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WBraun
climber
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the human brain has been wired for religion/spirituality/belief systems
The human brain has never been wired for religion/spirituality/belief systems.
You are now just making up stuff out of your mind.
The brain has nothing to with religion/spirituality/belief systems.
The brain is pure material matter controlled by the soul.
It's only because the spiritual soul which is the real self that religion/spirituality/belief systems are there ......
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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The decline of institutional religion warms my soul.....did I just say that?
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WBraun
climber
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The decline of institutional religion
Has NOT declined.
It just changed/merged into heavy gross materialism due to poor fund of knowledge.
Gross materialism is the new modern religion.
Institutional nonsense is the works of those in poor fund of knowledge period ......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"Yes it's clear that institutional religion is on the decline everywhere in the western world. The U.S. was the last hold out and we're seeing it happen here as well. However, the human brain has been wired for... belief systems... The question is what will the new forms of it take?"
Oh my, you sound like that dreadful, Jehovahless hfcs now!
but wired for "religion"? lol
...
If the Humanities want to survive, they better do a few things... (1) Dump this SJW ideology, (2) dump post-modernist thinking, see it for the waste of time and failure it is; (3) start cooperating with science as opposed to choosing to conflict with it.
...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/08/virtual-reality-religion-robots-sapiens-book?CMP=share_btn_tw
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Word of the day -
Proselytize
pros•e•ly•tize (prŏsˈə-lĭ-tīzˌ)►
v. To induce someone to convert to one's own religious faith.
v. To induce someone to join one's own political party or to espouse one's doctrine.
v. To convert (a person) from one belief, doctrine, cause, or faith to another.
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WBraun
climber
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Proselytize
That's what the gross materialists and atheists all do all day long too .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Duck: We an accept or reject. But I like him a lot as the person he is as he is .....
We don’t have to do either. Ed is as he is. You are as you are. Me? “I am groot.”
We all have our own process, Werner. Evaluation is stoopid. IMO, What’s Happening has no possible explanation to it. Not to our little minds.
Just like culture, we find ourselves in the world without explanation. We do who and what we are at the moment. You and I are our own process—literally.
Conventionally, I think I’ve also said the same thing. Ed is rock solid.
Be well.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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May 12, 2017 - 01:08pm PT
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Dingus, thanks for the link.
I look forward to it. Right now, I'm bogged down in a couple Jordan Peterson videos (work related).
But it's on my short list!!
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Norton
Social climber
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May 12, 2017 - 01:12pm PT
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very interesting video, Dingus
thanks for posting it
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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May 12, 2017 - 09:28pm PT
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That video is fascinating, yet it fails to really paint an accurate background on Shenzhen, such as mentioning that it backs right up to Hong Kong, and much of its growth was due to cheap labor and copying/piracy. Put that together with a nearly infinite young well behaved labor supply, and the fast paced industry infrastructure grew as well. Once the lead blanket of Mao was lifted with the earliest granting of special exemptions to economic rules, they had demonstrated examples to build on, such as Japan.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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May 13, 2017 - 09:17am PT
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Fructose, my take from all those talks is that is exactly what many thoughtful people are trying to do. I think in a way that is what Paul is trying to say over on the mind thread as well. If all we have to go by is pure Darwinian natural selection, then this world will become ever more heartless as the strong use that as justification to take advantage of the weak.. The question of what kind of ethics we should have and why, and what authority will be behind them is now the issue.
I don't agree with Paul's take on the uniqueness and awesomeness of the human mind. I lean rather to the glorified ape model myself, but unless we intend to go back to the law of the jungle, we need to come up with some behvioral alternatives to traditional religion.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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May 13, 2017 - 09:29am PT
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Randisi,
I believed that a lot more when I lived in East Asia. It seems less obvious by far now that I have returned to America. Then again, the decline of America economically and in so many other ways compared to East Asia, may in fact be a demonstration of the Darwinian superiority of group cooperation over individualism.
It's not likely that America will ever assume the group oriented mindset of the East Asians, so the best we can hope for it seems to me, is to make them more ethical on an individually chosen basis which resorts to some form of belief system.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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May 13, 2017 - 09:39am PT
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Isn't America made great again at this very moment?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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May 13, 2017 - 10:29am PT
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Censors or not, life in America after East Asia is plain weird.
Some examples from Boulder County, Colorado.
1) I smelled something horrendous and had to close my windows. Turns out my neighbor was barbequeing human placenta which was then placed in capsules for new mothers to eat. I'm an anthropologist and some people do interesting ceremonies with placentas around the world, but that's the first time I've ever heard of humans eating it?
2) A guy stopped by my yard yesterday and asked if he could cut some of my dark lilacs for his live in companion who had cancer. He had heard that eating lilacs cure cancer.
3) We had a measles outbreak here because so many kids aren't vaccinated. Then I learned we have a worse vaccination rate in the U.S. than Bangladesh. This is the result of the cost of medical service but also the philsophy here that everyone's opinion is equal, whether half literate or an expert in medicine.
4) My town has just installed high speed fiber based internet cable, the first in our state to do so and paid by the city. We are finally up to the same speed I had in Japan 8 years ago.
5) I had to lock up my garbage cans to keep a neighbor from filling mine because they were too lazy to put their garbage in their cans which they keep in the front yard because they are too lazy to drag them to the street. The same people refused to move their cars for the street sweeper and the city doesn't fine for that. No one but me in our middle class neighborhood seems to care if the gutters are clogged with leaves and overflow when the snow melts.
And on and on I could go.
If you want to see optimism, human dynamism, new infrastructure, a respect for education and expertise, and feel a communal sense of energy, Asia is the continent currently for that.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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May 13, 2017 - 11:22am PT
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America is in decline and most likely will not make it by 2020. 2018 is going to be really interesting. Problem we have we still talk about the same S#it that is fifty years old and the powers in be will never change. China will prevail, eventually the communist party will be gone and the newer generation will turn the tide.
Over 100 days and what has been accomplished here: nothing, all our time is consumed in when and if Trump will be impeached and if he is gone still nothing will be done. Just more dead bodies overseas, problems we created and will not go away.
As for Shenzhen just need to get involved [assuming you have a business relationship with them]you would surprised on who you meet at on of these meetings.
One Chinese City Has Figured Out the Future
China´s Xi Jinping recently declared that he wants China to rank as one of the world´s most innovative countries by 2020 and to top the list by mid-century. Going by past practice, this probably means a lot more money being poured into dodgy startups and ill-conceived high-tech schemes. There´s a better model to be found, however, one that´s surprisingly close to home: the southern boomtown of Shenzhen.
The city´s Nanshan district, home to a huge High-Tech Industrial Park, is now China´s richest, with a higher per capita GDP than even capitalist Hong Kong, just across the border. Indeed, Shenzhen´s rapid success could well be more remarkable than the latter´s: Little more than a fishing village in 1979, when Deng Xiaoping decided to launch China´s reforms in a special-economic zone there, Shenzhen has since grown into a megacity of more than 11 million people with a GDP five times Macau´s. At an average of $727 per square foot, real estate prices are higher than anywhere in the U.S.; the city will soon be home to the world’s fourth-largest skyscraper. It´s little wonder that in 1992, when support for his reform agenda was flagging, Deng returned to the city to remind Chinese of the virtues of entrepreneurship and private enterprise.
Today some 8,000 tech companies have set up shop in the city, including Internet giant Tencent and telecommunications company Huawei Technologies, as well as the world´s largest drone maker; the $3 trillion Shenzhen exchange is devoted to high-growth tech startups. Beijing Genomics International, a public-private partnership, provides rapid DNA data downloadable anywhere in the world via Amazon cloud services. Lighting company LEDSFilm is manufacturing the smallest and brightest studio and entertainment lights in the world.
Not every city in China can become Silicon Valley, of course. And Shenzhen had a particularly good base upon which to build, given that the surrounding Pearl River Delta is home to the thousands of nimble manufacturers that assemble most of the world´s consumer appliances. But the city itself has gotten some key fundamentals right.
First and foremost, it´s a true melting pot. To a far greater extent than other Chinese megacities, Shenzhen has eased the path for migrant workers to become full citizens: Anyone who buys an apartment is entitled to full residency rights. Ambitious risk-takers from around the country flock to the city to make their fortunes, unencumbered by history.
By contrast, Beijing remains the preserve of party elites, while Shanghai is notorious for shunning outsiders. In both cities, bureaucratic infighting and middle-class resistance continue to hamper efforts to liberalize the "hukou" system of household registration. That condemns low-skilled migrants to black-market status in areas like education and restricts the flow of labor to where it can most effectively help businesses grow. If China´s cities want to develop ambitious, hard-working and entrepreneurial work forces, they need to do better at welcoming newcomers who embody those traits.
Second, Shenzhen has created the most business-friendly environment in China. It´s relatively easy to set up a company and to transfer funds overseas. The World Bank generously estimates it takes more than 31 days and 11 different procedures to start a business in China. Officials in Shenzhen´s Qianhai Enterprise Zone boast they can register a foreign-invested firm in eight days. Thriving venture capital and private equity firms now fill the city, which helps foster risk-taking.
Given its lack of natural resources, Shenzhen has focused instead on freeing people to innovate: Together the government and local companies invested more than $3 billion in R&D last year, nearly 6 percent of GDP; the nationwide average is only 2.3 percent. All across the city, posters declare that "innovation [is] encouraged and failure tolerated." City officials actively promote more open financial markets, so that entrepreneurs have an easier time tapping funding.
Most importantly, rather than heeding government diktats about what and how much companies should produce, the city´s thriving private-sector competes fiercely to develop products that can survive in a cutthroat market. Elsewhere in China, the government still coddles state-owned incumbents despite their excessive indebtedness, poor record at creating new jobs and overall inefficiency.
Finally, in order to thrive, new businesses need a solid regulatory structure that consistently enforces clear rules. Many local lawyers are licensed in both Shenzhen and Hong Kong, making cross-border agreements easier. A local free-trade zone now offers Hong Kong legal adjudication for companies fearful of more capricious mainland courts and regulators.
Deng´s reforms in 1979 were rooted in a single thought: They empowered individuals and promoted entrepreneurialism, rather than reinforcing the state-dominated status quo. If China truly wants to build a 21st-century economy -- a must, given its shrinking population and rising labor costs -- it´s going to have to do the same. Shenzhen is proof the formula works.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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May 13, 2017 - 11:30am PT
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roselytism /ˈprɒsəlᵻˌtɪzəm/ is the act of attempting to convert people to another religion or opinion.
The word is generally used as converting people to a certain religion. They all do it.
Wiki has a great page on the topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proselytism
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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May 13, 2017 - 11:50am PT
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They all do it.
Not really: there are religions of conversion and religions of birth. Can you think of an example of each?
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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May 13, 2017 - 12:06pm PT
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We know from Earth science, cosmology, and other sciences, that the planet was not created in 7 days, nor is the Earth only 6000 years old. That is just simple physics. Rocks get eroded, subducted, folded heated and metamorphosed, and over time change. As you go back in time, super old rocks become rarer and rarer. Even those scattered outcrops tell an incredible story.
Many religions, including Catholics, have accepted evolution. God could still have created the Earth. This is just the way that he did it.
Creationism, or more precisely, Creation Science, is the biggest bunch of bull that you are likely to find. It has absolutely no connection to actual science.
We know that the majority of humans believe in a Supreme Being of some sort or other. That does not mean that they are correct.
For a hoot, go check out the big state of the art Creationist Museum:
https://creationmuseum.org/
That building is so full of baloney that it really makes me question the honesty of those who built and operate it. Do they honestly believe that baloney, that has no evidence other than the account in the Bible? One of my current jobs is at a Natural History Museum. You can also visit the Smithsonian, and its excellent fossil collection.
One thing about most Natural History Museums: the amount shown to the public is a fraction of a per cent of what is actually in the collections. The research facilities are massive. In just the paleobotany collection that I am working in, there are close to 100,000 specimens, from all over the planet. There are probably less than 30 specimens in the public area.
Oklahoma has terrific surface geology. You can look at sedimentary rocks from the Cambrian to recent Pleistocene deposits. Every period since the Cambrian is available. One of the more interesting sites is a mammoth kill site in SW Oklahoma. When it was excavated, they found primitive human stone tools. There were many artifacts. The rock is so young that it hasn't lithified yet. It was found in Pleistocene terrace deposits, close to a river. Mammoth remains are very common, especially in the arctic, where they were buried in permafrost. Finding one with human tools is far more rare.
Anyway, we have good outcrops of rocks of every age since the Cambrian, and in those rocks, you can see life evolve through time. Out of the millions of specimens in the Museum's research vaults, there isn't a single human artifact older than the Pleistocene. We know that humans arrived in the America's rather recently, whereas the fossils and artifacts date back millions of years in Africa. If anyone had ever found, say, a nail encased in Silurian limestone, it would totally rock the scientific world. It has just never happened.
To be an honest person, you must acknowledge the rock record. You can't stick your head in the sand like they do at the Creationism Museum, which doesn't publish in any peer-reviewed journal(that I am aware of).
The Earth has a fantastic history, and that history is written in rocks. A rock can tell an incredible story, such as the 3.2 billion year old Austalian Stromatolites at the Smithsonian, or the cast of Lucy, an Australopithecus afarensis skeleton that is over 3 million years old.
H. Sapiens is a newcomer. We haven't been around for very long at all. In the past, there were times when there were more than one hominid species extant, but now, we are the only surviving hominid, although parts of our population still carry part of the genetic code from Neanderthals. If you find a bone that is young enough, it might still contain DNA. The Neanderthal genome has now been sequenced and compared with modern humans.
Hominid fossils are pretty rare. It appears that they were small populations, barely hanging on. When we began an agrarian lifestyle, our technology and population both exploded.
If you can find a human artifact encased in a rock that is, say, Cretaceous, it would be of HUGE significance. Despite the fact that most outcrops have now been scoured, it has never happened.
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