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sandstone conglomerate
climber
sharon conglomerate central
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Oh the fear of death...As if we, as the upright war-like great apes that we are, have some eternal reward coming to us because we simply existed on this planet for said duration. We're an animal, like all other animals. No one has proven that the soul exists. It's a ploy by the brain to conjure some divine reward. What is so terrifying to accept is the fact that when you die, you die. No more further conscience, no pearly gates, no reconciliation with your loved ones. Of course, you are reincarnated; your body breaks down and becomes something else, as it should be. But this awareness, that we find ourselves in at this present time, is done. When you breathe the air, you are breathing the air the Buddha breathed. Once you accept the death of the ego, the concept of infinite isn't that terrifying.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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^^^
But better is the hope of eternal life through Jesus!
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Maybe more importantly we could stay fccused on the here and now.
"Ye shall know them by their fruits."
~Matthew 7:16
"For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."
~ John 13:15
"Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you."
~ Matthew 21:31
"Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little."
~ Luke 7:47
There seems to be too much focus on the prize and not enough focus on the work.
I couldn't care less about what comes after. I know Jesus's calls to action compell me to action and I see the benefits all around in doing that work.
We live, we die. There isn't any guarantee after regardless of what we make up about it. Here and now we can act and we can see and feel the outcome of action. That works for me - I'm a practical guy.
Rbord, I think you mistakenly posted posted on the wrong thread.
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sandstone conglomerate
climber
sharon conglomerate central
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Well, if that gives you comfort, then that is fine. I believe in resurrection, just on the atomic level, without the hubris of eternal life. We're no more special than the cattle we eat, the bugs we kill driving down the road, or the pets we adopt to love as our own. Man is not special. We are self-aware, which is both a blessing and a curse. The only animal to do so,save for the sentient organisms swimming in the oceans...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"Your cut and pastes -- which amount to Sam Harris hand jobs-- are just as tedious as go-B's Bible passages." -Sycorax
Good phrasing. An artful turn of words. -MikeL
Really? Good phrasing? An artful turn...?
Spot on. -dmt
__
Well, Sycorax, MikeL and dmt as well, if my “cut n pastes” are tedious - and by the way they are mostly cut n paste links if you haven’t noticed, and not cut n paste walls of text whether 2000 year old bible verses or not - it is not because of content (much of it exciting new developments, iow, news), more likely it is because of interest (lack thereof). And re interest, yours, lack thereof, there’s nothing I can do about that, you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. Either you got it or you don’t. That said, I consider myself pretty lucky, grateful as well, that I am interested in all the staple topics incl issues that have shown up on these threads: the science, religion and belief stuff and their intersection and incl where it has been, where it is and where it is going, eg, re meaning, purpose, etc.; also the mind, brain, consciousness, determinism and freewill stuff, and all the AI stuff, and all their implications, eg, for the future; and also all the general science stuff (incl both the physical sciences and life sciences) and all their recent mind-boggling developments. Sycorax, MikeL and dmt, let me remind you all in particular - this is a science and religion related thread, and its sibling thread concerns mind and by extension brain and their topics. Anytime my tediousness on this thread, or anybody else's, gets too much for you all, you could start a literature thread or a post-modernist thread or a meditation thread or... and then post to those items to your soul's content.
Sycorax, since you were candid with me I will be candid with you: I find you crude and vulgar and shallow as D.J. Trump; and I find you pompous and sarcastic as D.J. Trump. Question I have for you: Why visit a science thread? This is a science thread. Why spend your precious time here? Question: Or why visit the brain mind thread? Why spend your time there when you perceive some of it, or much of it, tedious as you say? Question: Why not start a thread or threads that express or reflect your passion or passions (as these threads do mine) and then - guess what?! - our ropes never need to cross in the first place. How about that? as a solution? Just a suggestion that seems more than reasonable to me.
And were we all lucky enough and were you to take this suggestion, this solution, to start your own thread or threads, it would be one of my sincerest and deepest hopes that the mindless and factless and truly "tedious" smoking duck would leave with you. In that case, I could imagine intelligent discourse - not to mention an attendant basic courtesy - could rise perhaps a magnitude (that's a factor of 10). Just how cool would that be!
Hey Sycorax, AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. AGI stands for General AI. ANI stands for Narrow AI. Hope this FYI wasn't too "tedious" for you. Just wanted to be clear for you and any other non "science types". ;)
...
A ref - a cut n paste link! - for the mind thread!
Maybe I'll COPY and paste it there too?
Sophisticated new study rewrites the book on short-term memory...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-you-just-forgot-may-be-sleeping-1483633227
We are self-aware, which is both a blessing and a curse.
Better self-aware as humans (eyes turned to the stars), I say, than self-aware
as abalone (alone, ensconced under a rock in the dark deep).
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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There isn't any guarantee after regardless of what we make up about it. Here and now we can act and we can see and feel the outcome of action.
I didn't make it up but I believe it...
John 14:2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
John 13:34-35 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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I don't doubt your faith. Faith is cool. Don't degrade your faith by feeling you have to prove it. There is no proof for it and that is exactly what makes it faith. Proof of faith means that faith is no longer faith. Do you really want to disrespect you faith by claiming proof for it?
Focusing on the redemption and the resurrection stuff is like sitting on the porch in the morning dreaming and storytelling about dinner when there is work to be done that same said morning to reap the wheat to make that dinner. Stay on task.
To be all obsessed about redemption and the resurrection demeans Jesus's ethics - his calls to action. Do good sh#t for others and the rest will take care of itself. Jesus himself - if you believe the Bible - says so.
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sandstone conglomerate
climber
sharon conglomerate central
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At some point in our relatively long history as a species, when we came down from the trees to this point now, we developed the fear of death. Who knows when that came to be? What prompted this acknowledgement of mortality and subsequent longing for eternal reward? When did the development of ego begin, this certainty that divine reward was for us, an upright ape, and us alone? At one point we were hunter-gatherers and had an appreciation of the earth and all it's mysteries. We acknowledged that animals, plants. water, etc. gave their lives for us to exist. We lived for each other in the context of the tribe, and we gave thanks for the organisms that we harvested. Fast forward to this day, and everything is taken for granted. Water. food, heat, life. We lost spirituality, humility, and now we're an aberrant species on the earth, carving through it like it's something owed to us. The christian bible teaches that the earth was put here for us to use...that is wrong. We should be grateful for everything we have, not seeking to exploit it more, and more and more until it's gone...
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Thanks Mark,
Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
...We are not saved by works but unto good works!
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Where is the red print in Ephesians?
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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^^^
Tough crowd!
I'm tempted not to respond but these fit...
(Jesus said of Paul) Acts 9:15 But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel.
Isaiah 49
15 “Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child?
Can she feel no love for the child she has borne?
But even if that were possible,
I would not forget you!
16 See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.
Always in my mind is a picture of Jerusalem’s walls in ruins.
...Jesus had the nail prints of love in His hands and feet!
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7SacredPools
Trad climber
Ontario, Canada
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the nail prints of love
That's funny :)
Would make a good name for the free version of an old nailup...
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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I only care about the red print. The rest is chaff.
IMHO. :-)
I've read the Bible through a few times (full disclosure - except for the begats in Genesis). Wanted to keep honing down to the essence of it.
Got down to the red print - what jesus says is the best part of the whole thing. Then I did a bunch of peyote when I was 17 - I was into Aldous Huxley and Carlos Castaneda, too - and read the red print - just what Jesus (supposedly) said - and got that Jesus the mystic is telling us about his mystical way of being and seeing and telling us how to be in the world and act based on that.
Works for me. I don't feel something is missing from my life or the need to be saved (other than my wife regularly saving me from being more stupid than usual). I don't care about an afterlife (just seems like a distraction that wastes my time...hmm..). The best redemption for me from being stupid or an as#@&%e is just to not be stupid or an as#@&%e - that keeps me busy.
But, after Jesus the mystic gave me a call to action based on what he said about being while I was in my mystics' mind on peyote? That is good shit! And, that did it for me.
Anything around that core that isn't the core itself is just talk. There's just no juice there for me.
But, damn, act in accord with Jesus's call to love, forgiveness, compassion, non-judgement, non-attachment and service - that's where the rubber meets the road and that's an inspiring vision as far as I'm concerned. All the other stuff is just in the way
"By their fruits ye shall know them."
~ Matthew 7:16
And, no harm done if you want that other stuff. I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise. It's cool that people are different and think, feel, and believe different things and we can talk about it. We don't all have to be the same about all that stuff. What matters is that you're respectful around the campfire and you got someones' back if they need the help. Thanks for that.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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We're an animal, like all other animals. No one has proven that the soul exists. It's a ploy by the brain to conjure some divine reward.
We may be animals but there is no animal quite like us. No other animal on this planet has come up with a methodology like Science or an epistemological life so infinitely encompassing or an ability to reflect experience in such a compelling aesthetic. Humanity is not only remarkable in its intellectual scope, but in its unparalleled ability for creation. The soul exists at the very least because it is simply humanity’s remarkable invention.
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WBraun
climber
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Every living entity is the soul itself.
It's not some invention by humanity.
If it's an invention then there is an inventor.
The supreme inventor, God.
The logic of the modern science hs become ......
Sterile!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Mark: Religions are mythological constructs writ large.
(Every “thing” reveals a construct; that’s what they are.)
HFCS: . . . . if my “cut n pastes” are tedious . . . .
I like words. I like stringing them together. I like how they flow out of my hands here when I put them to the keyboard. A turn of an interesting phrase is a form of art to me more than it could ever portray “what things really are.”
Anyone’s cut and paste has always struck me as lazy and perhaps an indication that people have not really understood notions because they cannot summarize the notions very well themselves. They are not talking; they are letting other people talk. If it’s meant to be artful, then I get using other people’s words. If however one is attempting to make a point clear or show connections, then I’d rather they say so from their own hearts and minds. When someone posts a URL and not much more, I think it’s a sign of being lazy and a sign of incomplete understanding on their parts because they cannot speak for themselves. It’s another sign (for me) that people are not coming to their own conclusions or understanding. It’s another sign of consensus reality. Sheep, lemmings, herd mentality.
sandstone conglomerate: No one has proven that the soul exists.
No one has ever proven that love (or anything immaterial) exists, either.
There is soul food, soul dancing, soulful writing, soulful painting, the soul of or in work, you can lose or find your soul in your life, and so on. (What do you think people are referring to when they use the word?) Soul is all the messy dirty thick dark passionate shadowy mundane day-to-day parts of your life. It’s not the opposite of spirit. It’s the ground into which spirit attaches itself. If there is a hell, it’s connected to soul. Everyone has soul, which means one could say that everyone has their own soul. Everything has a characteristic of soul. New York City, Yosemite, the Sierra present soul and entangles your soul.
Is there nothing that is soulful for you in your life? Is there nothing that you feel a deep yearning for? Isn’t soul intrinsically associated with love, hate, desire, aversion? What makes you individually uniquely different than anyone else?
When most everything is seen as material, physical, conceptual and instrumental (tools) then one’s soul is often lost. When people lose their way in life, they lose their souls. PTSD is one indication that one has misplaced or lost their soul.
What the duck said.
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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"Information is alienated experience."
~ Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Out with the old...
and in with the new...
New Year’s Resolutions – Resolve to Worry Less
Do not fret—it only causes harm.
Psalm 37:8b
Motivational writer Dale Carnegie asked Captain Eddie Rickenbacker what was the biggest lesson he learned from 21 days in a lifeboat, hopelessly adrift in the Pacific. Rickenbacker said, “The biggest lesson I learned from the experience was that if you have all the fresh water you want to drink and all the food you want to eat, you ought never to complain about anything.”
Recommended Reading: Psalm 37:1-8
The Bible says something similar: “And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content” (1 Timothy 6:8).
We so easily fret about a thousand things every day, tying ourselves into knots of worry. But we have a heavenly Father who knows our needs, and Psalm 37 says, “Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart… Trust also in Him… Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him…. Do not fret—it only causes harm.”
This year, resolve by God’s grace to worry less, trust Him more, and live with joy and thankfulness for all He gives us.
The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year. - Samuel Johnson
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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...The divine purpose of life is to know the one true God and Jesus whom He sent, who made all things by His holy power!
And the ultimate prize will be to dwell with them in heaven, who loves us with an everlasting love forever!
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