Is your Intellect Pre-Enlightenment or Post-Enlightenment? (page 2)

Terry

Now are you happy?

As yourself: What did I contribute to this discussion?

Judge Dread

Pre-Enlightenment= The room is dark. Please turn the light on.

Post-Enlightenment= Someone turned the light off in the same room.

Judge Dread

Having grown up and spent most of my formative years in a religiously divided home, its probably not hard to understand why I'd be on the post-enlightenmnet. Not because I was some uber rationalist from a very young age and thoroughly logical. I was made to test and question religious ideas and beliefs (both sides tried to show the weaknesses and errors of the other). They should have expectedly that I'd likely doubt both of them though.

I do have a very sincere interest in why people believe the things they do and what shapes them, so I don't make fun of pre-enlightenment peeps, usually.

JeffT

Terry, you seem determined to pound everyone into one of a couple of boxes of your making. If we are not modern, intellectual and non-religious, then we must be knuckle dragging, uneducated neanderthals, enslaved by religious dogma. I think you fancy yourself as thinking outside the box, when in fact, you're just renting space in a bigger box. And you pride yourself on seeing shades of grey in your dichromatic world.

Human beings don't work that way. We have complex inexplicable modes of behavior. How do you rationally explain Beethoven's creation of the 9th symphony when he was deaf? Why do people fall in love? Why do people spend a life time working on (and succeeding at) projects others think are impossible?

Searching for intellectual solutions to the conundrums of life isn't living, embrace the unknown, live in a question, accept that not everything is (or has) an answer. Dare to try just not knowing a few things.

Sorry if the technicolor comment was too subtle.

Night Owl

There are many people like Terry.

They need to judge.

They need to find fault.

They need to hide their feelings of inferiority with "education".

They do these things to keep from seeing what THEY have become.

Night Owl

Midget-Sasquatch

I took Terry's post to be not about judging others, but more about trying to help anyone who's still on one side of the dichotomy to move more towards the center. After all, he's particularly harsh on himself when recalling his time as a JW.

I agree with the idea that there can be alot of satisfaction and peace by finding a point somewhere along the spectrum.

JWoods

Even after I was post-JW-delusional---I was still RELIGIOUSLY AFFLICTED delusional.

Why? The same BELIEF structure of Gods vs Demons was firmly in place.

Why?

I had not replaced that thinking!

I had not tested those foundational premises with anything else!

I guess it was different for me. Part of the process of giving up the whole JW theology also made me question and give up previous indoctrination in mainstream protestant (Presbyterian and Methodist) teaching, literal interpretation of the bible, etc.

So, I was completely out of religion when I was out of the JWs.

THE GLADIATOR

Pre-Enlightenment: dependant on scripture, church and Authority?

Post-Enlightenment: testing everything with practical curiousity?

Of course people who have a faith in a god or gods consider themselves to be Post-Enlightenment or Enlightened.

Whereas non-believers are considered Pre-Enlightenment - or Unenlightened.

So it becomes a matter of our perspective or world view. Everyone is certain they have tested everything with practical curiosity and are

Post-Enlightenment. Challenge anyones dearly held beliefs and the challenger is automaticaly considered Pre-Enlightenment.

I realize that to your lazer like mind Terry, my comments make no sense; but I am describing how the 'average' mind works.

PSacramento

A little bit of both Terry.

I don't think I can be all of one and none of the other.

There are times I find comfort in the pre-enlightment mind set, but that doesn't last too long.

I love to question and to find out and test things, but that tends to draw me into conflict with that side of me that is a "traditionalist".

But I am ok with that, it would be boring to be all of one thing and nothing of another.

PSacramento

Before the Age of Enlightenment the earth was filled with many nations living under vastly differing beliefs about the world.

Tribes, nations and empires possessed fanciful superstitious beliefs about their own importance in the Big Picture

Look around much?

;)

Is your Intellect Pre-Enlightenment or Post-Enlightenment?

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