The belief that an incorporeal religiously and morally obligating authority figure exists beyond our observation is inversely proportional to knowledge base. GOD is the big answer at the end of the monster book when we are unable 'to bravely not know what every man has known before'. The absenses or interstices in our knowledge are like the pressurized cavity of a submarine. The wish for simplicity, the despair of no one having easy answers, causes G O D to rush into these cavities of knowledge like the Thresher in concrete galoshes. Some TIME article argued that monothesim is favored for selection by evolution. If so, it seems unlikely that evolution would abandon a working strategy: internalizing/endogenizing believers will statistically sustain reproduction vis a vis declining birth rates in externalizing/exogenizing individuals/states/nations where dopamine oops G O D is not up the dendrites.
Posts by rmt1
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23
How many more years before no one believes in God?
by JH in.
do you think there will come a time, where no one will believe in god or even talk about him?.
children at school aren't taught religion any more around here since years.. so, how long do you think it will take before no one talks about god anymore?
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67
anyone ever wonder whether IT could be the TRUTH?
by Cordelia ini cant believe im posting this either!.
but ive got a huge decision to make wont go thru it all again its on my last thread, and i have decided that i am stopping going to the meetings completly (ive been dfed 7 months and because i didnt want to hurt my family even more i continued going to all the meetings and hid my boyfriend, wno was wonderful about it, put a letter of reinstatement in which they refused but relised by the way i paniked when i thought they might reinstate me that it is not what i want!).
i love my bf and want to be with him without any secrecy but i also want my family to accept him and still speak to me but i know that will not happen, so i have two choices either get reinstated and then leave (and risk losing mybf) or tell them now i dont want it and stop the meetings altogether before i go insane.. thing is to be free of the meetings and be with my bf, i will lose my family they are all so strong in the 'truth' they will not have any contact with me and my husband is divorcing me so ill lose finacially and my house and have to share time with my daughter, not to mention all my old friends who are wanting me back, and if i stop now all those months of trying to be reinstated will be wasted id be set right back,.
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rmt1
"Truth" is not an infantile surrender to a Lacanian FATHER with his Cleaver-ly promises, but a very uncomfortable, ceaseless, knawing worry that human morality is constructed, and/or that the individual is most perfect and least sinless when they do not abrogate their own reasoned judgment on what is right or wrong. Need it be said this is all mercurial and relative like an Archimedes without a fulcrum? Welcome to the terror of being "in the World." The fear of death by an inflammation of the Armageddon ("apocolitis") quickly begins to pale in significance next to the sheer joy of having in your own hands the entire remainder of your life, however little they have left you (or much, if you're very lucky).
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8
Thesis defense
by ChrisVance intomorrow is my master's thesis defense.
i've been working on my master's degree in applied linguistics for three years.
i'm really nervous in spite of the fact that the defense has nothing to do with my grade.
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rmt1
Any exdub that gets this far has all my admiration and positive envy. Good luck. Bona fortuna. (I used to say "God speed" when concluding the 5-min service meeting before heading out for the 15 minutes of service that preceded the coffee break.) God speed, if you truck with that, etc.
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55
Do stupid people have more children? What are the implications?
by AlmostAtheist inno offense to those with large families (and no compliment to those with small ones), this is a thread speaking of averages and groups, not specific people and families.
your mileage may vary.
dealer participation will affect consumer cost.
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rmt1
Suburban sprawl, the housing boom (a key financial index for the GDP), HUD, all have a stake in the number, proximity and density of idiots who will make you desire to change locations to simulate control over your environment. If you look at land prices, you can be certain that the investors are rubbing their hands at the number of idiots that are available to pressure-cook the others and make hardworking people flee in terror. (Not talking about southerly migration to the sun belt; that's different.) It's like adding fuel to their fire. This is besides the fact that maintaining the over-saturation of entry-level idiots means that those who can get smarter are FORCED to get smarter: no more of the Cleaver era getting a job out of high school and supporting a big family. Idiots are the oxidizing atmosphere (more) in which the non-idiots (fewer) are burned so as to drive the economy.
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38
Do we imitate Jehovah---think about it
by TopHat insomething i have thought about mankind in general recently.
we have love, compassion, creativity, but we also have jealously and revenge in our hearts.
satan wants to imitate god too.
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rmt1
A humble attempt at deprogramming... Imagine that someone saves your life. You "owe" them your life. Then they attempt to compell you to kill someone. You do not |owe| them obedience. Imagine that a computer scientist created an artificial intelligence that was smart enough to understand that it "owed" its existence, consciousness, sentience, what have you, to its coder, author, writer, creator. Then the scientist ordered it to kill people, other machines, yell fire, sing karioke, what have you. Just because the machine has received a command, it does not |owe| something, anything to its creator. "owe" is a human idea, a human mental tally sheet having to do with an expectation of returned generosity. It all starts with what we give out first. I give you labor, you "owe" me a paycheck. I the government give you protection, roads, services, you the population "owe" me the government some return service. "owe" does not exist anywhere in any time as any thing. It is a purely hypothetical mental construct. Look around - you will not find "owe" anywhere. Imagine that an invisible advanced alien creates the human race and demands to be called "Jehovah". The human race "owes" it its life. Then it tells the humans to kill some other intelligent race, say, Jebusites. Humans do not |owe| such a service to its creator, but may very fricking well be aware that they'll be exterminated themselves for noncompliance. As long as you can get down to the primitive BIOS of the belief about "owing", that there is no such thing as "owing", but there is entirely and only and exclusively the concept that you can be exterminated by the creator you "owe", argumentum ad baculum, THEN, you have a chance of getting back even farther and seeing that there is no moral quotient, no moral kernal, no moral nugget, to this idea of "owing" any one, from "God" to "Satan" to Niel Diamond. If a grey-alien "Jehovah" is parked over the earth with his finger on the floodgates of an Armageddon, we STILL don't "owe" him one damn thing. Recognizing this is one good step to reverse the cult's programming.
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38
Is there anthropological evidence proving the Nephilim's existence?
by truthseeker ini've had this question is my mind for a while now, but has there been any skeletal remains discovered that could prove the existence of the nephilim?.
there's so many unanswered questions about these giants - first of all, were they really hybrids?.
secondly, if the demons could materialise and procreate, how do we not know that they gave their children the same reproductive powers?.
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rmt1
global flood = silly. Black Sea freshwater basin being flooded by the Mediterranean due to melting glaciers after the last Ice Age (in our very own Holocene) gouging through modern Bosperous circa 5000bc = plausible.
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18
Why is the "end of times" prospect attractive...
by Narkissos inor, perhaps, why was it attractive to you at some stage of your life?.
intense suffering might be the right answer in exceptional cases, but hardly for vast numbers (such as most early christians or modern-day cult members).. what then?
fear of life?
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rmt1
Freud in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" talks about (appx) how the biologic organism has a trajectory towards death (not Jungian thanatos but similar) that it keeps trying to reach, except that it accidentally reproduces sexually and so perpetuates itself. Essentially, our conscious lives are a persistent unconscious repeating attempt to cancel out the unfathomable, unbearable intensity of existence (die) but we consciously keep short circuiting this primitive drive in the effort to consciously find a *better* way, means, method, status, position of dying. IE: we repeatedly accidentally DONT die because we repeatedly consciously try to die better - with a better income, better house, better pension, larger family, more friends, more political power, etc, et al.
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38
Is there anthropological evidence proving the Nephilim's existence?
by truthseeker ini've had this question is my mind for a while now, but has there been any skeletal remains discovered that could prove the existence of the nephilim?.
there's so many unanswered questions about these giants - first of all, were they really hybrids?.
secondly, if the demons could materialise and procreate, how do we not know that they gave their children the same reproductive powers?.
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rmt1
In the Paleolithic, there were "egalitarian" societies. There were not enough resources around for any one authority figure to begin hoarding them. Since society subsisted with such small margins for error, no one could hoard things to the extent of endangering another's survival without endangering his very own. I.E. "egalitarian" societies. In the Neolithic, society's subsistence had gained a larger margin for error and there were now a greater range and backup of resources. Now society could afford it if any one individual began to hoard resource, because his personal/family survival was not threatened because most had some form of basic subsistence. However, those fit to hoard were those naturally bigger, stronger, and sometimes combined with shrewder. "Egalitarian" gave way to "big-man" societies. He was not exactly a chief or king, whose temporal power begins to require a greater proportion of shrewdness - this is a primitive stage of authority which is only slightly removed from "egalitarian" subsistence. Giants that appear in mythology, Greek, Hebrew, Norse, etc, might be remembering a pre-chieftain sort of hoarder whose power was based more proportionately on physical girthiness than on shrewdliness. (KOL)
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1
article
by rmt1 inhttp://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-brooks1oct01,0,3034570.story?track=hpmostemailedlink
quoted in full:
october 1, 2005 latimes.com : print edition : editorials, op-ed the dark side of faith by rosa brooks it's official: too much religion may be a dangerous thing.
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rmt1
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-brooks1oct01,0,3034570.story?track=hpmostemailedlink Quoted in full: October 1, 2005 latimes.com : Print Edition : Editorials, Op-Ed The dark side of faith By ROSA BROOKS IT'S OFFICIAL: Too much religion may be a dangerous thing. This is the implication of a study reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Society, a publication of Creighton University's Center for the Study of Religion. The study, by evolutionary scientist Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 prosperous democracies, including the United States. Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality. He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. — which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) — also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. This conclusion will come as no surprise to those who have long gnashed their teeth in frustration while listening to right-wing evangelical claims that secular liberals are weak on "values." Paul's study confirms globally what is already evident in the U.S.: When it comes to "values," if you look at facts rather than mere rhetoric, the substantially more secular blue states routinely leave the Bible Belt red states in the dust. Murder rates? Six of the seven states with the highest 2003 homicide rates were "red" in the 2004 elections (Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina), while the deep blue Northeastern states had murder rates well below the national average. Infant mortality rates? Highest in the South and Southwest; lowest in New England. Divorce rates? Marriages break up far more in red states than in blue. Teen pregnancy rates? The same. Of course, the red/blue divide is only an imperfect proxy for levels of religiosity. And while Paul's study found that the correlation between high degrees of religiosity and high degrees of social dysfunction appears robust, it could be that high levels of social dysfunction fuel religiosity, rather than the other way around. Although correlation is not causation, Paul's study offers much food for thought. At a minimum, his findings suggest that contrary to popular belief, lack of religiosity does societies no particular harm. This should offer ammunition to those who maintain that religious belief is a purely private matter and that government should remain neutral, not only among religions but also between religion and lack of religion. It should also give a boost to critics of "faith-based" social services and abstinence-only disease and pregnancy prevention programs. We shouldn't shy away from the possibility that too much religiosity may be socially dangerous. Secular, rationalist approaches to problem-solving emphasize uncertainty, evidence and perpetual reevaluation. Religious faith is inherently nonrational. This in itself does not make religion worthless or dangerous. All humans hold nonrational beliefs, and some of these may have both individual and societal value. But historically, societies run into trouble when powerful religions become imperial and absolutist. The claim that religion can have a dark side should not be news. Does anyone doubt that Islamic extremism is linked to the recent rise in international terrorism? And since the history of Christianity is every bit as blood-drenched as the history of Islam, why should we doubt that extremist forms of modern American Christianity have their own pernicious and measurable effects on national health and well-being? Arguably, Paul's study invites us to conclude that the most serious threat humanity faces today is religious extremism: nonrational, absolutist belief systems that refuse to tolerate difference and dissent. My prediction is that right-wing evangelicals will do their best to discredit Paul's substantive findings. But when they fail, they'll just shrug: So what if highly religious societies have more murders and disease than less religious societies? Remember the trials of Job? God likes to test the faithful. To the truly nonrational, even evidence that on its face undermines your beliefs can be twisted to support them. Absolutism means never having to say you're sorry. And that, of course, is what makes it so very dangerous.
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14
NEW STUDENT IN NEED OF NEW ADVICE.
by stillAwitness in.
my first semester in college is okay but how do you stay focused guys?
i wanna strive for a's instead of just a passing grade but sometimes i feel so blah when i wake up in the morning.
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rmt1
Visualization: It covers a good deal of poor memory. When uploading new vocabulary (mainly new languages) into memory, I manually air-write it out on a blank surface while visualizing the letters I'm forming. If I visualize it, it can later be consulted like a physical image. When I'm required to remember a series of ideas that must be in RAM storage in case they are asked for on a test, I typically try to put each idea into a squadron with another 4-5 ideas/terms, so that they form a 2x3 matrix or a hexagon that can be visualized. As required, I also arrange ideas into internally visualized symmetric shapes like triangles, octagons and tetrahedrons. Regularity aids this method. Excess mental capacity is a symptom of our evolutionary success; there's no reason to avoid some apparently absurd things that do not require much additional processing power. (As for storage, you won't even realize that you're remembering things you couldn't before.) Not if you're _really_ shooting for top grade. Audio: use mnemonics, no matter how silly. Find auditory patterns. If a song occurs in tandem with a phrase, latch onto it as a mnemonic until you've taken the test and gotten the A. If a large series of data has to be memorized, throw your entire musical capacity at it until all the data is a sing-along. If apparently disparate ideas or terms must be memorized together, throw your entire narrative capacity at it: make up a miny story (or relational picture) of how they're related. Energy: Perhaps try studying while standing so that it's a longer time between fatigue. Daily exercise also means more energy without more sleep. Stressed-out R&R after midnight has a way of quickly turning into 3-4am. Be aware of when negative emotional energy means you really ought to turn in. Stress inventories: Get (the equivalent of) moderately smashed (salt to taste) at the start or middle of every weekend, but not the day before class. Get friends with whom you can laugh so heartily that you're adding years to your life. (I know, easy.) Teacher psychology: If you can ask the teacher a question after every other class, or at least once a week, you're well on your way to being evaluated upwards in marginal grade cases. If you can physically look good _while_ looking attentive/fascinated/focused/whatever, do so. The instructor is human and has the visceral unconscious Froidian and Faucaultian desire to implant their knowledge in attractive vessels where it will germinate. Be seen by them to be tracking their physical movements in the class space. A component of their career choice is performativity; acknowledge it not as an audience member who is duly surprised or predictably delighted, but as a seasoned observer who has already gotten in, and out, of their thought cycle, and who can show their seasoned appreciation by not showing novice appreciation. And depending on your academic aggression, I believe teachers do enjoy, in a masochistic way, to be challenged beyond their traditional ranges of knowledge by the new paradigm of adult student, even to be moderately disagreed during classtime with and to find a smooth transition out of the mis/dis-understanding. Find ways to push the teacher up to and completely beyond their range of knowledge YET allowing them every retreat for a smooth return. They will appreciate that YOU appreciate that the field is beyond any one person's ownership, and you will simulate a colleague if but for a second. Anyway, I believe I didn't type this out so much to help someone else as to see if I actually had some system I could document to myself. Some of this may be naive in hard sciences or mathematics. All I can say is that being an ex-Witness, I have my work cut out for me to get anywhere on this planet.