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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jan 12, 2015 - 09:48am PT
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since it is experience-based, then you need to have a taste.
Exactly. Man, I am ready. I've been wanting to do this for years. You have convinced me that there is something to it, and studies say it is good for you to boot.
I will PM you if you will help me. I live in Norman, just S of OKC. There are some Buddhist churches or whatever they call them. I just can't figure out which one is the right one. You could help there.
I am interested in Buddhism specifically because it doesn't require belief. It is what it is, and I've never read a bad word about meditation.
You live in L.A. right? You probably have many choices.
I could do a road trip, but not if it is super expensive.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jan 12, 2015 - 11:07am PT
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I love the term "chess engine" !
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-real-kings-of-chess-are-computers-1420827071
Chess playing by computers is entirely mechanistic btw, even if entirely unknowable / unpredictable because of built-in chaos, etc..
Three or four years ago, inspired by a Dennett lecture on freedom of the will in Edinburgh (it's on YouTube), I loaded a couple "chess engines" in my computer and let them go at it as a function of various settings I could control. It was fund and enlightening on many counts, I'd recommend it to anybody who's got the time.
Chess engines: Great explanatory power (as Carl Sagan would say) regarding how complex systems work: On the one hand, they are entirely mechanistic (they follow the cosmic rules exactly; thus they have no "contracausal" or "supercausal" freedom); on the other hand they have can-do power and what's more, some have more of it than others (a key point, too).
What to note: Can-do power is easily conceived as a kind of freedom. Some climbers have the freedom (the can-do power) to climb 5.13 while others do not. Similar with chess engines.
.....
Even in a fully mechanistic universe, even as fully-caused living things, we still have can-do power and life is still able to be powerfully lived.
Where's it say THAT in the Koran? or in the Bible? lol
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 12, 2015 - 11:44am PT
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"That is one reason that I am uneasy about atheism. Religion, even if it is false, has worked as a mechanistic framework for basic morality. Strip that away and you are left with Mistah Kurtz."
Holy shiite muslims where do you come up with this crap?
Ever hear of the Stoics? Thomas Paine? The Bill of Rights?
It's idiocy like this that keeps the God ball rolling along. Not to mention this the statement above supports continuing The Big Lie for for the false notion that the world would somehow be less moral without it. If the behavior of the world's True Believers is any indication - I'll take my far more moral atheist pals any day, thanks.
Pardon me, but this kind of ignorance just pisses me off.
Morality is innate - a product of evolution (OF COURSE). Religion borrowed morality, not the other way around.
Need I mention that most agnostics do not seem to understand the true definitions of either agnosticism nor atheism. From my discussions, most self identified agnostics are actually atheists.
Hey, JL - if you've got no meditation retreat recommendations to share, just let me know and I'll take it from there.
I'd prefer doing a BASE jump though. Seems like the quicker route to the no place.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 12, 2015 - 12:04pm PT
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So Ward, now that you've demonstrated your clairvoyance - who will the Seahawks beat in the Superbowl?
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 12, 2015 - 12:06pm PT
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You guys should try a rough 90 mile open water crossing in a kayak.
You'll see God and a whole lot of other really bizarre stuff.
More if the moon happens to be up.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 12, 2015 - 12:51pm PT
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Not to mention this the statement above supports continuing The Big Lie for for the false notion that the world would somehow be less moral without it.
If morality is innate then define it. What is moral and what isn't? What religion does is to codify morality through easily assimilated lessons. Whether that comes from god or not it facilitates adherence to certain behaviors. The bigger lie is that religion is nothing but relativistic nonsense and should be ignored. If morality is inherent in the human mind then surely that inherent morality is manifested in both the religious and the secular. The implication of the above statement is that religion is in fact less moral than secular thought.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 12, 2015 - 12:55pm PT
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Silly. Creativity, love, curiosity - all are also innate and evolved, but all vary from individual to individual - as does morality. A universal definition of morality - given its inherent subjectivity, would be impossible, of course. Communities negotiate group morality - always with some level of continued disagreement and varying compliance.
Religion should be ignored? Another one of your strawmen. Never said it, and certainly not remotely possible.
The implications of the above statement? I haven't a clue - it's yours, not mine.
"Extending a poster's point of view" is a strawman's number one tool.
My thesis has always consistently been that religion is not necessary for a well functioning, free, moral society. The data that supports this are secular nations - hundreds of millions of people who live peacefully and successfully together without religion.
That's a much harder thesis to counter, given the inconvenient supporting data. Hence all the strawmen, I reckon.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:11pm PT
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Paul, there is a lot written about an innate morality that we all share as human beings regardless of culture. Most involve experiments where subjects are asked what they would do in various situations in which they can save to save this individual or group of people or that individual or group of people. Culture apparently imposes an additional layer on this innate morality, but the innate morality is there.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:17pm PT
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Given that moral action is observed in other species - who do not practice religion as we know it (and do not appear to have the brain function to do so) - I'd say its a safe bet that innate morality evolved long before the mental equipment powerful sophisticated enough to invent God did.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:20pm PT
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Silly. Creativity, love, curiosity - all are also innate and evolved, but all vary from individual to individual - as does morality. A universal definition of morality - given its inherent subjectivity, would be impossible, of course. Communities negotiate group morality - always with some level of continued disagreement and varying compliance.
The tap dance of subjectivity yields nothing. If morality is but a subjective construct based on subjective, individual need facilitating evolutionary success then explain its universal nature. Further explain why it so often violates the needs of evolutionary success. How is it we can hold certain "truths" to be self evident? Why shouldn't we own slaves, a great boon to economic and societal success?
Silly, straw men? Really?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:26pm PT
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My thesis has always consistently been that religion is not necessary for a well functioning, free, moral society. The data that supports this are secular nations - hundreds of millions of people who live peacefully and successfully together without religion.
Those secular societies, and I assume you're talking about western Europe, are constructed on the vestiges of centuries of religious thought dating back to the Paleolithic. One wonders what their morality might exhibit without that past.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:29pm PT
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Culture apparently imposes an additional layer on this innate morality, but the innate morality is there.
I don't disagree, but you can't dismiss the importance of religious practice as a mediating force, sometimes rational, sometimes emotional on that innate morality.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:36pm PT
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Yes, modern European society remains substantially unchanged from the Middle Ages. Nothing new under the sun there.
Explaining the universal nature of human morality or brains requires the same simple logic: Our species evolved with those traits. Both vary by individual, however.
Not hard.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:38pm PT
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Yes, modern European society remains substantially unchanged from the Middle Ages. Nothing new under the sun there.
Finally, a solid example of the "straw man."
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:39pm PT
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European societies are also well educated because they're affluent, very often the result of the merciless exploitation of people in other part of the world, particularly people of different races, religions and cultures.
Their societies are also smaller and less diverse than our own, with a greater sense of community. One has to ask how well "innate morality" will work in a highly individualistic society with little sense of community or social regulation other than religion and the law.
Then there's the idea of maintaining that because Thomas Paine etc. could be an atheist and moral so every Joe Sixpack can do it too which I find rather dubvious.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Jan 12, 2015 - 01:40pm PT
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Let's light em on fire and burn some witches, then.
"Every Joe Sixpack"? Wow. Telling. Way to employ the GOP's favorite dehumanizing stereotype. Apparently atheistic morality is only accessible to the ivory tower elite. After all, all the Blue Collars are looking for is cheap half racks and a warm place to take a dump. That sounds familiar to me for some reason....
Ah, well. We're all doomed I guess.
Europe is smaller and less diverse, with a greater sense of community? Got any supporting data, there? Seems like once you've got a lower end threshhold of few million folks together - that's more than a statistically relevant sample size, no? Such a counterargument also ignores the smaller, but highly diverse, irreligious sub societies within our own society.
I'm left wondering how well versed or familiar Jan is with American society these days.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jan 12, 2015 - 02:06pm PT
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I'm well enough versed in American society to know that so far, atheists are a very small minority in our society, and they tend to come from the more affluent and educated elites. Maybe Joe Sixpack will be a highly moral atheist a few centuries from now, but not at the moment. Then again maybe it sounds better to use that leftist elite term "the common man" as though that will change anything.
As for Europe being less diverse, yes as a continent it is (majority are white Christians or ex Christians speaking Indo European languages) and certainly individual countries are less diverse. And if you think there isn't a lot of social pressure to do things "the British, French, German, Swiss" etc. way, then you obviously haven't lived there.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jan 12, 2015 - 02:06pm PT
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Wow. Telling. Way to employ the GOP's favorite dehumanizing stereotype. Apparently atheistic morality is only accessible to the ivory tower elite.
Whoa... flagrantus strawhommus!
The whole of Western Philosophical thought has been affected by theological thought. Like Socrates, there are elements we wish to discard but the influence is doubtless. From the Hellenistic to the present, religion is the underlying red shift of the Western Tradition. What, after all, is a liberal but a non-believing Christian.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 12, 2015 - 02:08pm PT
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Tvash -- "I'm left wondering how well versed or familiar Jan is with American society these days."
She's by far one of the most intelligent people on this forum .....
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