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#Post#: 1763--------------------------------------------------
Re: In the Interest of Harmony Among People With Different Belie
fs
By: AGelbert Date: August 27, 2014, 1:59 pm
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Ashvin said, [quote]I distinctly remember even at that age
sharing this internal feeling of rage with George who viewed
their culture as both easy and degenerate. I view modern culture
through this same lens. We have in essence forgotten everything
that was truly important and replaced it with with spiritual
opium meant to make us feel good rather than to mature us or
make us stronger.
As much as it may pain people like Michael Tsarion, John Lash,
Jay Weidner, and Joseph Chiappalone all who claim to be
“Gnostics”, we are here to be forged in the fires and trials of
life so that when the time comes we are able and worthy to
behold the face of eternity without turning away in
shame.[/quote]
Well said. I totally agree, not because of Az's fanciful idea
that we are locked in groupthink, but because, nearing 70 years
old, I HAVE tried out a lot of these belief systems seriously
and found them wanting. And when I try something, I go for it
100%. I have the physical and mental scars to prove it.
I will add to what you said that a central issue here is the
question of motive. Does a human seek comfort and bliss or
Truth? New agers of all stripes claim that is one and the same.
We know better. We know, from hard experience, that genuinely
seeking the truth is PAINFUL. But that just gets us labeled as
masochists by those who basically respond biologically, not
spiritually, to spiritual truths.
That is, they AVOID PAIN like the plague and will go into every
possible logical chain of unprovable, but nice sounding,
premises they can come up with to justify comfort and bliss as
EQUAL to Truth and any "groupthink" that does NOT put Homo SAP
in the top dog position and advocates personal sacrifice in the
service of a personal God is "ridiculous".
When the "ridiculous" label appears too transparently
RIDICULOUS, then they go for the "you are being suckered by
evil" meme in perfect Orwellian speak. :evil4:
UB,
The adjective "ridiculous" is ad hominem baloney. f you
disagree, argue the merits rather than cast aspersions on the
narrative or the narrator.
Surly & GO,
Agreed. All this talk of aliens and reptiles are side issues
that always come off as buck passing to me. The sin buck stops
at Homo SAP. Many Homo SAPs just DO NOT WANT TO GO THERE.
Submitting to a higher authority is just not their thing. And
the very idea that said Higher Authority requires worship and
obedience when that is "ridiculous" for a Supreme Being (all
these new Agers of course know exactly how a Supreme Being
should think because they are well on their way to Supreme
Beingdom! ;D ). And they are humble too...
Yes, they agree, the world is all fucked up, but that's not
their fault or some sky God's fault either... All that evil
stuff going on out there has nothing to do with human fallen
nature of fairy stories about sin and guilt, etc. That's just
ridiculous and so boring.
HTML http://www.desismileys.com/smileys/desismileys_6961.gifhttp://www.pic4ever.com/images/bc3.gif
The common thread in ALL belief systems that reject the
existence of a Supreme Being that we owe our existence to is
that they do not DO guilt, remorse or acceptance of Homo SAP as
a sinful fallen being. We are just nice chumps in a random
universe and the bad "____fill in this blank with ANY entity as
long as it ain't human___ ;)_____" are ruining our spiritual,
happiness and bliss by various sneaky techniques that we must
banish from our threatened Homo Sapiness so we can all live
happily ever after. [img width=80
height=40]
HTML http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9HT4xZyDmh4/TOHhxzA0wLI/AAAAAAAAEUk/oeHDS2cfxWQ/s200/Smiley_Angel_Wings_Halo.jpg[/img]<br
/>And these folks have the brass to claim Christians believe in
fanciful fairy tales! ::)
And when they read what I just posted, they do the Orwellian
two-step and claim that is exactly what Christian "groupthinking
robots" do!
HTML http://www.desismileys.com/smileys/desismileys_2932.gif
It's "perfectly logical" that we can be puppets of
reptilians/ETs/groupthink herd following/fear of death
escapism/cowardice/mother-in-laws (just kidding! ;D) and other
dark evil forces "out there" in the twilight zone of the random
multiplex of universes but it's "just silly" to believe that
there is ONE God who has a plan for our salvation in a fallen
world. ::)
Ashvin, I suggest you dwell on the subject of guilt. The
responses (or lack of them) are quite revealing of the
willingness of the debater to be objective about the human
condition and the disposition (or lack of it) od the debater to
seek the Truth. 8)
In summary, I wish to say that Christianity, as Homo Saps
practice it, is far from perfect; but in belief systems, it's
way ahead of whatever is in second place. :icon_sunny:
[font=times new roman]Te conozco bacalao, aunque vengas
disfrazado.[/font]
#Post#: 1764--------------------------------------------------
CIVILIZATION AND ITS “MALCONTENT”: THE PROBLEM OF GUILT
By: AGelbert Date: August 27, 2014, 7:33 pm
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[quote author=agelbert link=topic=3270.msg54715#msg54715
date=1409165900]
Ashvin, I suggest you dwell on the subject of guilt. The
responses (or lack of them) are quite revealing of the
willingness of the debater to be objective about the human
condition and the disposition (or lack of it) of the debater to
seek the Truth. 8)[/quote]
Ashvin said, "Very good suggestion! Here is a great paper about
that. The following are two snippets, the rest can be found at
the link."
HTML http://www.equip.org/PDF/JAF006.pdf
HTML http://www.equip.org/PDF/JAF006.pdf
CIVILIZATION AND ITS “MALCONTENT”:
SIGMUND FREUD AND THE PROBLEM OF GUILT
The Second in an Occasional Series on the West’s
Most Influential Thinkers
by C. Wayne Mayhall
SYNOPSIS
Sigmund Freud despised religion, theism, and the Bible, and,
although his goal was to eradicate the problem of guilt, he is
ultimately responsible for confusing it. His primary motivation
for psychoanalysis was to transform guilt into neurosis and sin
into sickness. Freud believed that guilt must be eliminated
through self-analysis and that our struggle to transcend the
stifling codes of culture is inescapable unless we are willing
to break out of our moral prison. Freud viewed himself as a
destroyer of conventions whose purpose was to dissociate guilt
from sin, making it a problem for science rather than faith.
A careful study of Freudian thought reminds us that as long as
people continue to believe in a view that relegates the problem
of guilt to biological determinism and ignores individual
responsibility, Freud is with us. Secular thinkers, for better
or worse, consider him an architect of the modern mind, whereas
Christian critics name him an unholy builder of said modern
mind, in the line of Marx and Darwin.
...
GUILT AS MAN’S BASIC PROBLEM
In the summer of 1997, exactly one-hundred years beyond Freud’s
first intense interaction with religious phenomena and the
beginning of his own self-analysis in 1897, after two weeks
visiting Nazi Labor and death camps in Germany and Poland, I
came by Eurail to the foot of the Heumoz mountains in the Swiss
Alps. There I boarded an incline for a ride up into the heart of
Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer’s L’Abri Fellowship11 for
a time of intense study and the opportunity, I hoped, to get my
mind off the absurdity of Hitler’s “final solution.”
I arrived at the cozy retreat to discover it was between student
summer sessions and virtually
abandoned. Alone in the Fellowship library, surrounded by
hundreds of volumes of the thoughts of great thinkers, I came
across a seventy-six-page book humbly titled Freud, 12 written
by theologian Rousas J. Rushdoony.13 For the next few days,
beginning very early in the morning and lasting long into the
night, I explored his thesis that the central problem Freud
confronted was the nature and character of guilt and the
development of a method for its eradication.
As I write this article, a decade after that experience, I
realize why I was so consumed by Rushdoony’s perspective. Five
years prior to that trip to L’Abri, in 1992, I was an upstart
professional freelance writer plying my trade for national
magazines when I was commissioned by Harper’s magazine to do
research on white supremacist groups in America. As I combed
through stacks of their propaganda riddled with the rhetoric of
hate and destruction, I was shocked when I came across a
pamphlet blatantly denying that mass extermination of Jewish
people had even occurred. I pledged right there and then to
visit the sites of concentration camps myself one day, so that I
could see it for myself.
At L’Abri, after fulfilling my pledge to wade through historical
remnants of Nazi sewers of depravity, alone in that quiet place,
my thoughts and experiences coalesced. I realized clearly the
guilt of the white racist and the German fascist were cut from
the same cloth, one denying the other fabricating a death
machine responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocent
men, women, boys, and girls. I saw in Rushdoony’s reasoning, how
Freud’s desire to eradicate religion under the banner of
illusion and eliminate guilt through the language of biological
determinism let them both off the hook, with neither God to
judge nor conscience to condemn them.
HTML http://www.equip.org/PDF/JAF006.pdf
#Post#: 1765--------------------------------------------------
Re: In the Interest of Harmony Among People With Different Belie
fs
By: AGelbert Date: August 27, 2014, 9:07 pm
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Knarf,
I didn't know that. My main education on Buddhism has come from
Ka and some scholarly and long videos posted here over a year
ago of a former Buddhist turned Christian.
It's good to know that some forms of Buddhism accept the
existence of God. [img width=110
height=100]
HTML http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/chinese-emoticon-22648577.jpg[/img]
Ashvin,
I just read the Freud document. It confirmed some suspicions I
had about his zeal in wanting to off religions in general and
God in particular. One of my first posts here was on a document
about Freud that Peter posted defending greed.
I argued vociferously against it and Surly agreed my argument
had merit. So I started coming back now and then from TAE until
RE recruited me into becoming a Renewable Energy [s]NUT[/s]
author.
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191258.bmp<br
/>
The guy (Mowrer) that rocked the psychoanalytic free-for-all
that Freud started had it EXACTLY RIGHT about human nature:
[quote]He writes: “The basic irregularity is not emotional, but
behavioral. [The patient] is not a victim of his conscience, but
a violator of it. He must stop blaming others and accept
responsibility for his own poor behavior. Problems may be
solved, not by ventilation of feelings, but rather by confession
of sin.”4
From his position of prominence within the Ivory Tower of the
psychoanalytic culture, Mowrer realized that Freudian
psychoanalysis turns out to be “an archeological expedition back
into the past in which a search is made for others on whom to
pin the blame for the patient’s behavior.”5[/quote]
I'll go farther than that! UB and many here talk about the
horrors Homo SAPs, many of them alleged Christians in leadership
positions, are inflicting on the world. And all the other
non-Christians, say YEAH! But Freud is THE guy that CONVINCED
predatory capitalists in Wall Street (New York City is a MECCA
for Freudian psychiatry!) that GUILT was WRONG and it DID NOT
MATTER how much the USA promoted revolutions, slave labor, mafia
tactics, wars for profit, fake religious "Christian
Missionaries" backed by the CIA to keep the rubes humble and
willing to work cheap.
OH NO! Feeling GUILT for that was neurotic and must be avoided
in order to have a HEALTHY and HAPPY life of the APEX PREDATOR.
THAT was PRECISELY what snowballed the asshole Capitalism and
Wars PRE-Freud to the world class, no-holds barred demonic blood
fest and Bling craze we are NOW SADDLED WITH!
It was REJECTION of Christianity and God that allowed GUILT to
disappear from our leaders, not the LIP SERVICE espousal of it.
Sure, elite fucks have always been at that game. But NEVER was
the rejection of common decency a guilt free exercise in
business executives and government officials UNTIL Freud's
bullshit became the "common wisdom". That "common wisdom" is
that caring about other people or your employees is a WEAKNESS
and NOT looking out for number one 24/7 is MASOCHISTIC. Only
STUPID people do not put themselves above EVERYBODY else. What's
wrong wid ya? Ya got an inferiority complex or sumptin'? Do unto
others before they DO IT unto you!
GAME THEORY came DIRECTLY from Darwin and Freud. Neither of
those two paragons of prevaricating mindfork had ANY use
whatsoever for God or Christianity.
MILLIONS of people have DIED and work in in slave conditions
BECAUSE of Freud, Darwin and their bastard children, social
Darwinism, Greed is Good, Guilt is Bullshit and Game Theory is
how you WIN. :evil4:
And then Christianity gets BLAMED for most of the 20th century
EVILS
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/gaah.gif
(that is THE
century most people have been killed violently in numbers and as
a percentage of the population as well!).
The ABSENCE of Christianity is the main CAUSE of those evils.
Not that I expect non-Christians to admit it, but the reason
they scapegoat Christianity so much is because THEY DO NOT WANT
TO EXPERIENCE THE GUILT of looking in the mirror.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/nocomment.gifhttp://www.pic4ever.com/images/237.gifhttp://www.pic4ever.com/images/290.gif<br
/>[img width=40
height=40]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-051113192052.png[/img]
#Post#: 1767--------------------------------------------------
Re: In the Interest of Harmony Among People With Different Belie
fs
By: AGelbert Date: August 28, 2014, 1:55 pm
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UB,
I understand your genuine concern for how unfair life is and the
gamut of human talent, intelligence and societal opportunities
or the lack of them that dictates fortune or misfortune in our
lives.
But in essence, you are just rephrasing a quote from Freud:
[quote]“I stand in no awe whatever of the Almighty. If we were
ever to meet I should have more reproaches to make to Him than
He could make to me. I would ask Him why He hadn’t endowed me
with better intellectual equipment, and He couldn’t complain
that I have failed to make the best use of my so-called
freedom.”33[/quote] [img width=100
height=100]
HTML http://www.imgion.com/images/01/Angry-animated-smiley.jpg[/img]<br
/>
[quote]Freud was a scientist not a theologian, more concerned
with the psychology of religion than the nature of faith. “There
was no reason why Freud should have been so engaged by the
problem of religion—at least no obvious, psychoanalyzable
reason. He had never gone through a phase of faith; no family
pieties had stifled him so that he had to speak out,” writes
Freudian scholar Philip Reiff. “His free-thinking father
:evil4:…raised his children in a secular atmosphere. After a
childhood devoid of religious impulse and schooling, Freud was
easily converted to the Darwinian gospel...”22 It was only
natural, for Freud to address religious belief through
anthropology, “instead of dealing with guilt in terms of God,
creation, and man’s fall.”23[/quote]
HTML http://www.equip.org/PDF/JAF006.pdf
HTML http://www.equip.org/PDF/JAF006.pdf
Looky here, a Mking "free-thinker"
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp<br
/>raised Freud!
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714183543.bmp<br
/>So now you know what these "FREE-THINKERS" (otherwise known as
evolution true believers ;)) visit upon humanity...
HTML http://www.websmileys.com/sm/violent/sterb050.gif
As to all the disparate opportunities Homo Saps have that makes
a one shot deal at Salvation look irrational, thereby
"justifying" a belief system that incorporates Karma math and
reincarnation, I disagree. If God exists, He certainly has the
faculty to judge fairly. He understands humanity rather well
since He is the designer and creator of our physical and
spiritual machinery so He is in an excellent (and logically
superior to any human) position to judge human behavior.
Occam's razor dictates that a JUST God taking care of business
is far more logical than a complex Karma dance through multiple
lives.
GO,
I understand much abuse goes on in childhood that causes
inappropriate guilt. But the discovery, through psychoanalysis,
that you were freaked out by seeing mommy making it with the
milkman or as a child beaten, sold in slavery, prostitution,
made to wear dresses if a male or not allowed to wear them if
female, forced to have sex with parents or an older sibling,
deprived of a normal IQ through undernourishment, born with
Down's syndrome, the wrong color, etc. does NOT justify you
perpetuating any anti-social behavior by claiming it's what you
GOTTA DO to feel right after all the **** you went through. The
VICTIM must NOT be blamed, of course. But the VICTIM has a
tendency to BECOME THE VICTIMIZER if morality is a NON-ISSUE,
Capisco?
This "He's just DOING WHAT he does" attitude given by Freudian
shrinks to the immoral bastards that set up corporate charters
of "limited" (institutionalized acceptance of immoral avoidance
of responsibility) liability (LIMITED=ZERO LIABILITY=GUILT) is
the misanthropic religion (Orwellianly claimed to free humanity
from guilt) that legitimized all the Wall Street War
profiteering, soul destroying practices as "business as usual"
(i.e. cognitive dissonance on steroids). It's world class
mindfork. It's insanity labeled sanity and Game OVER Theory for
Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself, PERIOD.
We are all born with different opportunities. For those who say,
well, if ya didn't accept Christ, you are doomed to hell, I say
that if I didn't accept Christ, I would be doomed to hell. God
is the final arbiter of who goes where. The bible says all
things are possible for God. "All things" in the context of
scripture does not mean He does reincarnation as a salvation
mechanism IMHO. It means that He is the BOSS and He decides who
goes where after the valley of tears.
It's far simpler for Him, for example, to compress 3 seconds of
your last breath as a Hitler to years of instruction and
revelation in order to get you to accept Christ than to rig up a
complex Karma network of reincarnation. I don't KNOW if Freud
went to hell or not! I am happy to get into it with fellow
Christians about who gets the heavenly brass ring and who
doesn't. I am far more liberal about that than many fundys
because I HONESTLY believe that suicides DO NOT EVER go to hell.
But that's just me. ;D
The God I believe in is a JUST God. Regardless of the
limitations of humanity to understand WTF God wants us to do
(most humans don't have the literacy, brains or willingness to
read ANYTHING, let alone religious documents like the Bible!),
I'm certain the "math" is done by God to UB's satisfaction (and
mine).
#Post#: 1769--------------------------------------------------
Re: In the Interest of Harmony Among People With Different Belie
fs
By: AGelbert Date: August 28, 2014, 4:47 pm
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GO,
I agree that some people have been helped by this therapy. My
point is that overall, Freudian Psychotherapy has harmed
humanity, not helped it. A kind, patient Christian approach to a
person's past of pain and abuse is far more efficacious in
healing those hurts than Freudian Psychotherapy. Freud threw the
baby out with the bath water, GO. We need to eschew any and all
respect for Freudian Psychotherapy. It is wrong and morally
abhorrent. But you are, of course, right in recognizing that
there are people that have been helped by it.
I suggest you consider the possibility that you are confusing
the God given human mechanism of compassion in listening and
learning about someone's past that any human can have or pretend
to have (as shrinks do for money) with Freudian Psychotherapy.
Freud hijacked compassion and fellowship for the healing of
hurts where people console each other and seek God's guidance
and twisted it into Psychotherapy. So they used tools that have
been used in the confessional or among friends for centuries and
charged for them by setting themselves up as the authority in
place of God.
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714183312.bmp
You think that those who were helped to deal with their pain by
Psychotherapy makes it worthwhile. I don't. I think compassion
and caring helped them, NOT Psychotherapy. I think Psychotherapy
legitimizes a Godless approach to healing abuse so it is wrong
as well as being ultimately socially destructive. So we will
have to agree to disagree. ;D
#Post#: 1770--------------------------------------------------
Re: In the Interest of Harmony Among People With Different Belie
fs
By: AGelbert Date: August 28, 2014, 5:29 pm
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[quote]154. Neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander’s Near-Death
Experience Defies Medical Model of Consciousness[/quote]
HTML http://www.skeptiko.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/life-beyond-death-300x160.png
[quote]Interview reveals how a near-death experience changed
everything neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander thought he knew about
consciousness, spirituality, and life after death.[/quote]
You may listen to the 52 minute interview at this link or read
snippets from the taped interview below. I really enjoyed the
butterfly wing experience.
HTML http://www.skeptiko.com/154-neurosurgeon-dr-eben-alexander-near-death-experience/
HTML http://www.skeptiko.com/154-neurosurgeon-dr-eben-alexander-near-death-experience/
[quote]What I do remember from deep inside coma, for one thing
my first awareness was I had no memory whatsoever of my life. I
had no language, no words. All of my experience in life,
knowledge of humans, Earth, the universe, all of that was gone.
The only thing I had was this very kind of crude existence. And
I call it in my book the “earthworm’s eye-view,” because it
really was just a crude, kind of underground.
I have a vivid memory of dark roots above me and there was a
kind of monotonous pounding, a dull sound in the background
pounding away eternally. It was just murky and gross. Every now
and then a face, an animal or something would boil up out of the
muck and there might be some chant or roar or something. Then
they’d disappear again.
It sounds very foreboding to talk about it right now, but in
fact, since I knew no other existence I don’t remember being
particularly alarmed when I was in that setting. I think that
that was the best consciousness that my brain could muster when
it was soaking in pus. It turns out that that seemed to last for
a very long time. Given that it was my first awareness of
anything, it actually seemed to be years or eternity. I don’t
know. It seemed like a very, very long time.
Then there was a spinning melody, this bright melody that just
started spinning in front of me. Beautiful, beautiful melody
compared to that dull pounding sound that I’d heard for eons. It
spun and as it spun around, it cleared everything away. This was
the part that was so shocking and so hard to explain. It was as
if the blinders came off and the reality there was much more
crisp, real, and interactive and fresh than any reality I’ve
ever known in this earthly existence. That part is very shocking
and hard to explain when you go through it, and yet what I’ve
found since then is that a lot of people who have had NDEs
discuss the same kind of hyper-reality. But it’s very shocking
to see it.
For me, I was a speck on a butterfly wing. I had no body
awareness at all. In fact, I had no body awareness through this
entire kind of deep coma experience. I was a speck on a
beautiful butterfly wing; millions of other butterflies around
us. We were flying through blooming flowers, blossoms on trees,
and they were all coming out as we flew through them.[/quote]
[quote]Of course, as I healed—it probably took three or four
weeks for a lot of my neuroscience and neurosurgical training to
come back—all along that time I was still writing all this down
and not reading anything. I was very tempted but my son had told
me, “You want this to be worthwhile, don’t read anything else.
Just write it all down.” I just was shocked; I was buffeted
because my neuroscience mind said, “No, that couldn’t happen.”
The more I heard about how sick I was, my cortex shut down, “No,
that’s impossible, your cortex was down.”
Of course, for a while I was going after the hypotheses that
involved formation of these very complex, intricate memories
either right before my coma or right coming out of it. That
really did not explain it at all. Part of the problem, when you
get right down to it, is that whole issue of remembering the
melody because that was a very clear part of it. I remember the
elation when I figured that I could just remember that melody
and that spun the melody in front of me.
Then all of a sudden, boom! Everything opened up and I went back
out into that valley, so crisp and beautiful, and my angel was
with me, as I came to call her, my companion on the butterfly
wing. And then out into the core, outside of the universe. Very
difficult to explain in that fluctuation.
I guess one could always argue, “Well, your brain was probably
just barely able to ignite real consciousness and then it would
flip back into a very diseased state,” which doesn’t make any
sense to me. Especially because that hyper-real state is so
indescribable and so crisp. It’s totally unlike any drug
experience. A lot of people have come up to me and said, “Oh
that sounds like a DMT experience, ”or“ That sounds like
ketamine.” Not at all. That is not even in the right ballpark.
Those things do not explain the kind of clarity, the rich
interactivity, the layer upon layer of understanding and of
lessons taught by deceased loved ones and spiritual beings. Of
course, they’re all deceased loved ones. I’ve kind of wondered
where it is that these people are coming from. They say, “The
brain was very sick but it was very selective and made sure it
only remembered deceased loved ones.” They’re just not hearing
something.[/quote]
[quote]It seems to me that they’re really barely making a dent
in the medical model that we have. The medical model that we
have sees us as these biological robots and death as kind of the
ultimate Boogeyman. Can we really believe that we’re really
going to change such an entrenched system?
Dr. Eben Alexander: I think so. I think that is very much a
possibility. There’s this whole issue of mind and brain and
duality versus non-dualism and the physical material reductivist
models. I go into this in great detail in my book but I think
you have to go back about 3,000 years to really get to the
beginning of the discussion and to start to see why certain
things have transpired.
I think most importantly was the part of this discussion that
happened between Rene Descartes and Spinoza back in the 17th
Century. They started us into our current era. Our current era
is one of mind/consciousness/our soul has been put in the realm
of the church more-or-less. There was kind of a truce of sorts
that I guess Descartes came up with back then to say there’s
mind and then there’s body and just let the natural scientists,
those with an interest like Francis Bacon and Galileo and
Newton, let’s not burn them all at the stake. Let some of them
survive.
So I think it was a good thing to have that truce so that
science survived. I mean, I’m a scientist and I love science and
the scientific method. I’ve just come to realize that the
universe is much grander than we appreciate. So I have to simply
broaden my definitions.
I think science is still very important to get us there. Getting
back to that mind/brain issue, what happened over time is
science kind of grew up and got to be more and more powerful at
giving us many things. Science has been a real wonder. But I
think that it’s been somewhat at a price and that price came
from splitting out mind and body back then and that dualistic
approach because as science gained more and more of an upper
hand, people were losing track of the kind of mind part of it,
the consciousness part.[/quote]
[quote]Can we really then hope to get out of the consciousness
loop that we’re in now? Is it just going to be a matter of a
philosophical shift like we had back in the 1700’s? Or is there
something fundamental to the way that we’re constructed that’s
going to keep us limited in how much we can really tap into and
understand that knowing that you experienced?
Dr. Eben Alexander: In my view, what I think is going to happen
is that science in the much broader sense of the word and
spirituality which will be mainly an acknowledgement of the
profound nature of our consciousness will grow closer and closer
together. We will all move forward into a far more enlightened
world. One thing that we will have to let go of is this kind of
addiction to simplistic, primitive reductive materialism because
there’s really no way that I can see a reductive materialist
model coming remotely in the right ballpark to explain what we
really know about consciousness now.
Coming from a neurosurgeon who, before my coma, thought I was
quite certain how the brain and the mind interacted and it was
clear to me that there were many things I could do or see done
on my patients and it would eliminate consciousness. It was very
clear in that realm that the brain gives you consciousness and
everything else and when the brain dies there goes
consciousness, soul, mind—it’s all gone. And it was clear.
Now, having been through my coma, I can tell you that’s exactly
wrong and that in fact the mind and consciousness are
independent of the brain. It’s very hard to explain that,
certainly if you’re limiting yourself to that reductive
materialist view.
Any of the scientists in the crowd who want to get in on this,
what I would recommend is there’s one book I consider the bible
of this. It’s a wonderful book but it is really for those who
have a strong scientific interest in it. It’s called Irreducible
Mind, Edward Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Bruce Greyson, Adam
Crabtree, Alan Galt, Michael Grassa, the whole group from Esalen
and also based in the Division of Perceptual Studies at the
University of Virginia, have done an incredibly good job. Toward
a Psychology for the 21st Century is the subtitle and that’s
exactly what it is.
I felt their book was quite illustrative and of course it caused
a huge splash when it came out in 1987, but again a lot of the
reductive materialists like myself were not really going to put
in the work to go through all of that. We just thought, “We
can’t understand it so it can’t be true.”[/quote]
[quote]Dr. Eben Alexander: I would say for one thing I think
that a healthy skeptical approach to all this is a good thing
because it helps us get to the truth. It helps us know the
answer. What we have to be careful of, of course, is not getting
in the trap of having our prejudices rule the day. A lot of
these experiments and studies, how you interpret them will
depend a lot on what your prejudices are going in.
I found early on in my experience, I had to do as Descartes
recommended when he was talking about getting to the truth, and
that was to really ignore or to reject everything I had ever
accepted as real. That was the only way to start getting to
where I could figure any of this out. I
know that a lot of the reductive scientific crowd out there—I
have a favorite quote from Stephen Hawking. He says, “There’s a
fundamental difference between religion, which is based on
authority or imposed dogma and faith, as opposed to science
which is based on observation and reason.” What I would say is I
think his statement is true as a general statement but that
science, and certainly those who believe in science and
scientists, are as prone to addiction to imposed dogma and faith
as our religious zealot. So one has to be very careful to really
step back and want to know the truth. That’s what I think we all
would like to know.[/quote]
[quote]Alex Tsakiris: In this case, if we really do step back
one of the things that’s troubling to me, and you touched on it
a minute ago, is how overwhelming the evidence seems to be. At
this point, we can confidently say that near-death experiences
didn’t just start happening in the last 20 years since we had
advanced resuscitation techniques.
We can confidently say that 4% to 5% of everyone who has a
cardiac arrest is having this. There’s obviously hundreds of
millions of people over time who have had these accounts and we
have thousands and thousands of well-documented, consistent
accounts across cultures, across times. These are the measures
that we would normally use to say, “This is a real phenomenon.”
And then when the skeptics, and really the mainstream scientists
have pounded against it for 20 years with really what amounts to
a bunch of very silly explanations but ones that have been
carefully looked at and dismissed—was it CO2 , a fear of death,
other psychological factors? Is it all the different things like
REM intrusion? All these things.
Clearly this would normally be something where we’d be putting a
lot of attention into it. Or that it would then become the
presumed explanation for it. But none of that’s happening. They
have managed to hold back the dyke, you know? So what do you
make of that?
Dr. Eben Alexander: Okay, I think in trying to get back to your
original question with the previous guest, to me one thing that
has emerged from my experience and from very rigorous analysis
of that experience over several years, talking it over with
others that I respect in neuroscience, and really trying to come
up with an answer, is that consciousness outside of the brain is
a fact. It’s an established fact.
And of course, that was a hard place for me to get, coming from
being a card-toting reductive materialist over decades. It was
very difficult to get to knowing that consciousness, that
there’s a soul of us that is not dependent on the brain. As much
as I know all the reductive materialist arguments against that,
I think part of the problem is it’s like the guy looking for his
keys under the streetlight. Reductive materialists are under the
streetlight because that’s where they can see things.
But in fact, if you’re keys are lost out in the darkness, the
techniques there are no good. It is only by letting go of that
reductive materialism and opening up to what is a far more
profound understanding of consciousness. This is where I think
for me as a scientist, I look at quantum mechanics and I go into
this in great detail in my book, is a huge part of the smoking
gun. It shows us that there’s something going on there about
consciousness that our primitive models don’t get. It’s far more
profound than I ever realized before.
That’s where I’m coming from because my experience showed me
very clearly that incredibly powerful consciousness far beyond
what I’m trapped in here in the earthly realm begins to emerge
as you get rid of that filtering mechanism of the brain. It is
really astonishing. And that is what we need to explain.
Thousands or millions of near-death experiencers have talked
about this.
Not only that but as you mentioned a few minutes ago, people
don’t even have to go to a near-death situation. There are
plenty of mystical experiences that have occurred over millennia
that are part of the same mechanism. That’s why all this talk
about oxygen, tension, CO2 and all that you can pretty much
throw out the window. You really need to be working towards
explaining all of those phenomena. Part of the problem is
they’re hard to explain but that is a clue.
Willy Lomans was asked, “Why do you rob banks?” He said,
“Because that’s where the money is.” Well, same kind of thing.
They are hard issues and the whole understanding of what
consciousness really involves. I came a lot closer to that in my
coma experience and coming out of it and in doing all the very
intense homework for the three years since then to try and
understand it. It’s a difficult question because it’s close to
the real truth that we’re going after. If it were easy it would
be widely available. It would already have been written up by
somebody who wanted to publish or perish. That’s not how it
works. It’s not that easy.[/quote]
#Post#: 1779--------------------------------------------------
Re: In the Interest of Harmony Among People With Different Belie
fs
By: AGelbert Date: August 29, 2014, 7:49 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
UB does the fallacious argument(s): [img width=30
height=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-141113183729.png[/img]
[quote]Blaming freud for influencing our current state of
affairs is also like blaming the wright brothers for the
disapearance or downing of malaysian airlines planes.[/quote]
You ignored Darwin as the CHIEF influence on Freud. How fucking
convenient of you. You ignored Freud's influence on Wall Street
through his nephew Bernays. You DID THAT because you KNOW HOW
influential and TOXIC they were. How fucking convenient of you.
And the incredibly disjointed and illogical comparison of the
accomplishment of powered flight with the destruction of an
aircraft is shamefully silly. You are using the "all cats die;
Socrates died; SO Socrates was a cat" silliness to attempt to
ridicule my historically accurate statement. And you are DOING
IT because you DO NOT WANT TO DISCUSS GUILT. And you completely
avoided the illogic of you claiming to tap into super healing
powers from a source that is CONTROLLED by the power of YOUR
MIND (something LESS powerful than the powers you claim you
obtain). How fucking convenient of you.
You don't want to talk about God. [img width=30
height=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-141113183729.png[/img]<br
/>You don't want to talk about guilt. [img width=30
height=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-141113183729.png[/img]<br
/>The issue was never whether Freud is the bad guy, but if
pretending GUILT is the "bad guy" is wrong or right. I say it's
wrong and from Darwin to Freud and on down the line, the godless
butchery of the 20th century is the result of rejecting God and
guilt from disobeying him. You claim it has ALWAYS been that way
in human affairs.
Bullshit. You know better but are an evolution true believer so
you won't even consider the possibility that your religion has
boosted human evils. SO you claim all this is old hat and has
not really changed anything,... Never mind the number of violent
deaths in the 20th century and the LACK of belief in God beyond
lip service of the leaders of those countries that were
responsible for all that violence...
You accuse me of the fallacious argument called using a bad
analogy. You are wrong.
[quote]Bad Analogy:
claiming that two situations are highly similar, when they
aren't. For example, "The solar system reminds me of an atom,
with planets orbiting the sun like electrons orbiting the
nucleus. We know that electrons can jump from orbit to orbit; so
we must look to ancient records for sightings of planets jumping
from orbit to orbit also."
Or, "Minds, like rivers, can be broad. The broader the river,
the shallower it is. Therefore, the broader the mind, the
shallower it is."
Or, "We have pure food and drug laws; why can't we have laws to
keep movie-makers from giving us filth ?"
[/quote]
This is what YOU are doing to avoid discussing the key issues.
Poisoning The Wells:
discrediting the sources used by your opponent. This is a
variation of Ad Hominem.
Psychogenetic Fallacy:
if you learn the psychological reason why your opponent likes an
argument, then he's biased, so his argument must be wrong.
(Agelbert hates Freud so Agelbert must be wrong, thinks UB!) ;D
Changing The Subject (Digression, Red Herring, Misdirection,
False Emphasis):
this is sometimes used to avoid having to defend a claim, or to
avoid making good on a promise. In general, there is something
you are not supposed to notice.
HTML http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#analogy
HTML http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#analogy
I'm done with this topic. It's clear that you are smart enough
to know that you must avoid a topic you cannot counter on the
merits. I don't do subject changes as to eschewing guilt by
rejecting God as being the culprit in our "modern" dystopia. You
do. Have a nice day.
GO,
Thanks for flipping Knarf's argument on its head. That was
brilliant, excellent and logical. Knarf won't go there. Knarf
has been NOTABLY silent EVERY TIME I brought up the fact that
the new age movement, which convinced millions and millions of
people that faith in God was bad, silly, stupid and caused all
sorts of evils and wars by "neurotic" religious "straight
jacketing" of humans, once DISCARDED, would usher in an age of
peace and enlightenment.
The result was that every bad aspect of society and
civilization, as a whole, got worse. But those who reject God
are one-trick ponies and never tire of reminding all of us of
all the "horrendous evils" of Religion and Faith in God. The
20th century, the Century of Self, is the first century in human
history where religion DID NOT play any role in the wars and DID
PLAY AN INSIGNIFICANT role in human affairs. The result is
affirmative evidence that rejecting God and Guilt is a path to
societal destruction.
They don't buy that and NOW they claim it's MOTHER EARTH that is
going to "throw" us off the planet. God is an illusion but
MOTHER EARTH, well, she is ANGRY, and has big arms to get rid of
the human vermin. ::) Then they rush to say it is just a
metaphor and we are being silly to talk about the metaphoric
mother earth.
Pin them down and they will FINALLY tell you what they REALLLY
believe. ;) Ya wanna know what that is? Just Google ANY
scientific article about species origins and adaptation. ANY
amazing and still unexplained mechanism in life forms is ALWAYs
explained by "Evolution" provided this and "Evolution" did that
and so on. We OWE this to the GENIUS of
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/d2.gif
Evolution!!!
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714191329.bmp<br
/> Thank EVOLUTION for small favors (and apex predators!)!
[s]God[/s] =[s] Mother Earth [/s]= Evolution Get it?
That's the RELIGIOUS "Evolution" of the FREE THINKING, GUILT
REJECTING folks that get highly bent out of shape when you want
to "devolve" them back to THEISM! ;D
#Post#: 1822--------------------------------------------------
Re: Human Life is Fragile but EVERY Life is Valuable
By: AGelbert Date: September 5, 2014, 11:40 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxDo0j6l2s8&feature=player_embedded<br
/>
Mother and Daughter LOVE.
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-170614152530.gif
#Post#: 1904--------------------------------------------------
Re: Human Life is Fragile but EVERY Life is Valuable
By: AGelbert Date: September 20, 2014, 8:07 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3adbayvKWA&feature=player_embedded<br
/>
Atheist Doctor gets it. ;D
#Post#: 2048--------------------------------------------------
Re: Human Life is Fragile but EVERY Life is Valuable
By: AGelbert Date: October 17, 2014, 10:32 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m_OMaT5_gc&feature=player_embedded
[font=times new roman]For Seeing Eye® alumni, Mollie and
Jeffery, their dreams to be ordinary, involved parents and
active community members have been realized through their
partnership with Seeing Eye® dogs. Watch and listen to their
inspirational stories in their own words in the above video.
HTML http://dl2.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1225/1225662m3squ1oj6v.gif
[/font]
HTML https://www.seeingeye.org/Donate.aspx
*****************************************************
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