Friday, April 29, 2022

Knowledge and God ´s Mind

Mic Valen Wi God is Knowledge. God doesn’t know anything. Reply Share 23h Ang V Harr Mich Valenti Wil You're right. Because knowledge is of the mind. And God doesn't have a mind because God isn't a person. Reply Share 22h Si Clous Ang V Harri OM Reply Share 22h M Re Mont An V Harri That sounds a lot like what Aristotle believed, with his esoteric First Cause co-eternal with the Universe. I´m interested in all manner of diverse experiences as someone with a degree in Bio Anthropology, including Michael Harner´s shamanism, Black Elk´s relationship to the Creator, and the Buddha, among them. Yet, nothing has impressed me like the point that emerged as I appreciated the 12 step second step about "being restored to sanity" and the Buddha´s doctrine of "the non-existence of the self." The special role of Jesus and his legacy just popped into my awareness around that moment. Simply put, I see it´s significance in references to Einstein. Many people operating according to the rationalist scientific view of God like Einstein´s comments about Spinoza´s impersonal God. Yet, Einstein actually appreciated the vivid quality of the NT, rejecting mythicist talk, and he gushed over Gandhi, saying, "Who would believe that a man such as he ever walked on this Earth?" Gandhi, for his part, had been a secular law student in London when he went to a vegetarian club and met theosophists. They revived and reoriented his enthusiasm for Hinduism, and with an interfaith spirit. Gandhi went on to become an interfaith Christian Hindu who said he read the Bible for Jesus regularly. Even though he famously "didn´t like Christianity." Those references are a good warm up to that of FD Roosevelt, who has been widely mudslung covering up his Social Gospel influences, his modern spiritual-religious references, and his alertness to fascist danger in the face of conservative business isolationists. Not to mention his vision and legacy in the UN and human rights. As much as people have to do for themselves in spiritual practice and more, the special quality of Jesus Christ is spectacularly personal in nature and as it relates to the developments from the OT to modernity. If God is the eternal Creator, the distinction between human beings in the OT follows a key historical component in which some kind of Divine-human effort was being made before Jesus Christ´s actual life, mission, and message was even possible. And I am impressed how the personal quality of Jesus´ account in the Gospels has been expressed in his legacy in Christian community in Western Civilization. The nature of the abusers of the fruits of Jesus´ legacy is clear as the central role of Christians in changing monastic schools into Universities is made clear over other misleading stereotypes and scapegoating accounts. We are not developing knowledge by ourselves at all, in fact. The comparative evidence amongst cultures and individuals is all around. Learning and knowledge development only flourishes with people valuing decent conduct. Besides Christians developing their monastic schools into Universities, take the end of slavery, no less. The UK, location of early knowledgable monks like Alcuin of York in Charlemagne´s times, the Puritans produced George Fox who led the co-founding of the Quaker Friends. Their remarkable spread outside the establishment Anglican Church interacted with University grads like William Penn in part in the UK itself, with various forms of high integrity protests and inclusionary values. In a hundred years, excluded from the mainstream by and large, the Quakers agitated against slavery, sparking University activity that produced dissenting divinity grad and anti-slavery essay winner T Clarkson. His intense research gave him the epiphany to lead the pioneering social movement against slavery, joining with the Quakers and others in a Society. What split accounts for "knowledge" being associated with merely dissociated individuals? Descartes´ famous "mind-body split" actually involves his role as the kind of human catalyst for philosophy´s various key modernizing steps in introspection, secular mechanicism, and mathematics. I´ve found it helpful to look earlier at the work of the pivotal monk Thomas Aquinas, who Christianized ancient Greek philosophy, as in Aristotle´s esoteric and inscrutable First Cause, co-eternal with the Universe. So, knowledge in fact is related to God´s being a Divine Mind and Love, with Jesus having led to the understanding of both. That highlights the sense of Jesus saying that he was the Son of God and Man, and not doing it crudely at all, in fact, but with great tact. Jesus´ standard of integrity is associated with the rise of Christian spiritual monastic practice after Anthony of the Desert and his sub-legacy. The powerful fruits of that culture in University-based philosophical culture were then appropriated by people in the roles of merchant-soldier-monarch/ politicians who colonized the world by WWII. The personal relationship to God through Jesus, most directly in the NT and the history of high integrity individuals in Christian society, now makes clear the new objective. Secularized Christian-derived University-based knowledge practices now operate at the level of globalized Universities and FD Roosevelt´s UN human rights-sustainability. It is thus the US constitutional democratic Civil Right of Freedom of Religion and UN human rights that governs individual spiritual-religious seeking, ultimately. Interpreting Jesus alone requires modernizing the spirit of the letter, and evaluating the spirit of the letter involves the meaning of "love thy neighbor as thyself." It is that latter message embedded in UN human rights that sets a structured pluralism. Gandhi´s example shows how he processed knowledge, as a secularized Hindu law student in London and vegetarian, he met theosophists at a club. They oriented him to Hinduism again, but with an interfaith awareness that came to include Gandhi´s knowing Jainism, Buddhism, and reading the Bible for Jesus regularly, despite "not liking Christianity." Gandhi´s interfaith Christian Hindu face of God through Jesus. And Einstein, no less. Safely ensconced in FDR´s US at Princeton, as the war raged horribly on, Einstein was a face with his lovable ways of sticking his tongue out, playing his violin, and riding his bicycle as a groundbreaking physicist who discovered the enchanting formula e=mc2. His acknowledgment of Jesus´ vivid NT presence and Gandhi make Einstein worth admiring for how his Spinoza reference is itself an understatement. Einstein was enchanted by personal examples but as a scientist not really a spiritual specialist. &&& Michae Valentinu Wilso Ang V Harrio Knowledge, being the Mind of God, is not information to be learned, as this post seems to suppose. Being eternally unchanging, it does not partake of the dualistic, codependent nature of humanity. However, as His Thoughts, our eternal Self is one with Him. Mark Rego Monteiro Michael Valentinus Wilson God´s nature has been proposed by others, and specifically philosopher, AN Whitehead and the Process Theologians, as di-polar, with both an eternal/atemporal nature and a temporal side. Your assertion seeks to make the distinction that "God´s eternal self" doesn´t "partake" of the human "dualistic codependent nature." You identify a human´s "eternal self" as being God´s Thoughts, somehow relating to Knowledge itself, that you equate to the Mind of God. The problem with asserting abstract metaphysical relationships, also in Whitehead´s case as in many others, is the failure to relate to empirical cases, which makes the assertions in the old tradition of pre-empirical thinking. "Science" has famously generated even vicious overspecialized anti-theists who in part certainly show the limitations of unempirical assertions. For that reason, I have never given up my love of empiricism, but which also demands the application of philosophical thinking, as its foundation. The goal, I am happy to have learned, is philosophical truth with the criteria of logical coherence and correspondence to reality. "Science," ie scientific philosophy, in fact, is just a subdiscipline of philosophy. As for "knowledge" and God, I was fascinated to begin to learn about Anthony of the Desert in recent years. The so-called Father of Christian monks began as an ascetic Christian seeker. I still haven´t read his full account, but the outline of his now-termed psychological and spiritual struggles were expressed as demons of loneliness and the like. After some thirty plus years, he had gone through cycles of psychospiritual crisis until a major episode resulted in his having a youthful appearance with tranquility. Later monks and by Benedict of Nursia had identified three stages of Purgatio-Illuminatio-Unitio, with divinization/theosis a crucial crossover stage, presumably to the "Unitio" level. In looking at later phenomena, with many spiritual practitioners called "saints" by the Catholic church, there comes the pivotal position of the monk Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s following Francis of Assisi (d. 1225). Assisi was the son of a successful merchant without advanced education, who had a spiritual revelation outside the church and monastic system. As for knowledge, Aquinas made landmark efforts taking Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause of the co-eternal Universe with god the Unmoved Mover. Through Jesus, the understanding Aquinas developed is more of the "Moved Mover." God´s effective reality directed Aquinas´ thoughts in his various fairly well-known arguments, like the argument from motion. That is the classic First Cause argument, that all motion in the Universe came from a Prime Mover. That also relates to Aquinas arguing against infinite regress, and locating eternity in God through Jesus´ heritage and legacy. The ancient Greeks, as historian J Hannam points out, didn´t do experiments, and didn´t look for physical laws of nature. They were seeking to understand the purpose of things, Hannam suggests. Aquinas, by contrast, codified the Christian understanding of a loving and lawful God who had created a lawful created Universe. That then provides a more comprehensive and empirical framework for making assertions about our relation to knowledge and God. Aquinas honored the ancient Greeks and eclectic influences as part of Christians turning monastic schools into Universities with modernized, Christianized philosophical scholarship. Descartes´ later contributions, involving a mind-body split quality, correspond to growing secular mechanicism in modern knowledge. The role of the Christian community is hinted at here, as Franciscans also became known in the UK as the proto-scientific Oxford Franciscan School, among other fascinating developments. Thus, I think that empirical historical meditation, reflection, and evaluation begins to value human activity more comprehensively than even the description of "dualistic, codependent humanity" that you want to assert. That ultimately is the importance of keeping tabs on Jesus, and not neglecting as a stereotyped figure. The descriptions of his suffering and death on the Cross relate profoundly to the meaning of his Resurrection and the community that extended his legacy in historical development. In a sense, I see in part the relevance of the Original Sin-Original Blessing polarity. Cause and effect understanding through modern philosophical scholarship, spiritualized,can give us the insight to recognize a balance of forces, and the need for spiritual practice. Jesus taught about people having a light within, and "shining that light in front of others with good deeds to honor God." Matt 5 by "going and learning" Matt 9. The Buddha certainly found similar insights as he formulated his Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, and found his sangha community forming. With secularizing Christian Western culture having significant University-based currents, comparative religious studies has emerged and increased in its knowledge more slowly than scientific philosophy and technology. Yet, with the developments in empiricial psychosocial disciplines as with psychoanalysis and healing in therapeutic psychology with Freud, Jung et al as well, the meaning of academic and other learning communities has signficance for a spectrum in human spiritual levels of awareness. The 12 steps started by AA, by its founders Bill W and Dr Bob, provides its own interesting balance of groups and individuals. Jung sent a letter through acquaintances, as Dr. Bob and Bill W and others were involved in the spiritualized approach of the Christian Oxford Group. William James´ book Varieties.... was also in play. Yet, with limited formal spiritual-religious study, Bill W the stockbroker formulated the innovative 12 steps and Big Book. Process Theology proposes an intimate relationship between God and his Creation that suggests a rich meaning by Divine Love. Its expression through human beings near and far becomes part of the linkage of relations.

Prayer And Meditation Studies Are Associated with which god(s)?

​Anonymou WhiteRabbi Anonymou WhiteRabbi 15 hours ago @Green Peacemst These prayer and meditation studies have been associated with which god(s)? Several? Or only one of them? @Anonymou WhiteRabbi Ah, what´s the shortest answer? "(Scientifi) studies" are in Jesus´ legacy of his Creator God, while any individual and tradition-group variants are now studied with all the cause-effect empirical psychosocial knowledge that makes (g)God(s) capable of being analyzed for their ecological and social systemic components and their spiritual-religious referents at various levels. So, sorry Sam Harris and co., I actually studied Bio Anthro in college, and know most essentials about the issue. So, here goes. As for you, quite a good question that automatically deviates from scientific methodological naturalism into the area of psychosocial studies and empirical symbolic human phenomena and practice. When you ask about "studies associated with which god(s)," are you aware of the History of Science and Religion itself? Where do those studies themselves come from? Hindu culture? Buddhist culture? Most likely, you´re a scientific materialist/metaphysical naturalist with an ideological belief that "atheist humanists" invented "science" and Universities because of your ideological anti-Christian beliefs. Surprise, suddenly the whole context has its basic self-referential component. But, don´t have a hairy conniption. Allow me to lay the groundwork since I have the honor of having been an atheist humanist who has had to plow and pick his way through education and life with a degree in Bio Anthro from a pretty good world famous and leading University. So, how does a philosophical scholar classify, say, Gandhi, a secular law student in London and vegetarian club member, who met theosophists at the club who reoriented him to a new approach to Hinduism and interfaith study that led Gandhi to include regular study the Bible for Jesus in his practice? Gandhi´s enriched kind of crossover multicultural life and exploratory example in spiritual-religious study and practice requires a little more than stereotypes by ideologues who think human psychosocial symbolic behavior equates to humans inventing (g)God(s). I also get to L Mehl-Madrona MD, PhD´s multicultural shamanic psychiatry at the end, so don´t jump ship too soon. Extended Short version in a paragraph: Thus, thanks to Jesus´ legacy in University-based philosophical scholarship, we know that there is only one Creator God. That refers to the ancient Greek and eclectic-based Christian-derived philosophical scholarship in multiple disciplines with empiricism, including both "science" and psychosocial symbolic studies, to understand how and why people have developed their systems from shamanism to the institutional modern religions and their spectra of practice. Hinduism has its formal temples and gurus including yoga, Buddhism has spread throughout Asia and now the globalized UN community of nations, Taoism includes tai chi and has spread, and Christianity has its secularized forms that have hidden its influences in key ways of philosophical knowledge, business practices, and democratic government forms along with the intiative of UN human rights. Christianity´s formal expression has diverse institutionalized forms, and individual practitioners thanks to the Freedom of Religion. Gandhi is an excellent example, having been a secularized former Hindu law student in London, who as a vegetarian joined a club where he met theosophists. Those theosophists reoriented him back to Hinduism as part of an interfaith approach that Gandhi developed on his own that included significant valuing of studying the Bible for Jesus regularly. God is one, while Christianity´s University-based system, now globalized in the UN human rights-sustainability community, has provided the multidisciplinary philosophical empricism in science and psychosocial studies to analyze and even refine spiritual-religious practices according to the standard of loving integrity in Jesus´ legacy in human rights-sustainability. Extended reasoning behind the short version: And that´s where the very nature of the question requires getting literate about "science" in its true nature as scientific philosophy. It is a subdiscipline of modern philosophy, which is itself a Christianized modernization of ancient Greek and eclectic influences. Thus, at the primarly level, it doesn´t matter. Such brainscans identify the specific kind of brain state related to the activity. It isn´t just something to be confused with fantasy or fiction writing, for example. It is the spiritual-religious practice and the associated, identifiable standard brainscan that is being observed. However, this is where Christianity has served through its developing "science", ie scientific philosophy, and its secularized, mechanicized version. While you may think "science" is "godless" with its methodological naturalism, and the widespread twist into scientific materialism and metaphysical naturalism, get this. The origin of science's belief in a lawful nature began as the belief in a lawful Creation. Thomas Aquinas´ widely neglected role in Christian Universities. Yet, that also involves a self-referential process now as Luther´s inspired Reformation started University-based philosophical scholarship into the Enlightenment and constitutional Civil Rights and Freedom of Religion until the Social Gospel influenced FD Roosevelt´s vision and legacy formulated and negotiated modern UN human rights after the catastrophe of WWII. It was right at that point that Eliot D Chapple at Harvard in anthropology drew on Pavlov´s dog symbolic conditioning, Ogden and Richard´s symbolic language symbol-thought-referent interrelations, and Malinowski´s human needs approach in anthropology to identify how human interaction contexts could be operationalized as emotional-interaction patterns for symbolic meaning. See JB Watson´s work with conditioning a child for a specific human demonstration of Pavlov´s principle. That´s where Skinner´s work came from, moreover. Chapple drew on Malinowski´s and other field studies to lay out the approach of behavioral anthropology. Religion, and the different areas of human society no less, thus consists of two kinds of basic rituals: Rites of Intensification and Rites of Initiation. My "rite of initiation" into spiritual-religious practice came as I opened a book by scholar H Smith and like the Chinese Tao. I also walked into a Unitarian Universalist interfaith congregation and liked their support of interfaith spiritual paths. Rites of intensification began as I began reading casually, and took my studies from cross-cultural psychology to History of Science to sociology to Bio Anthro and the evolution of speech, symbolic behavior, psychosocial interaction, and religious ritual. And a class in tai chi, Kung Fu, and then my first venture to a Zen Buddhist temple to meditate. And more from there. It is on that kind of foundation that "science" and scientific materialists are lassoed back to Earth and reality by getting schooled in science as philosophy. Thus, the evaluation of "brainscans of meditators and prayer" is the standard for spiritual-religious practice behavior. The question of studying the spiritual-religious knowledge classification of the meditators and praying people involves the psychosocial study disciplines and its empirical symbolic content. All told, Religious Freedom allows anybody to believe whatever they want. However, scientific philosophy, derived from its Christian foundations in spiritual-religious practice, has provided a symbolic knowledge systems of physical objects and processes that applies to everyone, and many key people are interested in learning, along with economic and business development, and University-based philosophical scholarship in general. Seeking the philosophical truth, in logical coherence and correspondence to reality, is in fact the method that underlies even "science," begins to and totally demystifies it, and situates it in a spectrum of multidisciplinary philosophical disciplines. Fritjof Capra has gone far with his Systems Theory of Life, as has Ken Wilber´s Integral Theory, as did Greg Bateson Ecology of Mind, JB Cobb´s Process Theology, and Karen Armstrong´s historical mythos/logos approach. Thus, Lewis Mehl-Madrona MD´s multicultural approach might provide a basic indicator of the point like this. He acknowledges Christianity as central to his work as a holistic shamanic psychiatrist, and includes indigenous and diverse paths on a patient-client basis. His medical psychiatric and psychological training are all in Jesus´ legacy of University-based philosophical empiricism, science, and psychosocial studies. That includes his ability to recognize the shamanic healing of indigenous shamans and the medically attested, medically impossible healings with spiritual-religious testimony of US Native American indigenous people. Through the University system´s heritage, the Creator referred to was originally Jesus´ own lawful and loving heavenly parent, that has been extended in relation to scientific philosophical knowledge, now widely secularized and providing a methodological naturalist foundation for all spiritual-religious philosophical evaluations, with Chapple´s Pavlov-Watson-Malinowski type behavioral framework filling in the Levels of Analysis, directly or indirectly. The framework is based on comparative religious studies and its philosophical empirical nature. The transpersonal psychological view, combined with the philosophy of religion provides the understanding of the transcendental and spiritual-religious phenomena and practice. Thus, thanks to Jesus´ legacy in University-based philosophical scholarship, we know that there is only one Creator God. That refers to the ancient Greek and eclectic-based Christian-derived philosophical scholarship in multiple disciplines with empiricism, including both "science" and psychosocial symbolic studies, to understand how and why people have developed their systems from shamanism to the institutional modern religions and their spectra of practice. Hinduism has its formal temples and gurus including yoga, Buddhism has spread throughout Asia and now the globalized UN community of nations, Taoism includes tai chi and has spread, and Christianity has its secularized forms that have hidden its influences in key ways of philosophical knowledge, business practices, and democratic government forms along with the intiative of UN human rights. Christianity´s formal expression has diverse institutionalized forms, and individual practitioners thanks to the Freedom of Religion. Gandhi is an excellent example, having been a secularized former Hindu law student in London, who as a vegetarian joined a club where he met theosophists. Those theosophists reoriented him back to Hinduism as part of an interfaith approach that Gandhi developed on his own that included significant valuing of studying the Bible for Jesus regularly. God is one, while Christianity´s University-based system, now globalized in the UN human rights-sustainability community, has provided the multidisciplinary philosophical empricism in science and psychosocial studies to analyze and even refine spiritual-religious practices according to the standard of loving integrity in Jesus´ legacy in human rights-sustainability.

Thursday, April 28, 2022

God and the Old Testament, Brutal Violence for Who? And God´s Love through Jesus?

Jo H Cle How many people and animals did G@d kill with the Flood? How many people and animals did G@d kill while Passingover in Egypt, in destroying cities? Why do so many insist on teaching from a Bible that includes so much killing by G@d? At leadt at the Episcopal Sunday School I was sent to , it was about Jesus’s love. Reply 4hEdited Mark Rego Monteiro Jo H Clem I was raised by an ex-church atheist humanist who valued education. I had academic success at the start, as part of my spiritual-religious interest in interfaith spiritual practice starting with scholar H Smith´s Chinese Tao and Unitarian Universalist interfaith. I got a degree in Bio Anthro, going for the evolution of speech, symbolic behavior, psychosocial interaction, and religious ritual. It also included Stone Age Cave Art. Understanding the way evolution works, from individual organisms to human social life meant thinking about the meaning of "survival of the fittest." R Dawkins had written his book The Selfish Gene. If you study archeology, you don´t hear much about the Jews overall. The Assyrians and Egyptians were powerhouses early one. Babylon. Greeks, Romans, Persians. Alexander the Great. Julius Caesar. I find that a relevant bunch of angles to clarify the meaning of Jesus Christ. And the OT. Especially now, thanks to Buddhist mindfulness, being aware that my love of University-based education reflects how Christians turned monastic schools into those Universities. The rise of secularism and mechanicism is a crucial additional issue, as are the three devastating forms of materialism that oppose or interfere with spiritual religious practice and knowledge of phenomena, I´ve come to see. Jesus Christ is a very intriguing figure, whose movement switched from Jewish to Roman gentile in nature, with ample Greek philosophical tools in play. The survival of the Jewish people, the Hebrews, and so on, is an adventure in archeology and anthropology, that is in Jesus´ legacy, and can richly inform Biblical study. God didn´t just part the Red Sea every time, and there were vicious intertribal battles amongst vicious powers, like the Assyrians, and the Egyptian pharaohs saying they "wiped out the seed of Israel." on the Merneptah stele, for example.

Friday, April 22, 2022

Is Religion in the name of God the Problem? Heaven on the Inside, and then What?

Jer Go Religions. Many still hate and slaughter each other in the midst of all of that love of the God some choose to worship. The conquerors pushed aside those who worshipped Idols. Made them except the Montheistic Omnipresent God, and the conquerors has slaughtered more in the name of their God, than the people who worshipped Idols. It is History. Look around the world today. We have nowhere else to go. "Heaven is not a locality, Heaven is in the mind'. The more kindness in the mind, the more beautiful the Heaven.". Reply Share 20h Bar Ho Jer Go god and jesus are both idols Reply Share 15h Mark Rego Monteiro Jer Go Your manner of discussing the subject identifies Idol worship, then scapegoats "God", or "religion in the name of God," and fails to discern the elements that Christianity´s own high integrity spiritual legacy has developed. Conquerors "in the name of God" are engaging in their own kind of idolatry, albeit at a new scale of power. Thus, spiritual-religious "fruits" were, and have been hijacked by non-spiritual human beings in their activities as merchants, soldiers, and politicians. Scapegoating perpetuates the problem, and your foray into the solution misses the causal factor, personal effort in spiritual practice for personal growth. The irony of Christianity is that its spiritual practitioners developed monastic schools into modern Universities with modern empiricism and philosophical scholarship. In the process of developing knowledge, the useful tool of mechanicism and naturalism wasn´t done with spiritual insight, but for the indulgence in power, privielge, and pleasure. Descartes was a French Catholic in Protestant Holland, hounded out of a University and criticized by the Catholic Pascal for mechanicizing and desacralizing his thought. Hugo Grotius, also in Holland, is credited with formulating desacralized natural law, although Grotius wrote about Jesus the Christ, and attempted to identify acceptable essentials for sustaining religious minimal societal standards in society in a belief in God and God´s Providence. In fact, that was a step towards Religious Tolerance. John Locke did something similar. It is thus that we note two things. That in the universality of human violence and enslavement, with the likes of Genghis Khan´s body counts est. up to 60 mn, the Chinese Hongwe Emperor in the millions, and other Chinese genocides, India´s own King Ashoka who became Buddhist because of his own shock at battle violence, Africans with African slaves like Olaudah Equiano recounts, and Jesuit Manuel da Nobrega´s account of his Jesuit colleague cannibalized by the indigenous people, and the famous US Native Am Sacagawea a Native captive sold to a Frenchman. Thus, European humans indulging in their roles as merchants, soldiers and politicians were acting in accordance with the law of the jungle, that Might makes Right, among peoples. The very implication of injustice reflects the core of people´s own natural self-love, and its spectacular divine codification in the Hebrew-Jewish Abraham-Mosaic prophetic context of Jesus Christ, and largely underemphasized, his teachings about spiritual practice that accompany your point about the Kingdom of Heaven being on the inside, as in "clean the cup on the inside" Matt 23. Thus, the immense power unleashed by Christian monk scholars is in fact one demonstration of Jesus´ very importance. The powerful aggressive use by nominal Christian merchants etc showed how far power can take a bunch of humans with access to it. It´s regrettable to those who are drawing on either self-love, or the understanding of spiritual principles as Jesus taught them from God. Buddhism, by the same token, in Japan was subordinated to Japanese appropriation of Western University education, especially sci-tech power. Through secular materialism, that Christian spiritual cultural development had been detached from direct Christian spiritual integrity. Their human indulgence reigned, using standard religious forms. A similar thing happened closer to home with Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin. Christianity, unlike Genghis Khan´s shamanism or Buddhism´s approach, etc, meanwhile, possesses an exceptional self-correcting core in the combined elements of Jesus´ life, mission, teachings, suffering, Resurrection, and loving Commandments for God. However, even today, businesspeople profiteers have funded Fundamentalism to defend their profiteering culture with a pro-rich, anti-social theology. The solution isn´t an end to religion, which serves the profiteers´ own diversionary tactics. The issue is to clarify Jesus´ truth, with its unprecedented loving power of love, and the need for individuals to engage in spiritual practice, personal effort in spiritual practice for personal growth. Globalized University-based, US Civil Rights and UN Human Rights in Jesus´ legacy have established a structured pluralism with reference to Jesus´ standard of loving integrity. The Buddha´s brilliance thus can be elevated in its psycho-spiritual logical coherence, and more dubious extreme doctrines of it, like the "non-existence of the self" can be refuted by individuals in the Freedom of Religion. Barack Obama represents one angle of high integrity in his progressive liberal doctrine. Albert Schweitzer represented another, dedicating himself to an African medical project. Religious services worker Frans van der Hoff et al´s Fair Trade certification drawing on the co-operative business model is another. Fannie Lou Hamer and her Farm Co-op was, no less.

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Tom Sawyer Painting Fences With Blinders On: Freud, Max Weber, Rev MLK Who? Another Scientific Materialist

How Hi 2 days ago Questions about the nature of the cosmos are prompted by religion, unsurprisingly since God is nominated the creator of existence. With the coming of science the question lay waiting for a realistic examination, but as an atheist who is happy to consider the nature of existence or the cosmos I have no interest in any kind of religious style answers and as far as I know there are no viable scientific ideas to explain this most profound question of all. How do we answer the question as to what existence is in scientific terms ? *** Which means that in the end it can only be a religious question, which makes it of no interest beyond the simple fact of acknowledging it is a mystery. But it is not a mystery that religion throws any light on at all, religion simply uses the unanswerable mystery to assert the validity of its assertion that God exists. Like1 Green Peacemst 1 day ago The fixation on "science" is its own ideological condition, and anthropologically, in fact religious. "Science" is a modern technophilic portrayal of scientific natural philosophy, that is, the application of philosophy to study physical objects and processes. Freud provides a trail for scientific materialists to observe the trail. He was a neurologist faced with patients suffering with no apparent organic cause of disease. Thus, he drew on some existing therapeutic forms, and asked the patients, like Anna O. for the sake of simplicity, to relax, focus their attention on the pain, and share their thoughts. Meanwhile, he took notes and encouraged them to continue. That was where Freud began analyzing their words, not studying their neurons or neuromusculature, etc under a microscope. That enters into the non-scientific philosophical, yet what is still in fact empirical philosophical, that by now can be called the psychosocial empirical philosophical (aka social sciences and humanities). Moreover, comparative religious studies and the philosophy of religion are both best used as multidiscplinary philosophical approaches, ie disciplines. If religion is merely considered anything, empirical philosophical scholarship is how University-based culture has been addressing it. I´ve had to develop my own terms, as far as I know, including spiritual-religious phenomena, practice, experience, and knowledge in the process, although I see it naturally as part of comparative religious studies and philosophy of religion. Your turning religion into a circular argument misses a basic point. "Science," which is actually scientific philosophy, is part of the full spectrum of modern empirical and philosophical forms. It helps also to take what I began to describe about Freud´s need to shift his approach, and acknowledge philosophers-psychosocial scholars like Max Weber who developed antipositivism/interpretivism. Human beings cannot be studied much like physical objects at all, but require understanding of symbolic issues, norms, values, etc. God the Creator, the Divine Transcendental Entity, can be inferred from the empirical sources since at least Abraham and Moses, shamans across cultures, and the like in their spiritual-religious experiences, that related to practices. Modern philosophy of religion works with what was originally Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause argument. The historical sociological continuity then shifts as ancient Greek culture was absorbed to neoplatonic Roman conditions, and Christian philosophers. Christian monasticism then developed, and became one major institutions of spiritual-religious practice. By the 1200s, the pivotal monk Thomas Aquinas then Christianized ancient Greek philosophy, with Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause characteristically reformulated in accordance with Jesus´ heritage and message of a loving, lawful Creator God. Modern philosophical forms in University-based culture is derived from Christian spiritual practice in the first place. Whether you understand your own obligation to study psychosocial studies, or the need to acknowledge spiritual-religious practice as a scientifically identified legitimate and unique kind of brainscan state in prayer or meditation, it is philosophy that establishes the continuity and distinctions. That is, no less, how epistemology works in philosophy. "Science" itself has been treated as a technophilic and supremacist practice of truth. It isn´t. That´s a philosophical fallacy, as well as a psychological condition, as well as a "spiritual religious revelation." Depending on the discipline being drawn on. That´s a University-based philosophical discipline, to repeat. For that reason, I´ve also had to invent the method involved that gives the overview and employment of the liberal arts and sciences with that kind of acknowledgment of literacy, Multidisciplinary Philosophy. The established churches don´t have the last word on doctrine. The Universities inspire individuals to modernize it, along with US-inspired Freedom of Religion and Civil Rights, and UN human rights, and EU equivalents. Once Universities are identified as Christian-based, anyway, Christian-derived democratic society has created the psychosocial mechanism for individuals to engage in spiritual religious practice and philosophical investigation to assess the empirical and philosophical issues. I was helped early on by identifying Unitarian Universalism, for example ,in the US. Like How Hi 1 day ago Green The idea that you can have religion in a university, a centre for knowledge creation, is identical to the notion that you can have a mafia police force, that is a police force dedicated to enforcing the law that openly welcomes practicing criminals within its ranks. Religion is the antithesis of science, a primary goal of religion in the modern era has been to steadfastly oppose science in order to maintain its own political authority, and your efforts are completely in line with this. For a genuine science to exist it must be based on a positive atheism that seeks a world in which religion does not exist, because this is a precondition for science to exist as an authority on knowledge of reality existing in its own right. Science done properly is nothing like religion, however many people, like yourself, wish to claim that it is. Natural philosophy faded away at the end of the eighteenth century as science came on line as a means of discovering the underpinnings of reality in a precise and demonstrable form. As an admirer of science from an early age I also considered philosophy to be as redundant as religion, and yet oddly enough I have become a philosopher myself, according to my own understanding of how my life has turned out, a life now in its twilight. Religion is the most important knowledge we possess, it created our world and it rules our world, but it is not of the same nature as knowledge created by applying a scientific method to the study of existence as it appears around us. Thus religion is part of reality, not an account of reality, and as a part of reality religion is a fit subject for science to be applied to, and indeed only by such scientific application can we discover what religion actually is as a natural phenomenon created by a natural process. The reason I had to become a philosopher is that because religion rules our world with an iron grip, as it always has, it turns out that science does not actually exist ! Ha! Who would of thought that ? But it is true. It is not possible for science to exist in a world where religion exists, as already noted. It transpires that during the war between religion and science, so called at the time by at least a couple of authors, an accommodation was worked out whereby science could exist true and free in places that did not encroach upon the ability of religion to exist, while a proclaimed science would come into being, shaped to the needs of the continuance of religious authority, in fields that could not be allowed to have a genuine scientific account of reality, thus we now have the nature of life covered by Darwinism hailed as the greatest of all sciences, the most atheistic of all sciences! When it is not science at all, it is at best science in the service of religion. If a genuine science existed it would recognise that the human species is a form of superorganic species, where the individual person has evolved to become a unit of a higher order of organic being. The core aspect of individual anatomy facilitating this biological shift of mammalian form onto the level of a superorganic species is of course the power of speech. Linguistic anatomy generates a biological flux of information that constitutes a biological programme, we know this programme as ‘knowledge’, it organises individuals causing them to bring the human animal as superorganism into being. This is where religion comes in, as a biological flux of information animating the existence of the human animal created by nature via the process of biological evolution. Hence the reason why the utter nonsense of religious spiel is so vital for our existence, even in a modern world where the ability to know reality exactly as it is, by means of science, is so well developed. This description of the control of science by religion in no way equates to a conspiracy, the creation of the biological flux of information that delivers all social form and structure ensures that this outcome will be realised, if it did not then the religious knowledge underpinning social form would be unable to achieve what we see it has achieved. Thus universities, contrary to my initial statement, are religious institutions, they exist precisely to control knowledge, not to create it. And those who attend universities must be regarded as akin to the people that train for religious orders of whatever kind, and in this sense the science that is produced by universities does indeed constitute a mode of religious formulation, but this is because academics are really priests, concerned to serve the message ruling society, not being at all interested in what reality is as it is discovered by genuine scientific investigation. This devotion to false, but authoritative ideas, is how nature made individuals to be, it is not a character flaw, however much it sounds like one. Your prophets or seers, those who conjure up religious mythology, are communing with God in the sense that they are developing ideas that reflect the nature of the object that exists in reality that the word ‘God’ relates to, the human superorganism. The resulting mythical ideas have social power because they represent the real attributes of empowerment that relate to the formation of human superorganic physiology based upon the cellular somatic units that we are ourselves. &&& (The extended version reply) Listen to yourself. Tsk, tsk, and shame on you. You have dug yourself into “'Science´s' fancy hole in the ground” fantasizing that it looks like the whole Universe and squashes the big bad wolf that isn´t just fundamentalist religion, but Religion itself. Shameless, just shameless. Was Barack Hussein Obama just a “scientific” phenomena? Are you that blind? Was Ralph Nader a lab technician? Are you só naive? Was Rev Martin Luther King working at a hospital clinic to address the deep roots of racist inequality, even as he perceived its socioeconomic roots, as sociologist CW Mills did in his work like The Power Elite? That all appears like material you see through a thick fog, in your deep hole. In addition to the points I already made, scholar Huston Smith points out that Jesus´ own roots in Hebrew-Jewish prophetic culture begin with the prophet Elijah. He was inspired by God to stand up to the religiously wayward King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, and protected in the process. Jesus had his own teachings and demonstrations that have been widely neglected. The pioneering social movement to end slavery was sparked by the dissenting denomination Quaker-Friend Christians who ignited University-based activity that led T Clarkson to join the Q-Fs and lead the grassroots campaign. Scientific philosophy itself is originally and in principle part of Christian University spiritual philosophical practice, or do you fantasize that Newton was identified by the British East India Co. And fed from their corporate mammaries, like any common contemporary American consumer? Like Dawkins who has no clue about his own affiliation with Oxford University and its meaning. Atheists conspiring? Well, England might be approaching such appearances, and certainly have shown limited ability to forcefully communicate Dawkins´ kind of crass fallacies. His colleagues have called him “an embarrassment” and others have referred to jokingly “varieties of irreligious experience.” That´s a joke based on William James´ balanced, but pro-theist Varieties of Religious Experience. And in a world facing the threats of unsustainability and human rights abuses at the hands of profiteering businesspeople. I even covered Freud and Max Weber, and a range of the psychosocial historical issues. You have the gall to equate me to any other pro-theist speaker on the subject. Meanwhile, you say that you became a philosopher, after all your continuing stereotyped-oriented ideological scientific materialism, and like Alexander Rosenberg, show no knowledge of the meaning and significance of the empirical psychosocial studies disciplines, also essential philosophical developments, like was is in fact scientific philosophy. “Science” is a crass and conceited technophile name, catastrophically overvalued, and part of the very problem of your kind of ideological religious fundamentalism. There you are, subverted by your own stereotypes and held accountable. It´s like religious fundamentalists try to hijack scientific philosophy and philosophy on the whole. Tsk, tsk, again. Shame on you. And that´s how deep the hole is that you´ve jumped into and dug deeper for yourself and others. And in the twilight of your life, no less. Well, I´m no spring chicken, and have seen passed the limitations that you keep painting like a Tom Sawyer at the picket fence wearing horseblinders as if FD Roosevelt, Eleanor, and Gandhi never showed up at all. John Muir, the eco-theist post-Presbyterian founder of the environmental Sierra Club, has a story in his life of digging a deep well as a youth in which he almost died. That would make a nice metaphor along with that Sawyer formulation of mine. Meanwhile, I am grateful for my dad´s well-balanced emphasis on education, with him having left a church as an atheist humanist, stating his straightforward disappointment with church historical violence once, valuing education, psychology, and focused, with anger, on the problem of multinational corporations. And then his limited psychological spiritual resources left him exposed to his unresolved issues and surrounding stresses. His cancer diagnosis was followed by a massive heart attack that killed him and required a defibrillator, delay of techno-cancer treatment, his own indulging in self-reinforcing atheism interpreting his failure to experience the afterlife at death, devastating radiation treatment, cancer elimination, and his rushing his recovery by returning to work in international politics, then getting pneumonia four months later and dying from that in his weakened state. Jesus taught, “seek first the Kingdom of Heaven.” Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths including the need for Right Meditation. Herb Benson MD had labeled the Relaxation Response. OC Simonton MD had written Getting Well Again about psychosomatic approaches to healing cancer. Christian Science had thrived for a long time, and still has a sustained presence based on its powerful transpersonal healing approach, with thousands of testimonies. Carl Jung had promoted a spiritually oriented therapeutic psychology. Thus, I had a good balance to my introspection and overall interest in education and into going to an excellent college at a renowned University for liberal arts and sciences, and getting an undergraduate degree in Biological Anthropology. I switched from sociology to that, and carried my social interests and concerns dynamically with me. It makes me sad at first, that you are like many scientific materialists, and many involved in these discussions, who are simply unconcerned with informing yourself adequately about the subjects involved. I have long had a sense of my responsibility. I focused on the evolution and dynamics of speech, symbolic behavior, interpersonal interaction, and religious ritual with Bio Anthro´s Terrence Deacon one frequent advisor professor. I had also found Eliot D Chapple´s amazing and widely neglected work on anthropology and emotional-interaction patterns that he identified as rhythmic in nature. He derived it from Pavlov´s basic insights on symbolic conditioning. JB Watson´s work is also revealing, with anthropologist Mel Konner relating Watson´s famous work with a child using a gong and a cute little harmless white lab rat. Gong´s cause fear, and fearful associations when a rat is the “guinea pig.” So to speak for humorous effect. Thus, symbols are almost physical in nature. Yet, that is the interface with the non-physical and human realm of symbolic meaning. It is in fact energetic and neural. No less, the complexity of the neural is in circuits and networks. The relevance of the Holographic model was recognized by neurophysiologist Karl Pribram. Wave interference and reflection off an object/subject projected onto a photographic plate resulted in the image´s 3D information being captured, non-locally and distributed. Now, Chapple et al published his Principles of Anthropology with his behavioral interaction patterns-based treatment, also building on Malinowski´s biological need based approach, among others. And the implications clear to someone with active musician-drummer interests like myself. Chapple identified religious ritual for Rites of Intensification and Rites of Passage, building on Van Gennep´s work and the like. He also identified the need of a leader, an “originator.” Which is all fun in its details. But, Greg Bateson and Joseph Campbell later came along and publicized work on schizophrenia, with the double-bind theory psychotherapeutic, and Campbell citing J Silverman MD, I think, on how tribal shamans train “schizophrenics” who actually have a talent. Not as crazy people, but in holistic intelligence. Lord knows I am one of them, among others. But back to basics. Your kind of stereotyping ideological scientific materialism gives you know understanding of the multidisciplinary importance of all University-based liberal arts and sciences in evaluating the significance of scientific philosophy itself. Like I mentioned. I discussed Freud and to Max Weber et al´s crucial work. It reflects how FD Roosevelt and Gandhi didn´t consult Einstein. Einstein was fascinated by Gandhi´s “experiments with truth,” however. Gandhi, a secular law student in London who went to a vegetarian club (?) where he met interfaith Theosophists. Apparently they gave him a new modern spin on Hinduism, and interfaith practice. Gandhi went on to study the Gita and the Bible for Jesus regularly, as his inspiration. Personal conduct, and in fact, the kind of spiritual religious principles that underlie the scientific community and its origins, and nature. A lawful Universe? Where do you think that notion comes from? Aristotle was looking for purpose, not laws, as historian James Hannam points out. And Harry Harlow, studying monkeys, fought the psychological establishment by modern scientific materialistic times, to get the term “love” approved in describing the effects of deprivation. You, an empirical observer like myself observes, demonstrate a related complex, in trying to reduce all to materialist objectivity. As Marshall Rosenberg pointed out in his popular technique Non-Violent Communication, we have feelings and needs that need to be acknowledged. John Bradshaw´s brilliant work on the Crisis in the Family and the wounded inner child did more brilliant work. Empirical, but not scientific. Standardized, but not objectifying. Compassionate, empathetic, in honor of Jesus´ living legacy of loving integrity for Moses and God´s love, and standardized pluralism that makes such declarations as “all religions have one God” worth assessing. UN human rights and sustainability make that standard broadcast around the world. Not scientific reductionism and its associated 3 major forms of materialism: secular, scientific, and economic, and their related misdirections. Economic materialist businesspeople fund Christian fundamentalists, which fuels scientific materialists misguided stereotypes. Congratulations! &&& How H 5 days ago Green I was about to kickoff and have a go at you because your response adopts an aggressive manner at the outset, but I appreciate you taking the trouble to set out some of the more substantial aspects of your life’s work, and I respect that. Clearly we are set at odds along the fracture lines of religion versus atheism, but dealing with that can only come down to an exchange of abusive criticism, and I am as good at that as you are, and I feel sure neither of us are interested in such exchanges just for the fun of it. You do attack a love of science as being blind materialism, and you defend religion on a simplistic basis, but your extended reply provides substance to respond to more constructively. Accordingly, I have looked at various psychological ideas of the kind you talk about with interest, some of the best for me have been where the suggestibility of people is tested so that they can be made to deny the evidence of their own eyes under peer pressure, or susceptibility to authority where a willingness to inflict harsh torture is demonstrated under pressure from an authority figure. From childhood I became a passionate atheist, it has been all that has interested me all my life, spurred on by the fact that we are so oppressed by religion in every detail of our lives, so that I set about my life with two questions fixed in my mind; Why does religion exist, and what would science say the human animal is, if it could say ? And that is it, that has been my life. In my mid forties I hit upon the idea that individuals did not exist as ends in themselves, but in such a manner that I felt the reality of this idea sufficiently to pursue it. Since then this has been my life. That the human animal is a superorganism exactly identical to the insect superorganisms in its nature, is utterly obvious, from a scientific viewpoint, it is completely undeniable, except by way of mere verbal denial, but it is also an idea that cannot be known without destroying society as we know it, because this idea is the key to giving a totally scientific, materialistic if you insist, account of every detail of our existence, which is currently based upon mythological representations of myriad kinds. In order for any account of human existence to have any validity it must recognise this alternative reality, otherwise however clever, however well formulated or tested, it can only be erroneous, just as science based on the earth being at the centre of the universe could only ever be erroneous no matter how exacting and clever its presentation was. I began by writing ripostes to various elements of what you said, but there is nothing to be gained by exchanging insults or simplistic criticisms. But I ought to try and address the specific criticism you make of my dismissal of universities as institutions dedicated to the control of knowledge, not its creation. I am only concerned with religion, and that is because science cannot exist where religion exists, this is a simple fact, our world proves it over and over again. No one is talking about the liberal arts, though I guess I could do, but there is no need, religion, that is all that matters, if there were no religion then liberal arts could do little harm by way of aiding and abetting mental subjugation to an identity implant. Your father, you say, rejected Christianity because of its betrayal of its true nature revealed in its history, that is something worthy of congratulations, shame there are so few Christians who know anything about this, or who care. A crucial attribute of science is that there should be no value judgements, obviously, but you appear to be insisting that because we are all about value judgements in our daily lives then science must follow this course too. In that case you may as well not have science, this is indeed what sociology is like. But that is not science, and I want to know what the human animal is, as it is revealed to be by science! I do not give a fig for anything stemming from that insight, good or bad, I just want to know the correct answer. And of course I do. With that correct answer now obtained, we can address the consequences. Difficult to do briefly. All I would say for now on this, is that I do not see a bright future ahead for us on this planet carrying on the way we have been that has brought us to the position we find ourselves in today. Any ideas I would conjure up about the kind of world I would want to live in would probably read like a H. G. Wells novel, utopian, unreal. But knowing what is real, is itself real, I have proved that, and I hold the believe that knowing what is real is the highest value attainable in the pursuit of knowledge, it is an idealistic belief, but you can congratulate me for that if you like. Like Green Peacemst < 1 min ago Your conceit as an ideological scientific materialist is as noteworthy as it is characteristic of the type. Your noting my stance as "aggressive" is certainly not undue, but your posturing is exposed as you call my attitude "abusive criticism." Oh because I asked if you could be "so naive"? Your mischaracterization is more of an indication of your misguided ideology. In fact, I am presenting you in direct address with positions that refute your ideological assumptions. Your conceit comes from the widespread sociological context of society in which "scientific materialism" has become embedded with the even more toxic economic version of business profiteers, and the "sandwich" form of secular materialism that is unfortunately just as dangerous as it is vulnerable to the other versions´ misdirections. You propose that I am characterizing your "love of science" as "blind materialism." No, although that also reveals how you manipulate terms to shift empirical references. Your blind materialism is what failed to acknowledge key points that I´ll have to address in a moment briefly. Your personal account leads you to share your fixation with equating humans as a "superorganism" IN THE SAME SENSE as insects. I recall that my professor for a class, Harvard´s EO Wilson, was at least held to hold a similar view at one time, in relation to Sociobiology. He was always pretty sophisticated, and when I was presenting him with my Levels of Analysis with anthropological and psychological learning perspectives, he called my views "clinical." The point being in your case that any human condition is only ANALOGOUS to the insects in some respects. Individual human "Ant Queens" demonstrate how symbolic material gets manipulated to create cultural or subcultural ideologies. Barack Obama´s and Bernie Sanders excellent characters and abilites to get elected as President or Senator of Vermont only were no match for GOP maneuvers based on business profiteering funding and scheming that got both Bush and Trump elected with popular minority votes. As Obama spoke more progressively than his modest accomplishments derived from his community organizing background. Individual innovators, or just personalities expressing archetypal positions, in symbolic human behavior can emerge in politics like Obama and Sanders on the good progressive side or the reactionary profiteering side. That reflects conduct, and a crucial angle of spiritual-religious meaning. The human being is no superorganism from the "scientific viewpoint." Your "blind materialism" indeed is exposed, as you say what? "except by way of mere verbal denial, but it is also an idea that cannot be known without destroying society as we know it." These aren´t careful empirical ideas, but your projection of your fears of your stereotypes of spiritual-religious phenomena, blurred with religion. You seek a "scientific" account of humanity, and even are prepared to concede "materialistic", but that´s not a concession. That´s a mistake, a false equivalence. A scientific account of humanity is limited to the physical. That´s what "science" does, ie what is actually scientific philosophy. "Science´s" wheels come off, one might say, outside of physical objects. A good simple example in this subject area is medically attested, medically impossible healings with spiritual religious testimony. Among countless cases in various sources, are Marlene Klepees and Bill Owen. Marlene Klepees went to the Mayo Clinic at age 20 suffering agonizingly from her cerebral palsy and surgical interventions that tried to adjust her skeleto-musculature. Her prayers since age 12 were finally answered, however. She had a prayer-vision-church sequential experience, left the clinic for an afternoon, and returned without the symptoms of her cerebral palsy (childhood brain damage) and the surgical interventions from some years earlier. Bill Owen was hiking with his son, got ill, and returned to Florida, and got hospitalized. His liver was identified as failing, and doctors stumped. Owens´ minister organized a prayer circle, and the next day, Owens began to recover. A University hospital confirmed the reversal. Studying this context draws on the empirical psychosocial studies that study human symbolic behavior, and even form a limited continuity. The reality of "mind" however, is symbolic-energetic and a shift from its own bio-neurological circuit system substrate. Mind over matter identifies how a motivated person in studies, business, sports, or whatever can push beyond their tiredness to complete a deadline overnight or the like. The insights I began to mention to you are fundamental in undersanding what Fritjof Capra´s work in Systems Theory lays out for what is in fact multidisciplinary philosophical epistemology, . You, however, falsely equate "science" with the complete approach. Multidisiciplinary philosophy does include "science," but it understands the basic insight of philosophers and scholars like Max Weber et al who formulated the term antipositivism and interpretivism. Human psychosocial symbolic norms and values require understanding. Your frame of reference as "scientific materialist-anti-religionist" has you, having alleged that I`m simplistic, shows no psychosocial understanding of science and religion. You untenably oppose them, showing no understanding of the History of Science and Religion, and how you are stereotyping with poorly informed functional lack of literacy. Thomas Aquinas shifted Aristotle´s esoteric First Cause philosophy of a co-eternal god-Universe, to the Christian lawful Creator God´s lawful Creation. James Hannam has done excellent work, with popular books like The Genesis of Science/God´s Philosophers. Thus, all the early scientists were Christians in one way or another, up to the spectacular story of Michael Faraday with no University education. You miss all the distinctions because of your primary fallacy. What was the difference between the Vatican team that convicted Galileo and all the Anglicans, Lutherans, and Quakers et al surrounding Lister, Pasteur, and Koch et al? You have no clue. What was the effect of the non-scientific rise of the Industrial Revolution after Watt´s technicological insights with his steam engine? What was the nature of Darwin´s insight about evolution and its impacts? At the levels of complexity going on, Darwin participated in his local church, but never resolved his assertion "What is the relevance of Christ for 'science'?" He was a kind guy with AR Wallace, for example, and aware of Rich Owens the 'dinosaur' guy´s frequent dishonest conduct. Moreover, Darwin never studied spiritual-religious phenomena like the Quakers had, as Julian of Norwich had healed in the 1300s, as was beginning to rise at Lourdes in the Catholic Church, with many other aspects. "Science" was racing ahead as a human activity capable of technological fireworks. Religion has faced the very much more complex issues of its foundational role in society and underlying science itself. Why has the UK, with its Church of England, never gotten rid of its aristocracy? The US got rid of its aristocracy, but not the problem of greed generating oligarchy. The US led with Freedom of Religion, and that led to the 1893 Chicago Parliament of Religions in the US, not Europe, it is worth noting. You snarl about religious mythology, and make no reference to the range of progressive religious efforts that include the Quaker-Friends, Unitarians (where Darwin started), Emerson´s own leaving the Unitarians, but proposing the Oversoul as a Hindu influenced philosophical religious concept. Unitarian Universalism´s wide open structure encouraging spiritual exploration according to set principles. And so I inform you about a range of material that is very much necessary to understand "reality," empirical reality that goes beyond the scientific study of physical objects. The empirical reality that has emerged with various efforts including the study of symbols, starting with Pavolv´s dog and sign to symbol conditioning. Behavioral psychologist JB Watson gave a famous demonstration of a child and a white lab rat. The well-fed rat was just a cute little furry creature with the child, until the gong was rung to scare the child. A few sessions later, the child was scared of the fluffy sniffing rat. Anthropologist Mel Konner tells the account well in his rather materialist book The Tangled Wing. Anthropologist ED Chapple took Pavlov´s work to establish a very coherent behavioral anthropology, no less, drawing on the likes of Malinowski´s field studies. Chapple identified religious rituals as two main kinds: intensification and initiation. You don´t know what´s real by a long shot. You stop at scientific materialism, and your anti-religious stereotyping, all without adequate multidisciplinary knowledge which makes Multidisciplinary Philosophy possible. That includes science, and knowledge of the broader foundations and applicability of empiricism, especially around symbolic behavior and systems. That´s where Emerson´s Oversoul, William James´ Varieties, AN Whitehead´s Process and Reality, Jung´s archetypes, Piaget´s learning, in addition to what I´ve mentioned above, far outstrip your ideological arena. Technically you have a good start. Your ideology, however, makes you as mistaken about religion as a Dawkins calling "God a delusion." Your victimizing comments attempting to characterize my strong and critical forms of personal address like your being "naive" aren´t abusive, except to a conceited ideologue. That´s something I not only am not, in any sense, but have just gone even further in showing how much is missing from your view. Congratulate you? Congratulations on being able to pronounce "superorganism." Congratulations also on having me devote so much effort in this additional comment. Now, wake up and read some OC Simonton MD´s The Healing Journey for a powerful view of how medically attested, medically impossible healing with spiritual-religious testimony justifies the transpersonal philosophy of Emerson, William James, and the rest beyond whom I´ve mentioned. People very unlike ants, and very capable with symbolic language and empiricism, indeed. Until you can engage with their talk, you know very little about what´s real, except in the methodological naturalism of scientific philosophy.

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Matt Fox on Original Sin, for Original Blessing; Yet, The Reality of Sin and the Context of Blessing Is What, Then?

I´ve liked Matt Fox a lot, and originally ate up, in my own terms, his title of "Original Blessing." Yet, the doctrinal tit-for-tat, and the needs of reality, and the teachings of Jesus, have implications that make Blessings and Sin important contexts. If the Creation was considered "good" in Genesis, Jesus´ legacy in biological evolution and human historical sociology and anthropology gives us plenty of material to chew on about human inclinations and tendencies, psychosocial and biological, to indulge in the abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure. Here´s a string of my comments in a dialogue.... Mark Rego Monteiro I´ve enjoyed knowing about Matt Fox for a long time. Now, however, I know how far I´ve come. I got a degree in Bio Anthropology that has served me fundamentally to push through and identify my approach as spiritual empirical theism. Fox is reacting to some doctrinal spectrum, and affirming an important message. However, the issues raised by "original sin" aren´t actually unempirical. Jesus did talk about "Clean the cup on the inside where there is wickedness", and the Lord´s Prayer includes, "Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil." Those are the operative human quality variables that are empirically observable, in religious institutions or otherwise. It isn´t religious people that had to stretch to invent "Original Sin." YN Harari, whose own assumptions I disagree with in spiritual-religious aspects, nevertheless raises very empirical issues in trying to assess the meaning of agricultural settlement and human rights. A helpful case study is the late CEO Ray Anderson. The guy had a multinational corporation for floor carpeting in 1994 when a client wrote a letter in the spirit of the 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit on sustainability. His staff forwarded it, and Anderson researched the matter, taking it deadly seriously, at last, you might say (considering the 1972 UN Stockholm environmental conference, Earth Day, Rachel Carson, and more). Anderson came around to say things like, "I have been living as a pirate." FD Roosevelt, moreover, it is worth noting, had applied the Social Gospel to create the New Deal, not a business-influenced free market extension of the Stock Market disaster. America´s corporate business profiteers had even connived with mercenary pro-rich "gospel" ministers in what became linked to US military propaganda. Original Sin, and original blessing, both have important empirical considerations to be understood and acted upon. B H T Author Mark Rego Monteiro Original sin has been taught that it is an awful evil that everyone in their very conception are stained with. Which then condemns everyone so conceived to a place of eternal punishment. Of course, there is a proffered remedy. Which is nothing like Jesus taught. But you are right that Jesus more than once called out self-righteous hypocrites who ignored the needs of the poor and oppressed. Mark Rego Monteiro B H TGood point about the specifics of the original sin doctrine. Yet, even so. Simply treating "original sin" as totally false, or even totally replacing it with "original blessing" is ultimately insufficient. My point goes further. I have a degree in Biological Anthropology, and more, and noted the issue of more than "self-righteous hypocrites." A wide range of people indulge in the abuse of power, privilege, and pleasure, and as with the profiteering businesspeople who connived with the Billy Graham-like Rev Fifield to concoct a pro-rich "gospel", there is a "wickedness" that J referred to as I quoted, I recall. The "deceitfulness of wealth" was another term J himself used. AN Whitehead had an interesting insight, as he proposed ideas such as the evil of the industrial revolution involving "the diversion of attention to 'things instead of values.'" Whitehead similarly observed, "“The degeneracy of mankind is distinguished from (mankind´s) uprise by the dominance of chill abstractions, divorced from aesthetic content.” More specific angles are like evaluating Christopher Columbus and other cruel Conquistadors of various nations. Merchants and soldiers, even as part of "Christian civilization," weren´t themselves even monastic spiritual practitioners. Yet, violence and enslavement weren´t even just nominal Christians. It has been a typical behavior of all human civilizations. The British African Olaudah Equiano´s African father had slaves before he was enslaved. China´s Hongwe Emperor massacred by execution huge numbers of people. For starters. The famous infamous Genghis Khan led the slaughter of an estimated 40 to 60 mn people before achieving a level of stability as ruler and a reputation of religious "tolerance." Depending on definitions of tolerance, in the end, for that matter. We even have biological studies of Jane Goodall´s famous line of chimpanzees in East Africa, Pan troglodytes. They are known to slaughter their neighbors entire groups, because they can. Similar studies of human tribal groups showed ample conflict and shifting alliances in temporary lulls. Children have some good qualities, but idealizing them fails in relation to a necessary and sufficient empirical philosophical analysis of truth. If "original sin" needs its own empirical broadening, it isn´t because it doesn´t have its own empirical foundations. That leads to the next point which is "Original Sin" and "Original Blessing" require empirical observation of current reality, no less. What is current behavior? In my case, mere psychotherapeutic insight into human potential and mental health doesn´t directly translate into eco-social injustice, as with Jesus´ own leading the disciples on the Sabbath. Matt 12. Psychology itself has developed subdisciplines, with Seymour Sarason innovating community psychology and Julian Rapaport innovating the concept of "empowerment" in the 1970s, and I Martin-Baro innovating liberation psychology, some time after liberation theology, no less. That´s where George Fox´s leading the co-founding of the Quaker-Friends was a powerful revelatory event. Without much formal education as the son of a prosperous merchant, Fox created a spiritual-religious practice of silent waiting meditatively on the Inner Light of Christ for God. Yet the result wasn´t merely being nice. He stopped bowing to aristocrats, valued individuals and women, and protested injustice. He did merely become known as a "co-founder" among sixty others, and yet, their proteges agitated against slavery to inspire the first modern social movement. Understanding the empirical realities of sin, original or not, and its meaning, along with responding effectively to it, certainly go beyond merely asserting an "original blessing", which is certainly insufficient.

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Dr. Sy Garte: The Irrationality of Atheism Through Science, and My Effort for Science and Religion

Zh Zh 1 day ago I love how you demonstrated the irrationality of atheism through science but I wish you could have made a rational and logical case for your religion too 2 Green Peacemst Green Peacemst 1 second ago Interesting point. It´s not clear that he´s gotten that far yet. I know that I got my college degree in Biological Anthropology studying the evolution of speech, symbolic behavior, and religious ritual. I had been an interfaith spiritual seeker since high school. I felt anxious and stressed, and hungry for a social philosophy that I had sought in a Kung Fu class. I worked a summer in eco-consumer advocacy knocking on doors, then went to Africa to teach science. Back in the big city suburbs, I left a corporate job after three weeks to work in social services with substance abusers with kids. A colleague introduced me to a self-care technique by Louise Hay, a Religious Science minister who healed her own cancer with a holistic bodywork psychotherapy effort and her spiritual orientation, including Emmett Fox. She also shared that her mother had been doing Christian Science, that I hadn´t registered earlier. Her book was endorsed by Bernie Siegel MD who had written Love, Medicine, and Miracles. I remember that Siegel had an account about a Jewish prisoner being tortured, who had a vision of Jesus, then told his torturers, the SS apparently, "I love you." I actually wrote him about that and asked for the source, and he responded that he couldn´t remember. More likely the person had remained Jewish and was fearful and ashamed. Today there are numerous conversion testimonies in a Jewish Jesus ministry, incidentally, that I´ve seen. The work was slow for 5 or so months, and I experienced an acute psychological crisis of despair. I brought a Tao Te Ching one day, ran to the bathroom, and set the faucet dripping to recite the first chapter, "The Tao that can be told is not the Real Tao...." I guess the Louise Hay contact happened around that time. Another colleague offered to take me to an NA 12 step meeting. I felt so moved that I joked, "I´ll have to start using drugs." Instead, I used my thinking to investigate more kinds of meetings and found CoDA and Al-Anon. CoDA uses self-care affirmations, along with emotional awareness training, and the standard blessings of sharing and step work in relation to a Higher Power. I also explored holistic workshops, Buddhism, yoga, and creativity. Relationships with women provided oddly acute experiences. Uncovering crucial, painful issues by one point, I began a distinct recovery period. At one point I worked as a security guard at The Disney Store on New Year´s Eve. I even began doing bicycle delivery work, with a lively series of experiences. I even began to take legal and business classes at that time, with one class giving me the chance to write on special sea turtle protective mechanisms for fishing nets. One context led me to visit my old college area in Boston/Cambridge, where I applied for a book-stocking job, got it, moved into an apartment, and found the Christian Science Reading Room I remembered in Cambridge near my college. I quickly moved back to my other big city suburbs, looked for temp work, and met a Russian woman. Meeting her, I quickly found a call center temp job. That was around February, 1999. Six months later, I got promoted to a permanent desk office position in a Wall St. customer service position. The 12 step group CoDA was still my primary spiritual practice, with Buddhist meditation, study, and temples, and some Christian Science. I began attending Christian Science services in the big city enough to meet a friendly couple who I met for brunch a few times. Also, an eco-social justice activist who had shifted from being a musician. I began visiting Episcopal services at lunchtime, and other kinds of services and locations on Sundays, along with Unitarian Universalism. My Wall St. job was in conflict with my eco-social values, and so it soured, but only by May, 2003. I had also been involved with a food co-op store for years by that point. I also got divorced, traveled Europe for a month to fulfill one dream. I found a job in social services through a Unitarian Universalist contact. I also started dating an African-American woman, an orphan of two parents who had died of AIDS, as I recall. The job was at a homeless shelter with a cast of characters and challenges. The relationship ended, and the job soon after by 2006 or so, and I was ready to apply for a masters based on classes in International Relations. I remember at some point there having thought in Christian Science that it was good for small things, but not for social reform. In my masters program, I began tracing University based education and social movements/Civil Society back in history and identified Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi. along with the UK anti-slavery abolition movement. I was reading remarkable testimonies in Christian Science, including one of a soldier whose arm was badly hurt by a bomb and left with just a shred of bone. His prayer in Christian Science led to its healing. Another was of a group of British POWs in a Japanese camp who organized and resisted malnutrition in relation to their meditative prayerful focus on God as Divine Mind and Love, and more. I had intense interest in Christian Science, but found they prohibited drinking. I didn´t want that as a restriction. I also realized that Jesus had taught love, not elimination of all things unlike him, nor all rivals in spiritual understanding. I could be Christian and interfaith, too. I gave Unitarian Universalism a few chances. My experience in the masters program was demanding enough that I tried to attend a United Church of Christ location there. I then took another trip through Europe, and then went to Brazil to teach English. I got involved with an adult student of mine who was some kind of independent Christian, kept returning to the area, had a child with her, and married her. I graduated and tried to get work in an agroecological context, but things didn´t work out. Another intentional ecovillage, although Christian, was fundamentalist. I returned with my wife and child to her village by the beach, and was able to teach English in the nearby big city. Anti-theists began attracting my interest and attention several years ago. I had been calling myself an interfaith Christian, and had tried to associate with Unitarian Universalist online communities, but simply found their disinterest in Jesus disempowering to me. I determined that I was an independent interfaith UU Christian. At root, my logical case for my religion would be that as the result of my studies and personal experience extending my masters research on the origins of Universities and social movements, along with my undergraduate History of Science studies, and my understanding of the psychosocial issues in mental health, I saw the underlying components resulting from sustaining Jesus´ standards of loving integrity in his legacy. Jesus´ standards of loving integrity account for a number of unique phenomena in the development of Western Civilization. I refer to it as Jesus´ living legacy of loving integrity for Moses and God in University-based, US-EU-UN global human rights-sustainability society with structured pluralism, as one short version. Thus, the rise of University-based Western Civilization specifically relates to its heritage in Jesus. All the admired advances in Western Civilization involve modernization processes that have been identified with secularism as part of the Freedom of Religion and advance of science. However, scientific materialism and the narrowmindedness of church authority has led to the association of secularized Christian culture with atheistic secular humanism, and three main forms of materialism, including economics. Jesus´ special role as Savior is reported in most doctrines as his substitutionary atonement, his sacrificing himself for our sins. However that dynamic has been used in the spiritual-religious terms of the Bible, Jesus taught the need for personal effort in spiritual-religious practice for personal growth. Therefore, as the described Son of God/Son of Man, Jesus´ teachings and demonstrations of healing, and people achieving salvation in this life through their personal transformation from love, God´s love through Jesus, Jesus gave a standard of spiritual-religious practice. He potentialized a new level of salvation.

The Fairy Tale Lies of Christianity? How About The Universal Abuses By Human Psychosocial Biological Tendencies?

Charles Godwin Mark Rego Monteiro Mister, if you can clone yourself, please do so. Our world needs more men with such views. That African woman who started th re- greening of Africa, trying to correct th damage done by cristian Europeans ( read Leakey's " White African"), I'd be thrilled if she were Empress of Earth for a few years. Th small bank concept, put him up there to help her. But, please, Let's drop th fairy story lies of cristianity. Absolutely everything about that religion,( which holds world record for causing more pain, suffering, misery, death, backwardness than other human concept) , everything about it was stolen ( stolen, not borrowed) from previous religions. Amusing, only cristian I ever heard of honest enough to admit that, an American Roman Catholic Bishop, writing in American Catholic Digest, 20th century. Reply Share 9h Jivana Kennedy Charles Godwin "Let's drop th fairy story lies of Cristianity" Amen .... (and even that is patriarchal 🙂. Reply Share 6hEdited Jivana Kennedy Charles Godwin "Amusing, only cristian I ever heard of honest enough to admit that, an American Roman Catholic Bishop, writing in American Catholic Digest, 20th century." Remember his name, Charles? Reply Share 6h Mark Rego Monteiro Charles Godwin Well, I´m glad to see your enthusiasm and imagination. I don´t agree with your unbalanced bashing of Christianity. "Absolutely everything about that religion....world records of pain....stolen...." The simplest way to address such scapegoating is to be clear about the universality of human violence and enslavement. The term "world records of pain" you use with Christianity reflects an important issue not to be mistaken. The first issue of having concepts and information at one´s fingertips to even confuse issues on such a grand scale is one key. The key is history and sociology. Thomas Aquinas at the U of Paris made key contributions by linking Aristotle´s esoterica First Cause to the Creator God clarified by Jesus, identifying as the Son of God/Man, as loving and lawful, in the legacy of Moses and his burning bush, et al. The empirical context of a Creator God, now confirmed by scientific philosophy itself, is not to be underestimated. And it is Aquinas´ pivotal work that then led to Luther´s amazing inspired, with all the unleashed brutality surrounding it, Reformation, the Scientific Revolution by Christians, the Enlightenment by Christians in all their expressive forms, and so on. As the Christians survived intact the tribal invasions of the Western Roman Empire and converted the tribes with missionaries alone, the path was set to Charlemagne, as they survived the Islamic invasions. Genghis Khan killed 40 to 60 mn in conquest before becoming something of a kind of tolerant ruler. Do we count the Khans who devastated Baghdad in 1258? As the Italians around Marco Polo´s time prospered, the voyages of Prince Henry the Navigator became possible as they defeated the Muslims at Ceuta, N Africa, etc. Merchants and soldiers used the modest advances of Christians at that time, as historian J Hannam has noted from the plow to the gun. Acknowledging foreign influences does not justify denying the innovative accomplishments of Christians and their own legitimate, and significant identity. For anyone in the Christian context as we are, that is in fact a form of self-hatred. For anyone not, it is scapegoating and its own forms of hatred. It is thus that the world functioning by conflict shifts the historical and sociological paradigm. Judging Christians as despicable conquerors reflects at best a view based on UN human rights. That is a standard established by the Social Gospel legacy of FD Roosevelt. It is, however, anachronistic and a category error. Jesus´ highest standard of loving integrity became a core element of a culture operating in a world of people hardly based on Hare Krishna dancing in the streets. Nor did Christian society have necessary and sufficient tools with its having developed modern philosophy after Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s. What is Christian integrity and hypocrisy in Just Wars? Unempirical philosophical analysis can be mocked in Monty Python films as a village metaphysician asks "How do you know she is a witch?" While the British and other European Empires splayed the world, their only "crime" was being more powerful than the conquerors they encountered. If the Spanish had been conquered by the Muslims in 711, and drove them in the Reconquest from Iberia in 1492, what is the nature of their war trauma? From the psychotherapeutic perspective, we can recognize that the Muslims had forced them to endure extended conditions of submission to a foreign conqueror and conflict. The massive violence against indigenous peoples is a crime now that we have FD Roosevelt´s UN human rights having been proposed, then negotiated with the world. The Conquistadors, however, were merchants and soldiers unleashed in a world of violence. The indigenous Brazlilians in contact with the Jesuits M da Nobrega didn´t focus on summoning spiritual healing. Cannibals, they ate one of the Jesuits. Nobrega, for his part, was able to conceive of the problem of adult language learning, and the solution of bringing together indigenous kids and orphan kids from Portugal to interact and learn to speak each others´ language in the 1500s. Olaudah Equiano the free British African, was the son of a slaveholder, while Queen Nzinga of Ndongo was fortunate to have survived various executions of rivals, as a woman and daughter of a slave-wife. China´s Hongwu Emperor had scraped his way to power from humble origins, and murdered many. And so on and so forth everywhere. European merchants and soldiers weren´t extraterrestrials for all their technological advantages. They were naughty kids with big guns, not even Fransciscan monks. We all have blood on our hands, not just Christians, and there are differences in standards for nominal and authentic, and those with and without spiritual-religious training, and all that. The proof is in the pudding. FDR´s Social Gospel UN human rights, with Eleanor´s important work as well, is an excellent signpost, as is his contemporary Gandhi and Kasturbai. Rev MLK and Fannie Lou Hamer came a little after for additional references, just to start a conversation about the meaning of how human psychosocial biological tendenicies correlate with universal violence and enslavement. "Christianity", meanwhile, became so complex with its University-based philosophical scholarship that it has had the capacity to conquer the world even before the UN was set up. Even then, westernization continued because of the standard set by secular western culture and its appeal. In fact, the pressures continued. The distinctions aren´t Christianity, in fact, except to understand nominal versus authentic and high integrity. The problem is materialism in three main forms: secular, scientific, and economic. Without reference to spiritual-religious practice and knowledge, the need to advance Jesus´ loving integrity through University-based structured pluralism is what has remained. Resistance against not Christianity, but the unleashed power of it in the hands of human psychosocial biologically impulsive materialists of all kinds, summed up as business and corporate profiteering. Civil Society represents the love of democratic culture, which isn´t opposed to Christianity, it is the very integrity that is necessary to take effective action.

Christianity and the Inner Life; Don´t Ignore the Quakers, Schleiermacher, Washington Gladden, and the Beatles

Jim Palmer 7 hrs · The below picture sums up the problem we have. Religion has taught too many people to look up into the sky to "God" for our liberation, power, guidance, freedom, and well-being. We have also been trained to look up into the sky and pray for divine intervention to solve the problems of our lives and world. The Christian religion has taught people to look up into the sky to find God and Jesus. Meanwhile, Jesus himself taught people to find their liberation, power, guidance, freedom, and well-being within themselves. Jesus often spoke of the necessity of his death, which upset his closest followers. He explained that his death was a necessary step to shift their attachment from the physical person Jesus to the higher spiritual nature that was within them. Unfortunately, the Christian religion has failed to make this shift; they pay homage and place the focus on the physical Jesus but have not embraced and manifested their true spiritual nature. The salvation of our world is not going to fall down out of the sky. Heaven is not a location above the clouds with streets of gold. The salvation we imagine is not somewhere over the rainbow but is inside each of us! Jesus taught and demonstrated this reality 2,000 years ago, and then we proceeded to hijack his message and called it “Christianity.” People are waiting around for Jesus to return not knowing that any return of Jesus is what we lift up out of our hearts. Institutional Christianity built a religion around the physical Jesus, while Jesus himself taught that the same nature of his being was equally our nature, and that we should listen, heed and actualize that nature. There is no Jesus that is going to float down from the sky to save the world, but each of us is a manifestation of the same primordial, ultimate, infinite, whole and pure nature or essence that we can actualize to birth a new world. The Christian religion’s version of the salvation of the world is that the physical Jesus will someday return to earth and straighten everything out. Where is the logic in this? Jesus was already here once and the mess and misery of the world were not resolved. In fact, Jesus never said his mission was to single-handedly save the world. Instead, he said that his mission was to bear witness to and demonstrate the truth that would. The colossal mistake of the Christian religion was building its salvation plan around the physical acts of Jesus in the world rather than what they meant in the spiritual realm—that is, in the “heavenly dimension” in us. It is an elevated state of mind. That is where we experience the reality. This is one of the central points I discuss in Inner Anarchy -> http://tinyurl.com/jwkh932 Stop waiting for the physical Jesus to drop down out of the sky, and start lifting out of yourself the Spirit of Jesus that is deep in your heart. You don't have to be a Christian or religious person to do this. Jesus used language that readily available to him and his cultural and religious background such as "father", "spirit", and "kingdom of heaven", but you have to do the work to realize that these words are pointing to a universally available, relevant and significant spiritual reality that each of us can actualize for ourselves. Jim Palmer 5 Comments Mark Rego Monteiro Palmer refers to institutional Christianity once, but ignores any example of divergence and innovation. It´s irresponsible for a public writer. The Quaker-Friend Christians led in being co-founded by George Fox, are an astonishing example of a neglected account in spirituality, as remarkable or even moreso than Lucretia Mott, Gandhi, FDR, Albert Schweitzer, and Rev MLK. In the 1650s, as Newton and Locke et al were part of those driving the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, Fox innovated silent waiting meditative prayer on the Inner Light of Christ, for God. He valued individuals more intensely, he stopped bowing to aristocrats, he valued women significantly, and protested injustice. Fox had little education, in fact, although the UK and the areas of London might be understood as having greater influence of education, going back for example to Alcuin of York who was called to the courts of Charlemagne at Aix le Chappelle/Aachen. No less illuminating is that Descartes, famous for his pioneering work summed up in "I think, therefore I am," but also the Cartesian "mind-body (spirit/nature) split". He was a French Catholic, raised in Jesuit institutions, and identified as having used a "devil´s advocate" device in his philosophy that corresponds to no one as that of Therese d´Avila. The nun monastic wrote The Interior Castle that became a widespread success at that time after the 1580s. Just as imporantly is understanding the significance of Universities, which were established with the pivotal work of the monk Thomas Aquinas. The problem of the later educated monk Martin Luther is another thing, but his successful act of criticism and inspiring social change remains. Then came the Quaker-Friends, among others, with Biblical criticism an educated movement with F Schleiermacher, the "Father of Liberal Theology," significantly identifying religious intuition or feeling. John B Cobb was a Methodist who embraced AN Whitehead´s legacy Process Philosophy in C Harteshorne´s Theology. He referred to the problem of a lack of spiritual practice in Protestantism back in the 1970s, I think. That is also where the Social Gospel started in 1877 is worth noting. W Gladden´s The Christian Way was addressed largely to businesspeople and talked about meditative reading and living the message. By 1893, a Swedenborgian and dissenting Presbyterian organized the Chicago´s Parliament of World Religion that invited Swami Vivekenanda, Buddhists, and a wide range of world religious figures. Alan Watts´ leaving his ministerial training for interfaith seeking and the Beatles´ visiting India involving Transcendental Meditation, yoga, tai chi, and Buddhism all more generally involve efforts not rejected, but certainly supported by many or most progressive Christians. Getting mad at fundamentalists and evangelicals is a sad testimony, no less, to the confusion spread by the business profiteers who have very tangibly concocted Billy Graham style doctrines that whipped up anti-communist fears by those in fear of their souls and jobs. That would include smearing the pro-social of many kinds.

Saturday, April 9, 2022

"I, Abstract Thinker. Concrete Thinkers Don´t Treat Me Right."

Vic Sho I swim in the abstract like a fish in water, I can see that concrete thinkers can not follow my leaps in abstract thought, and they tell me, I think too much, and I am not special. So I am inclined to keep my abstract thinking to myself, even though I love sharing it. It is true some of us with a mental problem do get lost in abstract thought, but when I listen to them, I can tell they don't understand what they are saying. Reply 1d Mark Rego Monteiro Victor Shortus I certainly appreciate you valuing of abstract thinking. However, the question is its healthiest and optimal application, and the truth. Here, you´re bringing up "concrete thinking" as a category as if it is in opposition to abstract thought, since you are equating it with the unappreciative and uncomprehending attitudes of some number of individuals you have encountered. In my case, having gone to one of the best colleges/Universities on the planet, I was seeking the truth in sociology when I ran into Karl Marx´s saying "The individual is abstract. Social activity is real." or the like, at some point in one of his works that we were reading for class. I duked it out a bit with the course professor, as I drew on the empirical type of thinking of Hume, in that area anyway. The professor couldn´t get passed the disagreement, and said "I don´t think you´re ready for this class." Well, that reflected a key principle that I´ve found fundamentally important to develop the solutions to key modern confusion. Empiricism. I switched three classes and my major to Biological Anthropology. For one thing, the insights involved lead to the perception that while theoretical physicists, as you mention, can get wild and crazy, and profound in certain ways, they usually remain disconnected from the realities of our biological needs for survival. Wall St. as you mention, has created regular crises in the economy, no less, as physicists operate in the rarefied context of socioeconomic maneuvering for profit instead of ecological sustainability and social justice for well-being. It is thus that economist Herman Daly drew on the work of N Georgescu-Roegan (sp?) to develop Ecological Economics based on basic parameters of biophysical and ethicosocial limits. Those are concepts tied to our empirical realities, that are all important for human survival and well-being. In your case of feeling unappreciated and uncomprehended, I would refer you to the primary empirical reality of your own personal psychological needs, actually psychosocial in nature. I was blessed by a co-worker as I worked in social services having returned from teaching science in Africa for a year. She, an Afro-Haitian-American to celebrate, shared a technique for self-care with me by Louise Hay. I got Hay´s book, You Can Heal Your Life, and a little later, endorser Bernie Siegel MD´s book Love, Medicine, and Miracles. Another colleague, with less education but an ebullient spirit, introduced me to the 12 step groups. I paid attention to my own joy in the community experience. I linked that to my own curiosity and vision, and looked up alternative meetings, and found for myself CoDA and Al-Anon, about codependency. As I learned self-care in community at those support groups, I learned about my range of emotions, and my ability to care for myself in spiritual practice. The idea of a Higher Power restoring people to sanity, restoring us in the group to sanity, and me, myself, and I, integrated with my existing notion of the Chinese Tao. I had embraced that years earlier as I read scholar Huston Smith´s work. He referred to the Tao as a "creative continuum that is always accessible." My work also included training in basic counseling technique for emotional awareness and visualization. CoDA had been founded by an AA couple, Ken and Mary, with Ken at least having professional therapeutic training. The tools of CoDA are fairly advanced in that respect, with affirmations included, such as, "I am a precious child of God and deserve love, peace, prosperity, serenity, and understanding. I am loving and loved." Louise Hay had similar techniques. Joseph Murphy is another author I discovered of a similar background to Hay in Religious and Divine Science, both derived from Mary Baker Eddy´s Christian Science, I later learned. It is with that understanding of meeting my basic needs for love that I met Abe Maslow´s pyramid scheme of building blocks of needs, I can appreciate. I also had already related to nature, with a hike in first year of college, time in the Outdoor Club, up Mt. Kenya with friends in Africa, and then hikes with Sierra Club back in a big city area on the East Coast. I had also knocked on doors summer after graduation for eco-consumer advocacy in Ralph Nader´s legacy, the PIRGs. They taught me about public interest activism by the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. All of that led me to work like Herman Daly´s and theologian JB Cobb´s For the Common Good about ecological economics. Later, I came upon physicist philosopher Fritjof Capra´s multidisciplinary work, first with The Tao of Physics, then his book of interviews Uncommon Wisdom, including EF Schumacher and OC Simonton MD, RD Laing, S Grof MD, and W Heisenberg. Capra´s work Hidden Dimensions reflects his application of Systems Theory and extending it into ecology, and sociology with concerns for social justice. A little less abstract than Capra´s Hidden Dimensions is the late W Greider´s The Soul of Capitalism. He researched ESOPs, and linked them to Daly´s ecological economics work briefly, and David Ellerman´s co-op social economics, also in an excellent introductory manner. I highly recommend people recognizing their own psychological needs. In fact, physicist Arnie Mindell became a psychotherapist with spiritual interests. Fred Wolfe is a physicist who became interested in shamanism. Both have been interviewed on Thinking Allowed videos with J Mishlove. Hume, incidentally had traced the building block process from sensations to abstract thought. Eliot D Chappell was a behavioral anthropologist who linked Pavlov´s discovery of basic symbolic physiological conditioning to a full analysis of human culture and individual involvement in interactions. When I got my masters in International Relations years later, I was happy to find that scholar Alex Wendt had drawn on perspectives like symbolic interactionism in sociology and social psychology to develop social constructivism with a compatible perspective. All told, that provides a powerful balance of perspectives that allow understanding what Systems Theory has been covering overall, along with epistemology, and what biologist N Tinbergen called Levels of Analysis. It boils down to the great spiritual insights of the likes of Buddha and Jesus, no less, in the end. Such work is actually philosophical in nature, and has its heritage directly in Jesus´ legacy. Maybe you can find something in what I´ve mentioned that is of interest. No man is an island, and the classic bargain described by Goethe, most famously anyway, in Faust, is powerfully instructive when we look at the UN reports of the likes of the 2005 World Bank UNEP NGO Ecosystem Assessment. You can´t do abstract thought on a dead planet, to riff on one quote.