07-24-2012, 08:27 PM | #31 | |
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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If I killed anyone it couldn't possibly be because of my disbelief. It would be because of other factors. But if a religion says to kill non-believers any such killing would be because of said religion. Ok, so I got sucked in. This is my final post on this thread... I hope.
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07-24-2012, 08:32 PM | #32 | |
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Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 07-24-2012 at 08:40 PM. |
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07-24-2012, 08:33 PM | #33 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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There are some schools of thought, notably panpsychism and its less extreme versions (I like panprotoexperientialism, even if it is a mouthful), that contend that, at least to some basic, low level degree, "mind" (or at least "experience") is found in all matter down to the smallest components. This is often cited as an answer to the "hard problem of consciousness", namely, qualia (the experience of seeing red as red, or feeling love as love), which don't at this time of our infancy in understanding consciousness seem to have explanations in terms of matter alone. With these schools, there is no "soul" or "mind" stuff, and also no "matter" stuff. It's a monistic "matter-soul-mind" stuff that are inextricably linked. As for me, although panprotoexperientialism seems elegant and plausible to me, I withhold my judgement either way. I, for one, know my own qualia - how I feel at any given moment. Now, if it turned out to just be the result of some chemicals sloshing about (or, according to some, quantum mechanical processes, but I doubt it based on the classical scales involved at the cellular and biomolecular level), would this matter? Even if there were no "me" (self is a poorly defined concept anyway, and defining it in the common spiritualist way via association with a unique immaterial soul just pushes the question somewhere else and raises more too), would this matter? The point is that the evolving process typing this and uses "me" or "I" as shorthand for itself at this very moment has values, feelings, goals, and meanings attached to itself ("myself") and others. And those seem to be pretty continuous over time, with occasional corrections and very rarely some overhauls. It seems like you're denigrating the physical, the very elegant and complex and beautiful (and not at all fully understood yet) chemistry that, at the very least, is the full set of your life functions, if not also your mind, your loves, your interests, thoughts, passions. Does knowing the lights in the gorgeous starry night are mostly nuclear fireballs (with the exception of a handful of planets like Mars and Venus, and possibly a quasar or two) make it any less gorgeous or magical? To me, only more awesome. Same with the smell of flowers, the taste of pizza, and my own more positive mental states.
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07-24-2012, 08:39 PM | #34 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
Also, I hardly think that Jung's ideas are unscientific... at least, not moreso than all of the multitude of other psychological schools out there. True, it's not materialistic, but given our virtual current non-understanding of the mind's origins, we should at least keep an open mind for less-than-materialist approaches; to do otherwise wouldn't be science.
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07-24-2012, 08:41 PM | #35 | |
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Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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07-24-2012, 08:48 PM | #36 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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07-24-2012, 08:48 PM | #37 | |
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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You mean correcting a genetic failing on any children I have is brainwashing? You like inflamatory language even more than I do.
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07-24-2012, 08:52 PM | #38 | |
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Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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And yes correcting your child's opinion by surgery would be brainwashing. And atheists have in fact supported the declaring of people as non-persons. Enough every year to equal a major war.
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07-24-2012, 08:53 PM | #39 | |
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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My ability to love loses nothing by knowing how evolution created my neural tissue's ability to experience it. Ignorance is not magical. So what if my life only has meaning that I give it? Why is having control over our own lives so horrifying to you?
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07-24-2012, 08:54 PM | #40 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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Re: Theology Specialization: Comparative?
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Religion involves a deep emotional attachment to one's beliefs / philosophy, and almost always in the context of society. It's this emotional attachment that's the problem... beliefs about what's true and what's false should have no emotion attached to them, and be readily discarded if they don't match the evidence, make good predictions, or are otherwise useful for what they're meant to be useful for. Believing anything because it "feels right", or you don't want to imagine a world in which it isn't true always has the ugly potential to lead to violence and death and oppression... whether it be an atheistic and materialistic belief or a more traditionally spiritual one. And I do find it telling that religion and its beliefs (whatever the religion) seem to always serve the social order first, and the individual last. "God" is usually "Society" under a pseudonym because fewer individuals would swallow the rules otherwise.
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