Narkissos - Yup, I’m stumped. As far as I can tell, negative theology is theatrical deferred gratification that poetically structures God in litotes. He was entertaining negative theology towards the end of his life, guardedly saying that it ultimately performs the same ergs as positive theology, because what are you left with but a nice crisp-edged Zero of knowledge that so perfectly outlines what we actually always already assume. It’s almost like the ‘positivity’ of the negative theology exists under erasure. “I’m not saying this!” I can only guess that he was a deconstructor of self, and fully subscribed to the reiteration or re-instantiation of the “I” so that his “now-I” knew it had lost something. So, this component of “previous-I” was a deciding factor. Which could have, had it remained, decided for or against negative theology. So (brain hurts), is it that positive theology enables positive decision of acceptance, whereas negative theology seems to negate its ostensible neutrality or empirical fairness, which leads to a malaise about belief? (ponderous…)
Posts by rmt1
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56Do you still *want* to believe?
by daniel-p inif the answer is "yes," please explain why.
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(i don't think this question needs explaining - i think you all know what i'm talking about.
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Creation stories -- why?
by Narkissos inthe issue of creation is very often discussed here.
i for one don't feel the need for yet another "creation vs. evolution" debate, nor even for an additional discussion on the details and meaning(s) of the genesis stories.
rather, i would like to start a more basic discussion on creation narratives in general, as those seem to be found in most cultures as far back as the history of writing goes.
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rmt1
Myth was the first science. Orally-transmitted/aurally-received aetiologies of existence and creation almost invariably rehearse the natural order as seen in the wild and strong-man primitive societies, and legitimate the strongman physical authority by backing it up with a collection of dazzling Dionysic (oral) theatre, quasi logic on the rightness of the present hegemony, and fuzzy good feeling opiate assurances that maintaining the natural order (by deferred gratification, not being hubristic, self-forced contentment, self-sacrifice) will result in some kind of reward. Aural communication precedes literate communication. Literacy in early civilization enables greater, or broader, surveillance, census, increased taxation and the mobilization of manpower. Oral myth becomes ossified or frozen in text (Pesistratus was the first to have Homer written down), which because of its artifactual objectness (ten commandments) accrues its own textual tyranny, which aids in future circular logic that “We are the receivers of divine commandment: See? We have the receipt.” Homeric heros are descended from Zeus. Vergil’s Aeneid gives an aetiology that legitimizes Augustus as a descendant of Zeus. Could the OT have been an elaborate aetiology for the Levites to retain and justify their status? And was not Moses a Levite? As far as the innocent non-Machivellian endeavor to explain our origins, someone else on this board mentioned the E-Bay effect, and there could have been an unregulated market on who had the best oral story to explain things. I still sense that argumentum ad baculum would have trumped any Nobel winners for Best Aetiology.
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"Science has proven that God doesn't exist"
by AlmostAtheist ina quote from a poster on another thread that i promised myself i wouldn't hijack:a portion of [posters on jwd are] antitheists which means they hold the view that science has already proved that god doesn't exist.
may i ask, who are these posters?
i don't read every post on jwd, i could buy that i just missed it.. atheists by and large have come to that point by realizing that things that can't be proven shouldn't be believed outright.
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rmt1
Tetrapod, well I know the Anthropic Principle sucks rocks. What can you say briefly about positive atheism?
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56
Do you still *want* to believe?
by daniel-p inif the answer is "yes," please explain why.
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(i don't think this question needs explaining - i think you all know what i'm talking about.
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rmt1
(None of this is worth reading, but it is worth writing, if the reader knows what the writer means. Reading Derrida is probably more useful.) Sure. Not the JW cosmology, which is too centralized, simplistic, elitist, inhuman, and draconian. In the childhood years, where there's a high ratio of received doctrine to empirical evidence, the christmas lights/choral convention singing causes a sweetly severe desire for there to be a Santa/God who will bring gifts/Armageddon. As the proportion of empirical to received knowledge flattens, then overtakes doctrine, the "desire" 'to believe' begins to dissipate. The fact that I now see nothing but a bleak, desolate, empty reality-truth in which all morality and convention is constructed, and where meaning is always already deconstructed by its own untransmissibility without the slippery statistical Heisenberg probabilities of language, does not mean that my metaphoric inner ear would not like to have strictly voluntary access to a divine or numinous power dialectic which generates more power for me in the form of dopamine than it extracts from me in the form of usages, obediences, loyalties, conventions, worships, sacrifices, et al. However, such a conveniently personalized divine or numinous power dialectic is like a perpetual motion machine - such a thing cannot exist. As well, voluntary access to any dialectic means it's not a dialectic: for there to be real meaning, relations or proportions of power, one must abrogate mobility and allow oneself to be planted at a certain point along the dialectic. You rarely "want to believe" when you are already in the dialectic predicated upon the doctrine that you must believe, and you must like it, and you cannot mobilize. When you don't still believe, you don't want to abrogate mobility. One of the key motivations for Cypher's willingness to get plugged back into the Matrix is that he had the ability to opt for un-knowing. Unless an ex-JW has an extensive lobotomy, there is no way to unknow the terrible (JW) experiences that often prevent a "desire to believe" being mobilized even along different doctrinal/denominational/eschatological vectors. If you read this I cannot give you back your two minutes.
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Are Most Folks Here Agnostics and Atheists?
by Nate Merit inthat's the overall impression i get from reading the posts.
i'm very new here, so i could be mistaken.
if i am, my apologies.
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rmt1
My sense of divinity/spirituality, when it occurs, is in conjunction with numinous landscape and geography, numinous trance music like Dead Can Dance, and the tickle of eureka (Present perfect "I have discovered"), the dopamine of learning unknown knowledge, and anagnorisis, the dopamine of re-learning known knowledge.
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21
"Science has proven that God doesn't exist"
by AlmostAtheist ina quote from a poster on another thread that i promised myself i wouldn't hijack:a portion of [posters on jwd are] antitheists which means they hold the view that science has already proved that god doesn't exist.
may i ask, who are these posters?
i don't read every post on jwd, i could buy that i just missed it.. atheists by and large have come to that point by realizing that things that can't be proven shouldn't be believed outright.
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rmt1
From Jonathan Culler's "Literary Theory": "...meaning is determined by the context, since context includes rules of language, the situation of the author and the reader, and anything else that might conceivably be relevant. But if we say that meaning is context-bound, then we must add that context is boundless: there is no determining in advance what might count as relevant, what enlarging of context might be able to shift what we regard as the meaning of a text. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless." Translation: the universe is big. If you haven't read the complete works of Douglas Adams, stop breathing, right now, and go do it. The three-dimensional potential measurements of the universe, that it is a potential sphere potentially 26 billion light years in diameter and growing, in no way cartographically surveys the sub- and hyper-dimensional crannies where such a Mesopotamian cumulonimbus Herm might have his privvy council. And there might be something we have no terminology to comprehend awaiting outside of what we can our "universe." According to the popular conception of a God that is outside space and time, being outside our physically observable universe is _the perfect_ place for a privvy council. Our telescopes cannot _get there_, so we _can't see_ that he's "Not there." Am I far off the mark by saying that the only thing an atheist will insist on is that "science has not observed phenomena that would suggest a god"?
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Scientists find Goliath inscribed on pottery
by truthseeker infyi.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9997587/updated: 9:30 p.m. et nov. 10, 2005scientists find goliath inscribed on potteryreference from 950 b.c.
lends credence to bible tale, archaeologists say.
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rmt1
lol undercover
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% Women vs. % Men in JW
by void ini read a scientific study a few months ago that stated the women where more susceptible to religion than men.
(i am trying to find this article as i dont like not backing up my claims.
anyway it got me thinking a lot.
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rmt1
Good enough. I was trying to account for those types of JW men who have intense emotions inwardly, and intense loyalty to the organization (my one friend wrote epic poetry about Jesus and Satan jousting at Armageddon like he was an Alexander Pope...), but who typically repress outward emotion. I figure that these are rare and disproproportionate vis a vis women who are looking for a more complete package of emotional exchange.
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% Women vs. % Men in JW
by void ini read a scientific study a few months ago that stated the women where more susceptible to religion than men.
(i am trying to find this article as i dont like not backing up my claims.
anyway it got me thinking a lot.
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rmt1
Mes deux centimes. (re blondie) Women are more socially conditioned for cooperation and delayed gratification vis a vis men, as well as social fulfillment in roughly egalitarian groups. Men are conditioned for competition, yes, even JW boys who are not *told* they’re being conditioned or groomed for competition under a theocratic merit/nepo/aristocracy. (re freedomlover) Part of this social conditioning is purely related to the brute economics of being JW. You have the face-to-face assurance that if you’re down and out, some brother or sister will help you subsist. (Whether or not this happens is entirely irrelevant to the assurance factor at retention.) This is a baseline fall-back position upon which JWs make their main selling point of community and equality, while not as great a percentage of men fall into this segment of economic non-independence/non-solvency. Why did Bush have so many blue mothers vote red? Security. Their maternal evolutionary sense of duty to future generations took precedence over other concerns. (I voted blue but I would never opt to short-circuit biologic intuition…) The term “Hall” denotes public space owned and operated by the public, to which the public can retire or retreat or assemble. “Kingdom” implies plenty and beneficience, like in a patron client relationship. “Kingdom Hall” implies at base a communal shelter from economic brutalities which forms the home-base or kernel of any attempt at self-improvement. *Confession, do you mind extracting that regarding “social feeling” vis a vis “religious feeling”? I would think that the stereotype that women are somehow more inherently religious or more inherently devoted to a Mesopotamian cumulonimbus Herm is a construction that favors men as more the providers of, less needers of, such communion.
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you call it cognitive dissonance. i call it pain
by coolhandluke inwhen i was growing up i never watched cartoons.
i didn't play with other kids who were not of the same faith.
i didn't curse.
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rmt1
poetry