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jeremy11
Trad climber
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Mar 17, 2009 - 10:34pm PT
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If someone claims to be an atheist, they are stating that there is Definitely No God anywhere in the Universe. To authoritatively make that claim, they must be ALL Knowing.
This, of course, is contradictory, as one of the attributes of God is Total Knowledge.
Sadly, but truly, many theists have been jerks about it. It is much better to live as an example of the LOVE of Christ, and only preach sermons upon request. So I'll shut up now.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Mar 17, 2009 - 11:04pm PT
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If someone claims to be a believer in god, then they must be all knowing since it takes total knowlege of that fact. Since only god can be all knowing, the believer if therefore delusional.
This same logic can be applied to belief in Santa and fairys.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Mar 17, 2009 - 11:43pm PT
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Who else has bouldered at God Rock north of Bishop? Can you then be an Atheist?
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pip the dog
Mountain climber
planet dogboy
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Mar 18, 2009 - 12:17am PT
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cintune,
> Pip I think this is where the qigong art of non-rivalry
> might have come in handy.
absolutely. i am confident that Rokjox' heart is in the right place, it is just his words that at times veer off into, well, "off.” perhaps he rips into his keyboard before considering the whole of the post he is responding too.
as in the post above -- i was in the middle of a large crowd in at the center of a large shopping mall. and people were just walking past this wailing child. so i sat her down on a nearby bench, bought her an 'Orange Julius' (or whatever), sent my sweetie to find the local security geniuses, and just waited for mom to arrive. it wasn't like i put the child in my car and crossed a state border. it amazed me that her mom took over half an hour to mention to the security people that "her 3 yr old 'might' be missing'. mom had just continued shopping.
~~~
but precisely the same thing can --and should-- be said of me. i am absolutely notorious for flailing away at my keyboard before actually reading, carefully, all of the post that for whatever reason suddenly lit up some synapses in the outer regions of my 'gulliver. ah, the simple act of taking a moment to read all of a post carefully and taking amoment to consider it's intent. hell, taking a moment to think about much of anything. i'm working on that, albeit with limited results to date.
as such i owe brother Rockjox an apology. and he has it, right here and right now.
~~~
just now i am trying to take a deep breath before responding to 'jeremy11'. and if i'm smart, i'll recognize that i have tried to make my small point at least 6 times in this thread. and that attempt #7 isn't likely to move the topic forward.
i just need to bite my sharp irish catholic huge family in the ghetto tongue sometimes -- regardless if it happens to be the only effective weapon i was born with. and hardly a gentle defensive art, as in Akido or Qigong. more like a 25lb mallet where a tiny veneer hammer would do.
Popeye got it right: "I yam what I yam." Yet that is no excuse for not trying to evolve just a bit (i'm confident Olive Oyl told Popeye so, endlessly -- as my Olive Oyl tells me so, endlessly.)
all good things,
^,,^
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Mar 18, 2009 - 12:36am PT
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Jaybro, if yo not be kiddin' thanks. I try to keep these comments short cause after you read several really long ones....Yikes. Hopefully we be reading and thinking and ...more. Smiles, lynne
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Mar 18, 2009 - 12:41am PT
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Norton, I sense that yo be thinking. But if you believe in God it takes faith because yo canna' see Him.
And It takes something also to believe in the things that we know, like wind and atoms and neutrons and gravity and so much more that is real and exists, but we canna' see. Peace and Joy, lynne
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jstan
climber
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Mar 27, 2009 - 04:46pm PT
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http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/04/04/neurotheology/
Are humans hard-wired for faith?
POSTED: 11:54 a.m. EDT, April 5, 2007
By A. Chris Gajilan
NEW YORK (CNN) -- "I just know God is with me. I can feel Him always," a young Haitian woman once told me.
"I've meditated and gone to another place I can't describe. Hours felt like mere minutes. It was an indescribable feeling of peace," recalled a CNN colleague.
"I've spoken in languages I've never learned. It was God speaking through me," confided a relative.
The accounts of intense religious and spiritual experiences are topics of fascination for people around the world. It's a mere glimpse into someone's faith and belief system. It's a hint at a person's intense connection with God, an omniscient being or higher plane. Most people would agree the experience of faith is immeasurable.
Dr. Andrew Newberg, neuroscientist and author of "Why We Believe What We Believe," wants to change all that. He's working on ways to track how the human brain processes religion and spirituality. It's all part of new field called neurotheology.
After spending his early medical career studying how the brain works in neurological and psychiatric conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, depression and anxiety, Newberg took that brain-scanning technology and turned it toward the spiritual: Franciscan nuns, Tibetan Buddhists, and Pentecostal Christians speaking in tongues. His team members at the University of Pennsylvania were surprised by what they found.
"When we think of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, we see a tremendous similarity across practices and across traditions."
The frontal lobe, the area right behind our foreheads, helps us focus our attention in prayer and meditation.
The parietal lobe, located near the backs of our skulls, is the seat of our sensory information. Newberg says it's involved in that feeling of becoming part of something greater than oneself.
The limbic system, nestled deep in the center, regulates our emotions and is responsible for feelings of awe and joy.
Newberg calls religion the great equalizer and points out that similar areas of the brain are affected during prayer and meditation. Newberg suggests that these brain scans may provide proof that our brains are built to believe in God. He says there may be universal features of the human mind that actually make it easier for us to believe in a higher power.
Interestingly enough, devout believers and atheists alike point to the brain scans as proof of their own ideas.
Some nuns and other believers champion the brain scans as proof of an innate, physical conduit between human beings and God. According to them, it would only make sense that God would give humans a way to communicate with the Almighty through their brain functions.
Some atheists saw these brain scans as proof that the emotions attached to religion and God are nothing more than manifestations of brain circuitry.
Scott Atran doesn't consider himself an atheist, but he says the brain scans offer little in terms of understanding why humans believe in God. He is an anthropologist and author of "In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion."
Instead of viewing religion and spirituality as an innate quality hardwired by God in the human brain, he sees religion as a mere byproduct of evolution and Darwinian adaptation.
"Just like we're not hardwired for boats, but humans in all cultures make boats in pretty much the same way, Atran explains. "Now, that's a result both of the way the brain works and of the needs of the world, and of trying to traverse a liquid medium and so I think religion is very much like that."
Atran points to the palms of his hands as another example of evolutionary coincidence. He says the creases formed there are a mere byproduct of human beings working with our hands -- stretching back to the ages of striking the first fires, hunting the first prey to building early shelter. Although, the patterns in our palms were coincidentally formed by eons of evolution and survival, he points out that cultures around the world try to find meaning in them through different forms of palm reading.
Anthropologists like Atran say, "Religion is a byproduct of many different evolutionary functions that organized our brains for day-to-day activity."
To be sure, religion has the unparalleled power to bring people into groups. Religion has helped humans survive, adapt and evolve in groups over the ages. It's also helped us learn to cope with death, identify danger and finding mating partners.
Today, scientific images can track our thoughts on God, but it would take a long leap of faith to identify why we think of God in the first place.
A. Chris Gajilan is a senior producer with CNN Medical News.
END OF REPORT
A ways back I suggested we would answer the question of whether gods exist by performing brain scans on people occupied with religious thought. Turns out there is a name for this branch of medicine.
NEUROTHEOLOGY
Dr. Andrew Newberg MD is a prominent practitioner. His book is titled,
“Why We Believe What We Believe.”
He suggests we are hard wired and this goes into the second aspect of my suggestion. It can take millions of years to settle on a brain’s wiring so this study could well become interested in doing studies on other forms of life to see how brain function of this sort evolved and perhaps when. If we start with specie most closely resembling the first mammals, when do we first begin to pick up patterns similar to those typical of religious thought?
Bottom line?
Less than 100 years from now we may also have a Darwinian theory for the concept of religion itself and a roadmap of how this evolved with time among life forms on Earth.
We live in truly amazing times!
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Mar 27, 2009 - 05:45pm PT
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Dr. F, instead of putting forth unprovable arguments why don't you actually research God. Start with the book of Matthew in your New Testament. If you have questions, honestly dialogue with Jesus. You gotta be pretty quiet inside tho and listen.
You know how I know there is a God?.....:D Lynnie climbs with pretty much no fear. (The approaches are scary) Ask any of our bitd friends. I disliked climbing and I was terrified of heights.
Climbing is a gift God gave me when my husband, Dan, died. It is a wonderful gift. It keeps my brain and body working. Peace Dude. Keep asking the hard questions. Life is short and then....
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jstan
climber
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Mar 27, 2009 - 05:52pm PT
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If this avenue of investigation is pursued we will have the largest advance in human culture since the advent of agriculture more than 5000 years ago. Darwinism will have finally achieved its full impact.
How many angels can sit on the head of a pin,
what is a soul
who has a soul and who does not and
whether god exists or not
are all empty questions.
Some are even just argumentative strategies employed over the millennia to control people. Get them arguing vacuous concepts so they have not the time to poke holes where the dogma is most vulnerable.
They are just devices.
Lynne:
When you are without fear may I assume you are not on the sharp end of the rope? Did you read the thread devoted to Derek Hersey describing how he was without fear when soloing?
Lynne, there are times when fear is your best friend.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Mar 27, 2009 - 06:06pm PT
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Know how I know there is no god?
Because when I was little girl I prayed real hard for a pony.
I didn't get it.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Mar 27, 2009 - 06:15pm PT
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jstan, no not on the sharp end. It an astounding feat I am on the end of a rope, period. (oops! almost said it's a miracle, but I knew that wouldn't fly.) :D
jstan, I could barely walk across a bridge bitd. I offered a guy a new rope if he would just lower me to the ground off a climb my hub insisted I try. Guess yo had to be there.....back to work...lynne
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Mar 27, 2009 - 06:39pm PT
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"Some atheists saw these brain scans as proof that the emotions attached to religion and God are nothing more than manifestations of brain circuitry."
This approach has been around for ages and goes by various names - materialism, reductionism, et al, and attempts to "prove" that consciousness and all that jazz are "produced" by the brain.
However, there are no viable neuroscientists that I know of who give materialism any credence as an "efficient cause" or first cause for consciousness or so-called spiritual experiences.
JL
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Mar 27, 2009 - 06:47pm PT
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85% of the National Academy of Sciences, the elite scientific body in America, are atheists. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news...
It's estimated that 40% of scientists across all disciplines in America are atheist. Meaning that the majority of American scientists hold a belief of one kind or another.
I expect to have scientists attacked, somehow, soon ..wait ..
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jstan
climber
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Mar 27, 2009 - 07:38pm PT
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John:
As I read it the neuroscientists are trying to characterize the kinds of brain function associated with, how shall we call it, "religious thought." At this point they are not raising the quite different question of " cause." Simple association is being asked at this point. So I think your point/question is not at issue. But Lynne's case may allow us to illuminate this as follows.
In my original post I suggested if very basic similarities are found that cross all manner of population groups, one has to look more deeply for the reasons for this. I have not looked, as yet, into Newberg's data, but the report suggests that commonality has been observed. If in fact over the millennia the existence of "faith" has increased the Darwinian survivability of people then the hypothesis of an association would tend to be supported. (Here it is very hard to ignore the fact a lot of people have been killed over the eons in one way or another because of religion. It is not entirely clear yet, but Pope Benedict may be reinstituting Galileo's now 400 year long house arrest.)
Now Lynne has presented us with a very interesting test. To one degree or another some of us do not remain sanguine regarding the possibility of falling. Lynne has suggested this has been a prominent feature in her thinking. Would you not think that incidents of "falling" might have been a cause over the past millions of years for our developing how we "feel" about heights? If you do, then you are accepting the possibility this commonly encountered circumstance has been a factor( or a cause) in our being afraid of heights. Would you not say? If you agree that we have come to be wired this way as regards heights, then you may become ready to look at data as to whether our experiences over a million years have also played a role in the "religious wiring" or our brains.
Lynne's situation very directly establishes the potential for a parallel here. We can test her. Have her do a climb that puts her at the start of a 100' unprotected traverse some 100' above the ground. If she asks to be lowered to the ground then we know her wiring as regards the fear of height has outweighed her religious wiring. If she chooses to continue then we have put her religious wiring to its ultimate test. It has proven itself to be the stronger. (In days gone by we used to give people this test by drowning or burning at the stake. Tests of one's belief are a prominent part of our religious history.)
My feeling is wiring for the fear of falling probably dated at least from the time we were tree shrews I believe some 50 million years ago. The time span for Lynne's religious wiring probably began about the time social organization began to be important among our specie. Perhaps only over the last million years. Now the strength of the conditioning will be an integral over a product of training intensity times time. Religious intensity would have to be fifty times stronger than the fear of falling for that integral to indicate religion will trump.
I trust, and sincerely hope, she will ask to be lowered.
Norton:
Scientists are not intergalactic aliens and they have been subjected to the same conditioning as the rest of us for the past million years. Intellectually they may believe one thing or another is true but when asked that question who of us has not thought, "This question means nothing to me. Why respond "Don't be silly" when doing so may cause my grant application to be rejected? Social conditioning. Deny it as we will social conditioning is a fact.
A million years of this would be more than enough to cause the best of us to put ourselves in weird logical positions.
PS:
The assumption intergalactic aliens will not have been subjected to social conditioning is quite probably a loser.
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'Pass the Pitons' Pete
Big Wall climber
like Ontario, Canada, eh?
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Mar 27, 2009 - 07:58pm PT
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Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
Cheers,
"Praise the LORD and Pass the Pitons" Pete
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Mar 27, 2009 - 08:00pm PT
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God damn Dirtbag for starting this interesting thread long ago.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Social climber
valley center, ca
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Mar 27, 2009 - 08:06pm PT
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Oh My ! Work over, just checked this thread. Oh My ! Why can't yo people limit yo selves to several succicint para's.
What does being overjoyed I can finally tie in and climb without much/hardly any fear compared to the past and thanking God for this gift.....have to do with a 100ft. unprotected traverse 100 ft. up.
I need a jstan thomas guide or an interpreter.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Mar 27, 2009 - 08:10pm PT
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Religion is all about the dual nature of fear. It was invented to assuage the nerves of our prehistoric ancestors, who knew jack about what was really going on around them and essentially feared everything, with good reason. A clever made-up story, or two, or a thousand, calmed their nerves, allowing them to keep the fear at bay and get on with becoming such a precious dominant species... But on the flip side, by taking possession of our fear, religion can wield it like a weapon to intimidate those who don't like the flavor of the local Kool-Aid. So don't worry, cause the Good News is that We All Live Forever, little munchkins... or whatever. But just don't piss off the great and powerful Oz, or you'll be sorry.
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jstan
climber
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Mar 27, 2009 - 08:11pm PT
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There it is. "Much/hardly". The test is complete. You all will be relieved to know we will not have to burn Lynne at the stake. She failed.
I really regret that I will not be around 100 years from now to see how this all turns out. We will still have religious people certainly. But they will know why it feels good to be that way. And we, finally, can stop asking how many angels can sit on the head of a pin. Since I was five that one has always left me with my jaw hanging.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 27, 2009 - 08:13pm PT
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Let's not burn Lynne's steak at the FaceLift, either.
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