If people avoid information that contridicts their beliefs....

[MongGrel]

Rest my case.

You brought an empty case to begin with.

 

[MongGrel]

He's spitting in the wind? It doesn't require superhuman courage to post a diatribe against Republicans in this forum. Quite the opposite, I imagine it takes quite a bit more intestinal fortitude to brave the insults of the AT P&N left-wing hivemind and disagree with this forum's dogma.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YKbYLb5GVc

 

[davmat787]

You began with, "Religion or a belief in higher power likely was an evolutionary advantage or adaptation." I like that you said likely, but I don't find an assumption you find likely to be any reason for me to assume it might be likely at all. I find the most likely reason that folk invented religion was an experience of a God conscious state. I would say in fact that anybody who experiences a God conscious state doesn't really fit the definition of the faithful. He or she doesn't believe in God. He or she is a manifestation. There is one of these, I think, from the state of Kerala in India named Mata Amritanandamayi.

I said likely since we don't have evidence proving the theory but evolutionary psychologists believe it to be very likely.

After all the premise says the God concept or belief in higher power is a human construct, and a very old one too. Evidence of spirituality found in aboriginal graves in Australia are more than 50000 years old.

So with that premise one must ask why. Since the God concept existed among many cultures that were never in contact one can assume there were benefits to having religion in a civilization. .

Maybe it brought order to the populace, soldiers fought with a higher degree of bravery believing death would allow him to dine with God's concubines or whatever that night. Had no benefits arises from it or there was a negative impact it would not have propagated after all.

You mentioned achieving a god conscious state as a possible reason but I would guess priests and the upper echelon would claim being a manifestation of god exclusive to themselves.

I could very well be wrong but using experiencing a god conscious state as a reason for creating the god concept seems like a catch 22.

 

[Moonbeam]

I said likely since we don't have evidence proving the theory but evolutionary psychologists believe it to be very likely.

After all the premise says the God concept or belief in higher power is a human construct, and a very old one too. Evidence of spirituality found in aboriginal graves in Australia are more than 50000 years old.

So with that premise one must ask why. Since the God concept existed among many cultures that were never in contact one can assume there were benefits to having religion in a civilization. .

Maybe it brought order to the populace, soldiers fought with a higher degree of bravery believing death would allow him to dine with God's concubines or whatever that night. Had no benefits arises from it or there was a negative impact it would not have propagated after all.

You mentioned achieving a god conscious state as a possible reason but I would guess priests and the upper echelon would claim being a manifestation of god exclusive to themselves.

I could very well be wrong but using experiencing a god conscious state as a reason for creating the god concept seems like a catch 22.

But catch 22's are resolved at a higher level of consciousness, God Consciousness being the primary one in my opinion. The Bible teaches that we were created in the image of God, and you are suggesting that we created God ourselves. I see no contradiction considering the inability to determine the difference between a thing and its image. I do agree that the priest class wouldn't take to how I see things.

Nice, by the way, to be able top talk to you as we discuss points of view as points of view.

 

[OverVolt]

..

 

[davmat787]

But catch 22's are resolved at a higher level of consciousness, God Consciousness being the primary one in my opinion. The Bible teaches that we were created in the image of God, and you are suggesting that we created God ourselves. I see no contradiction considering the inability to determine the difference between a thing and its image. I do agree that the priest class wouldn't take to how I see things.

Nice, by the way, to be able top talk to you as we discuss points of view as points of view.

My catch 22 refers to the contradiction of knowing the god concept is a man made one and achieving a god conscious state.

If you knew or perhaps invented the god concept you couldn't also achieve the god conscious state you see as a possible reason for the very invention of the god concept itself. Why? Because as its inventor or at least knowing that it's a man made concept you would not view god as real which seemingly makes the god conscious state an impossibility right? Sorry for the confusing sentence structure, hope they make sense.

If I understand you correctly achieving that state would require an intense belief that God was real.

 

[Moonbeam]

My catch 22 refers to the contradiction of knowing the god concept is a man made one and achieving a god conscious state.

If you knew or perhaps invented the god concept you couldn't also achieve the god conscious state you see as a possible reason for the very invention of the god concept itself. Why? Because as its inventor or at least knowing that it's a man made concept you would not view god as real which seemingly makes the god conscious state an impossibility right? Sorry for the confusing sentence structure, hope they make sense.

If I understand you correctly achieving that state would require an intense belief that God was real.

I am rather antithetical to words and thinking so let me see if I can put this in personal terms. I used to believe in God and the good. I used to suffer deeply at all the evil I saw in the world. God was the only way I could tolerate existence, that all the suffering innocent people experience, all the deaths of young children, would all make sense in heaven. I wanted to prove that the good and God exist to satisfy my own doubts and have something positive to give to other people, a way to allow them to have faith.

I used to read, I used to think deeply about these things, but the more I looked the more I saw only self deception and illusion unavailable to me for some reason. I destroyed every western philosophy I read, I destroyed the God in my head. I came to see that there is no good or evil and that the universe is empty of meaning. Every belief that I treasured I lost. My life because black and without hope. I knew at a young age that I would always suffer and be unhappy.

I found a book on Zen and in it I saw folk who said the same as me, that there is nothing, that the world is empty of meaning, but they were laughing about it.

This was a shock that sent me into a rage. What the fuck was going on. How could anybody be happy in a world without meaning? So one night deep in thought something new happened. I had a flash of intuition, an insight into my condition. The world is meaningless and the need for meaning is as meaningless as everything else. I had misunderstood everything by believing that the existence of good required meaning. There I was empty one minute, deep in suffering, and the next filled with realization that the love I had hoped would come from God was right there inside of me. I had been looking everywhere out there for me and I had always been there all along.

So I would say to the religious person that God is in ones own heart and nowhere else, but I would say to the doubter that if he really doubted the existence of God he would know who God is.

And since the God conscious state, or the state of self awareness is the state of being without thought, the state in which we all had our birth and original being, it is known to every living human and the realization of what it is always a possibility. The invention of language and the possibility to split the psyche and the world into dualistic things is proceeded in all of us by a unity of consciousness in childhood. One does not become something or go someplace, one empties a ton of shit and returns to ones original state.

The acquisition of knowledge and wisdom isn't a process of addition, but of subtracting all of ones beliefs. When one experiences a unification in being, there is no doubt about it. No faith is required. Doubt is always the product of thinking.

 

[davmat787]

I am rather antithetical to words and thinking so let me see if I can put this in personal terms. I used to believe in God and the good. I used to suffer deeply at all the evil I saw in the world. God was the only way I could tolerate existence, that all the suffering innocent people experience, all the deaths of young children, would all make sense in heaven. I wanted to prove that the good and God exist to satisfy my own doubts and have something positive to give to other people, a way to allow them to have faith.

I used to read, I used to think deeply about these things, but the more I looked the more I saw only self deception and illusion unavailable to me for some reason. I destroyed every western philosophy I read, I destroyed the God in my head. I came to see that there is no good or evil and that the universe is empty of meaning. Every belief that I treasured I lost. My life because black and without hope. I knew at a young age that I would always suffer and be unhappy.

I found a book on Zen and in it I saw folk who said the same as me, that there is nothing, that the world is empty of meaning, but they were laughing about it.

This was a shock that sent me into a rage. What the fuck was going on. How could anybody be happy in a world without meaning? So one night deep in thought something new happened. I had a flash of intuition, an insight into my condition. The world is meaningless and the need for meaning is as meaningless as everything else. I had misunderstood everything by believing that the existence of good required meaning. There I was empty one minute, deep in suffering, and the next filled with realization that the love I had hoped would come from God was right there inside of me. I had been looking everywhere out there for me and I had always been there all along.

So I would say to the religious person that God is in ones own heart and nowhere else, but I would say to the doubter that if he really doubted the existence of God he would know who God is.

And since the God conscious state, or the state of self awareness is the state of being without thought, the state in which we all had our birth and original being, it is known to every living human and the realization of what it is always a possibility. The invention of language and the possibility to split the psyche and the world into dualistic things is proceeded in all of us by a unity of consciousness in childhood. One does not become something or go someplace, one empties a ton of shit and returns to ones original state.

The acquisition of knowledge and wisdom isn't a process of addition, but of subtracting all of ones beliefs. When one experiences a unification in being, there is no doubt about it. No faith is required. Doubt is always the product of thinking.

What you say really does make sense for your journey as you describe. However, while I am not religious I would not have the hubris to tell someone who is that god doesn't exist and there is no meaning to life.


I just don't believe that I or anyone else has a monopoly on the truth when it comes to things of the nature you discuss and on top if that the right to prescribe it to others. While the events that brought you to the conclusions you have made are true for you they may not be for someone else.

People find purpose and meaning to life in all sorts of things, from religion to helping others to sex and gluttony. Some will gain fulfillment and others an empty and false sense of meaning. Each person will ultimately know the validity of their chosen path of purpose, one can only bullshit oneself for so long.

In short if someone finds meaning to life in something different than me I could never think I was better or they were wrong. Likewise I would not tell someone who concludes life has no meaning that they are wrong, only that each persons own conclusions that while are contradictory can be true for each person respectively. I'll leave the determination of it being wrong to themselves, if they don't realize it by living an empty life I'm guessing they will know on their deathbed or facing death.

I've often thrown scorn and disdain your way, and not really for the core message you're conveying but rather the manner it's done. Many things you say are thought provoking, but I think you would reach more people if your messages wasn't surrounded by hubris and judgement and the idea that truths you've arrived at are right for all and anything contradictory is wrong. Just my opinion for what little it's worth.

 

[flexy]

>>
people often avoid information and situations that have the potential to contradict previously held beliefs and attitudes
<<

the explanation is easy: Pride.

It requires a lot to admit that held beliefs and attitudes are wrong, pride can make this difficult depending how mature someone is. This doesn't just apply to conservatives, this applies to everyone.

I speculate that the sub-conscious also plays a role there, simply spoken, you see what you want to see and you're blind to anything else which is against your bias.

HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY 101

 

[Moonbeam]

The Right brain is a powerful toy. To be able to know without reasoning seems to me to be magic stuff. I can't imagine they be the same thingi as you do.

It is Myers-Briggs, btw. It is a sorter of sorts following Jung's bit.

Freud opined that you couldn't attain knowledge via the intuitive process. He of course was wrong... One of the greatest intuitive thinkers of our time was Einstein, I'd argue. Jung opined that intuition was the "perception via the unconscious". He further said that 'sense perception' (empirical stuff) was only the starting point. Like when someone I know says, 'Hmmmmm'.

Anyhow, when you get back from Ravel's 'Bolero' (10) perhaps you could dump some data into my ever expanding basket of stuff. :awe:[/QUOTE]

I'll do a data dump:

First thing that comes to mind, what mine and why I can't say, is the story of the horse the cart and the driver, the emotions, the moving center, and the brain. To this we need to add a passenger who will set the destination. From this we see the monk, the fakir and the Yogi, and the way of the Sufi, the one who has facility over all three.

We know from evidence of people who have had their corpus callosum cut, that there are two different people in our heads. This can be verified by numbing one or the other hemisphere. I remember long ago laying on a bed staring at a necked light bulb in the ceiling. I was deep in thought that was leading to unpleasant feelings and the light bulb jumped and I found myself in the middle of a completely different thought stream, one, in other words was already developed and ongoing. The self that was interrupted, that observed the light jump, knew that what had happened was that my eye dominance changed. I had been viewing the bulb through the right sides of both my retina, the sides that lead to the left brain where I think I live because it's the hemisphere that speaks and whose words I hear when I think. The jump occurred when I saw the bulb from the person in the right side of my head who was on a different trip. God knows what he's up to right now. I think he thinks I'm an asshole and uses the fact that he's linguistically stupid not to talk to me. But I know he's the fucker that makes all my mistakes. He could be picking my nose.

So where oh where are you, Moonbeam. Will the real me please strand up!

It seems to me I am a different me all the time. At times I'm a stupid horse kicking at imaginary dogs, sometimes the cart when I drive easily and unaware that I do so, sometimes I'm lost in daydreams, sometimes I seem to disappear, sometimes I seem to wake up.

Then there is the matter of the way the brain thinks, rational and linear on the one side and pattern seeking on the other, the analyst and the grasper, the one who knows all kinds of things about tigers and the one who sees them in the bush. Which am I?

The rational mind alone reminds me of a donkey loaded with books, Without the capacity to make sense of the information one remains a donkey.

Then there is the programming of the brain that takes place, intentionally and accidentally, the seeking of pleasure over pain, the fact that we associate ideas with feelings, that we can learn to despise our own real instincts be taught to hate who we are something is screwed so I will have to reboot

Continued: In this way we can be made to be unconscious of what we feel, of avoiding anything that will take us near past pain so that we do not re-experience it, even though in fact we experience it all the time, but unconsciously. It is this that I have tried to touch on as the purpose of this thread, that because we believe actions in our past were evil, we avoid conscious awareness of them. This driving underground of negative feelings because we were made to feel evil for feeling them, when we had to feel them and weren't in any guilty for feeling, makes us our own worst enemy, insane in our dislike for ourselves. My suspicion is that the fact your Grannie taught you to see the humor in things from a young age, and a rather penetrating analytical intellect, are some of the reasons you resilient to self contempt. You find your own skin to be funny. It's probably the reason the doctors find your brain waves funny and atypical of most people, that you light up on both sides alternately. I think all humor is based on the shock of self recognition, a syntheses of data leading to an insight into the self. It's the best medicine for real humility I can think of.

 

[polarmystery]

>>
people often avoid information and situations that have the potential to contradict previously held beliefs and attitudes
<<

the explanation is easy: Pride.

It requires a lot to admit that held beliefs and attitudes are wrong, pride can make this difficult depending how mature someone is. This doesn't just apply to conservatives, this applies to everyone.

I speculate that the sub-conscious also plays a role there, simply spoken, you see what you want to see and you're blind to anything else which is against your bias.

HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY 101

This, and introspection. People from what I've seen aren't willing to seek constructive criticism, or even respond to it maturely. That I think will be the downfall of our society.