"Oppressive" Religion Actually Needs to Be Appropriately Classified; Stereotypes Aren´t True

Saltyhills • 2 days ago When I get to a pool and see an algae problem it may or may not surprise me given the time of year, weather, how many other algae problems I seen that week and so on. If I had to figure out if a pool will have algae based on math odds while staring at the water it would be crazy. I've been getting back into UFOs etc lately, don't know why. Watching a lot of science documentary to pass the time during Covid maybe. I never grew up religious (my mom always said we were Mormon but never saw the inside of a church, lol), but it's never bothered me that life originated here and I assume it originated elsewhere also. Problem is, unlike driving from pool to pool, we've only got the one pool here, so we really have no idea what the odds are for life originating. All these calculations about amino acids accidently combining etc., are bunk. Until you know the odds you don't know the odds. Good luck guessing though. Imagine this. It was blowing my mind recently, this documentary about what they call the big rip. Dark energy expanding the universe until it burns out. crazy. imagine that the big rip starts, but you've got this solar system still intact, but it's flying away from the rest of the galaxy, and by the time life becomes sentient, the sky is dark. Imagine how oppressive religion will be then, because they'll have very good reason to look up and see just their planets, assume they are alone, and some deity created them special. If somebody suggests there are other planets out there, let alone trillions, they'll just be laughed at. Based on the only odds you know about, it sounds ridiculous. 1 • Reply • Share › Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Saltyhills • 2 days ago Your take on religion is as malnourished as the physicalist speculation of the Universe´s "dark matter" operations is indulgent. Science is the legacy of Jesus, and Christian´s seeking knowledge of the physical Universe. That´s historical information that informs a balanced perspective and can be associated effectively with spiritual modernization and multidisciplinary philosophy. "Religion as oppressive" is a poorly informed view of religion in general, with Christianity´s own modernization into the pluralism of UN human rights and sustainability, fulfilling much of FDR´s own Christian service values. Gandhi´s demonstration of interfaith Christian-Hinduism is another. There is discipline necessary in spiritual understanding, and one feature in your kind of stereotype is the projection of the oppression caused by the materialistic indulgence in "liberty" without social responsibility typical of American type ideologies following the US-led profiteering ideology. Better get better acquainted with the dynamics of creating a sustainable society. The Universe will unfold, but humans tracking it need a little more spiritual awareness to play their full potential part. And Jesus´ legacy for Moses and God has been significantly twisted and abused by hypocrites and detractors. It is, nevertheless, the crux of the matter since he was no fundamentalist, and was the source of the modernization of principles that led to the UN and its human rights, pluralism, and sustainability notions. • Edit • Reply • Share › Avatar Saltyhills greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 2 days ago Science is the legacy of Jesus, and Christian´s seeking knowledge of the physical Universe. " I was brought up in a good Christian home and I owe mom a lot but let's not overdo it. Case in point is one of the most significant inventions for sustaining large civilizations. That's the iron, moldboard (curved) plow, which was invented three centuries before Christ in China. The European agriculture revolution began when Dutch traders brought the plow to Europe in the 18th century. Up until then, Greek Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants of all stripes were out in the field with teams of oxen huddled around feeble wooden stakes. With Bible in hand, these Christians screamed the Lord's name at their beasts to break the stubborn crust of the earth open in order to get a seed or two down in there. It was mission impossible. The Chinese-style plow went along without effort and only one ox needed. In terms of "nourishment" we Christians owe the Chinese a lot I'd say. Well, I don't know if I'm really Christian but that's how I was raised. 2 • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Saltyhills • 2 days ago • edited Well, you´re interpreting my comment as if I had said, "No other cultures made science-related advances, and Christians can ignore them" or the like. I´m not familiar with the full plow context, although I believe the gun, taken from Chinese hand cannons, may be similar, depending. It´s instructive to value viewpoints like Anthropology to apply the Christian´s full development of University-based empirical scholarship which has been much neglected because of science´s spectacular co-optation by profiteering businesspeople. However, multidisciplinary philosophy keeps our minds agile enough to recognize that scientific empirical philosophy has led to Christianity´s "Western" dominance in classifiable ways, based on the systematic procedures that allow mercurial human beings to psychosocially achieve so much that we talk about Western globalization, the Western format of the UN human rights, pluralism, and sustainability community, and the spread of the Western University model. Japan was opened by "the West" and China first took Western communism, and then has grafted capitalism as perilously as the West has. Jesus´ legacy started the spark back around Thomas of Aquinas, while the abuse of power unleashed through secularization has transformed something that was originally Christian monastic-based into the dream of "Western" profiteering business and other powermongers. The Christian religion, meanwhile, has spawned resurgent integrity reviving Jesus´ legacy on a pointed basis. Luther´s inspiring the Reformation, Thomas Clarkson seeking Quaker support and then leading the anti-slavery movement, pioneering social movement campaigns up to FDR´s envisioning the UN and Eleanor´s shepherding human rights. The spread of Christianity´s hypocritical and untamed "Wild West" has abused the spirit of the monastic schools that became Universities. Resurgent integrity has led to both not for profits like Greenpeace, Sierra Club, and Oxfam, and other movements in the UN community. What leads you to focus on other planets and oversimplify and stereotype religion? It´s not the spirit behind Newton´s access to all kinds of Latin books like Descartes, etc, FDR´s and Eleanor´s Christian service values, i.e. the Social Gospel, and the way that honors Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity. Time to look up integrity and hypocrisy, and how human bio-psychosocial tendencies cause Christian hypocrisy, not religion. Moreover, the Christian understanding of a lawful, ultimately loving, God, is about appreciating the lawful regularities of the physical Universe. It´s not about calculating probabilities of amino acids combining. The sacredness of life arguably began with science´s origins in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity, and perhaps the origins of Jewish prophetic culture in shamanism, along with the Judeo-Christian, and other select views, that treat God´s creating the Universe as sacred, and the extension of that sanctity. Salty greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 17 hours ago • edited Well, you´re interpreting my comment as if I had said, "No other cultures made science-related advances, and Christians can ignore them" or the like. I admit that's how I interpreted your comment. You've made the comment several times and it really sounds like that's what you're saying. Here is a another, even more clear example: Science is a Christian-derived practice. Religion is a broader phenomenon that often includes If you don't mean to contrast science with religion by deeming science as a particular practice derived from Christianity, while religion is a broad category that includes Christianity and other traditions, some of which say "God did it"; then I recommend you find a different way to phrase it or you're going to continually run into this communication issue with people. • Reply • Share › Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Saltyhills • 11 hours ago • edited Oh, you´re far too unconcerned with your own interpretive lens, which is typical of scientific materialism´s externalized focus and control-orientation. I´m quite deft and deep about the problems and confusions people bring to Science and Religion at this point, philosophical, psychological, and sociological not least of all, with my own unique biography of interest that includes a college degree around the evolution of speech and symbolic behavior. Al Gore has done great work calling Climate Change a moral issue. That needs to be the view of sustainability, human rights, and pluralism, with our debt and blessings from Jesus through Gandhi uplifted to inspire people out of their indoctrination by financial interests. Science, otherwise, is killing its own roots. Medical science in the US allows some 200,000 preventable deaths a year. It is science that has been a big victim of profiteering´s many tentacles to exploit it. Christian integrity and spiritual modernization is a lagging factor that needs rejuvenation. You might want to clarify your own confusion of "science" with proto-scientifically-related accomplishments by non-scientific cultures, for example. It is very much Christianity´s view of an omnipotent lawful and loving God that underlies the way Christians overcame Aristotle´s own limiting assumptions. Wrangling out what God actually does is a fine mess that scientific materialistics amply bungle and confuse. It is Christianity´s central role in developing sustainability, human rights, and pluralism in overcoming its own lopsided power that needs reckoning with. Gandhi, and Kasturbai, was a fine prophetic voice who showed in fine style how interfaith practice can illuminate Jesus´ own legacy of loving integrity. Yet, it is not the progressive´s and scientists who are lighting Jesus´ importance for UN human rights, pluralism, and sustainability. His misuse by profiteers and the hateful is being accepted and internalized by progressive and materialist submission to that hate and greed. Asserting Jesus is not the problem, and no problem for pluralism. Gandhi wore his Hinduism as he confirmed Jesus and the Bible´s importance for him. The Dalai Lama promotes his Buddhism with tactful modern touches and insights. Mohammed Yunus´ pro-poor, pro-women Grameen Bank, meanwhile, brings out his, their intercultural, implicitly interfaith Muslim sensibility. Vandana Shiva´s own Indian and international efforts as a woman pro-small farmer ex-physicist have their own related angle. Wangari Maathai´s African Greenbelt Movement, no less. Allowing Christianity to be hijacked, minimized, and masked over profiteering corporate executive schemes is the ultimate problem to address in all that. If they can twist Jesus as if hate and greed are his message with such fervor, imagine what passive rationalist progressives could do if they could gain insight from the likes of Gandhi, Mohammed Yunus, Wangari Maathai, and Vandana Shiva? Francis Moore Lappe has taken her amazing efforts, although totally secularized. It´s all desperately inadequate, with FDR´s and Eleanor´s roots in the Social Gospel a missing link, and Rev MLK´s Montgomery boycott and Fannie Lou Hamer´s Farm Co-op far too unsung. All of which requires far better informed communication at various Levels of Analysis and Explanation, the key in overcoming the paralysis of dysfunctional misconceptions. The Social Gospel of Washington Gladden and W Rauschenbusch underlie some or all of FDR and Eleanor´s work, and compare with Rev MLK and FLH. That´s where the signficance of asserting Christianity´s prominence is fully justified, in all the pluralism it actually implies through the principles of modernized and diversified Divinely condoned love. • Edit • Reply • Share › Avatar Saltyhills greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 10 hours ago You might want to clarify your own confusion of "science" with science-related accomplishments If I were to properly distinguish between "science" and "science-related accomplishments," then would I learn that science is the legacy of Christianity exclusively, while China, for instance, could only boast of "science-related accomplishments"? If so, then I was right all along. You do "deem science as a particular practice derived from Christianity". I win. with my own unique biography of interest that includes a college degree around the evolution of speech and symbolic behavior Symbolic behavior, eh? Did your study include subjects such as semiotics, psychoanalysis, and hyperreality? • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Saltyhills • 11 minutes ago • edited "I win" Your very motivational framework betrays you as you confuse your psychological needs with the nature of determining truth at all the relevant Levels of Analysis and Explanation. Apparently, you would "win" if you trim off your mistaken notion that science-related accomplishments mean that Christians didn´t invent modern science. You "admitted" that you interpreted my comments to mean, ""No other cultures made science-related advances, and Christians can ignore them" or the like." "exclusively" Modern science is fundamentally in Jesus´ legacy, because Christian multisector psychosocial and cultural accomplishments created the conditions for Christians´ crucial advances in metaphysical foundations. Not least of all, Thomas of Aquinas´ elaboration of Aristotle´s own neglected and denied First Cause argument. He also had limiting assumptions like "there is no motion in curves." James Hannam has great work on that. Stan Jaki has great work on the ancient scientific-related efforts. The "exclusivity" is about the psychosocial and cultural operating principles that allowed Christians to take hold of ancient Greek philosophy and rework it. That´s for clarity´s sake, that scientific materialists have been confusing not least of all in their narrowminded response to anti-science fundamentalists and failure to individuate from the indoctrinating propaganda by profiteering corporate executives that prevails and controls much socioeconomic ideology. Islamic nations have rejected the UN Universal Dec of Human Rights, calling it too "Christian." They have formulated their own Islamic version based on Sharia Law, the Cairo Dec. My purpose is more in the spirit of Gandhi, the law-degreed interfaith Christian-Hindu who studied the Bible "faithfully" and valued Jesus highly. Gandhi´s taking action as a grassroots type in favor of social justice is in the Judeo-Christian tradition back to Elijah, and in Jesus as well, if that´s not clear. In fact, resurgent integrity is a noticeable process in Christian historical sociology in that sense, as is the origin of modern social movements. You tried to push off your mistaken notions on me, and ignore your own attempt to make the point that "Science is not the legacy of Jesus." If you don´t acknowledge your own mistakes, you lose because you´re not really learning. You´re trying to take credit for someone else´s insight as if you were never mistaken. Jesus taught about building firm foundations for the Kingdom of Heaven that can have more than one psychosocial senses. That´s the value of God through Jesus as a transcendental basis. I don´t need to be right. I can be wrong. That´s why I´ve come so far, learning so well and so much with such clarity. I don´t need to win. I seek the truth in love and spirituality, which has developed to mean God through Jesus, in all its modernized US-UN human rights, pluralism, and sustainability senses. Semiotics, indeed. In fact, I used the great unsung work of Eliot Chapple in Behavioral Anthropology. My professor then was Terry Deacon, who introduced me to Charles Peirce. I just took note of his basic insights. I´ve just been refreshing the basic sequence from Peirce to Ogden & Richard to Korzybski. Chapple´s work clarifies the bio-psychophysiology of the dynamics. Still, I recall the fun of monkey call distinctions, and the meaning of chimp and ape symbolic communication rudiments. Fine stuff, and sound foundations. That leads to the sound semantics of understanding the value of psychoanalysis. I also worked in social services casework with substance abusers, and got trained by two PhDs from Columbia, no less. They drew on Milton Erickson´s rather insightful and creative hypnotherapeutic work, at the simple level of emotional awareness counseling. Fine basis to spur my own probes into Freud´s own trajectory, and his sound beginnings and compromised shift to the Oedipus metaphor. Meanwhile, Freud´s work has long been part of a marvelous larger sociohistorical context in his field, though one of my favorite anecdotes now is how Freud fainted twice in relation to Jung. Hyperreality? In Bio Anthro, the basic framework of Ultimate causation and Proximate causation was a fine philosophical introduction in context. So was Phil 101, and Descartes´ ontological argument. More so than Kant´s a priori / posteriori material, in one sense. My training included already references to the hypnotic insights of standard cycling among alternate states of consciousness. Michael Harner´s shamanic work is also stimulating. WL Craig´s Kalam Cosmological argument is excellent in modernizing the First Cause/Uncaused arguments. Transpersonal psychology since Jung also provides interesting material in analyzing the nature and interrelatedness of synchronicity and spiritual-religious experience. Psychosomatic healing and medically improbable or impossible healings as well. The Holographic Paradigm related to the philosophical implications of the likes of Karl Pribram´s and David Bohm´s thought as well. Oh, and Fritjof Capra´s work in the Systems Theory of Life is simply excellent, with his attention to emergentism. Aaron Browne greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 2 hours ago • edited It is hardly surprising that many universities developed out of and maintained strong ties with the church. The church had power, resources and an educated clergy. Literacy is a prerequisite for scientific inquiry. The only reason the church had a greater involvement in science as compared to islamic centres for learning was due to the power and influence the church asserted. It has absolutely nothing to do with grounding the scientific inquiry in Christian derived practices. You have yet to demonstrate that this was the case. At best you can claim that confirmation bias and a desire to validate the biblical narrative would influence church sanctioned centres. Nevertheless, being biased is a far cry from basing one's methodology on the nature of said prejudice. • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Aaron Browne • a few seconds ago Man, you are funny. "Hardly surprising"? You try to float "power, resources, and an 'educated' / literate clergy" of the church on top of your anti-religious assumptions, an alleged "Christian"? Those are unqualified variables that might apply in China and India, and in Islam. You are citing socioeconomic variables that begin to sketch out contours. Identifying the psychosocial and cultural component behaviors, however, are more specific, psychological qualities. I mentioned H Harlow´s angle on the experimental behavioral demonstration of a key form of "love." That correlates with Freud and Jung´s legacies in therapeutic psychology. It correlates with Spinoza´s own proto-psychotherapeutic insights, and William James´ research in Varieties of Religious Experience. Love heals, and provides for mentally healthy qualities of mind: cognitive intelligence, emotional, and social intelligence, as are now fairly commonplace terms. The "Biblical narrative" in Christianity has signficance because of Jesus Christ´s as related in the four standard Gospels. Sociologist R Stark began a series of investigative reflections that began by confirming the new caring qualities of the early Christian community. "Loving and caring" is the independent variable, psychosocial and cultural in nature, underlying the generalized socioeconomic qualities you referred to. If distorted and altered, or otherwise diminished at one level or another in any context, whether Justin Martyr pre-200, Anthony of the Desert in Egypt in 270, Cassiodorus or Benedict in the 500s, Charles Martel before 750, Charlemagne and Alcuin of York by 800, and so on, that quality still correlates with the specific accomplishments of the social complexity of monasteries, monastic schools, church, societal individual identity. Luther´s education reflected not just a statistical category, but the empirical factors that distinguished his attaining a PhD even in 1500, building on the legacy of Thomas of Aquinas already. It´s worth noting that besides the key foundation represented by the Christianized metaphysics of the First Cause argument, Aquinas is known for his basic epistemological accompishment of the four lawful realms, i.e. knowledge domains of phenomena: Natural, Human, Divine (Scriptural), and Eternal (Metaphysical). Levels of Analysis and Explanation and the interrelation of multiple disciplines, i.e. knowledge domain epistemologies, is required. Your socioeconomic variables don´t stand in direct relation, and your resorting to such attempted denialistic devices as "confirmation bias" indicates that you yourself are not literate in operational forces. Do you know about Freud and Jung´s work, or Harlow´s work? Those have direct implications for the meaning of "love," and its differentiative value in historical sociological analysis. You accused me of "reductionism", while your resorting to demographic level statistical terms represents reductionism by abstraction to obscure causal relations. "The only reason the church had a greater involvement in science as compared to islamic centres for learning was due to the power and influence the church asserted. Not grounding the scientific inquiry in Christian derived practices. " Again, your asserting "power and influence" ignores the empirical evidence and reality that monastic schools interrelated study and spiritual practice in a historical process that had a significant initiation of a societal subgroups with the likes of Justin Martyr´s philosophy and with Anthony of the Desert´s proto-monasticism in 270. I mentioned at least two key three key events and/or indicators in Bishop R Grosseteste the proto-scientist, monk Thomas of Aquinas, and Bishop Tempier. Science´s natural philosophy involved its spiritual-religious context, as clarified by scholars like Stan Jaki and James Hannam, which your abstracted variables neglect, and don´t refute. Where are you attributing "confirmation bias", in the end? Why, you´re attempting to attribute "confirmation bias" and "prejudice" to "church sanctioned centres." What sense does that make? That church centers try to claim credit for non-Christian scientific development. As with your abstracting reductionistic socioeconomic variable false exclusion dichotomies, you haven´t refuted the associations that I´ve indicated. Christian Church monastic spiritual practice developed the discipline of study, with the purpose of scholarship in general, and including scientific philosophy, were conducted in a psychosocial and cultural setting that allowed Christians to embrace ancient Greek accomplishments, Islamic too, and overcome their limiting assumptions. It wasn´t anti-religious materialists, which would be the implied positive logic of your argument. Descartes´ secular and mechanistic method then can be identified after those key earlier advances were made. Pascal protested. Yet, even Descartes´ source in the monastic nun Therese of Avila has been identified. Descartes has been credited with the "mind-body split." Indeed, that would mark the start of the tendency to DENY or IGNORE the relevance of Christian factors, and a bias against the FOUNDATIONS that did IN FACT exist in scientific development. The factors before and during Descartes´s life are all Christian psychosocial and cultural components. Now, that is an interesting and slightly new insight for me. The prejudice was in the extremism of the mechanistic step that DENIES the relevance of the Christian context. Oh, and your evaluations are thus correspondingly lacking in coherence about the empirical account I am providing and correspondence to it. Your negative confirmation bia, a rejection or denial bias and õrientation to invalidate the Biblical narrative is thus what is exposed, in full face of empirical evidence. Welcome to the scientific materialist looking glass.