A COSMIC MULTI-PLAYER GAME - My interpretation of the book of Genesis
Have you also taken part in labelling God as omnipotent and omnipresent independent existence,
because Christians supposedly all do exactly that?
But let us not dismiss it and look at this label in detail.
What you can do is not put a "full stop" after creation, but a comma. After all, the story that has begun is still in full swing.
A Christian can certainly say that he believes in the omnipotence of God, who, in full possession of omnipotence, created the earth and the universe.
At the same time, however, a Christian can believe that a creation will go its way from the moment it is set in motion.
If you feel uncomfortable or offended by the personal pronome of God, fill the term with one which suits you more, but spare the discussion about the term itself, in order to freely tackle the subject.
This interpretation allows us to imagine God as something that grants creation a life of its own, because what is the point in a God who always knows everything about anything, exactly what precisely happens, when exactly, by whom exactly, how exactly and where exactly.
It is compelling logic to consider this aspect as ridiculous, to say the least.
Such creation would completely lose its meaning and, begun under such conditions, would be immediately and confidently abandoned, recognising the nonsensical nature of its continuation.
So I could say that when God created paradise,
he was not really satisfied with its composition and when he realised that it would not develop a life of its own, under the conditions so far set, he pulled a big prank. After all, this very realization I call a logical thought (as an attempt of interpretation).
God introduced the rather static state - paradise, animals and human creatures who are neither particularly happy nor particularly sad, and who all live in eternal and infinite bliss with each other - to the serpent.
He threw sand in the gears.
Knowing that the human creature, because after the end of the paradisiacal state it was endowed with consciousness and reason, WILL go its own way. It can be interpreted that God does not wish to exert any detailed influence on this independent life, as he "lets it go on".
As clear as God is about the fact that the human mind will get confused and man will fall into error, it is also clear that from Genesis on God has gone from being a creator, manipulator (like in the great flood) to an additional state of a wondering spectator. Which I see as the consequence of Genesis and the further books of the bible.
That is why God can not use omnipotence in our respect,
for a reason, which is caused in the time factor of existence itself. As an ongoing one.
Just as a person has no deliberate influence on the fact that his hair should grow or that his breath should stop flowing or his heart should stop beating. He could only make rough corrections, but not fine-tune anything.
A person can commit suicide and thereby exert absolute influence on his hair growth, his breathing and his heartbeat. But you wouldn't call that fine-tuning.
God shared power with man at the very beginning of the story of man's creation.
Because man is in full fact empowered, he is henceforth responsible for his individual actions. It is not for nothing that they say "knowledge is power".
Knowledge can indeed be very agonising
and power is not something that really makes you happy, especially with no chance in sight to share it. On the contrary, holding power is one of the most exhausting and challenging states imaginable (ask single moms or dads). Equally, power can be extremely boring. It creates tension between these two states.
Because this is the case, a person in power needs some rules that allow him to recognise where he is abusing power and where he needs power in order to be able to act at all.
At this point, the paradox that makes man the absolute plaything of God and God the absolute player is resolved,
because from now on both mankind and God play in co-production.
At the same time, it is also clear that God has become involved in the human game. The part of God that has humanised itself is the part that has dissolved in all people or is in them as a "divine spark". This is reminiscent of the saying: "God is in you and you are in God".
The other books of the Bible can be understood as a continuation of the story and what we humans of past and present experience as trial and error, as gaining and losing knowledge. Depending on how we use our power.
The Christian set of rules,
summarised in the Ten Commandments, is therefore not to be understood as an unfair instrument from the perspective of realising one's human power, but as a realistic recognition of all cosmic players (God and humanity) in relation to each other, but as humans, developing independently in detail, i.e. within a set of rules for the sake of self-knowledge.
Where it gets interesting is when the differences become blurred,
and where one could explain the mysteriousness about oneself by saying that where the difference between God and humanity is fluid, and one begins to confuse one with the other, there lies something wonderfully truthful. Where God, as dwelling in man, marvels and where man, as dwelling in God, recognises.
Just to be clear, in such a state of being high, I will also come down to earth again.
I cannot always be on LSD, can I. Let's reserve that for special occasions.
The Ten Commandments are not written
so that they would never be broken, they are written because it is perfectly clear that they WILL always be broken.
Every mother and father knows that their child will break the rules they have set. Shall they decide against them?
It is crystal clear to parents that as the first creators of their child, they are also the first creators of its rules. Who else would they designate? Similarly, it is clear that God, as the creator of man, is the first rule-maker, who else should be named?
Reminder: If you again are in trouble with the term God, or if you are not coming from a Christian background, make your personal translation in order to put yourself out of trouble.
Don't forget the snake
If a person doesn't want to see his power, he turns the whole thing around and says: "God Almighty made me the way I am, with my faults and weaknesses. And then he punishes me for it because of them? Even though I can't help being a sinner because God made me that way. Then he also says: "Besides, I don't believe in God. And I certainly don't believe in a God like that." To which I would answer: "Congratulation!"
Indeed, when you put it like that, it can only seem absurd.
If you don't challenge your mind to think any further, you have just performed the remarkable act of feeling that you have bounced off the paradox you have just discovered.
But now demands to be freed from this paradox.
A fine example of opposing one's power, but also of not giving anyone the mandate to resolve the contradiction. Since the only one in having that mandate is the individual himself. After all, he can talk to God, can't he? Since he, at the same time, would also perform self talk.
But if the individual remains too impressed by the talk of God's omnipotence and believes himself to have no power at all, then he is mistaken, because of course he has all the means at his disposal to become aware of his thoughts. To become aware of Gods voice from within.
He can, of course, pretend that he does not understand the matter. And would be demonstrating an act of self-deception.
I mean, really, I wouldn't want to kill that very divine spark, since I may kill a lot of what I call "myself".
Overall, I would think that the style used in the Bible,
especially the books of the Old Testament - can be seen as deliberate and intentional means of exaggeration, similar to how we exaggerate advertising in our modern media.
In order to convey a message effectively, it MUST even be presented in this exaggerated form, because otherwise it might be easily overheard or overlooked.
So there is talk of a "vengeful", "angry" and "jealous" God. You can behave in a fearful or hostile way. But clearly you cannot overlook these very humanly traits.
You can also understand the language as metaphorical exaggeration.
Pictures:
Helmut Bischoff (German Painter) with whom I had a little cooperation a very long time ago on a book I had written named "Paradise found".
Or we can think of religions as capricious criteria, imposed on us by what I will call "gods," that we game pieces have to follow so the gods can have their fun with us.
We are divine creatures, and gods have to toy with us so we don't overthrow them.
I love the way you think. I can't always follow it, but I love it nonetheless.
Thank you :)
Your comment immediately provided me with questions.
If you were a god, how would you get the most enjoyment out of the game? Would you want to know all the cards or would you want to play a game after neither you nor the human already knew the entire deck? What would be fair, what would be entertaining?
Would you want sometimes you and sometimes the human to win? Would what you call overthrowing be the annihilation of your divine existence? What exactly would the human who accomplished this have achieved as a consequence?
Very interested in an answer, as I don't have one myself yet, but an inspiring thought is germinating in me.
Or asked again, on a second read through of your response. If we ourselves are divine creatures and we overthrow the gods, what would we gain, what would we lose?
The humans are not the gods' opponents. Other gods are. The gods and their human forms are not gods as we westerners have been led to believe, acting for human benefit through mysterious means, but more like the roman and greek gods (petty, cruel, jealous of each other, murderous, spiteful). They play the game of planet earth against other gods, a competition, like a vast video game, with humans (who are very unlike these gods) as mere game pieces. I see this all very clearly now. Religion is mind control so these fucking entities who wanna be gods can win their fucking game. It's time for humans to realize all this, and to take back control. Humans are the true creators - the gods have no power other that the power we give them by believing anything they say. Just say no to everything you are expected, by anyone, to assume as truth. Oh you get me on these wonderful rolls of thought. Where have you been?
You leave me somewhat perplexed with that.
Are you thinking of the sort of thing we mean by new world order?
I would think, however, that what you have commented on
falls precisely on the open ears of those who shoot every religion in the wind and denigrate it as a cult, while the communityless cult is sold as a moral and flawless and free world.
Behind my sewing machine. Time consuming (I produced videos as well).
Do you have/had any new engagements on stage?
what do you mean by communityless?
all communities, however they are tied together, operate on a specific level of the game, as single entities. As we rise in levels of the game (do you play video games? I don't) The dudes at the top, whom some might call gods, are also single entities (comprised of all the players down to we littles) battling with each other. The new world order fits into my fantasy here, in that it is simply a consolidation/federation of some of the gods who are currently playing in the top levels of the game. Someone is playing them though. Or maybe it's chaos up there, and nature is taking her course. We littles pay the price when the gods fight. Like downvote wars right here on hive.
I was thinking more of something like the community of local people, like the one I grew up in. Gatherings, like for my mum's funeral, which I wouldn't have missed for the world. If you manage to isolate those locals from each other, and it's of permanent nature, I describe it as "communityless". You see where I'm going with this...
Other than that, no, I don't play computer games of any kind. I play cards with my husband and his son and with my brothers when we get together, or other table top games. I sometimes visit the grannies or talk to the aging parents of my childhood friends when I visit home. I think it's important for Christians to gather and pray and sing at the funeral of a loved one because those are the songs and prayers we know (at least as I came to know them). The wake afterwards was always a comforting thing for me too. Things like that.
The union of the powerful is a separate topic, covered by me repeatedly in other places. I don't regard any of them as god or gods. They may have killed everything divine in them, who knows.
It is in those communities that we can break the game. Or so I hope. That's the level I am in the game, and I'm putting all my stake right here with my local friends, family, and neighbors. The few Christians I know well are apocalyptic. I hope I didn't offend you with my views on western religions.
Hey, have you read this. I don't know who wrote it, if it was Azzarello or this Crosby dude, but it captures what I have been talking about. I just this minute came across it. It's long, but a quick skim might give you a better idea of my vision of what is going on here. We are being played, and have been being played for centuries on end. It all escalated during WWII. Some of the upper players saw great opportunity and went for total domination of the game. They formed a federation (Club of Rome, CFR, that type of thing). Everyone is playing their assigned parts, and playing the game at their level. But the whole thing depends on us doing our assigned parts. We don't have to do that. We do, because life is easier if we spend our days doing paperwork, hoping we don't get financially screwed by, chiefly, by the governmental and medical cartels, which are the same thing via public/private partnerships/federations. Oh my goodness I have had enough of this vision I am having! Gotta run and breathe somewhere, maybe hug a tree to come back to the here and now.
Cannot open that website.
But I would answer that I am well aware of such things, maybe more than you'd assume.
So I am attempting to what I consider is sensible to do. My above in the post given interpretation was to find common ground of what I call my culture.
I am regularly being offended in that sense. The art is, from my point of view, to defend what I find is and was helpful to me.
So I am glad that the two of us did find that ground.
Count me among the Christians who is not apocalyptic. There are more of us :)
Oh! I auditioned just yesterday for the role of the witch in Into The Woods! Even if I don't get the part, I auditioned very well, another notch up in my performance credits - I didn't fall on my face at an audition for a musical! It was fun. I love to audition. I get to perform under very high stakes! Today I am morosely waiting, accomplishing nearly nothing, for their choice. I really want this one. It would be a shit ton of work, and might bring me out of a stupor.
Good luck for you. Having some hard work done, needs to find a place where it can unfold. Always good to do something out of the four walls to escape stupor, I agree. Do you find it difficult to remember your text?
I even have problems to recite poetry and never trained myself in doing so.
I have never tried to recite poetry, and learning lines takes a lot of work, using mnemonic devices to remember the next line, writing out by hand for tactile and visual reminders. Lot of work, which always seems impossible at first, then it gets to be fun, a challenge I welcome. Then there are the performances, which transport me elsewhere.
While I do not wish to denigrate or in any way diminish or demean your beliefs, I understand you to be seeking rational and constructive criticism and comment on your post, so I will undertake a minor point.
I suggest that this is demonstrably not factually correct. It is easily shown that from the standpoint of science, we are utterly nescient as to the nature and cause of our thoughts. It is also blatantly apparent that we do not exercise such control and means that have been proposed, and not yet falsified, that we have managed to ascertain. I could go on at length, providing examples of ways in which we misconceive of what consciousness is, our grasp of what it is, where it comes from, and etc., ad nauseum, but I will not because it's not important to my point nor useful to you and your purpose in posting.
I will just say that we are incompetent to discuss higher states of being when we can't even categorize or characterize the lowest states of being, or even our own state of being. We are utterly and blatantly incompetent to make judgments as to the character and composition of God, gods, ourselves, or even worms, fish, or biofilms. We can make a few carefully worded characterizations of our physical world, of our bodies, and the bodies of such creatures as we have long and insightfully studied, but there are almost no definitive statements we can state factually regarding spirit, consciousness, or mind.
We, and I mean anyone and everyone, can but speculate.
Thanks!
Having nothing against being disagreed with. Though I'd rather have had that in my last post :) In this one I would like to welcome some other interpretations of Genesis or any other book of the bible.
Alright, let me respond.
Who is "we"? If you say that you know that we humans as a whole are incapable of questioning our own thoughts, then I strongly disagree with you. Since that is a speculation on your part.
Why would one make a "definitive statement" since it shall be a good start to express oneself artistically whenever dealing with spirit, consciousness, or mind?
Apart from that, I would give science a chair but not the entire hall, in terms of human spirit, consciousness, or mind. The other chairs go to the arts and what else one can think of.
Again, who is "we" when you say "we" don't understand our own consciousness. There are ways to do that, and I just took one such path in the post above by providing an intellectual interpretive effort regarding the rich Christian culture (you must know how rich the libraries are, no?).
Even if it were true that consciousness, spirit and mind is not understood (by whom?), that is a fatalistic statement that makes any involvement in how I express myself as a human being, how I choose to understand and interpret my culture, completely meaningless (I wouldn't want others to get discouraged as well). It's as if you were saying that because we have not understood it in full, it's superflous to even try. What horrible silence that would be. Not sure how to understand you here. (Maybe as humans we can be such ignorants?)
Now, I would argue from the other way around and say: Because we try, we find more information about our consciousness and the nature of our cognition.
Questioned differently, where does understanding for yourself come from? Alone from scientific data?
You don't grow up as a kid reading science, are you? First and foremost you play and train your senses.
What about music, painting, sculpting, poetry, music, book writing? All of this can bring you to an understanding of yourself. Do you need a scientific explanation to understand art/music or do you first understand the music and then find out about the scientific explanation?
Another question: Have you yourself tried one of those arts? I mean, in a really tough way, tried to learn one of them? Instrument or painting oder script writing?
From my experience I can tell that I tried. Once, it was a book, and the moment I had around three hundred pages done, I found out much about logic, structure, organization, character creation, coherence etc. etc. - it taught me a great deal about what I thought I knew, and what I indeed knew and was capable of. To become a really good author of a solid several hundred pages, man, you really get something going there.
I agree, it is truly difficult to master a profession but I believe there are fantastic artists and scientists and everything in between in past and present human history. There is competence and there is incompetence, I think that is correct to say. It's incorrect to say that
I did that right in my text. I am not offended when you found that incompetent. But then it's like you are critiquing a meal, but weren't eating it. Give me a competent interpretation of Genesis and I will shamelessly judge it as brilliant or just crappy or something in between. No offense, see me smiling.
I can't believe you are incompetent in doing it. I would believe though in answering me that you are not interested.
Greetings.
Human beings, while unique, are a specific group with defined characteristics. That is us. This includes various limitations, inherent to our design, such as requirements to breathe, drink, eat, and sleep, that are universal. This also includes binocular vision, hearing, and our other senses. It is therefore facile to provide definitive statements about our capabilities to perceive, conceive, and receive understanding of the vast majority of factual reality, to wit, we simply can't. We aren't equipped to examine quasars in all spectra. Almost no information regarding quasars can be considered, and until we had instruments that were able to detect them, didn't conceive of them. Quasars are an infinitesimal portion of reality, and extremely energetic relative to most of it, making them highly detectable as well. This incapacity well reveals our inherent incapacity to know and understand something as mysterious as consciousness, which we - any of us humans - have no ability to detect except by the actions of conscious beings that have the ability to dynamically act. The objection that it's presumptuous to project such limitations on others is a logical fallacy that ignores the reality we are all humans, with the inherent limitations humans have.
Because understanding depends on definition. Making definitive statements enables disproving them, and thus increasing understanding.
I can make a thermonuclear device with my socks. Both these statements are equally fallacious, indicating delusions of grandeur. Either reality exists, and thus definitive statements can be made about it, which can be disproved if they are false, or nothing matters (literally, and pun intended). While it is convenient, and indeed necessary, to deceivers to make a variety of claims incapable of being disproved, and therefore without factual relevance, it is presently impossible to make statements about consciousness and it's nature that are disprovable regarding almost every aspect of it, such as what it is, where it comes from, and why we have it. This makes discussing it, in any of it's aspects, such as spiritual, rather devoid of functional purpose.
While you dismiss 'science' rather brusquely, unless you can disprove false claims you cannot demonstrate claims you make aren't false. That is science in a nutshell. That's all science actually is, a method for discerning falsity which is currently the only known way to discard provably false claims from those that remain potentially true.
I respectfully submit that unless you can make claims that have the potential to be falsifiable through experimental testing, your claims do not have useful potential to be true, since there is no way to establish they aren't false. Such claims don't represent knowledge, but discard knowledge and replace it with faith, which can, and has been, used to justify any and every evil that has ever been committed. Logic and reason are valuable, and it is because the scientific method is really all we have to differentiate between good and evil. Absent that method burning people alive has become a sacred ritual and for centuries caused horrific suffering. In fact, that horror continues to this day, claimed to be righteous and holy by the evil madmen inflicting that horror on their hapless victims for fun and profit.
The bulk of your statements above reflect our innate ability to use that scientific process to discard falsity without even employing conscious effort to do so, and also that we aren't even aware we do this for the most part. Again, I want to stress that what I am saying does not invalidate anyone's beliefs. People that claim they can make thermonuclear bombs from their underwear could be telling the truth, but they are not telling it in a way that is falsifiable, so it cannot be ascertained if they are telling the truth or not. What people have faith in, how they arrive at that faith, and how they express it are almost never communicated in a falsifiable way, so the common practice of Atheists to proclaim there is no God and all belief in God is stupidity is the very height of stupidity, because more than any claim of spirituality, any claim of spirituality being impossible necessarily must be made falsifiably or make a mockery of Atheists' assumption of reason and fact as any basis for their claims. Humanity has need of society, and evolution has enabled us to go along with almost any cultural practice as true believers in order to potentiate society, and our survival.
Note that I do not anywhere seek proof of anything. This is because proof cannot exist. Only disproof is possible to us, and that is all I have myself undertaken regarding my capacity, and the capacity of humanity, to judge such matters. It just isn't potential to us. It's above our pay grade. We are lucky to be able to tie our shoes, and that's as true for physicists as it is for shepherds.
I had questions for you that you left unanswered. Why did you prefer not to answer them?
Without going into the details of your answer, I would like to know what you understand by the term "interpretation".
Because you speak of what you refer to me as my "statements" and "claims", why don't you use "interpretation", since that is what I did with above text; I interpreted part of my culture.
I will go into more detail on other aspects of your comment.
I use the word interpretation below. I use all too many words, and create walls of text trying to accurately state what I mean and not leave inaccurate interpretations available.
I had actually wanted to discuss 'potential to be aware of' our thoughts, because I don't really think we do have that potential, but veered off as I did, and felt that the wall of text I produced was more than enough. But, to that point, I don't think we really have much understanding of who we are and what we think in terms of our consciousness. I think the sense that we are singular is absolutely incorrect, and that our consciousnesses are a collective event with many millions, perhaps many billions, of participants. I think a lot of our thoughts are thought by those other participants, and we have no opportunity to be aware of them.
I saw this in a dream, so can't think of any way to test it. However, I have read papers that claimed our gut fauna participate in our consciousness, contributing to our dietary decisions, so there is some basis for corroborating my claim we are a collective, albeit their claim is that we're also multiple species. I am certain sure that I am not alone in knowing that my mind is fully active (and has a very different understanding of reality) when I'm asleep. I'm just busy and non-responsive, and usually prevented from recalling my dreams, and I think this is the same for all people. In my dream I am only one of these many participants in my consciousness, and not even the top guy. I have no idea why I'm the guy that has to have my memory wiped every night and walk around all day unaware of all the things I know about me when I'm asleep, but I do know I'm pissed off about being mind wiped every morning, because I broke the veil of nonrecollection deliberately in that dream, which is why I remember it.
I guess the best way for you to test this claim I am making is to violate the nonrecollection rule during your next dream, as I did, by jumping out of the silvery bubble of nonrecollection we're supposed to stay in. That was about a week ago, so they/I didn't fire me and replace me with me. You may not like what you find out though. I was arguing with a boss when I jumped. I do not like not being the boss of me, TBQH. Although, the boss was also me...
Collective consciousness can be a little confusing to talk about.
I'm such a rebel.
I come back to my very first response in which I said that this is a "fatalistic" way of seeing humans.
So, as a consequence I can give up on every perception I think I have, for I am anyway a puppet towards collectiveness. If true or not, it still leaves me with the thought: Why bother at all and when I die, I really don't care if anyone wants to have some kind of ceremony, or wake or farewell, uttered in a cultural context, which anyway cannot be tested wrong or right. It leaves me actually without anything to cope. I am so sorry to hear/say that.
It plays right into the likeness of those you probably call "overlords", who do not adhere to any rule whatsoever but claim they do, and for the best of humanity. It's what my mom called "godless".
I am unable to grasp how this follows from the idea that we aren't fully informed and independent. Rather, such perceptions as I am availed I then regard as that much more valuable because of my awareness I am incapable of perceiving so much that exists. Since so much of what exists is imperceptible to me, implications inherent in my perceptions of what I can perceive are then all I can have of the rest of what exists, and therefore gain import in my mind, not that I find my lack of perception demoralizing and discouraging.
That limitation of my capacity is what it is, and my response is to reduce my expectations of my competence commensurately, while undertaking to be as competent as is possible to me.
Oh, I can certainly relate to that and I agree, very much so, that I am aware of my limitations. I don't see anything I could say against that. I count this as self-knowledge.
So the definition, for example, of the word "paradox" is valid until it has been falsified, do I understand you correctly?
Not exactly. Whatever definition you present for the word paradox is potentially true. If your definition is so vague it can't be tested, it is a very poor definition. If your definition is proved false it is no longer potentially true. Nothing can be better than potentially true. There is always pending a new interpretation of data, new data, or some better understanding offing to better define paradox.
For centuries Newton's explanation of orbital mechanics based on his formulae were accepted as true. Only very minor differences between what his calculations predicted and what actually occurred were observed. However, Einstein's relativity explained these differences, and completely upended physics. Einsteinian cosmology is radically different from Newton's, and the mathematics are also (much more difficult), while the solutions in orbital mechanics are so close that rocket scientists today still use Newtonian maths because they're much easier, and close enough for rocket science.
This is what I mean when I say proof does not exist.
I am confident that Einstein will be proved wrong, sooner or later, in the same way that Newton was. Perhaps only in a very minor way, perhaps in hugely substantial ways, but his formulae and cosmology will be amended when some part or aspect of it is falsified and a better explanation put forward.
This doesn't only apply to esoteric physics and math. We find, when we look, examples in every field of inquiry where accepted truths were proved false, and amended to make them more right, or they were altogether replaced. When we discuss something as incapable of falsification as theories of consciousness or spirituality, all manner of explanations and interpretations are claimed to be true by believers, but none of them can be tested and therefore amount to mere speculation or hypothesis, no more provable than the ravings of the mad.
So, you would describe my personal use of the term "paradox" in the given context as something, you cannot comprehend?
In case, you do not comprehend, every attempt from my side in wanting to come to a common understanding with you, is futile?
I would not describe us as unable to agree on the meaning of the word paradox. I don't at all think we cannot come to common understanding. I neither expect we will on matters of faith. IME any two members of a church have two separate and unique interpretations of their faith.
I think we can agree on things that can be tested, that have ways to falsify them, and if they are not falsified by these tests, we can agree those things could be true. If they fail those tests, I think we could agree those things could not be true. More than that I am aware I cannot judge with confidence, and I would hope we could agree on that, even if you feel confident about your judgment of such matters, we should be able to agree on my incompetence.
Alright, did you indeed come to a common understanding with me about the term paradox used in my given context? Including me re-phrasing the scene?
Honestly, I think we both do understand the word paradox. However, because I don't accept the premises the first speaker does, and the second speaker also seems to, I don't see his claim that the rule maker is evil to be paradoxical. OTOH, I do understand how that view - that the rule maker, God, is evil - is paradoxical to a believer.
Still, you'll probably give up on me after reading about my dream, so you may not care to bother about my understanding or common agreement. But, I'm being honest here, so despite my embarrassment about my whacko dream theories, I hove to and inscribed it on the blockchain for all time. What I experienced is what I experienced, and if you manage to jump out of the nonrecollection bubble and confirm any part of it, I'd feel vindicated for taking the risk. I don't think you're that ungovernable though, LOL.
Because all statements on the part of religion & humanism (philosophical, moral, ethical etc. etc.) are irrelevant to you as a whole, the conversation I have staged is also irrelevant to you, I have understood that.
This brings us both - you and I - to the end of our chain of argumentation.
I claim that I am responsible for my actions/omissions.
Very simple question: Are you responsible for yours? If so, why?
The whole thing is paradoxical not only for a believer, but for everyone else as well, even the one making the statement. That's the joke. I don't know anyone in the world who doesn't expect others to take responsibility for their actions/omissions. Since everyone expects this of each other, they talk about rules, actually on a daily basis.
What is going on in your most inner world, is hard to describe to anyone, I agree.
I did not understand
I understand from your discussions that you value your participation in society, in being considered a pillar of the community, not peripheral and challenging the fundamental structure. I instead have a sense of being excluded from an unfair system, from cliques that gain by being exclusive, and therefore worry at the edges to expose weaknesses and foster dissent against what I perceive as unfairness.
As I awoke from that dream, startled by suddenly exiting the nonrecollection bubble and beginning to recall my sensations and experiences, I recalled the feeling of exultation that I had succeeded in attaining to that recollection against the orders or will of the collective. My values are such that I am more invested in informational integrity than in being acculturated. I do not get that sense of your values, but rather that you are more of a team player and intent on providing structural integrity more than you are intent on ensuring you are treated fairly.
I dunno if that makes sense to you. It's a difficult and murky idea that can but be implied by our conversation, and isn't something we have stated outright or intentionally discussed. My defiance of whatever order I find I am part of is lurking just below the surface of my interactions, ready to snap like the jaws of a trap on any perception of injustice or unfairness I come across. It's not something I intend to do, or have learned to do. On the contrary, it's disruptive to order, and were I more competent at acculturation I would have learned to temper my reactivity in order to be more supportive to society.
I feel we are different in that regard, and that was what I meant. I can recall only the moments after I leapt from the nonrecollection bubble, and my recollection is that I felt triumphant that I had done so in order to recall that sense of defiance of orders to not recall that meeting with the boss me (I am sure that sounds insane, BTW). Anyhow, that innate defiance of order is a character trait inherent to me I think is not shared by you, and you instead are invested in strengthening the social order you participate in, or at least that's a sense I have got from our interactions.
So, I would not expect you to defiantly leap out of the nonrecollection bubble just because you were expected to remain within it. I would expect you to be supportive of that purpose of the collective rather than place your personal desire to recall above the interests of the collective.
Anyway, none of this lunatic dreamscape was the purpose of your post, and I regret bringing it up and clogging your blog with it. I suppose that I did exemplifies my own interest in my informational integrity and lack of support of the purposes of society - in this case you and your intentions for your blog - illustrating my point about governability.
If that's how you perceive me, it's because I talk about it a lot, mostly from a retrospective perspective. I visit the place where I grew up because I still have brothers there. The old people have all been dying for many years and as I knew many of them, I can also talk about them. The Russian-German - mostly practicing Christians - community in which I grew up is slowly dying its death.
I myself was the one who excluded myself from this form of coexistence - and of course not everything was perfect. But really, where is that the case?
I turned my back on everything, went to the city and didn't think about the fact that I then became a part of that which rejected religion, which primarily gave space to my own hedonistic needs and everything else you can imagine. So from my teens into my mid-thirties I lived quite an unconscious life and would describe myself as fully integrated in terms of fun and meritocracy. I was popular because I was a party girl and looked good etc. etc. I was successful at work because I knew how to market myself.
Until I became a mum, this life was full of adventure, fun - and of course the less enjoyable times too.
But when I had my son, everything changed in one fell swoop. I became severely depressed and walked the streets of my city and saw nothing but zombies. They all seemed remote-controlled and soulless to me. I was shocked to my core that I hadn't seen this before and I was terrified. The complete and unvarnished indifference of the city-people, their total self-centredness, their complete lack of connection to each other - it seemed to drive me out of my mind. With some effort, I somehow managed to reintegrate myself and push back the terrible desolation, the loneliness that had taken hold of me (though it never really left me, since). I had to pretend, for my son's sake, that it was all just normal, the way we all live.
I could say so much more.
From then on, many things changed for me. I didn't become my old self, but I couldn't go back to my hometown either. So I stayed where I was, brought up my son (of course the father and I separated), looked for a new relationship, failed, until I finally got together with my current husband.
I gradually withdrew from meeting up with friends as I was no longer interested in doing the same things all the time, such as going out and drinking, which had lost its appeal and seemed pointless. As a result, my social circle narrowed considerably. When 2020 finally came and I didn't want to be tested or wear a mask, I was made redundant. For me, the whole thing was rotten from the start. I was the only one in both of the centres where I had been working as a freelancer until then. There was no one, apart from me, who was so sceptical. Everyone complied. I lost the few friends I had - everything happened in such a way that people simply stopped seeing each other and that was it. So I also lost that support, my job and the friends in my city. In short, no, I'm no longer a member of society at all - I'm on the margins. It's amazing how life can twist, isn't it? I think I would do a lot of things differently today than I did.
Well, I can still say that my life has been good for the most part and is still good, as I don't have any material worries at the moment. I am blessed with a good husband and I hope that my son will make better decisions than his parents did.
What you see of me on the surface here on hive is just the surface.
I normally avoid giving such personal information, but that's what I've done. In order to respond to:
I am still not sure how to understand it but I would say that the interest of the collective seemed to differentiate from what I would say is my interest. The collective often seems to be like a mindless, conscious-less mishmash of no clear direction, even though, weirdly enough, it behaves very determined, ... zombies...
My own experience exactly summarized. We are far more alike than we are different. I suppose that is why I am so intent on your posts when you make them.
In the event you recall these words when you are dreaming, perhaps you will, being as independent of external control as you demonstrably are, decide to reveal to yourself the reality of our collective consciousness as did I, and take that leap out of the nonrecollection bubble that is imposed on us when we are asleep and the blinders of nonrecollection are lifted from our understanding. Until and unless you do, those blinders will continue to conceal that intellectual freedom I have seen.
It was unexpected by me. I have more questions than I can ever hope to answer as a result of that one second of recollection I forced on me - and it was all a dream - LOL
I think we have more in common than what leaps through our encounters. I find it sometimes a bit frightening to talk to you, but on the other hand there is something that seemed to have established a connection (interest in one another).
thank you for formulating it this way. I appreciate this sense of humor -LoL but no, it does not sound insane. I understand.
What you have sensed of me is probably my wish of strengthening the social order and for some temporarily limited time I was able to be part of it, and have an influence contrary to the collective march. When I was a counselor - without wanting to sound vain, I think I was a pretty unusual type of counselor. It's a loss, actually, because I was good in what I did professionally but I think that also is not something I can go back to.
The world that used to be no longer exists. Forward is the only direction we can go.
During 2020/21 I had some pretty weird encounters, where I hoped to re-establish myself, to join in somewhere else, since through having been excluded from the so called norm, I was seeking connection elsewhere. It became even more bizzare. People really became strange on the outer edges, as well. If you understand what I mean.
I completely identify with this assessment. I confess I was astounded at how some people reacted to the plandemic, how little they valued their own judgment, and were so invested in compliance. Eventually I became happy that some few revealed my own independent capacity to judge and act per their own recognizance, and I have accordingly sorted my acquaintances. Some few have become friends I can depend on to judge by their merits what they are shown and told, and them that do not I do not depend on for such rational understanding.
To me, you demonstrate such trust in your eyes, ears, and mind that I find necessary to be rational in the world we are plunged into.
Yes, I had hoped, more people actually would show signs of it. And they were there, but seldom. The rally in Berlin was therefore an important experience for me.
What made me so stunned during this time was that everyone was supposedly afraid. I didn't see any fear of illness (except for the exceptions), it seemed more like a pretext based on the behaviour I had observed from my colleagues. As soon as everyone wore a mask, it was business as usual for them. They joked and laughed and really got a lot closer to each other than they usually did. That was how crazy it was.
This whole thing just seemed to be something they had been waiting for so they could finally act out their heroic performances like in a film. I was as horrified by it as I was disgusted by this "solidarity", everything immediately reminded me of propaganda and how everyone rolled up their sleeves and wanted to be the first to "help". But I knew from day one of the lockdown that both the very young children and the very old would be the ones isolated, the sick left to die alone and all the bureaucratic madness that followed. It was a terrible time.
Good for you that some people turned into friends.
You were right. You are also right about people jumping at the chance to show their virtue. It's pretty awful. I wish I hadn't seen so much of it, and still see it, more than ever. I suspect this is how Mao and Pol Pot gained their followers, just this way, and fear similar horrors are yet to come upon the West.
From what I think this kind of behavior is a coping mechanism.
The government made it very clear that everyone was a criminal who showed signs of disobedience. Since that had being made clear right from the start, and since it is or being thought painful to be treated and seen as a criminal the human starts to cope with the situation in a way he can handle.
In order to handle pain and being outcasted, you need to have experienced pain, despair or even marginalisation before such an event. To know that it is not the end of the world. The tougher, the better, I'd say. Even though this sounds like a contradiction.
me, neither.
Whatever that might be good for...
I am afraid that in order to realize for people that what they did was coping, they need more of that kind in order to see that the coping mechanism will not spare them pain. It will cause further pain. When one is of the notion that there are only benevolent forces and that government authority will save them in a benevolent manner, they are, of course, mistaken. In this way, it is actually not the government alone who has all the power but uses the trick to hand power to the individual, who is then in the position to take on the power of denunciation.
Even if a company owner or senior manager in any working environment had seen through the whole thing, they had no choice but to go along with it, because all it takes is one rotten egg to undermine players who are basically acting rationally. Since you can easily bet on it, the staging went off without a hitch. You could live with that, because nobody can really see behind the other person's face in a situation like this. What was revealing, however, was the high willingness to be inoculated, at least if you want to trust any figures. So everyone can only fall back on their own environment to recognise the statistics of those who have been injected.
For me, it was like a huge testing ground that confirmed that it works on a large scale as well as on a small scale. If the group suggests that there are two short and two long lines on the wall, when in reality there is only one short and two long lines, the individual is very likely to comply because he has to assume that either he is right and the others are crazy or that he himself is crazy. If he thinks that the others are as crazy as they seem, it will seem safer for him not to rebel against the crazy. He will only insist on reality if he is absolutely confident about himself.
I know that you know everything I just said. I just wanted to let you know that I do, too.
I think this reveals why the size of human brains shrank ~20% in the last ~40k years, as centralization rose and deprecated hunter/gatherer societies with professional armies agriculture made possible.
I think it also reveals that the reverse will happen as decentralization develops and disperses across populations, deprecating the value of herd-following and putting a premium on merit, particularly as access to the illimitable resources across the solar system become available for development by whoever gets to them first. The more advanced technology becomes the faster it becomes more advanced, and the faster it disperses. In no industry is this more apparent than in space transport, since the first 3D printed spacecraft only launched in March 2023, but almost every manufacturer is moving to 3D printing of parts that leverage the strengths of additive manufacturing to produce the bespoke one-offs that are ill-suited to mass production.
The evolution of production of the blessings of civilization is going through a clinal boundary that will separate the sheep from the goats, as it were, as people that are able to will adopt means that enable them to themselves create their necessities, and people that can't will remain dependent on overlords and suffer the mercies of the merciless. No stronger incentive can be imagined than inconceivable prosperity and felicity being attainable to them that merit it, and abject penury the lot of them that cannot. I just read a paper that discussed a new way to manufacture integrated circuits - computer chips - from graphene, that create ~5x increases in performance with orders of magnitude decrease in heat production. This is hugely significant because graphene can be printed with ordinary inkjet printers, while silicon has to be manufactured in massive factories. It is possible to envision starting with a couple printers and creating an empire Xanadu could not rival.
This is why I am so optimistic regarding our posterity and the paradise they will enjoy in perpetuity.
I am afraid, you are losing me on this. In that regard, I am a typical women (that is something what is sometimes easily forgotten in online encounters, to be aware if you talk to a male or female).
I never was particularly interested in technology and I never will. It may sound unusual - especially nowadays - but I leave that to men. I would like to think that these men are wise, but I am not going deep into this. My concerns right now are more family oriented and also to find ground in other matters. So, I freely admit that I have a hard time to understand what you talked about above, also because it is not of my interest. So you'd waste your time on me to explain further into it.
I am relieved that you have also an optimistic outlook on what may come and that I find the most important thing right now.
I hope, you take it in the way I came to know you. I appreciate our deep conversation a lot. That is nothing you find often. Thank you for that.
We all have interests, and the opposite. There are certainly things you'd wax prosaic on I'd have nothing to add to. It is fortunate we are able to discuss interests we share, which makes for stimulating conversations we both enjoy.
You say that no state of validity can exist apart from the scientific proof of the invalidity of a statement, method, thesis, hypothesis or theory?
Did I understand that correctly?
Here I see a problem with this assertion:
What is a heart surgeon supposed to rely on, for example, if not on what are currently considered valid medical methods of performing a bypass?
Should he make all patients waiting for an operation wait for the next falsification of state of the art medicine?
Would you say that as long as this principle is not falsified, its application is ... what? Nonsense? Dangerous? Because according to that logic, every scientific statement will be falsified at some point.
Of course, this is always the case when and what about it happens, and is therefore a correct statement. But it is not stopping applications in all of the meantimes, because it cannot be held back, since it's a case of trial and error, would you agree? Furthermore, there are things which do not undergo the process of falsification, would you agree?
So what are you doing in the in-between space/time? Until it comes to this point where something is disproved? You hardly can do nothing. So you do something, correct?
What would a theology professor say to a student about theology? What basics shall he name, if all what he is going to name, one day will be refuted?
Potentially true. Also, we are people, not formulae, so we have biases, make assumptions, and take leaps of faith. Sometimes even dream.
Correct. That is actually what I believe is the case. What we know, what little we have tested and managed to eke out, is all only partially true at best, and all of it will change in time. All we can do in the present is the best we can with what we have, as imperfect as it may be. The scientific method is to make a hypothesis about an event that can be tested. Test the hypothesis and then proceed to discard it if it is falsified by the test, or devise more tests and see if you can falsify it. By this process we can gain a lot of confidence in a particular hypothesis that survives a lot of different tests. This is what heart surgeons rely on when hacking and slashing at people. When they're faced with something anomalous, such as not infrequently happens because people have some variations in how things are arranged internally, good surgeons do the best they can to use their experience to devise a solution in real time. But surgery is a lot different than theology. Different treatments can be statistically tracked to see which of them are better, if any are. This just isn't potential to theology.
Theology, I have tried to point out, isn't prone to being tested. Is Wotan the Allfather or is Yahweh? Allah? Raven? What's the point of theology when you can't falsify Raven, or Tengri, as the creator God? Whatever a theologian is teaching is being refuted right now, by hundreds of other faiths, not just sometime in the future. Yet, each of the different faiths also undergoes changes internally. Many Christian sects have radically changed in recent decades, now allowing women pastors, gay marriages, perhaps none so dramatically as Catholicism in that way just this year. Religion is utterly malleable and not infrequently used by pathological scammers to defraud people, because it is untestable, so I am loathe to invest much confidence in any particulars of a given theology. This was not always the case, however, and I was ordained in the ULC many years ago, when I thought I knew God.
I learned later that the more I know, the more I know how little I know, and gave it up for Lent (please forgive my little Lent joke). One thing I have noticed is that almost all true believers just happened to be born where their true religion was the dominant faith. What luck!
I got that.
Still, theology is being a faculty. Would you like to erase it from the field, so it cannot be further something one shall be able to study? So, from your point of view, all topics need no further study which cannot be tested to be true or false. As a consequence, all religion needs to be eliminated?
What practical impacts of that being the case, do you see will happen, if religion is gone? Philosophy shall go? History shall go? What about arts? None of them fit to the method of clean proof and disproof.
No churches, no chapels, no religious communal gatherings, no songs, no prayers? Where then to find the words to farewell someone who died and whom you loved? No need in doing that? What kind of dignity shall be practiced instead? Do you have a substitute? Or is no substitute needed?
Not at all. But there is a qualitative difference between matters which we can test and those we cannot. This is why I say I am incompetent to judge these matters.
I would never presume so. For myself, I cannot ascertain the truth of matters I cannot test, so I cannot depend on my grasp of them. I make do with my own sense of right and wrong, having tested my fundamental beliefs in a harrowing process that caused me to abandon confidence in rumors and assumptions, in acculturation I absorbed as a child. This was undertaken at great risk, shattering my religious faith, my affiliations across society, and even my family. When I discovered beliefs I could not support factually, I was compelled to moderate them to suspicions, and those I was able to falsify I had to abandon.
For me, I was unable to say I believed in claims I found factually insuperable, and this included religion. I can only make such statements for me, and I have repeatedly pointed out my reticence to challenge others' beliefs, because of how harrowing that process was for me. As for what replaced it, I have pointed that out also, that I no longer have certainty about anything. The best I can arrive at is that things that have been tested and not disproved are potentially true, at least until better understanding falsifies them in whole or part. This is greatly humbling, and why I say I am incompetent to make such judgments and am lucky to be able to tie my shoes, regarding my intellectual capacity.
While that is something, you and I can talk about within a private dialogue, I do not approve of it to be a message spread throughout the youth, for example. Not as the most significant message they get but as being seen as something that will meet them throughout the years of being an adult.
To formulate it differently. If I start with certainty, and my child is the very being that begins life with a blank state, I provide it with a certain form of commonly practiced habit. The child has no intellect on its own. It does not understand prayers, being held at the table, to be thankful for the meal, it just accepts it as a given. If you have signs spread around your household of religious nature, they are a given, but not understood by the child.
But if you start with uncertainty and you do not have a habit, do not have anything which relates to something specific, you do not use common phrases in accordance to that specifics, and in fact you use nothing whatsoever, the child, when it becomes older, has no ground on which it starts to ask questions about the spiritual nature of life. Why should it? There is no reason to question something when that something didn't take place.
So then you have raised your kid in a secular way, where you have not used specifics to teach it in a non-secular way.
Here, my thesis: Secularity, being the only way of raising a kid, produces later adults who do not connect in a deep way towards all given religions, but more in a way of tastes and preferences.
Teenagers and young adults may perceive themselves as tolerant and think that they appreciate different cultures in terms of their religious backgrounds. But since they themselves were not educated with religious specifics, what motivation shall they have, to either appreciate or question religious faith genuinely in the first place?
Modern, western young people grow up with modern parents who may have a Buddhist figurine in one corner of their household, they may grow up with pictures from the Hindu God Khali, nicely adorned in a frame, they may grow up with other bits and pieces from all over the world, but interestingly enough, what a modern household avoids, is to showcase is Jesus Christ on the cross, having a bible laying around, for example. Modern people collect those things from all over the world, appreciating the pleasures of the art but not the discomforts of the meaning. Would they be genuine Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims they would stick to all aspects of the specific culture, the pleasing ones, as well as the not so pleasing ones.
From my perspective, I doubt there are many genuine believers at all. I cannot speak of other nations but my own country has stripped itself off of Christianity and what we are now left with is so called "wokism". It's a highly individualistic, highly self centered cult which propagates "you can be whatever you want", utterly entangled in its contradictions. We have it now written into legislation, so it went to be official that feeling offended is now the base for becoming "integrated". The question is: into what?
Since we do not talk in private but in public, and since we must assume that someone else could read what we spread, I find it crucial to what we feed the field with. Everything publisized with a strong pull towards leaving religion out of everyday life, because it cannot be proven false, will support further the closure of local churches and local facilities to gather as Christians.
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Now I was the one to use a wall of text. And I could go on and on and on.
While I think you mean knowledge, I must disagree even with that. Kids are information vacuums. Upon reflection it is obvious that kids must be able to attain such knowledge as is necessary to successfully live to reproduce in order to perpetuate humanity, which obviously has continued to exist for hundreds of millennia. Before they learn to talk, they have absorbed the knowledge necessary to support the use of language to conform to cultural circumstances, which are enormously variable across the world.
Your expectation of the burden of parenting is accurate, because it is parents that primarily deliver to kids all that wealth of knowledge they attain to, and this knowledge then creates the foundation of understanding kids continue to build on during their educational careers, whether they are subjected to government indoctrination day camps or not. I chose to homeschool in order to prevent the enormous deception and disinformation public schools inflict, which I consider more important and formative than any actual factual information they could acquire thereby. In hindsight I was right to do this. My sons have always outperformed their public school peers, and today continue to be autodidacts and professionals that are admired and followed by their peers, and indeed, everyone that knows them.
While I cannot take credit for their achievements, I can be pleased that I did my best to prevent them from being burdened with false indoctrinations they needed to break and replace later, which I believe has enabled their lifelong success at achieving their goals. It is a mistake to believe that giving kids some false history is better than no history, because kids make their own history from the events in their lives, and the rest is just words. It is the events they experience that provide actual relevant historical information to them, and this creates a filter through which they read every word all their lives. If the cultural context provided them is some contrivance that does not affect their lives, they will dismiss it with prejudice. This is why the Preacher's kids are so often noted to be so rebellious, because so many Preachers are hollow shells of pretense of religion while actually demonstrating much different values to their kids than they preach.
I undertook to involve my kids in my professional, economic, spiritual, and social environment, which demonstrated to them the actual moral and ethical standards I lived, that I also sought to profess in the ritual and daily prosecution of our home. It is a mistake to believe that other spiritual traditions are hollow and void of meaning to their professants. The shrines to Ganesh Hindus maintain are no less significant to them than are kneeling in prayer before bed to Protestants and Catholics. The same sense of worship and gratitude to deity is felt and expressed by Shinto and Buddhist celebrants as in any other tradition. Atheism is a faith no less than Islam or the other Abrahamic religions, however, one thing I have never been is an Atheist, because if I cannot judge certainly how this universe has come about, I equally cannot judge between no one and some particular one. Atheists pretend to know that no god created the universe, which is no less merely faith than saying some particular god did so, whether Raven or Jesus, or any other.
The fact is that I have no specific information, and this is the truth no faith honestly states. Every tradition makes claims of being the one truth and all others evil heretics or heathens. I simply note that this is what they do, and that there is a purpose, a propaganda purpose in doing so, to create cohesive societies that can succeed at war. That seems to me to be the true purpose of religion: to defend society from aggression from others, and to successfully conquer others. I leave the lessons of history to demonstrate this fact to those that care to weigh the matter per their capacity to judge such record. Those that have been burdened with indoctrinations very often are incapable of viewing such record objectively, but must weight the record via the special exceptionalism their indoctrinations have accorded their society.
It is obvious from the conflicts in the world today that this exceptionalism is the main driver of war, whether in the Ukraine, Israel, Ethiopia, or anywhere else, people's are pitted one against the other and each claims to be the rightful victors based on their religious worship of the right god(s). I have sought to provide my kids with traditions and rituals meaningful and real that enabled them to themselves judge what is true and what cannot be true, as I have argued throughout our conversation. I owed them this as their father, to teach them the truth that they are the only judge of themselves that matters to them, and I hope I have managed it as well as I kept them fed, housed, and clothed until they escaped my rule. From their success at living their lives by their judgment, I have succeeded admirably, and I am content with that parental achievement.
Of course, you disagree. You raised your kids out of the public school and you have done well. You cannot do that here, school is mandatory. I have been at a court case where a mother was fined who rejected to send her two children to school during the years 2020/21 and I was aware of other cases during my profession where I found out about parents who were in trouble with the school system.
I did not question your unique way of raising your sons, since you have let me know. I find nothing wrong with that. I tried to give you my way of seeing the things I mentioned above. Since you find nothing of appreciation towards that, I will no longer defend my case.
I wish there were better options there. However, I did try to support my contention that kids do gain knowledge without formal educational direction, whether homeschooling or any other venue. I have also attempted to avoid disparaging your personal religious faith, but I seem to have failed at that.
My apologies.
You did not understand me but I thought, you would. That frustrated me and I used the wrong term "appreciation". I was talking about the un-specific objects in a household, either laid out or hanged on the walls. A kid cannot make anything of them, since it lacks the intellect at a young age (speaking of toddlers and pre-schools) to fully understand objects in an abstract way. When an object is not used as something practical, like a tea pot or a knife, which it will understand slowly but surely because its parents are using them daily, it will jus accept those objects as something normal but nothing what disturbs it in particular.
For the adult, a religious figurine or Jesus on the cross, has a specific meaning and in that sense I said "specific". For the child, it doesn't. Until it starts to ask questions.
You are right that when parents start wanting to explain their inner world to the child, they are going to fail since, for a kid, there is no God and there is no invisible entity to whom one can "talk". Adults make the mistake in wanting to explain these objects, way before the kid is ready for it, while it is enough to just have them there and use them in front of the kids eyes, like sitting down to pray (putting themselves in a meditative state) in the presence of that object.
These objects are just helpers to get into the posture of meditation/contemplation. The signs of religion are therefor made distinct from daily busy life, in order to make it easier for the adult to help him to get out of his usual habit into a more contemplative one. From my point of view, that is also, what churches are for. To interrupt the busy week with a contemplative Sunday morning. I am not of the notion that humans are all and always capable of being so disciplined, and if they are not able to sit down and take their times to reflect on other than daily tasks, they need the socially available space where everyone sits still.
It is the specific objects and, for example, table prayers, which will eventually catch the kids attention. Then it will start to ask why its mother or father do that and have these objects and what they are for.
Now, here comes the sensitive part and the skill of the parent how much information he shall give to a kid. And I agree, kids from pastors or priests are often rebellious because of the inability of the parent to let the kid come to its own conclusions but to interfere. The best thing, from my point of view, is to answer as little as possible or give very simple answers (appropriate to the kids age). If a kid does not stop to ask, you simply use the means to distract it and lead its attention to something else. One day, it WILL understand. The sooner, the less the adult forces it to have to understand.
But even the force parents use, like ordering them out of bed on Sunday mornings, does not hurt the child. It's annoying, yes, it is not something one understands, yes, but the wider meaning of having visible signs of separation between profane every day life and spiritual life I do not under estimate. It is one form of discipline and I am strongly convinced that every kid needs discipline (and I think you do not misunderstand that term and how I mean it).
Of course, you could say that you can do without all of it and you'd be right. Which I would describe as "exceptional".
I do understand discipline, and strongly encouraged my kids in it. I also understand ritual, and also used ritual and prayer when raising my kids. I probably talk too much though.
LoL, we both do talk too much :)
I use "faith" in its religious context. What I hear when you said it like you did, is not "faith" but actually "tastes", which I find is a big difference. You know what I mean?
While I know what you mean, I would not categorize such traditions as matters of taste, or preference, as they are fundamental cultural traditions where they are endemic as much as those cultural traditions endemic to our own youths. Many words have several meanings, faith, run, taste, and etc., which I suspect is not only true of English, but of every language. Much literature depends on such meanings, poetry, double entendres, and puns couldn't exist without them.
I could say that about every other aspect of human life. Since everything can be used for fraud. Science in the same way as religion.
We both know that is, what always happened and what will continue to happen. Arguing in this way, I as well could say that scientific institutions are as much corrupted as the religious institutions are corrupted.
That would not make neither science nor religion superfluous.
Insofar as that is true, it is because of scientism that accepts the pronouncements of a priesthood without testing them. Science isn't such faith in experts. The scientific method is the opposite of such faith, the skepticism that impels us to seek to falsify and test what we are told. You are absolutely correct that scientific institutions are corrupted in this way. That was one of the more devastating facts I was confronted with regarding Covid, that the prestige of institutions with centuries of demonstrable integrity had been leveraged to mislead us, and those institutions were corrupted and no longer demonstrating that integrity that requires adherence to factual reporting of data attained by seeking to falsify hypotheses. NEJM, JAMA, and similar institutions pandered to political narratives because polities intent on pushing jabs into the arms of everyone in the world were their source of funding, and flatly lied about covid and the jabs to keep that funding, those grant monies governments and foundations dole out to enable research to be done.
However, this is absolutely contrary to the scientific method, and is demonstrative of the degeneration of science and it's corruption by the same mechanisms that have degraded politics and financial institutions by Machiavellian masters using every means at their disposal to gain more wealth and power.
And certainly not all religious institutions have suffered such corruption. Yet, the more venerable and authoritative, the widest reaching and most influential, are ubiquitously because those have been preferentially targeted because of those features and their longer duration has subjected them to more attacks. I would have far more expectations of integrity from a local church preschool program than of the Vatican, for example. Similarly, few scientific institutions have resisted corruption. The BMJ comes to mind, as does the TrialSiteNews, while individual scientists that have refused to abandon their integrity have been strongly censored, libeled, and sanctioned in every way politically corrupt institutions could undertake.
This isn't science. Anthony Fauci infamously exclaimed 'I am the science!', but that isn't true and is contrary to science itself. It's rather treating science as a religion, venerating priests in lab coats, and substituting dogma for dissent, faith for skepticism, the very opposite of data integrity and testing hypotheses to disprove those that are false, because doing so enables pathological liars to mislead victims.
I can confirm that.
I forgive you for every joke. Jokes are very easy to forgive - LoL
But of course. How could it be otherwise? You can be aware of the coping mechanism and still want to practice and even find everything in the tradition that you learnt as a child and that gave stability to the adults around you: comfort, confidence, refuge, community.
Let me rephrase the scene, as this initiated your response.
Two people are talking about rules.
One says:
"I am who I am, with my faults and weaknesses. I don't want to be punished for what is wrong and weak about me. Because I am fallible, I break rules, I can't help it. Since I can't help it, I am not responsible. I don't trust the rule-setting source anyway, and because it has more power than I do, I don't believe in its rules. I don't accept any rules given by this source. It is an evil source."
The other replies:
"Wonderful! You have just described a paradox! Which source do you trust in terms of rules?"
Under your premise, the one being questioned in this way has no way to answer this question, and the other has no way to further develop the potential for self-knowledge. They are both victims of their inability to communicate. There is no potential that could be realised through the art of communication. Have I understood you correctly?
Here my premise is that everything under discussion between them is untested and mere assumption. Rules, faults, weaknesses, punishment due, fallibility, responsibility, a source of rules, relative power, and profanity are all assumptions that are only potentially true, and therefore potentially false. Unless these things can be tested and ascertained to be factually correct, quantified and qualified as to relevance and import, then my premise is but that they aren't more than hypotheses. So, the one being questioned could put forth any hypothetical source, alteration of the rules, or exemption for himself from punishment (as many sectarians have).
Insofar as I understand the origins of the Abrahamic faiths, Christianity arose from Christ's reinterpretation of the Mosaic laws, and Islam from Mohammed's. Is there any test, any way to falsify any of the tenets of these faiths, to establish that one of them is wrong and the others potentially true? Then there's innumerable other traditions, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Shinto, Buddhism, the uncountable and ineffable Native American beliefs, those of the ancients that painted beautifully on the caverns of continental Europe, carved images on rocks in N. Africa, and the myriad religions across Subsaharan African, Asia, and across the seven seas.
Some of these make claims, that if taken at face value, can be used to falsify those claims, such as your proscription against taking the six days of creation literally. And that's a rub, because all of these other faiths can do the same thing, pointing out that their mythos is allegorical or metaphorical for the human journey, or a simplification of Raven's actual labors creating the world analogized by dropping an acorn into the sea. It is difficult enough to explain things that are falsifiable, that are testable. When removed to a distance from reality as metaphor or allegory, inquantifiable spirits and claims of the nature of God have no way to be disproved. It's not possible to demonstrate the maker of rules is sacred or profane through language because sacred and profane are not able to be qualified or quantified, cannot be falsified or tested to establish which is what, or how they got that way.
I'd say it's like arguing over the weight of air in a bucket, except I can devise ways to ascertain the weight of air in a bucket. That's something in my wheelhouse, something I am qualified to judge. Ineffable spiritual beliefs is not.
You make it hard for me to come to common terms with you. I prefer this kind of method of indeed coming to an - at least temporarily - agreement. Of course, we need not to agree. But it makes a discussion alive from my point of view, to give a question and an answer, in the face of risking to have it not all laid out.
More of a ping pong.
Laying it all out pushes me to now read everything you laid out. Which prevents me to hear if I have understood you correctly in the former comment. If you provide me with a wall of text, you leave it to me to extract the very essence of what I have understood so far. Now, I need to have a response if what I had essentially heard from you, is understood by me in principle. I find this to be good enough.
Let us balance it more out, shall we?
So, which of what all what you have said, is the most important statement you want to bring on?
I intend to speak truth. I therefore need to differentiate between what I can have confidence in because I have tested it and not been able to disprove it, and my assumptions, biases, and and things I am wrong about. That last is difficult, because if I know I'm wrong I change my mind, so this then impels me to moderate my statements and claims, to be sure what I say remains factually correct even if I'm wrong, because I surely am wrong. I try to state things so that I am not asserting knowledge or certainty I cannot have.
I vastly prefer to be vague and uncertain than to lie or mislead. This clearly makes me unsuitable as a cult leader or politician, and I have to accept my limitations in that wise.
Interesting ideas, @erh.germany. I don't really have much to add to them. I find Christian beliefs fascinating and a great attempt at explaining how and why the universe is the way it is. They have certainly left their mark in history. My own preference is to look at the God issue from a scientific-technological perspective. This requires reframing the issue in the language of science and technology, which is a tedious and difficult thing to do. It may be misguided, but it is what my nervous system prefers. I do enjoy seeing how others frame their understanding of these higher matters and appreciate the effort you put into it!
Thank you.
If you out yourself and say that you are a Christian, you are immediately faced with the "omnipotent and omniscient" God figure. I think my whole post was to say that I am a Christian, but I do not believe in omnipotence and omniscience. That may send me right to hell, but I risk it.
I just was browsing through old comments between you and me where I was giving a Kruzmaka-story. We had quite some fun there. It was a pleasure to re-read our comments. You must go there now and do the same :)
The way I understand it is that this idea of an all-powerful and all-knowing being is not found in the bible, but it was developed by religious scholars and practitioners through the ages. Christianity's history is very interesting. I hope that it has been a force for good in your life. I was raised in a Christian household but somewhere along the line, I unhooked my neural tentacles from the mother ship. :D
Yes, I remember the fun times. heh 😜
I find that understandable.
As always, the talent of communication tips the scales. If you master the art of dialogue as a Christian, you can get along with everyone, regardless of their worldview. This in no way means betraying your Christian roots and convictions, it just means that someone knows how to communicate on all levels and can speak the other person's language as well as their own. I have experienced this in my job, where I have had to deal with many different people. If someone is an architect, you try to talk to them in architectural images, if someone is a mechanic, in these images, and if someone is a football-trainer, you ask them about the details of their profession in order to find an approach, and so on. You adopt the metaphorical language of the other person and then communication is much easier. Now it's a lot to ask of both Christians and non-Christians to be able to do this, isn't it? And one wants to hit the other on the head because they don't want to move towards the other in their expression.
:)
I agree that you can adopt the language of the other if you wish for communication to advance along a given line, but sometimes there's just no point in it. So, you move on and create your own symbolic communication system with a little help from your friends. This is how new religions and paradigms are formed. It depends on your strengths, weaknesses, and interests in a given topic. For instance, matters of God, or as I prefer to call it Higher Intelligence, I explored at length when I was younger. I discovered what I needed to discover in the language that I understood at the time. I tried to discuss these matters with people in that language, and I just got the blank stare, so I moved on. My interest in metaphysical dimensions changed from exploration to actual participation in the (un)reality of being part of a vast cosmic nervous system that produces the emergent fractal elements of higher intelligence. 👽 This is the neurological planet on which I landed, though I take it for granted that there are many other planets out there with their own unique metaphysical realities and systems of communication.
I do believe in an omnipotent (and omniscient and omnibenevolent) God. From my experience I have even come to believe that he would not only be omnipotent, but also the source of power. This is because, if you do what is right, I believe, you become more powerful. And if you do that which is not right, you become more powerless.
Have you not seen, in my opinion, that people who have a vice, to give an example, seem incapable of getting out of it? They feel powerless and unable to stop doing the wrong (even if they want to). Because the more they do it, the less power they have.
I think it is true that:
But if you avoid the wrong, I think one will feel more powerful.
So I do believe in an omnipotent God.
I can go into more detail if needed, but I think that sums it up well.
Cheers to you!
Although I don't believe in an omnipotent and omnipresent God, I wouldn't, for example, make our relationship with each other dependent on it and now attack your person because I couldn't understand why you do it, for example. I believe in a potent and powerful God which includes all traits I can imagine.
Ultimately, what exactly an individual understands by God belongs to their inner world, which is as difficult to explain as God himself. Especially as I do not understand faith as being detached from the practically real world. From faith derives the acceptance of recognising the Ten Commandments as a set of rules and the greatest realisation for me lies in seeing that I am fallible and a fool who can make a fool of himself and others. That does not make me a helpless irresponsible plaything of God, but quite the contrary, it provides me with the insight that despite my fallacies, I am still responsible for them.
I understand Christianity as an endeavour to unite people under this concept and the resulting practical actions and to offer a coherent world view. Also as a place of reflection, confidence and refuge. Many who see themselves as non-Christians forget that if Christianity didn't exist, everything else would be gone and they underestimate what they take for granted as support. In a youtube comment I read:
I fully understand what you mean with
Modern westerners tend to disagree, since they see that power lies in the hands of those who are without God. So they feel powerless. Which in a sense, is true, for power is defined as "who has the money and the influence to steer the wheel of leading the masses". It's the outward look but not the inward.
I am always happy to go into more detail since I feel every dialogue about the matter enriches you and me.
I can agree with the gist of it.
I have my own theory about the "power" of these people. It's just that, despite all the wrong things they may be doing, they had to do some right things to get to accumulate it. Not everything is black and white. Even some "not good" people can have some merit. But this enters into a different set of thoughts.
But, in my opinion, I hesitate to call it "power" altogether. I think that, perhaps, many times we not know what power is. The way I see it, power can be something even spiritual, so to speak, far removed from what is ordinarily called power. It has nothing to do with an office, a position or a popularity contest. A person who has nothing can be more powerful than a person with thousands of fortunes. But we are so used to thinking with our eyes that we do not believe in the invisible, and power is one of these unseen things. Maybe it's more something that you feel.
There is a story of a monk who was disobeying a foreign military. The military said to him, "Don't you know that you are facing a man who can kill, if he want so?" The monk replied, "Don't you know that you are facing a man who can let himself be killed, if he want so?"
Power resides in virtue, I think, or perhaps follows it. I think it was Aquinas who said that power and good are one and the same thing, although I am not sure about it. I see power as something in itself, just like good or justice, etc. It is non-physical. Being powerful is more a quality of the psyche.
But I digress.
I welcome any point of view, so you can feel free to add to it as you please.
What you said about power I actually tried to wave into my post. Though in a more implicit way.
The story of the monk reminds me of my grand dad, and his experience in prison camp. Maybe you remember it, when I talked about the historical events within my own family. It comes very close to what you have given as an anecdote about the monk.
We see that all along in movies, yet we don't apply that to our own lives, since we are usually in no way ready to face death (and I am not saying that I am that kind of human).
The term "power" is loaded, that is right.
When you are faced with what it actually is, when it is talked about one person wanting the other one to bend, submit to whatever might be the issue, the better term is probably "violence" or "coercion". Someone using violence upon you, to give into his will is one who, in principle, feels powerless to use other means than violence.
There is also the phenomena, when people feel powerless, they find the umbrella under which they want to gather, in order not having to be the ones personally to act out violence, but having others doing it for them.
So yeah, I agree with your additional thoughts on "power".
I completely agree.
Yes, I do. It is undoubtedly a impressive story. Maybe in the future we can talk more about it.
Greetings.