I did a (extremely unauthoritative) paper on Coyote myths of the southwest, and my impression was that the nature of the activities or aetiologies for which Coyote was deployed changed over time to reflect the increasing presense of the white man. That is to say, simple aetiologies like how life began, how the sun came to being, how men and women are different, do not make reference to the white man. The myths that do have some discernable mercantile or exchange activity. This would suggest to me that human myths would hardly be destroyed by the demonstration and visitation of alien life: they would alter rapidly in a race to find the best way of accounting for these advanced newcomers.
Posts by rmt1
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27Once life is discovered outside outside the realm of earth...
by undercover inhow will it affect you?.
aa's thread on scientist's "creating" life got me to thinking about how people would react if life was discovered on other planets or solar systems.
the movie "contact" explored that some along with how faith and science combat but yet complement each other.. would life on other planets pretty much destroy much of earth's religious myths?
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Jan 1st WT: Reaching out, Higher Education and Providing for one's needs
by truthseeker inwell, as a nice start to the new year, the jan 1st watchtower article, "how firm is your trust in god" blasts those who live comfortable lives, those who don't reach out, and those who pursue higher education.. definitely, they are taking a harsher stand, having completely painted themselves into a corner.. i highlighted the interesting comments.
i did not include all the text for each paragraph, just the main points.. .
1 a young man wanted to be more useful to the congregation.
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rmt1
Ah, Pistoff cracked open a pithoi of worms. Here in Tucson, Arizona, the state that has the least Federal funding for immigration control, the rate of illegal immigration is the highest. Pregnant illegal immigrants who cross the finish line bear U.S. citizens who, in the past 30 years, has produced a huge community of very legal and very hard working people who have higher mental endurance, lower ex$pectations (hegemonic, I acknowledge), close social networks, and increasingly pre-installed bilingual preference. If there’s a cracker male JW in Tucson who does not know Spanish when he hits his first McDonalds at 15, and does not already have a life-long tinkering bug that can be converted to a serious trade, he’s going to be scratching just to get a shot at the least desirable of the cleaning jobs. These people work terrifyingly hard (terrifying, that is, when you know you are soooooo close to being their direct competitors – my inadequacy syndromes coming through here) – just seeing the shit they put up with behind a fast food counter is enough to keep me up till 4am getting this cosmically stupid piece of paper.
And for the JW brass reading this, who think that you can smugly look through your little pantoptical police one-way mirror and not be seen, but get a jolt up your spine when the perp like on a really good episode of Law and Order: SVU looks you right in the eye, I would like to request that in the next Watchtower you include a discussion of the Roman patria potestas, the idea of the uber-irresistible centrality of the oldest male of the family, who had the power of life or death even over his son of 40, 50 years old, and whose son of such age was still not permitted to conduct significant or material transactions without the old geezer’s express permission, because of the uber centrality of the estate. Please also include a discussion on the slave rebellion of Sicily, which stemmed from the fact that Pheonician pirates had snatched tons of educated Greeks from the Aegean and sold them to plantation owners on Sicily, and, oddly enough, for many years, these educated people inconceivably just could not fathom why they did not instantly en masse up and off every inhumane plantation owner. Then they did. -
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WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE HUMAN RACE?!
by Mary ini watched dr. phil yesterday, where they were highlighting the disappearance of natalee holloway who disappeared in aruba over 5 months ago, and amy bradley who vanished from a cruise ship 7 years ago.
i always assumed that these girls were raped and then murdered and they very likely could be, but the program highlighted the sex-slave trade that is growing in leaps and bounds all over the world.
i sat there and listened in shock as one guy revealed what happens to some of these girls during snuff movies.
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rmt1
Warning: Bleak godless post. It’s evolution. (throw tomatoes) The perpetrators have a full comprehension of previous ‘things that happen’, and they are selectively driven to distinguish themselves by one-upping what goes before. The only way for heinous crimes to not get “worse” is for people to stop being able to remember exactly what everyone here seems to know, and for everyone to be able to not watch shock TV. Which isn’t going to happen, because we’re evolutionarily programmed to pay attention to threats until they dissipate. If the journalism (thank you, Jez) successfully structures it as a threat (with all the swelling dramatic music that accompanies such programming), then they have your attention, unless somehow you as an organism don’t perceive it as a threat. The growing catalogue of possible threats creates this huge database of previous knowledge that violent offenders are evolutionarily driven to surmount. I apologize for the bleakness of this godless opinion, and you are cordially entitled to hang it all on the Mesopotamian cumulonimbus Herm’s binary-structural abjection. Legal notice: Please note that I am not saying that such a situation does not suck; of course it does. Possible solution: find a way to grow violent offenders’ corpus collosum larger (typical profile is male) so they have more full-brain empathic and emotional feedback to “twisted” rational survival drives such as this affirmation/power business as featured on the show.
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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
Back when I was unaware of how to escape, I had become an escapist Tolkein fan, particularly of the Silmarillion (which many people think is as boring as the Bible but I disagree). I remember sitting in Grantview Assembly Hall and it occured to me: You know, there's absolutely no difference in the constructedness of divinity and theology between Brooklyn and Tolkien. I could just as easily switch all my "beliefs" over to worshipping Illuvatar through Manwe and fearing Morgoth and Utumno. There would be zero blessed F*ing difference. Illuvatar does not require coffee breaks after showing perfect strangers cheap pulp cartoons. He might ask me to go battle some Orcs, and that's not so great, but I'd get the same kind of infantile Lacanian reversion to a prehuman/pre"mother", Eden which is what I have here (in Grantview Assembly Hall...) But, try as I might, I could not make the switch; there was too much knowing of the construction, no matter how much I desperately wanted to believe in a different way of... belief. Selective lobotomy. I think that's where it's at. There does seem to be a growing literature of the inability to remain convinced while within a simulacrum. Started for me with Star Trek Generation Picard in the Chrismas Nexus and SOME HOW still knowing that nothing there in that happy place was real. How sad. Yet, how sad to be so sweetly, sweety, bitterly... sweetly, happy. Matrix was a footnote to that moment. Sort of like 'the method of anti-solipsism.'
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Of Late Many Here Seem To Be Preaching Aethiesm..
by Qcmbr inwhen i first came here a while back there was plenty of discussion around and about jw topics and general chit chat but of late i've felt quite a sharp increase in posts that are: .
1/ preaching aethism (as opposed to putting it forward in a respectful way as an alternate viewpoint.
2/ vitriolic attacks on those who dare have another view ('damn those stupid heretical believers') .
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rmt1
"To bravely not know what every man has known before." It takes a lot of effort to refuse to |"know"|.
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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
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…)
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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.