fett on 20/9/2007 at 13:40

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Here's an idea: Instead of watching a shitty movie, and arguing with people like a dumbass, TRY READING A FUCKING BOOK sometime. That's how you learn stuff.

What are they teaching kids these days? That's 20 minutes of my short short life I'll never get back. Bastard. :mad:

scumble on 20/9/2007 at 15:46

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No more posts. Please.

Turtle on 20/9/2007 at 16:53

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Don't give up, cause you have friends
Don't give up, You're not the only one
Don't give up, No reason to be ashamed
Don't give up, You still have us
Don't give up, now Were proud of who you are
Don't give up, You know its never been easy
Don't give up, cause I believe theres the a place
Theres a place where we belong

catbarf on 20/9/2007 at 18:54

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I know I've heard that before, what's it from?

demagogue on 20/9/2007 at 19:29

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Peter Gabriel's (funny enough) "Don't Give up" ... 80s song.



To give this a good answer would be sort of long ... I know because I just tried.
But to put it briefly.

1. The article wasn't really about differences in social values. It was really about the primeval, genetic origins of political/religious experience, phenomenology, which we all share. In particular, it has a certain theory about how that experience works which ... I'll explain below.

2. I didn't mean any particular atheist would feel deflated. I'm sure a lot self-declared atheists aren't going to disagree with anything the research is coming out with, or they haven't reflected on it. I just meant the (or one) classical atheist position as it's developed in modern Western thought isn't going to like it. I'm not sure it's even a popular position anymore, but it's a classic one, and it's a starting point for getting into discussion, anyway.

.....

ok, a little elaboration:

The classic modern atheist position is positivist. They are going to like the psychology of Sherrington and Pavlov, which said that the brain only conducts information, from stimulus to response. Remember Pavlov and his dogs salivating at bells. Everything, even the most complex behavior, is a glorified reflex based on the stimulus. If you only put in the real truth, then the brain would get unfiltered access to the "natural" world and behave accordingly.

So the weight of authority is now coming out saying that's wrong. The brain doesn't just conduct information ... it creates it, and uses what it creates; it's generative. It creates visions out of the chaos of its world -- with that narrative directing how we experience the world, and the world directing how the narrative gets written -- turns it into a game, wants to write rules for that game, and then plays and even cheats by those rules ... unless another set of rules surreptitiously or violently takes its place. By definition these visions, the way you "really experience" the world, add something to the unfiltered natural world which is, literally speaking, "super"-natural, which then go on to construct the world you "live in" ... and it is these visions which are making demands on how you act, not the "natural" world itself.

You could argue that the classical atheist position is going to hate this conclusion, because they want to privilege a "natural" world view over a "supernatural" one ... they don't want a natural worldview to just be another supernatural one in different words. Today we talk about secular law instead of theological law (and most people don't really know what to call "moral psychology" anymore, just "how I feel, I guess"), but law is law, imperative demands are imperative demands. They've always had an overwhelming phenomenological basis made up of "real visions that we act on", where "gut feelings" based on these visions have the lions share of making the real demands on how we act. An alien anthropologist might be confounded why atheists and believers say they disagree because they are exhibiting the same phenomenology that all humans share, just using different vocabulary.

I think a lot of atheists get caught up in cosmology, all the "out there" parts of religion ... a religious worldview doesn't explain the universe we see, and as long as we have a worldview that does explain it pretty well that doesn't need to refer to anything occult or supernatural, anything not covered by the rules of reality, they claim victory. If that's all they care about, then I guess they can relax and rest on their laurels and that's all to say. But it seems like a small victory to me. It loses focus of the most important part of what religious experience thinks it's doing, the part that internally makes demands on how humans make important life decisions and live their life and give meaning to it. Atheists don't want to call this experience religious, and religious people don't want to call it cognition ... but either way they are talking about the same phenomenology, whatever you want to call it. And on that ... well, I'll say this. If you want to best understand how a modern secular legal system works: study a religion.

I wrote a longer post that explains more of what I mean because I'm afraid this just scratches the surface, and even that would be much too short to give it justice.