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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 15, 2015 - 12:31pm PT
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this cloud of doom and suspicion
Obliviously this doesn't come from The Power seekers, or The Pleasure seekers. It comes from the intelligent foresight of thinkers who understand the evil ways of man.
Guns and the nuclear threat will soon go by the wayside. With the advent of suicide robots with an electronic shockwave that reduces brains to mush.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jun 15, 2015 - 01:24pm PT
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The difference between monkeys and apes. Please note that humans did not come from either modern monkeys or apes. Physically, All three of us are descended from a distant common ancestor.
Traits all Primates share in common (Prosimians, Old and New World Monkeys, Apes, and Humans)
-fingernails instead of claws
-opposable thumbs
-small noses and flat faces
-loose flexible lips
-eyes up front that see in color, 3-D and stereoscopic vision
-large brains for body size
-complex social life
-most have some kind of incest taboo
Monkeys
All of the above +
-walk on all fours like other mammals
-walk flat footed on top of tree limbs
-have tails
-have vocal communications that are specific to certain situations
Apes
All of the above +
-no tails
-arms longer than legs
-walk using three different methods unlike other mammals
--hang by their arms (brachiation)
--walk upright for short periods
--knuckle walk on their front legs with sloping backs because arms are so much longer than legs
-all have some kind of incest taboo
-all have vocal communications & ability to learn sign language
-some pass along tool making culture to the next generation through demonstration of techniques
Humans
-All of the above +
-legs are longer than arms
-habitually walk upright
-pelvis and shoulder size and structure are unique
-language fully developed & used to pass on culture from one generation to the next
-sophisticated tools
-all have some kind of incest taboo
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 15, 2015 - 02:04pm PT
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lol
wtf?
What happened to my Asian hotties looking for a good time?!!1
.....
That's the trouble with language and metaphor, ain't it? I mean if Adam and Even can be slanged out to mean earth and life (see modern "sophisticated theologian speak" Cardinal George Pell to Dawkins, Q&A, for eg) then our ancient common ancestors can certainly be slanged out to monkeys.
"Adam and Eve are terms – what do they mean: life and earth. It’s like every man. That’s a beautiful, sophisticated, mythological account. It’s not science but it’s there to tell us two or three things. First of all that God created the world and the universe. Secondly, that the key to the whole of universe, the really significant thing, are humans and, thirdly, it is a very sophisticated mythology to try to explain the evil and suffering in the world." -the Great Cardinal George Pell, lol!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD1QHO_AVZA
Hitchens: "Religion poisons everything."
HFCS: "It's Ovah for Jehovah"
LOL! George Pell COMPLETELY out of his depth talking about descent of modern man from neanderthals, etc. In above discussion w Dawkins. How could he continue? I'd be so embarrassed I'd leave head bowed. But that's just me, I guess.
Any day now we might here from the Pope that the Great God Jehovah (God of Moses and Abraham) is actually just metaphor (eventually slang) for the Great Mother Nature (Who like Aiwa of Pandora cares only for the balance of life and does NOT take sides, Avatar, lol!).
Also... that our Resurrection to come is just metaphor or slang for our starstuff reconstituted in other things. In this age of social media and worldly awareness, growing by leaps and bounds every year, would any "sophisticated" "science type" here be surprised? lol
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 15, 2015 - 02:38pm PT
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Can monkey-mind see no-thing?
:>\
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 15, 2015 - 02:53pm PT
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LOL! George Pell COMPLETELY out of his depth talking about descent of modern man from neanderthals, etc. In above discussion w Dawkins. How could he continue? I'd be so embarrassed I'd leave head bowed. But that's just me, I guess.
Likewise, you're equally out of your element discussing the notion of metaphor... perhaps a science thing... if you could just stop LOL!ing for a moment and really examine the issue you might see religious metaphor as a device that helps millions through the difficult experience of the "slings and arrows" of life from great to small. The morphine might not cure the cancer but it sure as hell helps with the pain... that, by the way, is a metaphor.
It isn't religion poisoning everything it's people... Hitchens for all his brilliance just didn't get this and it led him to his support of the Iraq war another disastrous error on his part.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 15, 2015 - 02:56pm PT
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but as far as you are concerned, you cannot "know" that I know, we agree on behavior... but that has nothing to do with what is "actually happening."
You don't want to concede that your "theory" is any worse than a physical theory. Yet you have not provided anything to show that it does better than a physical, materialistic theory.
Theory about what? When I say, consciousness at bottom has no content, what do you think that means. Kindoly notice that you keep going back to some thing, idea, concept, theory, something, anything that we can quantify and "know." I can understand that you hold out the hope that sentience can be exactly represented in digital form, as a purly mechanical output. The hope for this belief rests in our ability to reverse engineer objective functioning back to sentience - classic reductionism - then once we understand the basic stuff or things that source sentince, we can build it from scratch and have a machine that can love and laugh and know itself. Except no amount of reverse engineering of objective functioniing can lead back to sentience because subjective self awareness is bnot the selfsame thing as objective functioning. That leaves you to try and reverse engineer sentience, from the top down. Except there is no top or bottom because there is no edges to it. If there is, Ed, kindly point them out, even in poetical language.
And again, when you talk about what is "actually happening" with self awareness, or sentience, your notion, I believe, is that what is "actual" is not sentience itself, but an underlying physical process that "creates" it. This forces you into a closed loop from which thre is no escape. You can't even look at sentience as it is, neat. Your mind simply has to return to the stuff or thing that sources it.
A wedge into this circle might be to ask yourself what you consider to be the difference between sentince and neuro-processing.r, what is the difference between objective and subjective. If yu can look at the objective sans the subjective, then you can look at the subjective, sans objective. What happens when you do (shut up and stop calculatinig?). This might break the materialist trance.
And BASE, the idea that I was cherry picking QM to somehow vouchsafe some meditation insights is to have the whole thing bass-akwards. The science types that I ride with are also big Vapasanna folks so they are quite naturally looking at the empiracal stuff they find in their science (objective) and constrasting it with what they find in their experiential (subjective) adventures. They are not of a mind that the two realms exit in exclusive realities but rather there is one coin, so to speak, and finding commonalities is an exciting adventure. The idea they - or I - am looking to science to validate far-fetched subjective "theories" is also the opposite of what is happening. More like - there have been many smart folks who have looked at reality hard and long. Some look at things (quantifiers), others look into the void, the unborn, the pre-thing. Some, like my friends, probe both realms.
I do know that most of them have doubts that, for example, the search for what the neutron is all about will perforce eventually lead to some stuff that has mass. Though I certainly don't know the math to understand this at depth, one of the things often mentioned is that no one is quite sure what mass actually is.
JL
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 15, 2015 - 02:59pm PT
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you're equally out of your element discussing the notion of metaphor...
no, I think I have it. ;)
PS. lol!
.....
Can monkey-mind see no-thing?
To what or to whom is this referring? Rather enigmatic?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 15, 2015 - 03:10pm PT
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Paul, btw, if you think Cardinal George (or the Church at large) telling one group Adam and Eve are literally their ancestors while telling another group (seated in the adjoining room?) they are metaphor for life and earth is sophisticated or brilliant or wise - or somehow compassionate or sympathetic - then I am sorry, I have to disagree and call it what it is... VERY WEAK SAUCE.
Perhaps good enough for yesterday's "low-information" votary but thank Atheist God today's secular progressive sees through the bs.
Also related weak sauce otherwise bs... back-peddling and telling a group, or groups, something is metaphor when for centuries it was passed on (or palmed off) as truth, literal truth, historically or operationally.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jun 15, 2015 - 03:14pm PT
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Moose, I saw that Indian guy in person quite by coincidence the last time I was in India. Quite impressive. It just goes to prove that even with our big brains, we still can learn a lot from a monkey! Probably every other mammal as well. For sure, any trip to India is full of surprises.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 15, 2015 - 03:36pm PT
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Paul, btw, if you think Cardinal George (or the Church at large) telling one group Adam and Eve are literally their ancestors while telling another group (seated in the adjoining room?) they are metaphor for life and earth is sophisticated or brilliant or wise - or compassionate or sympathetic - then I am sorry, I have to disagree and call it what it is... VERY WEAK SAUCE.
Ha! I don't know cardinal George from Adam... he's not the point if he's a huckster so be it.
The issue is that what poisons everything isn't religion it's human nature. Religion actually serves, helps people.
I certainly wouldn't declare science a poison because Dr. Oz sells snake oil.
HFCS and Paul, your last posts belong to the Science vs Religion thread. Which turned into a God vs no God debate.
Sorry for the lecture, but I really like your on topic posts.
Focus!
;-)
Moose
The thread police... and me with this authority issue, hmm.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 15, 2015 - 03:42pm PT
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"Religion actually serves, helps people."
lol!
Yeah, and Big Tobacco used to serve, help people too. :)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 15, 2015 - 04:08pm PT
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"Religion actually serves, helps people."
lol!
Yeah, and Big Tobacco used to serve, help people too. :)
I had a friend, a psychiatrist, MD, real science type. She worked with parents and their dying children. She did it for some time and had to give it up because their was no alleviating the pain of that experience, she felt there was not even the slightest she could offer by way of consolation and their grief was simply unbearable. She was an atheist but saw religion as the one thing that brought those parents some small sense of relief to a pain of nearly infinite proportions. Yeah, religion does good, and (to keep it on topic) it's a valuable product of the mind.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jun 15, 2015 - 04:41pm PT
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George Pell COMPLETELY out of his depth talking about descent of modern man from neanderthals,
Well there's not much discussion to be had past the last 4k yrs, is there? I thought Pell did pretty good for this time period. He also went to Oxford, jus like Dawkins who incidentally majored in Behavior.
When we do look back at mankinds societies that had enough sense to keep a record. We can understand in societies like the Romans before their introduction to religion. They were hardly a step above their animalistic behavior, men and women killing each other for sport. Men and women having sex for sport and that's not even the tip of the iceberg. After Paul wrote a letter to the Romans describing the road to dignity, and when this letter entered the consciousness of the Romans they separated into societies of unequal levels of intellectual intelligence. And Rome crumbled. Since then the bible has held the moral bar high throughout the worlds environment and has reached just about every society. For countries today like the USA, the bible in the environment has caused a manipulation within the gene pool. Like it or not, everyone born today has the 10 commandments written in their hearts, just like the bible says.,
Dawkins says atheist can have morals. Sure, but all or most all the morals we pick and choose today are rooted in the bible. And he's surely read the bible so he has somewhat of an understanding to man's ill's and God's remedies.
But AGAIN, these guys that make their money by shooting holes in the bible really need to stop pulling verses out of text to prove their point! It's I sign of ignorance, or maybe it's willful-ignorance?
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Jun 15, 2015 - 04:53pm PT
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No, Blu, it's looking at the whole picture. True what you say that we've all been raised in the culture that at least pays lip service to the ten commandments, but again, in the big picture they were nothing new, they were predated by the Code of Hammurabi and Hittite suzerainty treaties. So we might as well call ourselves a nation based on traditional Hittite values, only filtered through Judaic copyists. And there's nothing out of context about the more embarrassing examples of Jehova's petty bloodlust. It's all there in black and white. Kill the infidels, no questions asked. And don't mix your cottons and polyesters, or there'll be hell to pay.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Jun 15, 2015 - 05:55pm PT
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And Christianity represents only 20% of the world's people. The Chinese, Indians, and Japanese most certainly don't have the Bible written on their hearts and together they represent over 50% of humanity.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 15, 2015 - 06:06pm PT
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Paul, it is as if... the girl asking Dawkins her question at 57:10 in the Dawkins Pell discussion was speaking on your behalf...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD1QHO_AVZA
(You can scroll to the 57:10 location, I mention this only because some don't know this I think.)
That is what it boils down to, ain't it? What people choose to accentuate? What folks, based on interests and needs, want emphasized.
Obviously an apropos parallelism here is the climbing world, where the adage 'Different strokes for different folks' is demonstrated time and again. Some gravitate to big walls, others to alpine, others to the gym.
To the point:
a) Dawkins and I and others want truth emphasized, also we love science so we like science as means to truth prioritized. Meanwhile...
b) Others, many others, (perhaps not so "into" or passionate about science) want comfort (e.g., through narrative, storytelling, ritual and communion) emphasized esp in the face of pain and suffering; they want compassion; they want whatever they can get to get motivated, to get up and going another day.
Personally I think, as I've mentioned many times before, it speaks to a yet to emerge, new institution still in the ether, so to speak, capable of competently covering both aforementioned needs / interests along with many others too.
Perhaps another point of contention between us regarding any new and/or reformulated (currently hypothetical) institution that addresses not only what is but what matters and what works: I suspect you would be content to consider it "religion" while I would NOT be so content; my inclination and desire would be to think of it as something more than religion (certainly MUCH more than any Abrahamic religion with its emphasis on God Jehovah and supernaturalism) and thus deserving of a different name to mark its new / renewed and enhanced functionality (gain of functions).
Time will tell.
Have a good evening.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 15, 2015 - 08:02pm PT
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Men and women having sex for sport and that's not even the tip of the iceberg
This begs for a wisecrack, but I am speechless.
Again, please go back to the mind subject
We'll have none of that young man! Now, go prepare your homework for Vacation Bible School.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 15, 2015 - 08:11pm PT
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Again, please go back to the mind subject.
Is anybody paying attention?
No. That's why zen centers are always near-empty.
Per what fruity was talking about, if you are a staunch lieralist, you will see every use of symbolic language not as creative attempts at getting at truths, but as mytholigized ways of viewing reality more accurately expressed though quantifications. This is every bit as nuanced as routing out preposterous aspects of ancane Hebrew culture and mistaking this for the core message of the bible. Yes, there are those who believe evolution never happened and that a mnan named Jonas spent a fornight in a whale's tripe, and that this is the "word of God." Others write view this and virgin births and waling on water as embellishments haveing nothnig to do with the deeper human truths found in the beatitudes and Song of Songs, to mention a few. The fact that we humans have tortured a doctrine of love (in the case of the New Testiment) into such abominations as the crusades and moral majority has little to do with the bible and everything to do with what Paul said - it's us. It's human nature. Most of all it's aggresion.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 15, 2015 - 08:23pm PT
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Focus!
And awareness!
Moose is my kind of...
poster.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 15, 2015 - 08:28pm PT
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Theory about what? When I say, consciousness at bottom has no content, what do you think that means.
I am trying to understand what you mean, and what the thread is about. The OP actually starts out stating what "scientism" is, you might imagine Largo with that raised eyebrow expression of "silly rabbit, everyone knows you can't explain everything."
You have made many assertions based on your experience. However, isn't it a bit of a pickle to do that, to use your subjective, first-person experience to explain/understand/describe what consciousness is?
This apparently doesn't cause you any problem. Or perhaps it is the problem you are recognizing makes it difficult, or perhaps you'd prefer to say "impossible" to make headway in this understanding. As MikeL would point out, our thinking about our thinking is "theory laden," probably much more so than any other set of observations we make and try to come to some understanding of.
To the extent that I have no idea what goes on in you to give you the appearance of consciousness, and vis-versa, we somehow can come to an agreement that we both do exhibit the property of having consciousness.
How do we come to that agreement?
It's a simple question, perhaps you can offer an answer and clear up some of my confusion.
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