Objective Moral Law: Shock Treatment Or Loving Revenge

Objective moral law. WL Craig refers to the raping of children being as wrong as 2+2=5 as justification for the existence of objective moral law. It´s such an extreme act that it fairly obscures the larger issue of framing moral law. The Buddha drew on Hindu notions of karma that moral cause and effect operates in the world. Thus, moral urges for revenge when wronged might be a more precise angle to pursue. Jesus´ loving Commandments for God thus can serve to assuage and nurture the inclinations for revenge and realiation. More broadly, to identify the patterns in which power and influence have overwhelmend people´s natural mechanisms and tendencies to seek revenge, as with modern impostion of big business corp exec profiteering and corporate-consumerism.

Death Rules, So Is There an Afterlife?

Avatar Ed Sen • 7 hours ago The one issue common to all life forms is death. The question, therefore, is whether or not there exists an afterlife. Can there be an afterlife without God? If not, then that is just more random nonsense. And, if you accept that your existence is nothing but worm food, what a pity. Religion is man's search for God and meaning. I am anti- religion. I am not anti- God.

greenpeaceRdale1844coop Ed Sent • 2 hours ago While religion´s disadvantages have prevailed in my own current lack of involvement, that doesn´t negate its advantages that have played such an important role in my life, and in establishing Western innovations leading to globalization´s positives and the UN human rights and sustainability communities. All of which reflects Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity for Moses and God in University-based society. Your reasoning about "death" and its meaning to life asserting that death is the "one issue (in) common" is fallacious, as any non-biologist could already begin to hypothesize. Your logical attempt to justify the "afterlife" as the "one question" is also undermined by that fallacy. All life depends on the material foundations of existence. That is one key common issue that underlies the OP itself. Where do the material foundations of existence come from? That question, however, begs modern Western Civilization, and its Judeo-Christian prophetic traditional component, along with the clarity of the revived and sustained ancient Greek eclectic elements. Given God´s origin and character in Jesus´ heritage in Moses et al, and his legacy of spiritual-religious tradition, and its philosophical religious clarification as a higher order cause of the Universe, then the question might be, what reasoning relates to an "afterlife"? Human concerns have revolved around it, in relation to humanity´s unique consciousness, a prerequisite to valuing individual identity and conceiving of an afterlife and its potential existence in the first place. Clearly non-Christian tribalists have conceived of realms like the Happy Hunting Grounds, and the question would be if ghost stories, near death experiences (as it were), and reincarnation experiences, along with shamanic visions have provided foundations for accounts. Christianity has its variations of these, including Greek additions, not least of all. While logically not first in significance, their importance is not at all trivial. It is Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity, however, that provides the sense of God´s love in modernity, with all its needs for pluralism. And I don´t deny the contributions of "religion", but I recognize the superior significance of society and more comprehensive contexts that avoid limiting dogmas, facilitate greater spiritual modernization and clarity of understanding, and generate the ability to overcome such limitations as profiteering suicidal genocide by corporate execs and their defenders. • Ed Sen greenpeaceRdale1844coop • an hour ago Name one lifeform tha t does not die and we will see if my reasoning is fallacious. Reasoning life, that is, men have devised various religions in an attempt to answer the question, "why are we here?" And, "how do we attain immortality?" Christianity is unique because it combines the necessity of redemption and God. Hence, revealing God's love and our love for him. • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Ed Sen • 2 minutes ago Again, you set yourself up to be wrong. Death is fascinating in its implications for life. And that means life itself doesn´t end. Apparently, I deduce that you were raised in a theological home. You still grab for theological trains of thought. And its dead ends, buh duh buhm. No pun intended. Death is a condition that structures the need for living organism´s to reproduce. Life is about REPRODUCTION, first and foremost, and SURVIVAL UNTIL REPRODUCTION, which is characterized by the prevention and avoidance of death. Did you get that, or should I put it, the PREVENTION and AVOIDANCE of death. It is thus that Natural Selection operates, that has resulted and continues to pressure DESCENT with MODIFICATION in ECOLOGICAL WEBS and NICHES. Those are formal academic style concepts based on my own education. Humankind hasn´t been inclined to formalize questions, so much as provide adequate answers as part of human culture´s origins in human pragmatic concerns. Japanese swordmaking, as Carl Sagan once presented, had elaborate knowledge stored in ritualized methods. Ritual is far less flexible and can´t be generalized normally as effectively. Human groups did have shamans who developed insights in beautiful and wonderful forms of diversity. Achieving "immortality" is not one of the driving motivations of many more humble and wise traditions. It is an indulgent wish that reflects juvenile and bio-psychological indulgence. In the case of Christianity, Jesus didn´t start out by killing himself to brag about immortality. He taught about many insightful lessons about the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth "not here or there," but within and among you, that involves "taking the plank ot of your own eye" before judging others or bungling with others unsatisfactorily. "Clean the cup on the inside where there is wickedness" gave the clearest psychospiritual insight into the meaning of such famous parables as the "house built on rock, not sand, will stand" and "a woman kneads yeast throughout the dough for all the bread to rise." Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity in University-based society has led philosophy, science, and medicine, and more into therapeutic psychology. While church dogma and doctrine was squeezed by power in the Roman Empire, then shaken into the unprecedented reality of a Roman church with pope and lesser tribal King of Italy in charge, the afterlife as a pleasure in relation to the "nasty, brutish, and short" conditions still prevailing for many is recognizable. Luther had to challenge the newly finagled form of "indulgence" for the poor to fund grand Vatican construction, but even as an educated monk, channeled his pain into Divine grace alone as justification. He lost sight of how rich his education was linked to the love of God in his personal effort. It was that reality that emerged in the English Reformation with George Fox and Margaret Fell´s Quaker-Friends. It was that reality that rode along with the silent worshiping, simple living Quakers building a rock of a reputation that a college grad Anglican gravitated to in igniting abolition in the UK. Other Quakers rolled in waves in the US North, no less, resonating with others. Jesus provided redemption in the form of potentialization and the clarity of God´s love. Jesus´ experience of suffering validated his personal efforts as the Resurrection validated Jesus´ full range of personal efforts and teachings about spiritual practice and the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. As he taught in his actions, he led the disciples to gather bread, to heal, to do good on the Sabbath, among other actions. More recently, Gandhi served as one of the most striking prophets for Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity. Unitarian Universalism provides tools in that vein. Not passive disenfranchisement in traditional dogma, but the democratization of University-based education, political, and economic power in ending absolute monarchy and establishing Civil Rights. My dad left the Catholic church. He embraced modern education in amazing breadth. I grew up fine with no religion in most ways in secularizing society. Profiteering predation through Reaganism didn´t start until I reached high school. And I was looking for truth. Apparently, my love of science without compromise has served me well. As I mentioned, and as you ignored in my comments, life´s physicality and abundance is what biologists study, because all life needs to REPRODUCE if it is to continue existing in its forms. That is empirical reality that cuts the Gordian knot typical of theoretical control oriented formulations like your death-afterlife obsession. And non-sequitor fallacy. No form of life independent of human psychocultural spiritual-religious tradition is concerned with an afterlife. That is an additional refutation of your point. The afterlife is a human perception, and it is the human ability to relate to the Transcendental Creator Entity Himself/Herself/Itself that has made the difference from tribal, non-Christian perceptions of ghosts, reincarnation, and NDEs (as it were). That depends on Jesus´ two Commandments for loving integrity for Moses and God that has established an unprecedented legacy in University-based society for pluralistic worship, human rights, and sustainability.

The World Created Itself. So, Logically....

mil • 8 hours ago So how do we know that "the big, beautiful world around us wasn't created by itself"? Isn't it just as likely that it grew itself spontaneously, out of a blizzard of loose parts? As in fact science would lead us to believe, and to explain in some detail? "God" is a very personal concept. So there are probably as many different ideas of what God is as there are people. Back when I was a kid I knew a couple of Catholic kids. And we got to talking about religion. And finally one of them said "You're lucky. You can believe anything you want to. Us? We have to either be Catholic or anti-Catholic."

greenpeaceRdale1844coop mil • an hour ago • edited "Created by itself" Well, work with that idea. You´re hypothesizing. Can´t scientists discover a Higgs Field cosmological generator? Truly, why forget mechanisms? Clocks are fun. "God" as a personal concept is part of any individual´s organismic reality, as a human, but anthropology indicates that shamanic talent is as real as talented toolmakers, artists, and hunter-warriors, or leaders, traditionally not least of all. Modern notions of human potential for any individual as a bio-psychosocial creature interested in the field and self-help books advance the notions of the Christian Enlightenment and American Civil Rights that have lead to US-UN human rights. Just, randomly? Or in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity. Well, the Islamic leaders of the world have overwhelmingly rejected UN human rights, so you know. China, Russia, and Brazil have been bristling as well in the OECD. So, getting clear about the power and nature of Western science and empiricism more broadly is key. Individualism isn´t transcendental. Just like snowflakes aren´t rocks, clouds, or hydrological cycles that transcend them. The Big Bang and the inflationary Universe with Dark Matter and Energy are amazing developments in scientific knowledge, as is the subatomic world and Higgs Fields. As far as they go. UN human rights, however, not atom-smashers, are what Star Trek´s science fiction Prime Directive ultimately came down to, as far as they took it. Start with scientific laws of physical objects´ behavior. What is a "scientific law"? Well, lawful regularities. Down to the Higgs Field. And so, is the Higgs Field "self-generating"? Pretty cool. Except, how did the Big Bang happen, with those significant "Red Shifting Galaxies"? It splurged all its energy, say. Now comes the Big Crunch in googleplex of trillions of years. It´s a big cycle, like some ancient Hindus postulated. Except, science perceives conditions that all creep in and have to be answered. The expanding and accelerating Universe, in which space seems to be expanding with matter-energy´s expanding motion. It doesn´t look like it´s going to crunch. Just go splat and hiss, on a googleplex astronomical scale. So, we have to ask ourselves about relativity as a scientific philosophical principle. Do we know everything, all the principles involved? Are Dark Energy and Dark Matter indicators of more things we don´t know, that well or at all? But, that´s where paying attention to details starts to make a difference. I like Fritjof Capra, and have surveyed his work to some degree. I recommend him highly. He was involved in atom-smashing type physics, and started to meditate. He met Krishnamurti. Capra began to wonder about differences in perspectives. What is the significance of how Einstein, Heisenberg, and so on began to see the interconnectedness of energy and matter? Matter being converted into energy is one thing, and matter´s constituent energetic atomic structure is inherent in that. Electrons, Heisenberg uncertainly in orbit around protons, that are composed of whirling, swirling probability thingies. At the atomic level, those electrons and their electron clouds form standing waves and patterns. A standing wave, like a rope whipped, is energy in a packet, a particle out of a wave. So, stuff like that was what Capra began noticing as he meditated and noticed wisdom in Eastern religions, like Buddhist perception of emptiness and impermanence. The Buddha himself, when reflecting on two basic realities, perception and the sense-perceived world, thought about the question, Are they united or not? He identified a quality he called "spiritual" and the source of that unity as "Spirit." He perceived its dominating presence in the moral law that underlay the process of crude nature being transformed in humans into nirvana´s enlightenment, according to the Four Noble Truths. So, what is the world´s self that "created itself"? Is it driven by time? By space, matter-energy? The Universe has gotten big, and is getting bigger. Really big. Really, really big. What can do that? What can cause that? The Universe/the world itself doesn´t actually communicate to us. We study its physical and energetic processes and objects. Until we come to the human realm. When scientists start messing with the human realm, they can´t. Or else moral questions arise. The physical Universe, however, doesn´t broadcast "morality." When we know our History of Science, it is part of Religion. Our ability to formulate "scientific laws" reflects the basis of science itself in a moral network of people, how Christian monastic schools became Christian modern Universities using the Christian Enlightenment´s secular approach to non-denominational, non-religious scholarship. Yet, morality keeps creeping back into scholarship that tries to treat people, now animals and the environment, as merely "mechanistic." What is that would endow us with a sense of the moral and sacred like that? If not the physical world, then the cause of scientific laws? But, morality isn´t actually "scientific", but in the realm of the social empirical, not just social scientific, but philosophical and "properly basic," at least as far as Jesus´ two Commandments and the spiritual-religious experience of coherent Christian loving integrity following Jesus´ legacy for Moses and God. With resonance from every other spiritual-religious tradition, with the Chrstian-derived, pluralistically-agreed upon UN and human rights as a secular touching stone. The world didn´t create itself. A source capable of moral qualities that are more than just physical, that we know as "human," that emerged in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity and resonate with other cultural traditions. Anthropologically, tribal cultures have had mythic insight into a Creator formulated that attains the transcendental character of God as logical necessity and providential Source informing prophets and relating to shamans. Something created itself. The physical world requires qualities that it doesn´t have as an effect of a transcendental cause. We gain insight into that not with scientific instruments, but the religious method: meditation, prayer, and so on. milo • 2 hours ago The realms of God and science do not intersect. Science can seek to explain anything for which there is evidence. But there is no evidence anywhere of God. It's just an a priori assumption people make. So I will just posit "stuff IS". That's all you can say. Or, as an Indian sage wrote around 500 AD, The world is infinite in every direction, It has no beginning and it has no end. As it has no beginning it cannot have been created, And as it was not created, there can have been no Creator. Neither can God be disproven. The notion that a God created us all is exactly as likely as there being, as the Igorot of Luzon once believed, 33 different realms-- heavens and hells-- each one with its own reigning monarch. I'm very comfortable with both views... although I consider the Igorot worldview to be more Swedenborgian, hence more charming. Well, you didn´t follow my reasoning, beginning with the OP. When you don´t refute, at least key points, you have already missed the boat. But, the truth has nothing to fear, and only love to share. Under every rock, and under any rug. That´s where the touches of UN Euro-American freedom and human rights come from in the first place. I made that point up a bit. But, it is clearly blinders that are at work, or I like the metaphor of muddied windows. Plato used the cave, as far as it went. "The realms of God and science do not intersect. Science can seek to explain anything for which there is evidence." First point: science seeks to evaluate physical types of evidence and provide explanations for physical events. Thus, medically attested but medically impossible physical healings are widely ignored by medical science. M Klepees was at the Mayo Clinic at age 20 suffering from cerebral palsy brain damage since 2 years old. She became Christian at 12, and at the clinic, was twitching so painfully she prayed, received a vision, and sought a church where she was healed. The Mayo Clinic registered her changed condition, but did not record the circumstances of the testimony. Larry Dossey MD has written about Catholics healed at Lourdes and certified as miraculous healings by the Lourdes´ board. Even those cases, he explains are not published in the standard medical literature because standard medicine has at best the term "spontaneous remission" that ignores non-organic, psychosomatic type factors. Bill Owens suffered liver failure on a hike, and at a Florida hospital defied doctors´ diagnoses. As he declined, his church minister organized a prayer for healing at his bedside. He recovered fully after the prayer. Thus, as far as direct forms of God´s divine interaction, there is medically attested, medically impossible healings with spiritual-religious testimony. L Mehl-Medrona MD works with cross-cultural healing techniques, and has testimonies of Native American shamans´ healing, among others. Your citation of an Indian sage rejects modern scientific understanding of Cosmology. The Big Bang indicates that the Universe had a beginning. Asserting "it cannot have been created....." by an Indian sage is dogma, and its premise of "no beginning" is refuted by scientific understanding, to repeat, and its conclusions a non-sequitor except for doctrinal confirmation bias. Your indulgence in Igorot of Luzon, or Swedenborgian ideas would have more empirical, and scientific, integrity if you understood the History of Science accurately alone. Science also provides metaphors that involve physical descriptions for concepts. Gravity, thus, was attraction at a distance for Newton as he philosophically reasoned about the basic way that an apple and the moon seemed to interact with the Earth by the math. As Einstein much later thought philosophically about his Field Equations, he came to propose his general relativity and geometric theory of gravitation. If you ever studied any History of Science, you simply can´t lose sight of the fact that "Science" was first called "natural philosophy." Newton was a natural philosopher as he worked through the 1690s. He is known now by the current expression "scientist," but in either case, was involved in studying physical phenomena. Some know he studied light, as with a prism, and designed an improvement for telescopes using a mirror with the lenses. He studied Galileo´s work, and Kepler´s use of Tycho Brahe´s low tech high quality astronomical data, as well as DesCartes´ analytical geometry that innovated math variables. As natural philosopher "scientists," they all studied natural physical phenomena in what became known as "physics." Robert Boyle, A Lavoisier, J Priestley, and others did work in what became chemistry with Lavoisier isolating oxygen. Again, physical phenomena in chemistry. In biology, A Vesalius and W Harvey studied blood circulation, again, physical phenomena. In the 1600s, also, DesCartes and Spinoza both talked about the emotions as "passions." By 1896, Sigmund Freud a neurologist had patients without identifiable organic causes of illness and pains. He started using early forms of simple hypnosis, asking his patients to relax, focus on the pain, and talk about any thoughts. As they shared memories focused on the pain, the pain would begin to diminish. The memories related to the pain led back to unpleasant childhood situations including sexual contact. Freud began to use the term "conversion" to describe the way feelings in unpleasant situations became repressed and then expressed as physical pain. In therapy, he used terms like "abreaction" to describe how the patient got better by talking and overall reconnecting with the repressed emotions. Freud wasn´t actually observing muscles and nerves, but talking with people, his patients. People, their thoughts, and their emotions can´t actually be treated objects dropped to test gravity or chemicals in test tubes. Yet, psychiatry and clinical psychology have developed conflicting groups of professionals, some focused on prescribing pills that address chemical approaches while others focus on communicative types of approaches. Sociology and anthropology also began to develop in the 1800s, with scholars like the US´s LH Morgan a pioneering social anthropologist who looked at kinship structures, and the relationship between material culture like technology and societal structure factors like property relations, governance, and intellectual development. Since humans are involved in all these subjects, "scientific philosophy" has had to develop empirical observations dealing with the complexities of human behavior. Experimentation has been extremely limited. However, many important concepts have been observed empirically and been useful. The sociologist Durkheim observed suicides, and developed the concept of anomie about the intense angst people can feel when there is social disruption as in the financial industry.

Hypocrites Causing Atheism, And Metaphysics

In response to "The most common cause of atheism is Christians being hypocrites...." Well, while God is significantly expressed through people, the big, beautiful world around us wasn´t created by itself. The Big Bang seems such a thing of grandeur that it almost could make a thoughtful person forget to ask, "Where did it come from?" Clever people keep talking about multiverses with cool TV series and sci-fi. Yet, where did it come from? "Time" itself is linked to the motion of matter-energy in this Universe. The antecedent cause was essentially "timeless." Whatever is the "absolute ground of being" is timeless, and somehow, eternal. When something is like that, it is not mechanical, and any action then occurs by some impulse that we understand as "random," except that space and matter-energy also only came into being at that moment and event. If not "random," an impulse by an incredibly powerful cause at a higher order of existence smacks then of "intention," not physical-mechanical causation either timed and programmed or random. That makes sense moreover when we wonder, where does our human experience of "intention" fit in this physical-mechanical material Universe? In addition to that, since when does "intention" not reflect intelligence? Now, that´s just following the logic from Aristotle, Aquinas, Craig, and the like. Nothing yet on Fritjof Capra´s Systems Theory and emergence. Or, ready to talk transpersonal psychology and historical sociology? Let´s just say that Harlow´s monkey studies had him battling the psychological establishment around the concept of "love." Jesus, let´s recall, "quipped" 2 loving Commandments (for Moses and God) as part of his legacy of loving integrity. I like the ring that has, with a vengeance while observing the profiteering corp exec funding of fundies and post-Cold War coasting of passive liberals generating the wildly polarized and paralyzed hell-in-a-handbasket fundie-secular momentum of society. Now, any Buddhist-yoga-tai chi etc practitioner worth their salt has been breathing healthfully all this while. I suggest that we fit that together with a reclaimed and loving Jesus. Greenpeace, Oxfam, food co-ops, and credit unions and the World Social Forum need all the help they can get. Mobius strip- and tesseract- style from the early Christians, Jewish diaspora-returned, and on through modern UN human rights. OK, OK, my dad was an ex-Catholic atheist humanist. Mom an agnostic. Dawkins et al´s rabid anti-theist atheism just galvanized me in my interfaith UU, touchy-feelie, hippie-dippie, book-wormy, bongo-banging, open-mike-rocking, frontline-doorknocking-for-Greenpeace and-Oxfam, teach-in-Africa/homeless shelter-volunteering, food co-op-loving Christianity, to be clear.

Alienated from the Supernatural, and the Spiritual, or not...

starm greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 12 hours ago • edited How can I be alienated by something I know nothing about? 🙄 I have no interest in wasting my time until I get a coherent definition of the word. I'm certainly not interested in reading any more of Karen Armstrong's or any other abrahamic apologetics, haven't heard of the others. • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop starm • 12 minutes ago • edited Well, Dawkins knows next to nothing appropriately balanced about religion, nor is he aware how alienated he is. I wasn´t keeping close track of your comments and their meaning beyond vaguely, and without much effort perceived your perception of God disproved and the like. Oh, yeah, and "mental aberrations." That smacks more of Dawkins "God Delusion" and Hitchens´"religion is poison" than my high school inclination, "I wonder what my dad´s book by Huston Smith says.....?" Yet, no biggie. Glad to engage with a toe in the water. First off, let me wax nostalgic and recall my high school angelic revelation when the Yin-Yang appeared with wings and descended from the Himalayas in a cloud of beef with broccoli. Just kidding, basically. So there I was, an atheist humanist dad with a house stocked with books, and my love of learning kindled and igniting. My buddy asked me, "Are you an atheist?" in the middle of Soc Sci class, and I nodded noncommitally. That was that. It never came up again at that time. I was at home at some point after that and picked up scholar Huston Smith´s book World Religions, and flipping through stopped at Taoism, a Chinese religion. He wrote, or I discerned, "The Tao is a creative continuum that is always accessible." I recall that as a bridge concept from "science" to self-transcendental awareness. I thought, "If there´s a God, that´s it for me." At 16. It was a non-objectifying notion, I can reflect now, in my relationship to "the Universe type- Source of the Universe type Higher Force/Power. Key psychological insight enriches that shift, that "scientific materialist" thinking can obscure. Piaget observed the development of our human object-oriented cognition. Elizabeth Bates, I think it was, studied affective-relational development. L Kohlberg studied moral development. My own political eco-social justice activist development also reflected those dynamics. In ecology class in college, they focused on the science, with one odd mention of what now can be called sustainability, and "sustainable yield." Fish, and how quickly they reproduce, or not. After college, I knocked on doors for consumer advocacy, including environmental protection. Environmentalism has to do with my/our perceiving the ecology in relation to myself/ourselves. Chemicals dumped in a local residential lake will not delay long to pose a threat to residents. I also visited Woburn that faced that faced a well-publicized problem as in John Travolta´s lead in the film A Civil Action, like Erin Brockavich. After reading fairly casually on my own time some Alan Watts and more about aspects of Taoism and Zen Buddhism and more, I went to a Zen Temple for an hour of meditation or so. I had stretched plenty as an athlete, so it was not totally unfamiliar. Yet, it was also a bit like an isolation chamber, might be a Western kind of image. Yet, seeing the "Universe and its potential Source" as the "Tao" and "myself as not-just-flesh-and-blood-brain-object-oriented materialistic mind" meant I was embracing different assumptions than materialistic science. Meditation and prayer has already begun to be studied by science, and basic material, and conventional psychological, benefits found. As a Bio Anthro major, my interest in rituals by then made my first contact with Mircae Eliade´s notion of the "sacred" meaningful. With that all as a foundation, it doesn´t end there. I´ll stop there, and ask you, How far did you stick with me? I´ve dipped a toe in the water, so let´s see what kind of pinky you lift. enoc ard greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 5 hours ago So, what is supernatural? • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop enoc ard • 3 minutes ago • edited OK, good question. As I recall, you brought Fibonacci´s historical contribution in math to my attention one time. That makes a useful case to build a materialistic philosophical framework, and the implications of multidisciplinary philosophy. Hindu-Arabic numbers allowed a new level of arithmetic activity in the West as Christians advanced proto-science and Islam´s scholars felt the ground slipping away beneath their feet. By DesCartes, he whipped up the keys to analytic geometry with variables as Galileo took Benedictine Bishop Raymond´s Toledo Archimedes and so on to Newton, and so on. While math is a kind of symbolic philosophy, its impact on human empiricism and constructive actions assumes a new level, a whole greater than its parts, and part of emergentism. Reductionism is more commonly employed, but constructionism and emergentism are clearly spoken too little of. Fritjof Capra, since writing the famous Tao of Physics, has done great work in elaborating around emergentism and sustainability. As part of that, Capra also explored psychology, as with S Grof and RD Laing. In the scope of implications, I can refer to related approaches by M Rosenberg, Alice Miller, and J Bradshaw to touch on the power and magnitude of human emotions and psychological cognitive states. Whoever noticed brain waves, all that psychology relates to brain wave graphing. And then come holographics. Neurologist K Pibram and physicist D Bohm noted the significance of what happens when an electron microscope laser beam is split, one half reflected off an object, and recombined on photographic film. It´s a phenomenon and paradigm related to complex wave mechanics. Interference pattern type stuff basically that interrelates with information theory. And the metaphysical philosophy of the supernatural. In his work, Bohm postulated the known explicate order, and the unknown or unperceived implicate order. That´s a whole mix of material that can help begin to map out the multidisciplinary dimensions of perceiving the relevance and character of the supernatural. I referred somewhere else here to the Greenbrier ghost murder trial around 1899, and more recent cases of murderers turning themselves in and the like with a fine listverse compilation and noting how the murderers reported being haunted. More formally, UVA´s Dept of Perceptual Studies was founded by I Stevenson MD studying reincarnation, and now B Greyson PhD studying NDEs, and more. All noteworthy empirical material to consider. How´s that work for you? How far did you get with my overview here?

Easter, Christianity, and "the gods": Did Humans Make the gods? If In Part, How Much?

Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 8 days ago Interesting enough, although "Easter as a pagan goddess is an 'unattainable' assertion" is a little embarrassing mistake. Actually, the guy missed the interesting fact that Easter eggs are apparently a Christian innovation, not pagan. Mesopotamian Christians are credited with it. Germans are credited with the bunny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Avatar Bish@ greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 5 days ago nature created the eggs, well before any god even existed.. greenpeaceRdale1844coop Bis • 4 days ago • edited "before any god even existed" Your assumption there is scientific materialism, aka scientism. "Science" is a term, meanwhile, that artificially dissociates the practice from its philosophical nature by making it seem a technical matter. Whatever seems routine in "science" is part of scientific philosophy, the empirical study of physical reality. Thus, the History of " Science" reveals that Christians actually defied ancient Greek assumptions as part of their living in Christianity´s own new cultural forms based on Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity and an omnipotent God. Modern scientific and moral philosophy emerged with empirical methodologies as Christian tools, as did mechanicism and secularism. In evaluating the full range of knowledge, epistemology includes both knowledge domains and phenomena domains. Scientific laws, for example, represent human models of lawful regularities in phenomena. Within those realms, epistemology identifies how phenomena are interconnected, with physics leading to chemistry, which leads to biology, which leads to human psychology, anthropology, and so on. Those sequences involve systems and emergentism. All of the knowledge domain systems are part of philosophy´s epistemological coherence, including alternative methodologies like contemplation. In looking at physics, its explanations of Cosmology reveal a limit of scientific philosophy. Evidence suggests that spacetime and matter-energy had a beginning and that the Universe is not eternal in the past. Thus, the Universe´s beginning requires a cause of some kind, and one of a different Order of Explanation. That Cause of the Universe is outside this Universe´s spacetime, matter-energy, and so is timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. yet of tremendous power. Without time, the Cause showed agency because it was not a mechanical process "timed" to go off. "Agency" is a quality we know as humans because of human minds. The Causal Entity of the Universe has no physical brain, and so is an immaterial mind. That´s where "nature" comes from, and human developmental cultures that mixed perception of the God Entity, natural forces, and god-labels, from shamans to temple priests in settlements. Jesus played a key role in his tradition, and ancient Greek philosophy provided a major resource for Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity in God´s love. • Edit • Reply • Share › Avatar Bishadi greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 4 days ago You are typing on a computer because of materialism. No god enabled the computer. Just as you came from a single celled living system; sperm/egg. No god created you. Your parents did the wild thing. "Those sequences involve systems and emergentism" Evolving. Growing, developing.......................... Life grows, develops and is emergent. Jesus just confirmed that following the rules (commandments) was the best model until the unveiling. Which he did not complete. Love requires honesty. • Reply • Share › Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Bishadi • 4 days ago "You are typing on a computer because of materialism. No god enabled the computer." You´re a little unclear about the difference between Homo habilis and Homo sapiens. Shamans are shown to have existed as early as 40,000 BCE, reflecting the psychosocial therapeutic role they play in a cognitively advanced primate advancing in symbolic tool use through language, right and left brain style. Shamanic relationship to the transcendental has especially shown healing abilities and undoubtedly, reconciling wisdom, extrapolating back from the likes of Cyrus the Great or FDR. Chimpanzees, incidentally, have been found to kill chimps from neighboring groups, given the sufficient advantages even at their level of sociality and cognition. Caine killing his brother Abel is a profound archetype and empirical psychosocial condition that afflicts human-type mammalian materialistic interaction. Greek society, for its brilliant grounding of scientific and moral philosophical culture, failed to adopt such culture more systematically and spiked and crashed illustratively in Alexander the Great. Ego reared its ugly head for the Greeks. And they splintered, and then were conquered by the Romans, who did the same. Except, as Julius Casesar became the pioneering tyrant with populist appeal, his more distant nephew or the like, Augustus Octavian, revenged Caesar´s assassination and was ruling when Jesus was born. Jesus´ life, mission, and message left 2 Commandments for Moses´ 10 and God and accessories that led to Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity. That legacy had monastic schools that Christians turned into Universities that were able to remake ancient Greek philosophy plus into modern science and other empirically informed philosophical disciplines. People unable to sustain mutually supportive social relations cannot sustain scientific and empirical culture. That´s where your distorted perception that neglects to acknowledge human psychosocial qualities, and spiritual-religious experience in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity, is stuck. In fact, sustainability and human rights indicators show us empirically that modernity is on track to disasters. Hell in a handbasket, as they say. With secular extremist ideology nurturing feelings of anger diverted in confusion, mixed up rebellion, and selfish ambition in people, materialism is showing its true colors. God enabled the computer, primarily through Jesus, with touches of ancient Greek, Islamic, and other channels. As for natural biology, you clearly were unable to follow the logical reasoning I presented to you about biology´s place in things. Even with Jesus´ unprecedented legacy, human bio-psychosocial tendencies to indulgence clearly make human sexual behavior vulnerable to destabilizing tendencies. Gandhi gave up sex at 35 because it is a powerful distraction and requires psychosocial and spiritual discipline to maintain balance. Barack Obama has shown as much responsible balance as any admirable public figure, and more, while the crude figure of the sexual adventurer and profiteer tRump has dumped his soul in anti-social values. Jesus can be said to have potentialized key aspects of salvation, but his legacy of loving integrity has led to University-based society with modern empirical philosophy that can educate anyone and everyone for sustainability, spirituality, and human rights if promoted persistently. Indeed, love does require honesty. And diligent effort to pursue and achieve that honesty. • Edit • Reply • Share › Avatar Bishadi greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 4 days ago people created the computers. The engineers are not gods. • Reply • Share › Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Bishadi • 3 days ago Yes. In the relevant frame of reference to computers and engineers, they can be described in material terms to a degree. "Gods" as you use it, is already retreating into refuting an egotistical notion. Engineers are not gods, and depend on a rich spiritual-religious context that informs their activity, in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity in University-based society. • Edit • Reply • Share › Avatar Bishadi greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 3 days ago Your body is material. Writing is material. As i use it, gods are man-made (man created) entities. Engineers do not depend on "rich spiritual-religious context ". That claim is based on "an egotistical notion." ps... Jesus was not a god either! • Reply • Share › − Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Bishadi • 3 days ago • edited Yes, two more material aspects for you! Many aspects of God the Creator and Providential Supplier are expressed in human beings. The original relationship to theism was through shamans, who are material. Yet, the appearance of the Loewenmensch in a cave from 40,000 years ago shows a figure that is not itself natural, a Lion-man. The healing in conjunction with shamans still occurs as it does in spiritual-religious contexts. One recent report concerned a fatal condition in an American who traveled down to South America for shamanic treatment that cured him. Engineers don´t exist because they were born yesterday. Your lens is inadequate, and virtually illiterate. No Isaac Newton, no engineers today. No Universities, no Isaac Newton. No monk Thomas of Aquinas, no Universities. No monk Bishop Raymond the Benedictine monk and his Toledo Translation School, no University science. No Jesus, no monks. My previous comments have already made related arguments. Your denial of engineers spiritual-religious context is denialism and potentially illiterate, simply in the context of this dialogue. Your simplistic attempt to throw back a description of you verges on ad hom, but you demonstrate yourself as not competent in the necessary literacy. Jesus certainly was a man. The question of his nature is more complex. Given that you have the freedom to question or deny, and even verbally negate his divinity is all part of the rich spiritual-religious context that now makes you not competent nor literate in such dialogue. While he taught spiritual practice involving seeking "the Kingdom of Heaven," he also referred back to the prophetic tradition that is his rich heritage, including Moses and all of the recorded testimonies that defy materialist notions. Materialism has observed in scientific philosophical study that chimps will organize, attack, and kill neighboring chimps. Greek culture that developed philosophy in ancient times was unable to sustain itself as the exploitation of any cultural strengths led to egotistical and wanton acts of violence that limited Greek development. Greek science itself receded to libraries that nurtured odd geniuses into Rome´s conquest of Greek areas. Aristotle´s own notions of a First Cause were rejected by him because he thought the Universe was eternal. Aristotle´s ideas were relegated to documents and neoplatonism. That, too, was repressed as Christianity became a foundational belief for the Eastern Emperor who suppressed surviving neoplatonic paganism. Jesus´ appearance is described in the New Testament as involving a number of spiritual-religious experiences, for both his parents and uncle/aunt parents of John the Baptist. Jesus´ message of loving Commandments for Moses and God defy materialistic limitations. He demonstrated healing and taught accessory principles of love, all in regard to seeking the Kingdom of Heaven and in relation to God´s love over judgment. Psychology has come to recognize the healing power of loving behavior, in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity, from Freud to Piaget to Harlow, et al. Psychologists have also recognized the existence of a relationship to Higher Powers, including Jung´s synchronicity and Higher Self taken from Hinduism. Also in Jesus´ legacy, nevertheless. From the persistence of prayer and meditation related activities to the non-materialist activity of Christian spiritual-religious love as the driving force and logic behind the emergence of Universities transformed from Christian monastic schools to Universities, to the establishment of the United Nations based on human rights and revealing sustainability, the organizing principle of God´s love has defied human materialistic corruption. FDR´s efforts against the Stock Market crash corruption of the rich and then the power mad efforts of Hitler´s Nazis allied at first with Stalin´s Soviet Russia, and technologically powerful Tojo Japan itself represents how FDR defied the rich and selfish tendencies in the US. He credited Christian service values and announced the importance of religion, also refuting materialistic analyses. In terms of logic, scientific empirical philosophy is only part of momentous Christian University-based developments. Psychology, history, and so on have all emerged, presumably an obvious, but radical point in your virtual functional illiteracy. It was thus that Christians have been able to take Aristotle´s First Cause argument, along with Islamic scholarship, to reason philosophically where scientific philosophy fails. I described it above already, so here I´ll cite a rich metaphorical version. The existence of supermarkets doesn´t mean that farms are unnecessary. Material reality is not sufficient and logically requires a cause from a higher order of reality, all of which operates according to emergentism. As to Jesus´ defining himself as the Son of God and in other related ways, you have already demonstrated inadequate literacy for me to even indulge in more here. In your unwavering incomprehension, this is certainly more for others and myself than you. You can find the meaning of love, of course. Jesus is not the means by which I first began learning about the principle. Just the crucial pivot and more. • Edit • Reply • Share › Avatar Bishadi greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 3 days ago Yes, man created a whole bunch of aspects for the variety of gods. Mars, zeus, even a hairy kristna that is claimed to have 16,000 wives. With words mankind even created libraries. "As to Jesus´ defining himself as the Son of God and in other related ways, you have already demonstrated inadequate literacy for me to even indulge in more here." Each soul born is a child of mother nature (god itself). Since i have read the dialogue, i am well aware of many metaphor of the bible and many theologies. What is sad, is too many have been led to believe that mankind is not capable of learning, creating or even unconditional LOVE. But i know better! • Reply • Share › Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Bishadi • 2 days ago "Yes, man created a whole bunch of aspects for the variety of gods." Modern psychology and comparative religion provide empirical tools that can provide highly precise analysis of the issues involved. Most people don´t, and few scholars get that precise. The basic issue goes deeper, as you try to approach with your statement below, " Each soul born is a child of mother nature (god itself)." Your comments thus reflect a level of disorganization in your perception, naturally enough. However, that is the benefit of acknowledging the University system and its organization of subject disciplines that situate the different subjects. Reality is multidisciplinary in its richness of phenomena, and the knowledge domains that form epistemology as well, with foundations in empirical philosophy. Your statement about being a "child of mother nature" captures the importance of nature as aspects of biology, environmentalism, and outdoor recreation, etc. Also as part of the creation with its own spiritual dynamics. "God itself," however, is yet another level, the absolute and ultimate that has gained its highest recognition in teachings related to love, the centerpiece of Jesus´ 2 Commandments for Moses and God. Protection and healing from disease are an important benefit, and recognizing the value of nature itself under threat another. The condition of humankind consists of the problem and the solution, related to the abuse of power through ignorance, greed, and hatred as the Buddha nicely phrased it. Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity in University-based society has ample expressions that encourage learning and creating. If you know better than any negative assumption, then you would benefit by knowing that numerous others also have known better, from Jesus to George Fox, John Locke, and more. • Edit • Reply • Share › Avatar Bishadi greenpeaceRdale1844coop • 16 hours ago Man created them religions even the words to describe the variety of psychosis. Man created the gods and even your spiritual dynamics of the most high. • Reply • Share › Avatar greenpeaceRdale1844coop Bishadi • 20 minutes ago • edited So, I misinterpreted in your statement, "Each soul born is a child of mother nature (god itself)" by my own semantic inclinations. You equate "mother nature" with "god itself." Your use of concepts is not paltry, but not directed by an intellectual discipline that acknowledges the larger scholarly community that has developed them and the University-based group that provides a strong basis for comparing and contrasting, developing empirical foundations, and understanding levels of explanation. "Psychosis" is a pathologized term referring to a psychological state. "States of consciousness" is a more standard term that adequately addresses spiritual-religious experience involving non-materialistic, non-natural, and supernatural/transcendental/transpersonal insights and perceptions. Your assertions are unempirical, nor do you show any awareness of the standards of empiricism. The biological anthropologist Eliot Chapple formulated a comprehensive behavioral psychosocial system that identifies the learning and conditioning involved in generating all the various cultural symbolic systems, including religions. At one level, that´s a major advance that helps ground a number of perceptions. The modern expression in English, "a cross to bear" reflects Jesus´ context of suffering before execution and Resurrection, and legacy, as a general kind of example. The Buddha taught lessons that include reference to the lotus flower and its scent. An Asian island tribe used leaves of a certain tree in certain rituals, such as rites of passage, because the tree provided vines for fishing nets as their primary male livelihood. "(Humans) created the gods" thus is subject to such analytical treatment, although that is a level not widely used. Alex Wendt´s social constructivism achieves a similar level of clarity as Chapple, more recently. Sociologist GH Meade actually drew directly on Chapple. Yet, as I have indicated already that you are unwilling or unable to acknowledge, philosophical analysis of levels of explanation makes clear what Aristotle original identified as causes. "Scientific laws" represent lawful regularities in physical phenomena. Those lawful regularities operate in classical mechanics, but emerge from Quantum atomic and subatomic phenomena as a primary level of emergentism, that applies continually as phenomena have been addressed by philosophical systems into academic disciplines. Just as "scientific laws" are human philosophical contructs, the phenomena they refer to are the invisible aspect of objects and their physical behavior. Tracing physical phenomena down to the quantum level with instrumentation, scientists have identified such phenomena as the Higgs boson and Higgs field, with one nickname the "God particle" because of its hypothesized, and apparently empirically-based, foundational character. Yet, empiricism itself is actually empirical philosophy, as science is scientific and empirical philosophy. Philosophical analysis of the levels of explanation continues by reflection, and can identify the origin of modern philosophy in Christians identifying ancient Greek limiting assumptions, like Aristotle´s view that objects don´t travel in curved motion, just straight lines. Christians identify God as the transcendent Creator and omnipotent, and in their scholarly religious networks had the confidence and clarity to recognize Aristotle´s error and correct it. For one, levels of explanation beyond biology lead to psychology, anthropology, and sociology, etc. All that involves emergent phenomena with new levels of analysis requiring new concepts and observing new processes. If founded on biology, new possibilities unlike biology have been observed. Force, wealth, speech, and sex can be abused and have been, whether in humans eating other humans in cannibalism, the capture of slaves for sex and wealth, and the use of lies for self-serving accusations and false convictions. The Code of Hammurabi, referring to transcendental aspects of God, is an early and well-known legal system from Babylon before 1,000 BC. Moses´ top 10 Commandments for Abraham and God emerged more or less contemporaneously. Moses´ spiritual-religious experience with a burning bush is well known. His descripion is ultimately limited in its quality of elevating Moses as leader. Jewish prophetic experience becomes recorded and confirms experiences by prophets who do not expect to be contacted by a transcendental God, and are reluctant not megalomaniacal. It is thus that coherence, continuity, and consistency form a larger emergent logic over historical development that fortifies the narrative component quality and compensates for its isolated nature. The Hammurabi Code, meanwhile, remained a purely archeological discovery, its name lost in the mists of time, whatever its lasting contributions. By contrast. Again, Aristotle´s First Cause argument provides a modern basis in WL Craig´s Cosmological Argument for God that situates materialistic science´s elements of knowledge in its philosophical framework of metaphysical cause. As one scholar has nicely observed in metaphor, "Just because we have supermarkets, it doesn´t mean we don´t need to experience or understand farms, agriculture, or gardens and ecology and biology.

"Human Evil Isn´t Natural, Just Like Childhood Trauma" Hmm...

In response to a meme.

I´d say, "You´re almost there. The evil involved is naturally human, and has emerged diverting spiritual-religious innovations. That spiritual-religious tradition has spawned integrity activists (imperfect spiritual-religious humans) from Luther to George Fox and up to the present. George Fox´s legacy spawned a legacy that another kind of dissident sought to lead abolitionism in the UK. Not for profits and social movements in modern times began there, basically. The 1960s were a rich resurgence of integrity that has weaker ties to the spiritual-religious tradition, so that organizations like food co-ops, Oxfam, Greenpeace, and Ralph Nader´s legacy are seen as secular. The corporate exec profiteering agenda rebelled against FDR´s own spiritual-religiously strengthened legacy, linking with a conniving Rev Fifield and Cold War anti-communist propaganda. Spiritual-religious experience is underrated and undervalued. It is, however, the missing link to the stepped on shape of things, and galvanizing what groups like Oxfam and Greenpeace have accomplished so far. Both were co-founded by Quakers, BTW. Formerly Jewish Quakers in the case of Greenpeace, interestingly.... Meanwhile, Buddhism, yoga, tai chi, Jungian psychology and more have also spread. It´s a rich seed bed. In green power co-ops, started in Denmark in the 1970s and 80s, that have exploded throughout Germany, and spread throughout the EU, the US has one since 2007. Started by two 12 year olds and a mom, SUN co-op solarunitedneighbors.org

Step Simp Mark Rego Monteiro I wouldnt call it (human evil) natural, anymore than Id call trauma natural...Most pathology comes from childhood trauma.. @Steph Sim I like to bias "natural" with goodness, myself. But that´s a loaded assumption. "Science," meanwhile, has limits, but is good for approaching philosophical objectivity. As empiricism, it goes further. "Naturally" is a key aspect. Mental health disciplinary views, a good basis for defining "evil" writ large, are the result of a special spiritual-religious tradition´s legacy of loving integrity. As "natural" goes, it is significantly less natural than traumatic behaviors, however. "Childhood trauma" leaves us with the "chicken-egg" fallacy (i.e. reptile ancestors laid eggs first, a la biology). A devil´s advocate question might be, "So, you think that in the transition to agricultural settlements, in which there were accumulation of resources and territorial formations, that violent behavior wasn´t "natural"?" After all, the Aztecs formalized human sacrifice rituals, and South American explorers Jean de Lery, Hans Staden, and Manuel da Nobrega all had vivid encounters with tribal cannibalism. That´s history and anthropology. Queen Nzinga of Angolan Ndongo was the daughter of a slave wife. Olaudah Equiano of Benin had a father who owned many slaves. Native Am Sacagawea had been enslaved by another tribe´s raid. Zhu Yuanzhang the Hongwu Emperor in China killed tens of thousands out of paranoia. The Maurya-Shunga-Kanva imperial changes reflected assassinations. There are bio-energetic explanations for it all, materialistically. De Lery, no less, encountered a famine driven cannibalistic experience in Europe at that time in the 1500s. In biology, moreover, R Wrangham et al have noted that our virtual ancestor cousin chimps kill neighboring chimps based on cognitive and social capacity. I believe Jane Goodall harbors that objective truth, sad only if viewed with preconceptions. They gain material resources. Naturally. And then spiritual-religious experience gained a powerful resource in human historical development with its psychosocial and cultural components. Thus, childhood trauma is one significant condition we know well, depending. But if you surgically isolate that from social, and environmental, cause and effect chains, its causation, your position misrepresents reality significantly in a form of reductionism. Having mental health counseling experience myself and more, I´ve identified an actual failure in University-based scholarship to adequately value trans-science disciplines and multidisciplinarity. Fritjof Capra´s work is a major contribution in that direction, and from a different angle, Karen Armstrong´s work is also noteworthy. "Liberal Arts" and "Social Science" themselves are disdained at large. In short, multidisciplinary studies, empiricism, constructionism, and philosophical epistemology are elements that combine into multidisciplinary empirical philosophy. With that empowering perspective, we can observe that adults have reponsibility for inflicting childhood trauma, and a very specific spiritual-religious tradition provided the tools and viewpoints to supersede those human bio-psychosocial tendencies. At the pivotal time of Jesus, the Greeks had climaxed when Alexander the Great assumed power as the result of violent intrafamilial homicides, leading to a sequence of events in which much vaunted ancient Greek philosophy remained ignored sufficiently to be reduced to libraries and odd geniuses. Augustus Octavian assassinated Caesar´s assassins and was emperor at Jesus´ birth, when the Roman Senate had assigned King Herod as "King of the Jews." Jesus´ teachings of loving Commandments for Moses and God´s parental love and accessory messages were followed by his execution at the hands of religious and political leaders, frightening his followers at that point. Jesus´ Resurrection three days later becomes noteworthy because of that. While Shamans can anthropologically be observed to have established important foundations and accessory traditions, as well and in humanity´s broader heritage, Jesus´ experience is the historical psychosocial and cultural operational feature in a mental health-oriented analysis of modern University-based scholarship. Child trauma normally is caused by harmful adult action, and adult therapeutic experience is possible, with an expanded range of modalities in this multidisciplinary framework. Mental health treatment is a modern constructionist perspective and noteworthy development in the legacy of loving integrity of a spiritual-religious tradition. Thus, as "natural" goes, it is significantly less natural than traumatic behaviors, however.

Did and Does the Bible Hurt Women?

The very book that belongs to all churches hurts and disrespects me as a woman. The book that pervades society at its very core has hurt women.

@Jen An Ly You need to be careful about how you are assigning responsibility and valuing knowledge. By "the book", you mean the Bible, and the book itself can´t hurt anyone. It is people interpreting it that may misuse it. That is an essential point, because it is Jesus Christ of Nazareth´s life, mission, and message that established 2 loving Commandments for Moses and God. It is Jesus´ legacy that made new levels of human relationship possible. As for the OT itself, its parts were at historical levels, and never out of proportion to other cultures at the time. The early OT involves harsh terms for all kinds of people, not just women, but again, all comparable to the Code of Hammurabi of Babylon. The prophets had a process unique in the world that focused on social justice, starting with Elijah for whom King Ahab and Queen Jezebel murdered a citizen subject to acquire his territory. It is that prophetic process for God through Abraham, Moses, and the other stretch of 40 plus prophets that made Jesus possible. Jesus taught those loving Commandments and profound accessory messages valuing women as in the adulteress account of sin and throwing the first stone. The path since then requires a little more study, because Jesus´ legacy made Universities possible and new levels of abuse of everybody, despite Civil Rights advances. While FDR addressed the rich and corporate exec irresponsibility that deserved to be criminalized and more with Eleanor up to the UN and human rights, it is very specifically a Rev Fifield who concocted a pro-rich "gospel" for rich execs that has led to the modern Religious Right.

Eternal Happiness for "Fools" and Gurus

It´s a funny skit. As for the issues, it gets at the nature of the non-seeker, or the misguided seeker still full of "the world." I have a situtation at a religious blog where a Dawkins or Hitchens type anti-theist very simplistically, and persistently, continues to push the same assertions. "You need evidence for God. No one has ever proved that God exists." I have to honor the type at one level, because they pushed me to the next level of spiritual awakening in the intellectual realm in recent years. There is a certain force in the mere use of "logic." "God is invisible, therefore he is a fairy-tale." That follows the orientation that science has been pursuing virtually since just before Newton as DesCartes invented modern mathematical notation. People tried to apply DesCartes´ approach to human affairs, and G Vico emerged as a secular, non-theistic respondent who pioneered constructionist ideas. That means perceiving that humans create their own artifacts, in complex ways. Terms like rationalism, logical positivism, and now scientism capture the problem of the science extremist side, also scientific materialism. Also, the Cartesian mind-body split is an iconic term that enters into matters. I´ve appreciated Karen Armstrong´s efforts along the way, with her articulation about the importance of spiritual practice and promotion of interfaith efforts. As a mixed blessing factor, her historical use of "mythos" to capture valid spiritual-religious experience as opposed to "logos" of rational thinking has had me doubting. Certainly, unempirical notions have been used in trying to innovate new religious experience, justifying the root term "myth-". Yet, that seems off-target, and carries the baggage of "myth" as fairy-tale. J Campbell used it too, I recall, and he stayed stuck in the non-transcendental and merely psychological. One key insight is to recognize the mystification of "science." "Seeing is believing" typifies the orientation, with Newton noticing an apple and looking at the moon, then studying the rate of fall of the apple. "Science," of course, is a modern popularized use by scientists themselves that extracts philosophy from it, and thus emphasizing the physical phenomena being mastered by virtual technicians. But, banalization is involved in that. Newton didn´t just "work it out." He thought about it, played around, and even thought about the concept of "action at a distance" in relation to his alchemical activities and those IDEAS. We don´t even need to talk about Newton´s understanding of an existing God to return to the term used for scientists until after the 1850s or so: "natural philosophers." Thus, Einstein´s insights were developed as he worked in a patent office, not a Collider or Atom Smasher facility. He had been philosophizing scientifically about light and its physics´ math by his Anno Mirabilis of some four groundbreaking papers. The scientific method is a philosophical method. It is empirical, and that too, can only mean empirical philosophy. Philosopher of Science M Pigliucci flipped, whether because of debating WL Craig or a series of events after that. He was anti-theist atheist, but became anti-scientism atheist, responding to physicist L Krauss who said, "Philosophy is a kind of science." M Pigl. commented, "He´s got it exactly backwards." Thus, we can start appreciating the philosophical value of questions like, "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" Science´s mystique is cracked, ultimately to its core. We can thus start delving into the relevance of scientific studies about the benefits of prayer and meditation, and other religious devotional practices. Scientific philosophy thus can richly supplement spiritual-religious knowledge, which of course is based on practice and the "spiritual-religious method." Well, that´s a philosophical statement. What else happens when philosophy meets spirituality and religion? lol

Covid:19, Vico, Duterte and the Question of Theodicy (selection)

"....The god/s of order eventually won the struggle and there was therefore peace and order in the cosmos. This order, however, was not a permanent design, it has to be preserved, protected and defended from the incessant desire of chaos to pull down cosmos to destruction. There is no problem of theodicy in this religio-poltical arrangement. Evil has a place then in this archaic cosmogonic design, and it is there lurking but active, waiting to attack anytime chance is offered. The battle is ongoing and never ceased between benevolent and evil gods such as between Re and Apopis, or Horus and Seth, or between El and Baal, or Baal and Yamm, or between Vico Sotto and Rodrigo Duterte. That is the problem with monotheism. You have only one god inhabiting the cosmos, where, in order to maintain his omnipotence, which is a prominent theme in the books of Ezekiel and Second Isaiah, you have to attribute evil and good, chaos and order, to the same god, Yahweh. Where do you put, say, Vico and Duterte, evil and good, on this political theology then? The problem of Vico and Duterte, evil and good, was first problematized by the Book of Job written centuries after the intensification of monotheistic faith in 7th century. The problem monotheism has engendered was immediately felt, “Will you attribute both Vico and Duterte, evil and good, to the same deity, Yahweh?” Unlike Filipinos, the Israelites under Yehud, felt uncomfortable with that. Thus they started conceiving and “adversary” where evil and Duterte could be associated with. By the time of Jesus in the New Testament, the adversary gained complete identity as Satan, the god of evil and destruction. Monotheism was slightly broken to separate Vico and Duterte, one landed in the bosom of Abraham, and the other one to his father Satan, the killer and destroyer. The discontent with monotheism created consequently Satan as adversary to Yahweh, which is inspired by the unyielding cosmic battle between Horus and Seth, Baal and Yamm and many more of such pairing of benevolent and evil gods. In this arrangement, society is not expected to sit and ask why evil exist. But society, as part of the consubstantiality between nature, gods and humans, must remain vigilant every time Apopis, or the Leviathan, or the sea dragons emerge from its lair to wreak havoc in order to drag the cosmos into chaos. We are not expected to sit and wonder afterwards why evil happens. But in this eternal cosmic battle we need to identify who are the sons of Apopis, of Seth, of Yamm, of Satan and spurn and overcome them to keep order and peace intact. The rise of the kind of Vico Sotto and others is a stark demonstration that we have this cosmic duty to protect peace and order. Next time evil prospers, don’t look on God and ask her why she let this evil happened. Look inside us rather and ask, why did we conspire with evil by becoming obedient and silent?" Nestor Ravilas, March 19, 2020, https://penuelschooloftheology.org/2020/03/19/covid19-vico-duterte-and-the-question-of-theodicy/

Borg and Crossan Ask About Jesus´ Crucifixion, "What Provoked the Authorities....?"

Borg and Crossan asking about the crucifixion and what provoked the authorities at the top of their domination systems at the time.

I think this is a second posting. Anyway, was the crucifixion of Jesus the will of God? Now that we can get so uppity and probing in modern society, we have to acknowledge why. We are in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity that is part of the primary Christian achievement of monastic schools inspiring modern University-based society. Thus, science tells us that the lawful material world is our foundation. "Sin" and "temptation" is the play of biological evolutionary impulses in our environments. At the beginning, anthropology tells us that shamans emerged establishing some important kinds of spiritual relationships in some, many, if not all cases. Yet, post-neolithic settlements created new levels and layers of arrangements that led to Abraham and the chronology of prophets to Jesus. If prophecies could foresee Jesus´ appearance, Jesus´ legacy has empowered individuals in the direction of "free will" and the effective action of science- and empirically-related capabilities. Jesus was at a crucial turning point in human historical development. What might the options have been? If more crucial humans had been capable of opening to Jesus, then they wouldn´t have killed him. But, Jesus didn´t actually provoke the Romans, nor the religious leaders. Not really. In some terms. So, the homicidal desires of the crucifixion leaders is really what emerges. God´s will is love. Love includes the flow of material reality that forms the basis for higher consciousness. Jesus was specially prepared to lead to a new level of awareness in his teachings. Even botched by authoritarian trends in church doctrines, Christian civilization has globalized and spread in the UN community. God´s will was that Jesus appear in the world, teaching God´s love at a whole new level. People´s condition led to the crucifixion execution. God´s will then can be said to have led to the Resurrection. There it is. That´s what seems to be empirical reasoning.

Religion in Sociology, and On to the Transcendental, Eliade, etc and Healing

geor lin Po Hilar • 4 hours ago do you vote in elections? Do you get checkups at the doctor? Do you get vaccines? All those things are holding things in respect and devotion.

greenpeaceRdale1844coop geo lin • 22 minutes ago • edited That´s an interesting proposition and hypothesis. It seems to me that the merely rational calculation that check-ups and vaccine scheduling are good for public health has to be acknowledged. Certainly the addiction to pills and hypochondria, say for "depression," demonstrates that the merely rational is accompanied by the generating of "respect and deveotion." In seeking pills for psychological depression, "respect and devotion" then direct "rational thinking" errantly but acceptably exclusively to substitutes for larger and healthier rationale. Studying Buddhism, yoga, and tai chi, for example, and understanding the significance of Ralph Nader´s and Francis Moore Lappe´s kind of consumer advocacy against corporate-consumer ideology and abuse, not least of all. geo lin Pop Hils II • 3 hours ago This is the way a sociologist viewed things Durkheim then goes a step further. Religion is not only a social creation; it is the power of the community itself that is being worshiped. The power of the community over the individual so transcends individual existence that people collectively give it sacred significance. greenpeaceRdale1844coop geo lin • 34 minutes ago • edited Nice summing up. Still, that is lacking in clarity around the role of individual spiritual-religious experience in the emergence of the community´s assumption and sustaining of sacred material. Moses´ account of the burning bush even seems to have involved his sociologically transcendent status as the Hebrew product of Egyptian royal upbringing. That shifts to psychosocial and transpersonal psychological levels of explanation and analysis of phenomena. Jesus, too, clearly, whatever the actual circumstances of his "Virgin Birth," it appears to have involved visions and most of all, his adult life, mission, and message. There is an interaction, extending even to prophecies as in Isaiah. My own focus in seeking was in the meaning of psychosomatic healing and health, which is a powerful manner of corroborating Jesus´ meaning. Mircae Eliade and Rudolf Otto have some influential ideas about psychosocial spiritual experiential phenomena, that Karen Armstrong has sustained in her own way. geo link Pope HilII • 2 hours ago One shared throughout sociology and by me. I see it every day. The things society believes in are pushed to those who do not believe. Law has became a tool to force conformance. It is called majority rule. • greenpeaceRdale1844coop geo ler • 3 minutes ago • edited Yet, in America´s model of constitutional democracy, Civil Rights "freedoms" have been proposed that provide flexibility. Their logic stems from the likes of T Jefferson´s own regard for Jesus Christ as a "moral teacher" and the existence of a Creator. Modern trends show how profiteering businesspeople can exert power and influence to impose their ideology, as Kevin Kruse has detailed in his book about Rev Fifield and the National Manufacturers Assoc already by 1940, apparently. Thus, not "majority rule," but hoarders of cash, power, and influence in sly concocted cultural control and influence. "Free market economics/ Market fundamentalism" thus whipped people into their line, blurring lines, with fundie Christianity, anti-fundie anti-theists, liberal anti-funie secular materialist Christians, and secular anti-corporatists some of the players. geor ler • 17 hours ago Funny how replacing religion with religion is the way society works. There has never been a society that is not religious. Society simply worships itself and its own ideals. Government has always been the center of worship. › greenpeaceRdale1844coop geo lin • a few seconds ago You talk about Durkheim below. I´ve looked at the work of anthropologist Eliot Chapple whose behavioral analysis involves understanding at least the individuals in community. I think GH Meade drew on Chapple, and more recently E D´Áquili, C. Laughlin et al. A Wendt´s social constructivism built similarly on psychosocial social science and theory. You´ve got some links to insights, but need to anchor and identify the cause-effect process to distinguish bio-psychosocial processes from the mess that modern society makes possible. Dinstinguishing historical continuity and shifts in terms of symbols and their referents is part of that. You, like society more broadly exposed to exaggerated materialistic assumptions, has been denying non-materialistic phenomena, often aggressively. That´s possible and even allowed in post-Enlightenment secular democracy, but also runs into the boundaries of psychosocial mental health. Michael Harner took earlier scholarship as an anthropologist, got initiated into three tribes by actually healing psychoculturally in their idiom and with their people, apparently. He then created a Western technique. Besides that, Buddhist psychologist Jack Kornfield reports on the vast range of studies about the benefits of meditation, to which I would add prayer. That serves as an initial corroboration of the material-behavior roots of the non-material phenomena implied. Paradigms to extend material phenomena´s reach exist, like the Holographic Paradigm, although contemplative practice is another angle. Grounding all such evaluations in a phlosophical spectrum, we can clarify the First Cause/Higher Order/Emergentist issues. I´ve already scoped out a range of conceptual and empirical material, but the relational one is also key in relationship to all these kinds of parameters. Science has promoted objectifying nature and the Universe. Environmentalism has promoted attention to the human and nature interrelationship, and eco-psychology its mental health dimension. Spirituality and theism gets at the awareness to larger, broader, more interconnected interrelationships still as hinted at in basic studies about meditation, related to contemplative practice. Medically attested healings of spiritual-religious testimony, whether purely Christian or just minimally syncretized native practice as in Lewis Mehl-Medrona MD, PhD´s work.

"Christians Started Slavery, So They Can´t Take Credit for Ending It" Really?

Jam Patte Mark Rego Monteiro lolz. Giving white Christians credit for ending slavery. You don’t get to get credit for ending the horror (slavery in the western world) that you started in the first place! ·

Mark Rego Monteiro Jas Patte Hardly. Fruit isn´t just Fruit, apples aren´t oranges, and neither are wax apples or wax oranges the same and undifferentiated. So, you might feel good pigeonholing Christianity because it reinforces your prejudices, but what will you do when saying all fruit is the same, types and wax, and that proves as superficial as the hateful mindsets you want to oppose? "Leftist anti-profiteering commies like Obama!"? As is apparent, Reagan-era pro-rich, anti-social economic ideology has combined with Cold War anti-communist propaganda to sustain MAGA, and snuff a great character and man like Obama. Obama was a Christian, no less, who distanced himself from a radical Black Liberation Theology Christian minister. So, if you´ve heard of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, you would think that applies here. Like I said, it´s superficial, and actually not a valid fallacy in a few ways. Short and sweet, Christians didn´t invent slavery, nor prevent anybody else showing that intent. Secondly, Political "Christianity" that you basically mean as countries and ruling churches, is its own sociological phenomena, while individuals following Jesus´ integrity have had unprecedented ability to accomplish things in the creaky joints of University-based, post-Reformation, Enlightenment modernizing "political" Christianity. That is inherently linked to the meaning of Jesus´ life, mission, message, and legacy. Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity led pretty directly to University-based education, which, nutshell, gives us empirical philosophy so famous in its mommy science. Constantine gave Christianity political legitimacy, and Christianity´s momentum of loving community even for soldiers made it a tidal wave that Roman´s power brokers put on like, well, armor and weapons. By 350, Anthony of the Desert had fathered Christian monks in the direction of higher integrity. By the 380s, the monk St. Jerome and the Pope (!) protested the execution of the first heretic Priscillian at the Emperor´s order. Integrity vs hypocrisy and apostasy. "Fruit" isn´t just "fruit," it´s authentic apples, oranges, and nominal wax types. So, back to slavery, Western and otherwise, was both long established and universal, and European merchants, soldiers, and political types dipped Europe into the existing African institution with tribes and Muslims. No other tradition has had the conditions where high integrity Christian activist citizens organized to end Western slavery legally, because even in England, without full democracy in their monarchy, they were able to. They were led by a dissident Anglican "insider" and recent college grad T Clarkson and a group of high integrity Christian outsider Quaker-Friends. Meanwhile, the Muslims had no intent to stop slavery as the 1816 Bombardment of Algiers demonstrated. Not to mention China and India. So, better hit the books to clear the cobwebs and let the fresh air in. The next step is perceiving the necessity of citizen action to address the other deviant "wax fruit Christian"spawn that truly has strong novel elements, profiteering corporate executives. UK workingpeople already invented the social co-op biz in the 1840s, and Fair Trade was invented in the 1980s. Food co-ops represent that well enough.

Science and Consciousness, Quantum Physics and Philosophy plus...

Pe Co Daen 1t SSlphrohnsoroemd · I have come to the conclusion that God is not a person or a spiritual being looking down at us from the heavens. God is the divinity of consciousness which we all, to some degree, possess. Science states that the whole Universe is conscious, which is in agreement with the belief that God is everywhere (omnipresent) and that God has infinite knowledge (omniscient). God is the great 'I Am Who Am' -- the Conscious Presence -- the 'Light' to which we are drawn, in order to become 'who we are to become' in this physical world. Scriptures tell the stories of humanity's growth through history and metaphor. Jesus Christ is the archetype for each of us to 'follow' and to become .... Like Jesus, our physical and spiritual natures have been born of Mother Nature (from the earth) and of 'Father God' (Divine Conscousness). The title of Christ is given to our spiritual nature -- our higher consciousness or 'Inner Christ' -- as a sign that we have been anointed with divinity. Born of the earth, we follow the path of Christ which leads to 'our' cross experiences on the earthly plane. At our death, our physical body returns to the 'tomb' of the earth while our spiritual consciousness (our holy spirit), like Christ, 'rises' to live on in union with the Divine Light of Universal Consciousness -- our 'God'. Mark Rego Monteiro @Peg C De I like your musing. However, when you want to include "science," I´m going to get a little more rigorous to help the true love flow. "Science" is the popular technical name for scientific philosophy. Normally, science doesn´t deal with anything that´s not measurable, and has spawned "scientism," where science fans get "spiritual" expressing aspects of loving emotions about the Universe and being aware of being a part of it. lol. "Consciousness" might be possible as a scientific concept, but first it relates to psychological and related philosophical concerns. Fritjof Capra has tried to express his "Systems Theory" work in terms of "science," including the Santiago school of cognition. In it, biologists look at life down to single-celled organisms as expressing that quality. A biologist, Charles Birch, I think has gotten associated with Process Theology and a view called "pan-psychism." That´s not "science," however, that´s the philosophy of religion and science, also called "metaphysics." God, I would suggest, can be pinpointed fairly precisely with philosophical reasoning, along with personal spiritual experience. WL Craig has made a good discussion of Aristotle´s First Cause logic, that Thomas of Aquinas and others have developed. Craig took it from a Muslim scholar, and calls it the Kalam Cosmological Argument. God is a Higher Order Being, logically necessary as the Cause of the Universe. Jesus´ life, mission, and message help ground our relationship to God in a structured way that helps us access other masters like Buddha, Anthony of the Desert, Teresa of Avila, Mary Baker Eddy, and so on. With these insights, we can channel our own individual experience in lovingkindness and interdependent connectedness. The Quaker-Friends have an insightful view of the "inner light" in individuals as part of their basis of silent worship. Pey Co Da@ Mark Rego Monteiro -- I would be the first to point out that my knowledge of science is very minuscule. However, because I have members in my family who are 'into science' more than into religion or spirituality, I keep my eyes open for information which affirms both scientific and spiritual principals. Without going into details, I have found the beginnings of this within the recent findings of quantum physics regarding consciousness and it's affects upon matter, and which question some of their previous scientific theories. It makes sense to me that when scientific and spiritual principals agree, there you will find Truth since God is the author/creator of both. And, when they disagree, one or the other has misinterpreted reality. In my post, I was stating my belief, not necessarily the beliefs within the scientific community. Their statement that the whole Universe is conscious helps to confirm, for me, my interpretation of God's reality. They may not yet have come to the same conclusion, but I am encouraged that they are getting closer. The more they discover regarding consciousness (i.e. its role in healing, etc.), the more we may all learn about God. Quantum physics is an interesting subject to explore if one is spiritually inclined and/or interested in the workings of consciousness. · Mark Re Monte Pe Coon Dae Sure, I know the kinds of things you´re talking about. Fritjof Capra, trained as a physicist, wrote The Tao of Physics way back in the 1970s. I guess overall, though, I ´d say, We need to learn how to channel our prevailing fascination with the way the physical world works a little more prudently, and for that Harry Harlow´s baby monkey studies showing how deprived monkeys suffer is probably the most relevant, for human spiritual and psychological choices now. From there, Freud´s insights were most importantly about the relieving feeling of healthy communication, that Jung saw through to the Hindu-derived Higher Self. Not just from there, but by valuing the reality of Jesus and his legacy of loving integrity in modern University-based society, we have to recognize that science is not God. Neither is the Universe, nor its beautiful interconnected features. Testimonies of healing, especially in Christianity, are neglected by most science fans, but have medical attestations that confirm their significance. They relate to philosophy´s insights of God as transcendental, the logically necessary Creator of the Universe, beyond spacetime, matter-energy, and part of all manner of spiritual traditions. United, now, in Jesus´ legacy of University-based culture. Another angle includes M Talbot´s Holographic Universe talks about physicist David Bohm and neurobiologist Karl Pribram´s interest in Holographic phenomena (a laser beam and photographic 3-D type mix) that has pretty amazing implications. But it´s also part of how matter and energy are connected. So, I see that their most amazing significance isn´t so much from the phenomena. It´s mostly important for how it justifies the value of spiritual practice in Jesus´ legacy of loving integrity. Jung´s direction in psychology building on Freud and more justifies some great testimonies in spiritual-religious healing. All that justifies the accomplishment of Christians historically and sociologically in getting us here with science just one branch of University-based empirical philosophy. This historical and sociological stuff is part of the philosophical, which has been treated strikingly "unscientifically" by extremist science fans. Many have made a mystique of "Science" that requires demystification. It supplements spiritual practice concerns, but doesn´t make the world´s human rights violations and sustainability crisis solutions any less clear. And so, we need to learn how to stop obsessing about the way the physical world works, and for that Harry Harlow´s baby monkey studies showing how deprived monkeys suffer is probably the most relevant, for human spiritual and psychological choices now.