academic epistemologies, to say the least.

Baha´iism, Christian Modernization, and Sustainability

Baha´iism According to the book Mankind's Search for God (pub. in 1990 by Jehovah's Witnesses, chp 12, pgs 304-305), it states concerning the Baha' i religious faith: "The Bahā’ī faith is not a sect of Islām but is an offshoot of the Bābī religion, a group in Persia (today Iran) that broke away from the Shī‛ite branch of Islām in 1844. The leader of the Bābīs was Mīrzā ‛Alī Moḥammad of Shīrāz, who proclaimed himself the Bāb (meaning “the Gate”) and the imām-mahdī (“rightly guided leader”) from the line of Muḥammad. He was executed by the Persian authorities in 1850. In 1863 Mīrzā Ḥoseyn Alī Nūrī, a prominent member of the Bābī group, “declared himself to be ‘He whom God will make manifest,’ whom the Bāb had foretold.” He also took the name Bahā’ Ullāh (“Glory of God”) and formed a new religion, the Bahā’ī faith". The book further says: "Bahā’ Ullāh was banished from Persia and was eventually imprisoned in Acco (today Acre, Israel). There he wrote his main work, al-Kitāb al-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book), and developed the doctrine of the Bahā’ī faith into a comprehensive teaching. At Bahā’ Ullāh’s death, the leadership of the fledgling religion passed to his son ‛Abd ol-Bahā’, then to his great-grandson, Shoghi Effendi Rabbānī, and in 1963 to an elected administrative body known as the Universal House of Justice". "Bahā’īs believe that God has revealed himself to man by means of “Divine Manifestations,” including Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, Muḥammad, the Bāb, and Bahā’ Ullāh. They believe that these messengers were provided to guide mankind through an evolutionary process in which the appearance of the Bāb initiated a new age for mankind. The Bahā’īs say that to date his message is the fullest revelation of God’s will and that it is the primary God-given instrument that will make world unity possible". "One of the basic precepts of Bahā’ī is “that all the great religions of the world are divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete harmony.” They “differ only in the nonessential aspects of their doctrines", but which the Bible does not concur, exposing all the religions of the world as false, being given the mystic name of Babylon the Great and that there is only "one faith" that pleases God (Eph 4:5), whose personal name is Jehovah.(Ex 6:3) "Bahā’ī beliefs include the oneness of God, the soul’s immortality (see Ps 40:14 that shows that the soul can be destroyed and Jeremiah 2:34 that shows that the soul has blood and therefore bleeds, so that it can be determined that the soul is as a person who breathes [the Hebrew word for soul, nephesh, literally means "breather"] and is therefore not immortal), and the evolution (biological, spiritual, and social) of mankind. On the other hand, they reject the common concept of angels" (the same as the Sadducees in the 1st century [Acts 23:8] but which the Bible establishes angels as ' mighty in power and God's ministers who does his will ', Ps 103:21, 22). "They also reject the Trinity (which also the Bible does not teach, see John 14:1, 28), the reincarnation teaching of Hinduism, and man’s fall from perfection and subsequent ransom through the blood of Jesus Christ".(which the Bible firmly establishes as real [Gen 3:1-6] and thus the need for a redeemer or ransomer, which Jesus Christ provided; Rom 5:12, 18; Matt 20:28) Today, the religions of the world are like a buffet, whereby a person can pick and choose any kind of religion that he wishes. However, to gain Jehovah God's favor, requires a strict set of guidelines be followed, just as a precision piece of machinery is built on a strict set of tolerances so that it performs well.(see Matt 7:13, 14, in which Jesus shows that the religions of the world are likened to "spacious road that leads to destruction, and many are going in through it", while the "one faith" that pleases Jehovah is likened to "cramped road leading off into life, and few are finding it") **** Your comment seems to want to promote Baha´i-ism by making assertions about Baha Ullah and running down a list of beliefs with selected assertions which, in fact, cover your personal interests and criteria. The process of attempting to engage in logical reasoning is itself a very specific cultural behavior with a very definite context, University-based society and the Enlightenment, not least of all. That is a Christian development, that is part of the modernization that Christians have driven within Christianity and that has spread because of its immense power and promise. It has been labeled "Western Civilization" and attributed to Greek philosophers, humanists, scientists, and rationalists mostly, but is in fact Christian modernization. It has taken over the world in its secular form, but it is in recognizing Christ´s legacy and the need to align unrestrained secular pluralism with Christ´s integrity. His death by execution and Resurrection served a purpose to highlight his teachings of God´s love and instructions for spiritual growth training to achieve the highest form of the Golden Rule package, "Love thy neighbor as thyself, until thy enemy." The Enlightenment Freedom of Religion and Universities now require the pluralistic participation and integrity resonance of all spiritual seekers with the concrete scientific concern of unsustainability underway. Modern secularized Christian University philosophy gives us the scientific view of the Universe that helps us understand the unity of God, while different disciplines, religions, and spirituality provide individuals with options in finding useful social, cultural, and psychological elements. In that fuller and more adequate perspective that your own intellectual effort can be appreciated more fully. May Baha Ullah help you in your search, in Jesus´, Buddha´s, Gandhi´s, and Susan B Anthony´s name.