Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/24/2014 7:40 PM, steve.sun...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Richard, you want something silly? I give you something silly. Barry is having a near panic attack, pleading, insisting that someone explain to him the importance of the experience of unbounded awareness. I guess he's got a turd he wants to drop on that or something. But, here. Get this. Ask Barry to explain, how as a declared atheist, he explains karma, and rebirth, (which he is on record of buying into), and he mumbles, It's not important. It doesn't matter. No, not important at all Richard, explain that to me, please,it you can. Go figure? No. I haven't figured that out. /The condition is called cognitive dissonance - that's when a person holds two or more conflicting beliefs at the same time. Barry used to be a professed Buddhist who believed in karma and a Self or Spirit that reincarnates after biological death. //Logically in order for //metempsychosis to work there must be a reincarnating soul-monad - a self that reincarnates - a person that reaps the karma of past or present actions. But the historical Buddha denied the existence of the Atman. Go figure.// // //Barry posted this information to alt.religion.gnostic several years ago and he also mentioned on FFL his belief in the Tibetan Bardo state. Barry apparently studied American Buddhism under the Zen Master Rama and converted in 1977. / //This sets up the dissonance conflict because some people get confused by not understanding why some people who go around doing good and have good intentions, are yet forced to suffer and vice-versa - many times people that go around doing bad things, get rewarded. The theory of karma or causation is almost inconceivable. So, w///hat happened to Barry is simple: after living in NE for so many years, he obviously has succumbed to peer pressure and has been turned into a materialist or a naive realist. ///You can understand how easy it is to get mentally brain-washed by reading about young people that go radical after watching just a single video. Some people are very susceptible to suggestion. Go figure. /It is sometimes very difficult to stay on a spiritual path when your own family and friends don't believe in anything and you feel like a stranger in a strange land. Sometimes people tend to conform to the level of consciousness that surrounds them and they begin to reflect that on social media. It's not complicated.. / ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : On 10/24/2014 8:44 AM, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: This sounds like a pretzeling moment /It seems dirt simple to me. We are all bound by karma, which means actions, past and present. If a person does good deeds, he or she will be reborn in a better life. ///On the other hand, if a person does bad things, in the past or present, he or she will get reborn in hell, or a less than satisfactory situation. /It's not complicated.// In some rare cases, if a person follows a spiritual path, does the work and realizes enlightenment, that person, if he or she has really good karma, may not have to be reborn again, unless they choose to do so, to help the rest of the world get free. //But, you are only going to get as much enlightenment as you are going to get.// // //So, based on my experience, what I've been told and what I have figured out - *I believe in Life; what it does to you and what you do back. */ ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... mailto:punditster@... wrote : /Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. / // On 10/24/2014 12:03 AM, blue_bungalow_2@... mailto:blue_bungalow_2@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: This could explain how Winthrop and Albert worked on the non-weapon part, of an exclusively weapons project, in which one of them was denied security clearance. /This is an example of cognitive dissonance - the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time.// // //What I'm trying to do is alert Barry that he is exhibiting some roughness by posting contradictory messages to the group. Everyone already knows that Barry believes in Buddhas, karma, and reincarnation and that he bought and read Sam Harris' new book. ///Everyone already knows that (except apparently Xeno). /The thing that doesn't make any sense is, why Barry didn't understand
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
well, it's also as you said previously, Richard, experiencing unbounded awareness is pretty much its own verification. I remember, as an aside, someone asking Maharishi, (this was on a tape), why is the experience of unbounded awareness blissful. His response was that, that is its nature. The person kept pressing him, and finally he said, why is water wet?, why does fire burn?. It is its nature. Sure, I guess you can unpack the experience of unbounded awareness we can have when we meditate, but it appears to me, at least, to be an enjoyable experience at the time we experience it, and when that broadened awareness carries over into activity, or even sleeping and dreaming as well, although in my case, I don't notice it in those other two states as much. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : On 10/24/2014 7:40 PM, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: Richard, you want something silly? I give you something silly. Barry is having a near panic attack, pleading, insisting that someone explain to him the importance of the experience of unbounded awareness. I guess he's got a turd he wants to drop on that or something. But, here. Get this. Ask Barry to explain, how as a declared atheist, he explains karma, and rebirth, (which he is on record of buying into), and he mumbles, It's not important. It doesn't matter. No, not important at all Richard, explain that to me, please,it you can. Go figure? No. I haven't figured that out. The condition is called cognitive dissonance - that's when a person holds two or more conflicting beliefs at the same time. Barry used to be a professed Buddhist who believed in karma and a Self or Spirit that reincarnates after biological death. Logically in order for metempsychosis to work there must be a reincarnating soul-monad - a self that reincarnates - a person that reaps the karma of past or present actions. But the historical Buddha denied the existence of the Atman. Go figure. Barry posted this information to alt.religion.gnostic several years ago and he also mentioned on FFL his belief in the Tibetan Bardo state. Barry apparently studied American Buddhism under the Zen Master Rama and converted in 1977. This sets up the dissonance conflict because some people get confused by not understanding why some people who go around doing good and have good intentions, are yet forced to suffer and vice-versa - many times people that go around doing bad things, get rewarded. The theory of karma or causation is almost inconceivable. So, what happened to Barry is simple: after living in NE for so many years, he obviously has succumbed to peer pressure and has been turned into a materialist or a naive realist. You can understand how easy it is to get mentally brain-washed by reading about young people that go radical after watching just a single video. Some people are very susceptible to suggestion. Go figure. It is sometimes very difficult to stay on a spiritual path when your own family and friends don't believe in anything and you feel like a stranger in a strange land. Sometimes people tend to conform to the level of consciousness that surrounds them and they begin to reflect that on social media. It's not complicated.. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... mailto:punditster@... wrote : On 10/24/2014 8:44 AM, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: This sounds like a pretzeling moment It seems dirt simple to me. We are all bound by karma, which means actions, past and present. If a person does good deeds, he or she will be reborn in a better life. On the other hand, if a person does bad things, in the past or present, he or she will get reborn in hell, or a less than satisfactory situation. It's not complicated. In some rare cases, if a person follows a spiritual path, does the work and realizes enlightenment, that person, if he or she has really good karma, may not have to be reborn again, unless they choose to do so, to help the rest of the world get free. But, you are only going to get as much enlightenment as you are going to get. So, based on my experience, what I've been told and what I have figured out - I believe in Life; what it does to you and what you do back. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... mailto:punditster@... wrote : Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. On 10/24/2014 12:03 AM, blue_bungalow_2@... mailto:blue_bungalow_2@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: This could explain how Winthrop and Albert worked on the non-weapon part, of an exclusively
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
/It was intersting to see how Xeno tried to enable Barry, by leaving out of the discussion all the interesting stuff Barry believes in - like karma and reincarnation. / // On 10/23/2014 10:21 PM, anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: I do not have time to read everything Barry writes. I have no idea what he believes about karma and reincarnation, we have never discussed it and I have not read what he said about it, if anything. We seem to disagree about the nature of free will. No one on this forum needs enabling to post what they think. Of course I never intended to include any of what you say. /You've spent what, hours dialoging with Barry about believing in God being a form of mental illness, and you don't even know what Barry believes in? Go figure./ / //What happened - I thought you guys all read Sam Harris' book.Go figure. //Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. / // Why are Cockburn's beliefs of import, Barry likes music and in particular Cockburn's songs and guitar technique. I like Bach (Lutheran), Mozart (Catholic), Brahms (probably agnostic), Glass (Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist); what does that have to do with [cognitive] dissonance when listening to their music? /Because the words to Cockburn's songs are all about believing in God? Did Mozart or Brahms sing about any songs? / /How does that work?/ // Trolls are not that connected to what others post, with comments skewed tangentially to the ongoing discussion, so you do not need to know how it works, as that is largely irrelevant to your posts. /You're still trying to enable Barry. Why do you suppose Barry trolls here to post duplicitous messages to get angry responses? A belief in God is not a form of mental illness. Everybody already knows that. You are supposed to listen to the words of the songs BEFORE you post your comments. Thanks./
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
/Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. / // On 10/24/2014 12:03 AM, blue_bungalo...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: This could explain how Winthrop and Albert worked on the non-weapon part, of an exclusively weapons project, in which one of them was denied security clearance. /This is an example of cognitive dissonance - the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time.// // //What I'm trying to do is alert Barry that he is exhibiting some roughness by posting contradictory messages to the group. Everyone already knows that Barry believes in Buddhas, karma, and reincarnation and that he bought and read Sam Harris' new book. ///Everyone already knows that (except apparently Xeno). /The thing that doesn't make any sense is, why Barry didn't understand what Harris wrote. It seems pretty simple to me. Harris makes a clear case for the value of spirituality, which he bases on his experiences in Buddhist meditation. Go figure./
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
This sounds like a pretzeling moment ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. On 10/24/2014 12:03 AM, blue_bungalow_2@... mailto:blue_bungalow_2@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: This could explain how Winthrop and Albert worked on the non-weapon part, of an exclusively weapons project, in which one of them was denied security clearance. This is an example of cognitive dissonance - the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. What I'm trying to do is alert Barry that he is exhibiting some roughness by posting contradictory messages to the group. Everyone already knows that Barry believes in Buddhas, karma, and reincarnation and that he bought and read Sam Harris' new book. Everyone already knows that (except apparently Xeno). The thing that doesn't make any sense is, why Barry didn't understand what Harris wrote. It seems pretty simple to me. Harris makes a clear case for the value of spirituality, which he bases on his experiences in Buddhist meditation. Go figure.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/24/2014 8:44 AM, steve.sun...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: This sounds like a pretzeling moment /It seems dirt simple to me. We are all bound by karma, which means actions, past and present. If a person does good deeds, he or she will be reborn in a better life. ///On the other hand, if a person does bad things, in the past or present, he or she will get reborn in hell, or a less than satisfactory situation. /It's not complicated.// In some rare cases, if a person follows a spiritual path, does the work and realizes enlightenment, that person, if he or she has really good karma, may not have to be reborn again, unless they choose to do so, to help the rest of the world get free. But, you are only going to get as much enlightenment as you are going to get.// // //So, based on my experience, what I've been told and what I have figured out - *I believe in Life; what it does to you and what you do back. */ ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : /Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. / // On 10/24/2014 12:03 AM, blue_bungalow_2@... mailto:blue_bungalow_2@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: This could explain how Winthrop and Albert worked on the non-weapon part, of an exclusively weapons project, in which one of them was denied security clearance. /This is an example of cognitive dissonance - the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time.// // //What I'm trying to do is alert Barry that he is exhibiting some roughness by posting contradictory messages to the group. Everyone already knows that Barry believes in Buddhas, karma, and reincarnation and that he bought and read Sam Harris' new book. ///Everyone already knows that (except apparently Xeno). /The thing that doesn't make any sense is, why Barry didn't understand what Harris wrote. It seems pretty simple to me. Harris makes a clear case for the value of spirituality, which he bases on his experiences in Buddhist meditation. Go figure./
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Xeno, me too! During some of my early meditations, I just wanted to jump up and run out of the room. But I just knew that it was what I had been wanting, just as I knew I was gonna start TM even before the lecturers said anything. In retrospect it seems like an amazing time in my life. I'll just relay what I told the Jehovah Witnesses when they informed me that the bible says TM is the work of the devil: based on my own experience, I think TM is a good thing. And I'm willing to risk my soul on that conclusion. There was nothing more they could say. They walked away. On Thursday, October 23, 2014 3:56 PM, anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: Like you Share, I really did not pay attention to the selling points as I had had experiences prior to TM, I was just looking for an easy way to meditate, a natural consequence of being lazy. The sell was there in the introductory and preparatory lectures and in available chart books supposedly showing benefits from the scientific side, but I ignored all that at the time. My first few meditations were really rotten, I almost quit right there. But trying to sell TM to friends who are not really into this kind of thing proved more of a challenge. None of my friends ever learned, except for a couple, and they never finished the course. A few of my family learned, and they all quit too. I did discover that some of my friends who were teachers, when I criticised the quality of the scientific research on TM, would try really had to convince me the research was really true. About 1% of research on meditation in general is of good quality. Part of that seems to lie with the advertising mentality of the TMO. Dr. Lorin Roche wrote the following: The Relaxation Response is the term coined by Herbert Benson, M.D., in 1968 or so when looking at the physiological data he was getting from TM (Transcendental Meditation) meditators who were coming to his lab to be measured. Benson soon got tired of our relentless TM zealotry and the way we (TM teachers who were working for him) would sign official research documents with Jai Guru Dev. As TM teachers, we wanted to take the results from his lab and instantly use them as part of our advertising and our public lectures. TM at the time had meditation centers in every major city in the United States, and teachers on most every college campus across the country. It was a hugely popular movement. But Benson needed to be able to clone TM, make it into a laboratory-standardized technique that could be replicated and measured at other labs. That's what science is. So he decided to de-mystify mantras, and he started telling people to just pick their own mantra, such as the word, ONE. This scandalized the whole TM movement, but he had to do it. And truth be told, as far as I know, Benson in his 30 years or so of research on the physiology of meditation, publishing hundreds of scientific papers, is probably the greatest meditation scientist ever. I trust his findings. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, TM meditators were the guinea pigs of choice for scientists, because there were hundreds of thousands of them in the United States alone, and tens of thousands in other countries, their training was standardized, and they were so well trained that they could come into a medical lab and actually MEDITATE while the scientists stuck needles in their arms, electrodes on their heads, hands and hearts, and breathe into oxygen-consumption measuring masks. It's hard to find people like that! Think about it. Who in their right mind would take out part of their day to do such a thing? When I used to do this, in the 70's, it meant driving through ugly traffic to UCI Medical School, then going into a lab with a thousand rats in cages just a couple dozen feet away, the smell of ether in the air, and letting the guys in white coats poke me with huge needles and take blood samples while I meditated. TM blew it, by alienating one of the great scientists at work in the field, and by pushing bad science — publishing in their ads the results of trial studies. But the Buddhists, by comparison, played it very smart, and gradually came to be the favorite of physiological researchers. The Buddhists cheerfully cooperated with the needs of scientists, it is a match made in heaven because Buddhism is a very clinical take on life anyway. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : WRT TM, I never got a snow job or a hard sell. In 1972, I was student teaching in a non traditional high school. One of the other student teachers explained the bubble diagram to me. Also during this time, my husband and I were doing marijuana approx 3 times a year. I wished that I could have that high in a natural way. We also did a yoga class. I caught a cold. Now fast forward three years. I'm in Yes health food restaurant in DC. A gorgeous young man comes up to
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Lawson, Skip was my dissertation advisor and I remember when he was working with Langer on this paper. On Thursday, October 23, 2014 5:34 PM, lengli...@cox.net [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: The late Skip Alexander, who used to head the Psychology Dept at MUM, co-edited a book that examined post-maslow development. He wrote the chapter on Vedic Psychology, and prominent mainstream-psychologists wrote chapters on post-Maslow, -post-Piagetian, etc., psychology. _Higher Stages of Human Development_ -Alexander and Langer, ed. May still be in print. [You can't have my autographed copy, sorry] L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : When thinking about why people value certain experiences and do certain activities, I like Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guideline. IOW, once certain basic needs are met, then a person seeks to satisfy additional needs. Which might not be higher but which might simply involve activating more of the brain. Could it be that we're simply compelled by neural pathways in our brain that want to be activated? Or are we simply physical organisms seeking homeostatis all the time? Today is Mahalakshmi day. There's a big celebration in the Dome. I haven't decided whether I will go or not. Autumn has been so beautiful here. I feel happy enough just glancing up from the computer once and a while, out the window to the trees and the sky, walking to the post office, doing my everyday tasks. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't need to go to the Dome and hopefully get blessings from Mahalakshmi in the form of more money and then feel happier. I am already feeling happy enough. Much much gratitude... On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:00 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: From: Michael Jackson mjackson74@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:04 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Well said Barry - and I agree with every word It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be. Most teachers or seekers just *assume* that these experiences they have or claim to have had are valuable, but when called upon to do so, they can't really produce any strong arguments for WHY they are valuable, or WHAT that supposed valueis. I'm suggesting that this oversight is epidemic in the world of spiritual practices, the elephant in the room that no one ever talks about. The people promoting these practices just *assume* that these experiences they're having or seeking are *worth* having or seeking, and debate the supposedly best ways of achieving them. But I don't know of very many who have taken that step back, beyond the assumption, and have tried to make a case for WHY they're so intent on achieving these things. What is it that they hope to achieve, and WHY would others want to do so? Answers such as, Well, I want to have these experiences because Jim Flanegin said that I would be a low-vibe slime until I had them the way he has do not count. :-) :-) :-) It's the same problem I see with religion in general. The people urging others to join their religions don'tseem to ever offer any real-world, payoff-in-this-lifetime reasons for doing so. They just *assume* that there is a payoff, and try to bluff their way through without ever specifying what it is. Millions and millions of seekers over the ages, and almost none of them have ever come up with a real *value* for all this seeking they're devoting their lives to. I'm NOT suggesting that there isn't one, just pointing out that no one ever seems to talk about it if there is. From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 4:33 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mentalillness From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not alsowreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Richard, you want something silly? I give you something silly. Barry is having a near panic attack, pleading, insisting that someone explain to him the importance of the experience of unbounded awareness. I guess he's got a turd he wants to drop on that or something. But, here. Get this. Ask Barry to explain, how as a declared atheist, he explains karma, and rebirth, (which he is on record of buying into), and he mumbles, It's not important. It doesn't matter. No, not important at all Richard, explain that to me, please,it you can. Go figure? No. I haven't figured that out. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : On 10/24/2014 8:44 AM, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: This sounds like a pretzeling moment It seems dirt simple to me. We are all bound by karma, which means actions, past and present. If a person does good deeds, he or she will be reborn in a better life. On the other hand, if a person does bad things, in the past or present, he or she will get reborn in hell, or a less than satisfactory situation. It's not complicated. In some rare cases, if a person follows a spiritual path, does the work and realizes enlightenment, that person, if he or she has really good karma, may not have to be reborn again, unless they choose to do so, to help the rest of the world get free. But, you are only going to get as much enlightenment as you are going to get. So, based on my experience, what I've been told and what I have figured out - I believe in Life; what it does to you and what you do back. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... mailto:punditster@... wrote : Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. On 10/24/2014 12:03 AM, blue_bungalow_2@... mailto:blue_bungalow_2@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: This could explain how Winthrop and Albert worked on the non-weapon part, of an exclusively weapons project, in which one of them was denied security clearance. This is an example of cognitive dissonance - the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. What I'm trying to do is alert Barry that he is exhibiting some roughness by posting contradictory messages to the group. Everyone already knows that Barry believes in Buddhas, karma, and reincarnation and that he bought and read Sam Harris' new book. Everyone already knows that (except apparently Xeno). The thing that doesn't make any sense is, why Barry didn't understand what Harris wrote. It seems pretty simple to me. Harris makes a clear case for the value of spirituality, which he bases on his experiences in Buddhist meditation. Go figure.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first place. Most religions have never tried to do this. They just make declarations like Maharishi did, along the lines of The purpose of life is to achieve these experiences of unboundedness, which then become dogma and are repeated and believed by successive generations of believers. But he never said WHY these experiences were supposedly worth achieving. Start now...what do YOU see as the VALUE of these experiences of unboundedness you speak of? If you can't establish that they *have* a value, then why do we need a system of *any* kind to achieve them? Systems already exist, but they are inefficient and quirky, and at best we just stumble into them. If the value to the individual is great enough, they will find a way. What was of value to me though, might not be of value to another. I have found these experiences valuable... HOW? I cannot help but notice that you have avoided my question. DEFINE this value that you have found in these experiences of unboundedness. How *exactly* did they improve your life (or anyone else's life), in objective terms? , but it has also been very interesting how they have ultimately played out for me. Sam Harris is also promoting those experiences in his new book Waking Up, a Guide to Spirituality without Religion. And, like you, without presenting a convincing reason WHY they might be valuable. These experiences can be fantastic, one can get attached to having them but as to how they can be interpreted is another question. What you are told in a particular tradition might not be a particularly good way to describe them if they tend to reinforce an impacted belief system. My view, at the moment, is the nervous system is relieving itself of something, but it is difficult to tell just what that something is. I would say the interesting spiritual experiences are just artefacts of the system normalising itself, so they are not really of real import. Then why construct a system to give people these experiences? If one is seeking heaven and trying to avoid hell, one is missing the point of the search, for the point is to discover the commonality of both, and avoid being sucked either way. WHY is anyone seeking *either*? And where did you make the connection between these experiences of unboundedness and heaven or hell? For me as time went on such experiences tended to damp out, everything kind of flattened out, until one day on a walk there was this shift in which the world, as it always had been, was identical with what I had been seeking. I'm not sure you get my point. You, like Sam Harris, are talking about finding alternative -- theoretically better or more benign -- methods of giving people these experiences of unboundedness. But it strikes me that neither of you have ever taken a step back and told us WHY you or anyone else really *wants* these experiences in the first place, and more important, what objective *value* these experiences bring to your life or to the lives of others. I *understand* what you're saying...I think. I'm just pointing out that you and Harris both seem to sound as if you're inside a herd of lemmings presenting options for a new direction in which to run, without ever making a case for WHY you are running in the first place. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Well said Barry - and I agree with every word From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 4:33 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first place. Most religions have never tried to do this. They just make declarations like Maharishi did, along the lines of The purpose of life is to achieve these experiences of unboundedness, which then become dogma and are repeated and believed by successive generations of believers. But he never said WHY these experiences were supposedly worth achieving. Start now...what do YOU see as the VALUE of these experiences of unboundedness you speak of? If you can't establish that they *have* a value, then why do we need a system of *any* kind to achieve them? Systems already exist, but they are inefficient and quirky, and at best we just stumble into them. If the value to the individual is great enough, they will find a way. What was of value to me though, might not be of value to another. I have found these experiences valuable... HOW? I cannot help but notice that you have avoided my question. DEFINE this value that you have found in these experiences of unboundedness. How *exactly* did they improve your life (or anyone else's life), in objective terms? , but it has also been very interesting how they have ultimately played out for me. Sam Harris is also promoting those experiences in his new book Waking Up, a Guide to Spirituality without Religion. And, like you, without presenting a convincing reason WHY they might be valuable. These experiences can be fantastic, one can get attached to having them but as to how they can be interpreted is another question. What you are told in a particular tradition might not be a particularly good way to describe them if they tend to reinforce an impacted belief system. My view, at the moment, is the nervous system is relieving itself of something, but it is difficult to tell just what that something is. I would say the interesting spiritual experiences are just artefacts of the system normalising itself, so they are not really of real import. Then why construct a system to give people these experiences? If one is seeking heaven and trying to avoid hell, one is missing the point of the search, for the point is to discover the commonality of both, and avoid being sucked either way. WHY is anyone seeking *either*? And where did you make the connection between these experiences of unboundedness and heaven or hell? For me as time went on such experiences tended to damp out, everything kind of flattened out, until one day on a walk there was this shift in which the world, as it always had been, was identical with what I had been seeking. I'm not sure you get my point. You, like Sam Harris, are talking about finding alternative -- theoretically better or more benign -- methods of giving people these experiences of unboundedness. But it strikes me that neither of you have ever taken a step back and told us WHY you or anyone else really *wants* these experiences in the first place, and more important, what objective *value* these experiences bring to your life or to the lives of others. I *understand* what you're saying...I think. I'm just pointing out that you and Harris both seem to sound as if you're inside a herd of lemmings presenting options for a new direction in which to run, without ever making a case for WHY you are running in the first place. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:04 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Well said Barry - and I agree with every word It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be. Most teachers or seekers just *assume* that these experiences they have or claim to have had are valuable, but when called upon to do so, they can't really produce any strong arguments for WHY they are valuable, or WHAT that supposed value is. I'm suggesting that this oversight is epidemic in the world of spiritual practices, the elephant in the room that no one ever talks about. The people promoting these practices just *assume* that these experiences they're having or seeking are *worth* having or seeking, and debate the supposedly best ways of achieving them. But I don't know of very many who have taken that step back, beyond the assumption, and have tried to make a case for WHY they're so intent on achieving these things. What is it that they hope to achieve, and WHY would others want to do so? Answers such as, Well, I want to have these experiences because Jim Flanegin said that I would be a low-vibe slime until I had them the way he has do not count. :-) :-) :-) It's the same problem I see with religion in general. The people urging others to join their religions don't seem to ever offer any real-world, payoff-in-this-lifetime reasons for doing so. They just *assume* that there is a payoff, and try to bluff their way through without ever specifying what it is. Millions and millions of seekers over the ages, and almost none of them have ever come up with a real *value* for all this seeking they're devoting their lives to. I'm NOT suggesting that there isn't one, just pointing out that no one ever seems to talk about it if there is. From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 4:33 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first place. Most religions have never tried to do this. They just make declarations like Maharishi did, along the lines of The purpose of life is to achieve these experiences of unboundedness, which then become dogma and are repeated and believed by successive generations of believers. But he never said WHY these experiences were supposedly worth achieving. Start now...what do YOU see as the VALUE of these experiences of unboundedness you speak of? If you can't establish that they *have* a value, then why do we need a system of *any* kind to achieve them? Systems already exist, but they are inefficient and quirky, and at best we just stumble into them. If the value to the individual is great enough, they will find a way. What was of value to me though, might not be of value to another. I have found these experiences valuable... HOW? I cannot help but notice that you have avoided my question. DEFINE this value that you have found in these experiences of unboundedness. How *exactly* did they improve your life (or anyone else's life), in objective terms? , but it has also been very interesting how they have ultimately played out for me. Sam Harris is also promoting those experiences in his new book Waking Up, a Guide to Spirituality without Religion. And, like you, without presenting a convincing reason WHY they might be valuable. These experiences can be fantastic, one can get attached to having them but as to how they can be interpreted is another question. What you are told in a particular tradition might not be a particularly good way to describe them
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
When thinking about why people value certain experiences and do certain activities, I like Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guideline. IOW, once certain basic needs are met, then a person seeks to satisfy additional needs. Which might not be higher but which might simply involve activating more of the brain. Could it be that we're simply compelled by neural pathways in our brain that want to be activated? Or are we simply physical organisms seeking homeostatis all the time? Today is Mahalakshmi day. There's a big celebration in the Dome. I haven't decided whether I will go or not. Autumn has been so beautiful here. I feel happy enough just glancing up from the computer once and a while, out the window to the trees and the sky, walking to the post office, doing my everyday tasks. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't need to go to the Dome and hopefully get blessings from Mahalakshmi in the form of more money and then feel happier. I am already feeling happy enough. Much much gratitude... On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:00 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:04 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Well said Barry - and I agree with every word It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be. Most teachers or seekers just *assume* that these experiences they have or claim to have had are valuable, but when called upon to do so, they can't really produce any strong arguments for WHY they are valuable, or WHAT that supposed value is. I'm suggesting that this oversight is epidemic in the world of spiritual practices, the elephant in the room that no one ever talks about. The people promoting these practices just *assume* that these experiences they're having or seeking are *worth* having or seeking, and debate the supposedly best ways of achieving them. But I don't know of very many who have taken that step back, beyond the assumption, and have tried to make a case for WHY they're so intent on achieving these things. What is it that they hope to achieve, and WHY would others want to do so? Answers such as, Well, I want to have these experiences because Jim Flanegin said that I would be a low-vibe slime until I had them the way he has do not count. :-) :-) :-) It's the same problem I see with religion in general. The people urging others to join their religions don't seem to ever offer any real-world, payoff-in-this-lifetime reasons for doing so. They just *assume* that there is a payoff, and try to bluff their way through without ever specifying what it is. Millions and millions of seekers over the ages, and almost none of them have ever come up with a real *value* for all this seeking they're devoting their lives to. I'm NOT suggesting that there isn't one, just pointing out that no one ever seems to talk about it if there is. From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 4:33 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first place. Most religions have never tried to do this. They just make declarations like Maharishi did, along the lines of The purpose of life is to achieve these experiences of unboundedness, which then become dogma and are repeated and believed by successive generations of believers. But he never said WHY these experiences were supposedly worth achieving. Start now...what do YOU see as the VALUE of these experiences of unboundedness you speak of? If you can't
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/23/2014 3:33 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: ** For me as time went on such experiences tended to damp out, everything kind of flattened out, until one day on a walk there was this shift in which the world, as it always had been, was identical with what I had been seeking. * *I'm not sure you get my point. You, like Sam Harris, are talking about finding alternative -- theoretically better or more benign -- methods of giving people these experiences of unboundedness. But it strikes me that neither of you have ever taken a step back and told us WHY you or anyone else really *wants* these experiences in the first place, and more important, what objective *value* these experiences bring to your life or to the lives of others. I *understand* what you're saying...I think. I'm just pointing out that you and Harris both seem to sound as if you're inside a herd of lemmings presenting options for a new direction in which to run, without ever making a case for WHY you are running in the first place. :-) /Maybe we should review//:// // //The purpose of yoga, both Buddhist and Hindu, is to liberate man from suffering; so that they do not have to be reincarnated again and bound by karma. Everyone already knows this. Sam Harris already told you this - didn't you read his book? 'The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason' by Sam Harris W.W. Norton Company, 2004 p. 214 ///
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/23/2014 5:04 AM, Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Well said Barry - and I agree with every word /You failed to answer Barry's main question: what is the value of the spiritual life?/ *From:* TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *To:* FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Thursday, October 23, 2014 4:33 AM *Subject:* Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness *From:* Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com * From:* TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *From:* anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first place. Most religions have never tried to do this. They just make declarations like Maharishi did, along the lines of The purpose of life is to achieve these experiences of unboundedness, which then become dogma and are repeated and believed by successive generations of believers. But he never said WHY these experiences were supposedly worth achieving. Start now...what do YOU see as the VALUE of these experiences of unboundedness you speak of? If you can't establish that they *have* a value, then why do we need a system of *any* kind to achieve them? *Systems already exist, but they are inefficient and quirky, and at best we just stumble into them. If the value to the individual is great enough, they will find a way. What was of value to me though, might not be of value to another. * I have found these experiences valuable... HOW? I cannot help but notice that you have avoided my question. DEFINE this value that you have found in these experiences of unboundedness. How *exactly* did they improve your life (or anyone else's life), in objective terms? , but it has also been very interesting how they have ultimately played out for me. Sam Harris is also promoting those experiences in his new book Waking Up, a Guide to Spirituality without Religion. And, like you, without presenting a convincing reason WHY they might be valuable. These experiences can be fantastic, one can get attached to having them but as to how they can be interpreted is another question. What you are told in a particular tradition might not be a particularly good way to describe them if they tend to reinforce an impacted belief system. My view, at the moment, is the nervous system is relieving itself of something, but it is difficult to tell just what that something is. I would say the interesting spiritual experiences are just artefacts of the system normalising itself, so they are not really of real import. Then why construct a system to give people these experiences? If one is seeking heaven and trying to avoid hell, one is missing the point of the search, for the point is to discover the commonality of both, and avoid being sucked either way. WHY is anyone seeking *either*? And where did you make the connection between these experiences of unboundedness and heaven or hell? For me as time went on such experiences tended to damp out, everything kind of flattened out, until one day on a walk there was this shift in which the world, as it always had been, was identical with what I had been seeking. * *I'm not sure you get my point. You, like Sam Harris, are talking about finding alternative -- theoretically better or more benign -- methods of giving people these experiences of unboundedness. But it strikes me that neither of you have ever taken a step back and told us WHY you or anyone else really *wants* these experiences in the first place, and more important, what objective *value* these experiences bring to your life or to the lives of others. I *understand* what you're saying...I think. I'm just pointing out that you and Harris both seem to sound as if you're inside a herd of lemmings presenting options for a new direction in which to run, without ever making a case for WHY you are running in the first place. :-) * *
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Well said Barry - and I agree with every word On 10/23/2014 5:59 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be. /The answer is simple: you should know the truth and the truth will set you free from ignorance. We are either free or we are bound. If free, there is no need for //yoga; if bound by what means can we free ourselves?// // //It looks like we are back to Buddhism 101. In over forty years of studying with teachers and practicing you still don't seem to fully understand what it is you have been //seeking. So, let's start from the very beginning: //Buddhism is a non-theistic religion of beliefs and practices largely based on the teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who is commonly known as the historical Buddha, the awakened one, the awakened one Sam Harris was talking about in his recent book, Waking Up. // // //According to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He is recognized by Buddhists as an awakened or enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help sentient beings end their suffering from - karma (from Sanskrit: action, work) is the force that drives samsara—the cycle of suffering and rebirth for each being.// // //Works cited:// // //Buddhism from Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition.// //http://www.britannica.com/// // //Harvey, Introduction to Buddhism, p. 40/ Most teachers or seekers just *assume* that these experiences they have or claim to have had are valuable, but when called upon to do so, they can't really produce any strong arguments for WHY they are valuable, or WHAT that supposed value is. I'm suggesting that this oversight is epidemic in the world of spiritual practices, the elephant in the room that no one ever talks about. The people promoting these practices just *assume* that these experiences they're having or seeking are *worth* having or seeking, and debate the supposedly best ways of achieving them. But I don't know of very many who have taken that step back, beyond the assumption, and have tried to make a case for WHY they're so intent on achieving these things. What is it that they hope to achieve, and WHY would others want to do so? /Non sequitur. I already answered this question in a previous post./ Answers such as, Well, I want to have these experiences because Jim Flanegin said that I would be a low-vibe slime until I had them the way he has do not count. :-) :-) :-) /Non sequitur. / It's the same problem I see with religion in general. The people urging others to join their religions don't seem to ever offer any real-world, payoff-in-this-lifetime reasons for doing so. They just *assume* that there is a payoff, and try to bluff their way through without ever specifying what it is. Millions and millions of seekers over the ages, and almost none of them have ever come up with a real *value* for all this seeking they're devoting their lives to. I'm NOT suggesting that there isn't one, just pointing out that no one ever seems to talk about it if there is. /Non sequitur.//I already rebutted this statement in a previous post./
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
You are very good at quoting scripture and contents of text books (and there is a value to that), but when you look to the honesty of your moment to moment experience - What do you find? Put aside traditions and ancient wisdom - they are not relevant today - today its What are you bringing to the table? BTW, you don't have to tell us . . .
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/23/2014 7:14 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Could it be that we're simply compelled by neural pathways in our brain that want to be activated? /According to MMY it is the nature of the mind to want to enjoy - it's only natural for anyone to want to be free from suffering. He said that the way into bliss is the way out of suffering.// // //So, nobody wants to suffer but in fact, suffering is a given in life: we all suffer from repeated birth, old age, sickness and eventual death. The truth is that we are all bound by karma, either from this life or from a previous life. There is no exception to karma, from the highest god or deva down to a single blade of grass. // // //The idea behind yoga is to provide the ideal opportunity for awakening to the truth of how things really are. If you know the truth you will be free. Yoga is immortality and freedom. // // //According to yoga theory, you build up samskaras due to karma - the actions in this life and in your past lives. You can remove the samskaras through tapas - burning off the accumulated layers of past actions through meditation and other yoga practices. But a practice will not remove all the samskaras - even for an accomplished yogi there's always a trace of karma because they still maintain a human body with air, water, and food, coarse or fine, and thoughts, volitions and desires. // // //A siddha yogi is one who has realized the truth and is totally free while still in living in a human body, a jivan-mukti - for them there is no return; everything has been done that needs to be done; gone to the other shore; totally gone. No come back no more.//Free./ On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:00 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: *From:* Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *To:* FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:04 PM *Subject:* Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Well said Barry - and I agree with every word It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/23/2014 9:02 AM, inmadi...@hotmail.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: You are very good at quoting scripture and contents of text books (and there is a value to that), but when you look to the honesty of your moment to moment experience - What do you find? /Teachers and textbooks are like fingers pointing at the moon - they are valid means of knowledge - we all depend on verbal testimony for most of our understanding. SBS compared enlightenment to Light (Brahman). The Absolute is already there; it doesn't require anything else to illuminate it because it is an already established fact. The enlightened state is described in the Indian rice analogy: you can remove the chaff and it's still rice paddy. All you have to do is isolate the relative from the absolute and be free. Just don't fall into the false belief that the pointing finger is the moon itself./ Put aside traditions and ancient wisdom - they are not relevant today /In this day and age hardly anyone reads or understands the Sanskrit scriptures. The only hope for enlightenment in this age of Kali is to practice karma yoga - giving up the fruits of your labor for the common good and seeking out a qualified teacher so you can work out your karma with diligence. / What are you bringing to the table? /As in a pond, when its influx of water has been blocked, dries up gradually through evaporation and use, so karmic matter, which has been acquired through millions of lives, is erased through yoga; there is no further unflux - Wallah Sutra, I.4/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Richard, your posts remind me of how much I appreciate David Deida and other teachers who suggest that the old ways of liberation are best suited to masculine physiologies. He also compares a soul to the light coming in from a stained glass window, which is the body. Via yoga practices we attempt to clean the dirt off the window. Via therapy we attempt to fix the cracks in the glass. But at a certain point, we realize we are the light. End of cleaning and fixing! On Thursday, October 23, 2014 9:11 AM, 'Richard J. Williams' pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: On 10/23/2014 7:14 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Could it be that we're simply compelled by neural pathways in our brain that want to be activated? According to MMY it is the nature of the mind to want to enjoy - it's only natural for anyone to want to be free from suffering. He said that the way into bliss is the way out of suffering. So, nobody wants to suffer but in fact, suffering is a given in life: we all suffer from repeated birth, old age, sickness and eventual death. The truth is that we are all bound by karma, either from this life or from a previous life. There is no exception to karma, from the highest god or deva down to a single blade of grass. The idea behind yoga is to provide the ideal opportunity for awakening to the truth of how things really are. If you know the truth you will be free. Yoga is immortality and freedom. According to yoga theory, you build up samskaras due to karma - the actions in this life and in your past lives. You can remove the samskaras through tapas - burning off the accumulated layers of past actions through meditation and other yoga practices. But a practice will not remove all the samskaras - even for an accomplished yogi there's always a trace of karma because they still maintain a human body with air, water, and food, coarse or fine, and thoughts, volitions and desires. A siddha yogi is one who has realized the truth and is totally free while still in living in a human body, a jivan-mukti - for them there is no return; everything has been done that needs to be done; gone to the other shore; totally gone. No come back no more. Free. On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:00 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:04 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Well said Barry - and I agree with every word It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be. #yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133 -- #yiv6444222133ygrp-mkp {border:1px solid #d8d8d8;font-family:Arial;margin:10px 0;padding:0 10px;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-mkp hr {border:1px solid #d8d8d8;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-mkp #yiv6444222133hd {color:#628c2a;font-size:85%;font-weight:700;line-height:122%;margin:10px 0;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-mkp #yiv6444222133ads {margin-bottom:10px;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-mkp .yiv6444222133ad {padding:0 0;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-mkp .yiv6444222133ad p {margin:0;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-mkp .yiv6444222133ad a {color:#ff;text-decoration:none;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-sponsor #yiv6444222133ygrp-lc {font-family:Arial;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-sponsor #yiv6444222133ygrp-lc #yiv6444222133hd {margin:10px 0px;font-weight:700;font-size:78%;line-height:122%;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133ygrp-sponsor #yiv6444222133ygrp-lc .yiv6444222133ad {margin-bottom:10px;padding:0 0;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133actions {font-family:Verdana;font-size:11px;padding:10px 0;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133activity {background-color:#e0ecee;float:left;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;padding:10px;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133activity span {font-weight:700;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133activity span:first-child {text-transform:uppercase;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133activity span a {color:#5085b6;text-decoration:none;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133activity span span {color:#ff7900;}#yiv6444222133 #yiv6444222133activity span .yiv6444222133underline {text-decoration:underline;}#yiv6444222133 .yiv6444222133attach {clear:both;display:table;font-family:Arial;font-size:12px;padding:10px 0;width:400px;}#yiv6444222133 .yiv6444222133attach div a {text-decoration:none;}#yiv6444222133 .yiv6444222133attach img {border:none;padding-right:5px;}#yiv6444222133 .yiv6444222133attach label {display:block
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Richard, I also appreciate Maharishi's distinction between and enlightened person and an enlightened teacher. The person maybe popped into enlightenment while eating a strawberry. So then he or she teaches the strawberry eating technique. OTOH, an enlightened teacher has such a perspective that he or she can see exactly where you are in your journey. And can genuinely help you along your path. On Thursday, October 23, 2014 9:25 AM, 'Richard J. Williams' pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: On 10/23/2014 9:02 AM, inmadi...@hotmail.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: You are very good at quoting scripture and contents of text books (and there is a value to that), but when you look to the honesty of your moment to moment experience - What do you find? Teachers and textbooks are like fingers pointing at the moon - they are valid means of knowledge - we all depend on verbal testimony for most of our understanding. SBS compared enlightenment to Light (Brahman). The Absolute is already there; it doesn't require anything else to illuminate it because it is an already established fact. The enlightened state is described in the Indian rice analogy: you can remove the chaff and it's still rice paddy. All you have to do is isolate the relative from the absolute and be free. Just don't fall into the false belief that the pointing finger is the moon itself. Put aside traditions and ancient wisdom - they are not relevant today In this day and age hardly anyone reads or understands the Sanskrit scriptures. The only hope for enlightenment in this age of Kali is to practice karma yoga - giving up the fruits of your labor for the common good and seeking out a qualified teacher so you can work out your karma with diligence. What are you bringing to the table? As in a pond, when its influx of water has been blocked, dries up gradually through evaporation and use, so karmic matter, which has been acquired through millions of lives, is erased through yoga; there is no further unflux - Wallah Sutra, I.4 #yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065 -- #yiv2625676065ygrp-mkp {border:1px solid #d8d8d8;font-family:Arial;margin:10px 0;padding:0 10px;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-mkp hr {border:1px solid #d8d8d8;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-mkp #yiv2625676065hd {color:#628c2a;font-size:85%;font-weight:700;line-height:122%;margin:10px 0;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-mkp #yiv2625676065ads {margin-bottom:10px;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-mkp .yiv2625676065ad {padding:0 0;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-mkp .yiv2625676065ad p {margin:0;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-mkp .yiv2625676065ad a {color:#ff;text-decoration:none;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-sponsor #yiv2625676065ygrp-lc {font-family:Arial;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-sponsor #yiv2625676065ygrp-lc #yiv2625676065hd {margin:10px 0px;font-weight:700;font-size:78%;line-height:122%;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065ygrp-sponsor #yiv2625676065ygrp-lc .yiv2625676065ad {margin-bottom:10px;padding:0 0;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065actions {font-family:Verdana;font-size:11px;padding:10px 0;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065activity {background-color:#e0ecee;float:left;font-family:Verdana;font-size:10px;padding:10px;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065activity span {font-weight:700;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065activity span:first-child {text-transform:uppercase;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065activity span a {color:#5085b6;text-decoration:none;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065activity span span {color:#ff7900;}#yiv2625676065 #yiv2625676065activity span .yiv2625676065underline {text-decoration:underline;}#yiv2625676065 .yiv2625676065attach {clear:both;display:table;font-family:Arial;font-size:12px;padding:10px 0;width:400px;}#yiv2625676065 .yiv2625676065attach div a {text-decoration:none;}#yiv2625676065 .yiv2625676065attach img {border:none;padding-right:5px;}#yiv2625676065 .yiv2625676065attach label {display:block;margin-bottom:5px;}#yiv2625676065 .yiv2625676065attach label a {text-decoration:none;}#yiv2625676065 blockquote {margin:0 0 0 4px;}#yiv2625676065 .yiv2625676065bold {font-family:Arial;font-size:13px;font-weight:700;}#yiv2625676065 .yiv2625676065bold a {text-decoration:none;}#yiv2625676065 dd.yiv2625676065last p a {font-family:Verdana;font-weight:700;}#yiv2625676065 dd.yiv2625676065last p span {margin-right:10px;font-family:Verdana;font-weight:700;}#yiv2625676065 dd.yiv2625676065last p span.yiv2625676065yshortcuts {margin-right:0;}#yiv2625676065 div.yiv2625676065attach-table div div a {text-decoration:none;}#yiv2625676065 div.yiv2625676065attach-table {width:400px;}#yiv2625676065 div.yiv2625676065file-title a, #yiv2625676065 div.yiv2625676065file-title a:active, #yiv2625676065 div.yiv2625676065file-title a:hover, #yiv2625676065 div.yiv2625676065file-title a:visited {text-decoration:none;}#yiv2625676065
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
I think you hit on something here I never considered. Social interaction. I do not think there is any objective measure by which one considers such experiences valuable. There are certain things I like, certain things I do not, and I go for the ones I like. While I do not know why, those things I like I sometimes like to share with others. A piece of music, a movie. Why did you post about Bruce Cockburn's music, his book? I am not sure there is any reliable objective measure why one likes something other than a general propensity to avoid pain and to maintain comfort. Now if you recall Maharishi said the mind seeks a greater field of happiness. Because he was hawking TM, he skewed the concept to correspond with his metaphysic (the transcendental field, the unified field). You do not need a field. Basically I think it comes down to you like stuff, and don't like other stuff. The rationalisations come later. If there is any objective evidence for that previous sentence it might be split brain experiments. When one side of the brain of people with this condition are asked to explain why the other side of the body did something, it makes up an explanation. The whole spiritual trip is a post hoc explanation fabricated to explain why something you like, in this case some kind of meditation for example, or the experience that is supposed to result from that, should be valuable to someone else. Spiritual endeavours are really quite a complex bother, all these things that one has to practice or think about, so to get someone to get involved in it really requires a real snow job. You have to bury them with advertising about how great things will be if they do this. You need an intellectual framework to explain why doing such atypical things will benefit. To get someone to come around to your ideas about what you like, it may not matter if it doesn't really work. You make up this because you are socially wired to a certain extent, and a successful social interaction results in feeling good. So there really is not much of a reason for saying such experiences as spiritual experiences are valuable, you hawk them that way, just as you would a certain artist, a good restaurant, a walk on a nice evening. Because social interactions are on an individual level, I would say the ego is involved, that level of personal identity that thinks it is running the show. The ego provides the explanations. From a scientific level, the experiments that indicate the brain comes to decisions often as far as 7 or 8 seconds prior to that decision comes into conscious awareness. That would mean you are not really in control of anything. Life goes on this and that way. Stuff happens, you think you do stuff. Hawking TM or hawking Bruce or hawking Hawking resuls in satisfaction. Whatever floats your boat. As for experiences of unboundedness, I really don't think of them that way any more. The spiritual trip is the strangest con in the universe. Suppose I put it this way: How would you like to be exactly the way you are for as long as you are? This is what I am offering you. It will take you about 40 or 50 years, and you will have to do all these different things, adopt crazy ideas, do exercises, sit quietly, eat special foods, take weird medicines. Want to jump in an try this out? In order to get people to do what you like, you have to be more devious in your enticements. It all comes down to 'I like this, and I want you to like it too'. Psst, I have some secret stuff that other people do not know, and if you let me tell you, and you do what I say, you will be able to say every day 'I'm gonna help people! Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me! From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 8:33 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/23/2014 9:29 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Richard, your posts remind me of how much I appreciate David Deida and other teachers who suggest that the old ways of liberation are best suited to masculine physiologies. He also compares a soul to the light coming in from a stained glass window, which is the body. Via yoga practices we attempt to clean the dirt off the window. Via therapy we attempt to fix the cracks in the glass. But at a certain point, we realize we are the light. End of cleaning and fixing! It's like the Zen koan: Polishing a Tile to Make a Mirror: /There was a zen student named Tai-i who was always sitting in meditation. His master Matsu asked him: For what purpose are you sitting in meditation?// // //The student answered: I am trying to become a Buddha.// // //So, the Zen Master picked up a tile and started rubbing it.// // //The student asked: For what purpose are you rubbing a tile?// // //The Zen Master replied I am rubbing this tile to make a mirror.// // //The student asked: How can you rub a tile to make a mirror?// // //To which the Zen Master answered: How can you make a Buddha by sitting and meditating?/ Zen Buddhism: A History Volume 1 by Heinrich Dumoulin MacMillan, 1994 pp. 160-163 http://www.absolutoracle.com/Notezen/Articles/koan1.htm On Thursday, October 23, 2014 9:11 AM, 'Richard J. Williams' pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: On 10/23/2014 7:14 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com mailto:sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Could it be that we're simply compelled by neural pathways in our brain that want to be activated? /According to MMY it is the nature of the mind to want to enjoy - it's only natural for anyone to want to be free from suffering. He said that the way into bliss is the way out of suffering.// // //So, nobody wants to suffer but in fact, suffering is a given in life: we all suffer from repeated birth, old age, sickness and eventual death. The truth is that we are all bound by karma, either from this life or from a previous life. There is no exception to karma, from the highest god or deva down to a single blade of grass. // // //The idea behind yoga is to provide the ideal opportunity for awakening to the truth of how things really are. If you know the truth you will be free. Yoga is immortality and freedom. // // //According to yoga theory, you build up samskaras due to karma - the actions in this life and in your past lives. You can remove the samskaras through tapas - burning off the accumulated layers of past actions through meditation and other yoga practices. But a practice will not remove all the samskaras - even for an accomplished yogi there's always a trace of karma because they still maintain a human body with air, water, and food, coarse or fine, and thoughts, volitions and desires. // // //A siddha yogi is one who has realized the truth and is totally free while still in living in a human body, a jivan-mukti - for them there is no return; everything has been done that needs to be done; gone to the other shore; totally gone. No come back no more.//Free./ On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:00 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com mailto:turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: *From:* Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com mailto:mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *To:* FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:04 PM *Subject:* Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Well said Barry - and I agree with every word It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Richard, is he saying something similar to: the Self alone unfolds the Self to the Self? That's what it sounds like to me. I think the whole thing is a big, fat paradox! On Thursday, October 23, 2014 10:17 AM, 'Richard J. Williams' pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: On 10/23/2014 9:29 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Richard, your posts remind me of how much I appreciate David Deida and other teachers who suggest that the old ways of liberation are best suited to masculine physiologies. He also compares a soul to the light coming in from a stained glass window, which is the body. Via yoga practices we attempt to clean the dirt off the window. Via therapy we attempt to fix the cracks in the glass. But at a certain point, we realize we are the light. End of cleaning and fixing! It's like the Zen koan: Polishing a Tile to Make a Mirror: There was a zen student named Tai-i who was always sitting in meditation. His master Matsu asked him: For what purpose are you sitting in meditation? The student answered: I am trying to become a Buddha. So, the Zen Master picked up a tile and started rubbing it. The student asked: For what purpose are you rubbing a tile? The Zen Master replied I am rubbing this tile to make a mirror. The student asked: How can you rub a tile to make a mirror? To which the Zen Master answered: How can you make a Buddha by sitting and meditating? Zen Buddhism: A History Volume 1 by Heinrich Dumoulin MacMillan, 1994 pp. 160-163 http://www.absolutoracle.com/Notezen/Articles/koan1.htm On Thursday, October 23, 2014 9:11 AM, 'Richard J. Williams' pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: On 10/23/2014 7:14 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Could it be that we're simply compelled by neural pathways in our brain that want to be activated? According to MMY it is the nature of the mind to want to enjoy - it's only natural for anyone to want to be free from suffering. He said that the way into bliss is the way out of suffering. So, nobody wants to suffer but in fact, suffering is a given in life: we all suffer from repeated birth, old age, sickness and eventual death. The truth is that we are all bound by karma, either from this life or from a previous life. There is no exception to karma, from the highest god or deva down to a single blade of grass. The idea behind yoga is to provide the ideal opportunity for awakening to the truth of how things really are. If you know the truth you will be free. Yoga is immortality and freedom. According to yoga theory, you build up samskaras due to karma - the actions in this life and in your past lives. You can remove the samskaras through tapas - burning off the accumulated layers of past actions through meditation and other yoga practices. But a practice will not remove all the samskaras - even for an accomplished yogi there's always a trace of karma because they still maintain a human body with air, water, and food, coarse or fine, and thoughts, volitions and desires. A siddha yogi is one who has realized the truth and is totally free while still in living in a human body, a jivan-mukti - for them there is no return; everything has been done that needs to be done; gone to the other shore; totally gone. No come back no more. Free. On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:00 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:04 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Well said Barry - and I agree with every word It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be. #yiv7549385388 #yiv7549385388 -- #yiv7549385388ygrp-mkp {border:1px solid #d8d8d8;font-family:Arial;margin:10px 0;padding:0 10px;}#yiv7549385388 #yiv7549385388ygrp-mkp hr {border:1px solid #d8d8d8;}#yiv7549385388 #yiv7549385388ygrp-mkp #yiv7549385388hd {color:#628c2a;font-size:85%;font-weight:700;line-height:122%;margin:10px 0;}#yiv7549385388 #yiv7549385388ygrp-mkp #yiv7549385388ads {margin-bottom:10px;}#yiv7549385388 #yiv7549385388ygrp-mkp .yiv7549385388ad {padding:0 0;}#yiv7549385388 #yiv7549385388ygrp-mkp .yiv7549385388ad p {margin:0;}#yiv7549385388 #yiv7549385388ygrp-mkp .yiv7549385388ad a {color:#ff;text-decoration:none;}#yiv7549385388
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 4:34 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness I think you hit on something here I never considered. Social interaction. I do not think there is any objective measure by which one considers such experiences valuable. There are certain things I like, certain things I do not, and I go for the ones I like. While I do not know why, those things I like I sometimes like to share with others. A piece of music, a movie. Why did you post about Bruce Cockburn's music, his book? I am not sure there is any reliable objective measure why one likes something other than a general propensity to avoid pain and to maintain comfort. Now if you recall Maharishi said the mind seeks a greater field of happiness. Because he was hawking TM, he skewed the concept to correspond with his metaphysic (the transcendental field, the unified field). You do not need a field. Basically I think it comes down to you like stuff, and don't like other stuff. The rationalisations come later. If there is any objective evidence for that previous sentence it might be split brain experiments. When one side of the brain of people with this condition are asked to explain why the other side of the body did something, it makes up an explanation. The whole spiritual trip is a post hoc explanation fabricated to explain why something you like, in this case some kind of meditation for example, or the experience that is supposed to result from that, should be valuable to someone else. Spiritual endeavours are really quite a complex bother, all these things that one has to practice or think about, so to get someone to get involved in it really requires a real snow job. You have to bury them with advertising about how great things will be if they do this. You need an intellectual framework to explain why doing such atypical things will benefit. To get someone to come around to your ideas about what you like, it may not matter if it doesn't really work. You make up this because you are socially wired to a certain extent, and a successful social interaction results in feeling good. So there really is not much of a reason for saying such experiences as spiritual experiences are valuable, you hawk them that way, just as you would a certain artist, a good restaurant, a walk on a nice evening. Because social interactions are on an individual level, I would say the ego is involved, that level of personal identity that thinks it is running the show. The ego provides the explanations. From a scientific level, the experiments that indicate the brain comes to decisions often as far as 7 or 8 seconds prior to that decision comes into conscious awareness. That would mean you are not really in control of anything. Life goes on this and that way. Stuff happens, you think you do stuff. Hawking TM or hawking Bruce or hawking Hawking resuls in satisfaction. Whatever floats your boat. As for experiences of unboundedness, I really don't think of them that way any more. The spiritual trip is the strangest con in the universe. Suppose I put it this way: How would you like to be exactly the way you are for as long as you are? This is what I am offering you. It will take you about 40 or 50 years, and you will have to do all these different things, adopt crazy ideas, do exercises, sit quietly, eat special foods, take weird medicines. Want to jump in an try this out? In order to get people to do what you like, you have to be more devious in your enticements. It all comes down to 'I like this, and I want you to like it too'. Psst, I have some secret stuff that other people do not know, and if you let me tell you, and you do what I say, you will be able to say every day 'I'm gonna help people! Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me! Two travelers are on a road, looking for Ixtlan. They ask a passing bird for directions. He gives them, then flies off. Do the travelers go in the direction he pointed them to, or not? Whatever their choice, do they ever get to Ixtlan? However long their journey, did they ever leave it?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/23/2014 10:36 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Two travelers are on a road, looking for Ixtlan. They ask a passing bird for directions. He gives them, then flies off. Do the travelers go in the direction he pointed them to, or not? Whatever their choice, do they ever get to Ixtlan? However long their journey, did they ever leave it? /This little story by Carlos Castaneda is almost straight out of South Asian mythology. Apparently Castaneda got almost all of his inspiration from reading books in the UCLA library. This is supposed to be Yaqui philosophy - but everyone knows that the native American inhabitants all migrated over from Asia. So it's not surprising to see ancient Siberian shamanic notions in Yaqui mythology. // // /*/Buddha's Parable of the Raft:/*/ // //Without a ferry or a bridge you can safely cross over a river on a raft.// //The purpose of the raft is to cross over to the other side. If you don't have a raft you can build one and use it to cross over. Once you have crossed over, you can discard the raft. You would look funny walking around with a raft on your head.// // /*/Zen Koan the Gateless Gate:/*/ // //There is a long, winding spiritual path to get to the gate. You must pass through the gate in order to get to the other side. Once you pass through, you find that there is no path, no going, no gate, and no other side. So, we call it the gateless gate. //http://www.spiritualliving360.com/index.php/zen-koan-case-of-carrying-the-raft-3065// /http://www.dailyzen.com/zen/zen_reading12.asp/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
That was a great read, thanks! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : I think you hit on something here I never considered. Social interaction. I do not think there is any objective measure by which one considers such experiences valuable. There are certain things I like, certain things I do not, and I go for the ones I like. While I do not know why, those things I like I sometimes like to share with others. A piece of music, a movie. Why did you post about Bruce Cockburn's music, his book? I am not sure there is any reliable objective measure why one likes something other than a general propensity to avoid pain and to maintain comfort. Now if you recall Maharishi said the mind seeks a greater field of happiness. Because he was hawking TM, he skewed the concept to correspond with his metaphysic (the transcendental field, the unified field). You do not need a field. Basically I think it comes down to you like stuff, and don't like other stuff. The rationalisations come later. If there is any objective evidence for that previous sentence it might be split brain experiments. When one side of the brain of people with this condition are asked to explain why the other side of the body did something, it makes up an explanation. The whole spiritual trip is a post hoc explanation fabricated to explain why something you like, in this case some kind of meditation for example, or the experience that is supposed to result from that, should be valuable to someone else. Spiritual endeavours are really quite a complex bother, all these things that one has to practice or think about, so to get someone to get involved in it really requires a real snow job. You have to bury them with advertising about how great things will be if they do this. You need an intellectual framework to explain why doing such atypical things will benefit. To get someone to come around to your ideas about what you like, it may not matter if it doesn't really work. You make up this because you are socially wired to a certain extent, and a successful social interaction results in feeling good. So there really is not much of a reason for saying such experiences as spiritual experiences are valuable, you hawk them that way, just as you would a certain artist, a good restaurant, a walk on a nice evening. Because social interactions are on an individual level, I would say the ego is involved, that level of personal identity that thinks it is running the show. The ego provides the explanations. From a scientific level, the experiments that indicate the brain comes to decisions often as far as 7 or 8 seconds prior to that decision comes into conscious awareness. That would mean you are not really in control of anything. Life goes on this and that way. Stuff happens, you think you do stuff. Hawking TM or hawking Bruce or hawking Hawking resuls in satisfaction. Whatever floats your boat. As for experiences of unboundedness, I really don't think of them that way any more. The spiritual trip is the strangest con in the universe. Suppose I put it this way: How would you like to be exactly the way you are for as long as you are? This is what I am offering you. It will take you about 40 or 50 years, and you will have to do all these different things, adopt crazy ideas, do exercises, sit quietly, eat special foods, take weird medicines. Want to jump in an try this out? In order to get people to do what you like, you have to be more devious in your enticements. It all comes down to 'I like this, and I want you to like it too'. Psst, I have some secret stuff that other people do not know, and if you let me tell you, and you do what I say, you will be able to say every day 'I'm gonna help people! Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me! From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 8:33 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
medicines. Want to jump in an try this out? In order to get people to do what you like, you have to be more devious in your enticements. It all comes down to 'I like this, and I want you to like it too'. Psst, I have some secret stuff that other people do not know, and if you let me tell you, and you do what I say, you will be able to say every day 'I'm gonna help people! Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me! From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 8:33 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first place. Most religions have never tried to do this. They just make declarations like Maharishi did, along the lines of The purpose of life is to achieve these experiences of unboundedness, which then become dogma and are repeated and believed by successive generations of believers. But he never said WHY these experiences were supposedly worth achieving. Start now...what do YOU see as the VALUE of these experiences of unboundedness you speak of? If you can't establish that they *have* a value, then why do we need a system of *any* kind to achieve them? Systems already exist, but they are inefficient and quirky, and at best we just stumble into them. If the value to the individual is great enough, they will find a way. What was of value to me though, might not be of value to another. I have found these experiences valuable... HOW? I cannot help but notice that you have avoided my question. DEFINE this value that you have found in these experiences of unboundedness. How *exactly* did they improve your life (or anyone else's life), in objective terms? , but it has also been very interesting how they have ultimately played out for me. Sam Harris is also promoting those experiences in his new book Waking Up, a Guide to Spirituality without Religion. And, like you, without presenting a convincing reason WHY they might be valuable. These experiences can be fantastic, one can get attached to having them but as to how they can be interpreted is another question. What you are told in a particular tradition might not be a particularly good way to describe them if they tend to reinforce an impacted belief system. My view, at the moment, is the nervous system is relieving itself of something, but it is difficult to tell just what that something is. I would say the interesting spiritual experiences are just artefacts of the system normalising itself, so they are not really of real import. Then why construct a system to give people these experiences? If one is seeking heaven and trying to avoid hell, one is missing the point of the search, for the point is to discover the commonality of both, and avoid being sucked either way. WHY is anyone seeking *either*? And where did you make the connection between these experiences of unboundedness and heaven or hell? For me as time went on such experiences tended to damp out, everything kind of flattened out, until one day on a walk there was this shift in which the world, as it always had been, was identical with what I had been seeking. I'm not sure you get my point. You, like Sam Harris, are talking about finding alternative -- theoretically better or more benign -- methods of giving people these experiences of unboundedness. But it strikes me that neither of you have ever taken a step back and told us WHY you or anyone else really *wants* these experiences in the first place, and more important, what objective *value* these experiences bring to your life or to the lives of others. I *understand* what you're saying...I think. I'm just pointing out that you and Harris both seem to sound as if you're inside a herd of lemmings presenting options for a new direction in which to run, without ever making a case for WHY you are running in the first place. :-) #yiv6943746459 #yiv6943746459
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Like you Share, I really did not pay attention to the selling points as I had had experiences prior to TM, I was just looking for an easy way to meditate, a natural consequence of being lazy. The sell was there in the introductory and preparatory lectures and in available chart books supposedly showing benefits from the scientific side, but I ignored all that at the time. My first few meditations were really rotten, I almost quit right there. But trying to sell TM to friends who are not really into this kind of thing proved more of a challenge. None of my friends ever learned, except for a couple, and they never finished the course. A few of my family learned, and they all quit too. I did discover that some of my friends who were teachers, when I criticised the quality of the scientific research on TM, would try really had to convince me the research was really true. About 1% of research on meditation in general is of good quality. Part of that seems to lie with the advertising mentality of the TMO. Dr. Lorin Roche wrote the following: The Relaxation Response is the term coined by Herbert Benson, M.D., in 1968 or so when looking at the physiological data he was getting from TM (Transcendental Meditation) meditators who were coming to his lab to be measured. Benson soon got tired of our relentless TM zealotry and the way we (TM teachers who were working for him) would sign official research documents with Jai Guru Dev. As TM teachers, we wanted to take the results from his lab and instantly use them as part of our advertising and our public lectures. TM at the time had meditation centers in every major city in the United States, and teachers on most every college campus across the country. It was a hugely popular movement. But Benson needed to be able to clone TM, make it into a laboratory-standardized technique that could be replicated and measured at other labs. That's what science is. So he decided to de-mystify mantras, and he started telling people to just pick their own mantra, such as the word, ONE. This scandalized the whole TM movement, but he had to do it. And truth be told, as far as I know, Benson in his 30 years or so of research on the physiology of meditation, publishing hundreds of scientific papers, is probably the greatest meditation scientist ever. I trust his findings. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, TM meditators were the guinea pigs of choice for scientists, because there were hundreds of thousands of them in the United States alone, and tens of thousands in other countries, their training was standardized, and they were so well trained that they could come into a medical lab and actually MEDITATE while the scientists stuck needles in their arms, electrodes on their heads, hands and hearts, and breathe into oxygen-consumption measuring masks. It's hard to find people like that! Think about it. Who in their right mind would take out part of their day to do such a thing? When I used to do this, in the 70's, it meant driving through ugly traffic to UCI Medical School, then going into a lab with a thousand rats in cages just a couple dozen feet away, the smell of ether in the air, and letting the guys in white coats poke me with huge needles and take blood samples while I meditated. TM blew it, by alienating one of the great scientists at work in the field, and by pushing bad science — publishing in their ads the results of trial studies. But the Buddhists, by comparison, played it very smart, and gradually came to be the favorite of physiological researchers. The Buddhists cheerfully cooperated with the needs of scientists, it is a match made in heaven because Buddhism is a very clinical take on life anyway. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : WRT TM, I never got a snow job or a hard sell. In 1972, I was student teaching in a non traditional high school. One of the other student teachers explained the bubble diagram to me. Also during this time, my husband and I were doing marijuana approx 3 times a year. I wished that I could have that high in a natural way. We also did a yoga class. I caught a cold. Now fast forward three years. I'm in Yes health food restaurant in DC. A gorgeous young man comes up to my table, doesn't say a word, and leaves a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi. I read the book over several months but don't understand most of it. A few months later I'm visiting my Mom. She comments that I seem so peaceful. I'm thinking about taking a Tai Chi class at Univ of Maryland, called The Art of Moving Meditation. One beautiful day in March 1975, I take my camera to Rock Creek Park. Along the way I stop at a grocery store. As I'm leaving, I see a picture of Maharishi for the first time. I don't know why, except for the word meditation, but I note the time, date and place of the intro lecture. When I go to the lecture at my local
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
The late Skip Alexander, who used to head the Psychology Dept at MUM, co-edited a book that examined post-maslow development. He wrote the chapter on Vedic Psychology, and prominent mainstream-psychologists wrote chapters on post-Maslow, -post-Piagetian, etc., psychology. _Higher Stages of Human Development_ -Alexander and Langer, ed. May still be in print. [You can't have my autographed copy, sorry] L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : When thinking about why people value certain experiences and do certain activities, I like Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a guideline. IOW, once certain basic needs are met, then a person seeks to satisfy additional needs. Which might not be higher but which might simply involve activating more of the brain. Could it be that we're simply compelled by neural pathways in our brain that want to be activated? Or are we simply physical organisms seeking homeostatis all the time? Today is Mahalakshmi day. There's a big celebration in the Dome. I haven't decided whether I will go or not. Autumn has been so beautiful here. I feel happy enough just glancing up from the computer once and a while, out the window to the trees and the sky, walking to the post office, doing my everyday tasks. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't need to go to the Dome and hopefully get blessings from Mahalakshmi in the form of more money and then feel happier. I am already feeling happy enough. Much much gratitude... On Thursday, October 23, 2014 6:00 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: From: Michael Jackson mjackson74@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 12:04 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Well said Barry - and I agree with every word It's NOT that I'm saying that seeking spiritual experiences ISN'T valuable. I'm just pointing out that almost no one in history has ever stepped up to the plate and made an objective, scientific case for what that value might be. Most teachers or seekers just *assume* that these experiences they have or claim to have had are valuable, but when called upon to do so, they can't really produce any strong arguments for WHY they are valuable, or WHAT that supposed value is. I'm suggesting that this oversight is epidemic in the world of spiritual practices, the elephant in the room that no one ever talks about. The people promoting these practices just *assume* that these experiences they're having or seeking are *worth* having or seeking, and debate the supposedly best ways of achieving them. But I don't know of very many who have taken that step back, beyond the assumption, and have tried to make a case for WHY they're so intent on achieving these things. What is it that they hope to achieve, and WHY would others want to do so? Answers such as, Well, I want to have these experiences because Jim Flanegin said that I would be a low-vibe slime until I had them the way he has do not count. :-) :-) :-) It's the same problem I see with religion in general. The people urging others to join their religions don't seem to ever offer any real-world, payoff-in-this-lifetime reasons for doing so. They just *assume* that there is a payoff, and try to bluff their way through without ever specifying what it is. Millions and millions of seekers over the ages, and almost none of them have ever come up with a real *value* for all this seeking they're devoting their lives to. I'm NOT suggesting that there isn't one, just pointing out that no one ever seems to talk about it if there is. From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 4:33 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
A slight nit: in the 40 years that Benson has been publishing his book he never, not even once, published a head-to-head study of TM vs his Relaxation Response. In fact, the criticisms that were leveled against Keith Wallace's first study apply equally well to Benson's research. And so, for the past 40 years, comparisons of the effects of two different practices were made based on preliminary results of studies that wouldn't be published in today's journals. When the American Heart Association meditation practices, they compared all the research they could find on every practice, including Benson's Relaxation Response. Their conclusion was that only TM had sufficiently GOOD research with sufficiently CONSISTENT effects, to allow them to make a recommendation. All other practices were given a non-passing grade. Remember: that's 40 years of research coming out of HARVARD UNIVERSITY couldn't persuade the AHA to endorse Benson's Relaxation Response. So... to call Benson the foremost meditation scientist is pure BS. To say that TM blew it by alienating such a great scientist is another bit of BS. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Like you Share, I really did not pay attention to the selling points as I had had experiences prior to TM, I was just looking for an easy way to meditate, a natural consequence of being lazy. The sell was there in the introductory and preparatory lectures and in available chart books supposedly showing benefits from the scientific side, but I ignored all that at the time. My first few meditations were really rotten, I almost quit right there. But trying to sell TM to friends who are not really into this kind of thing proved more of a challenge. None of my friends ever learned, except for a couple, and they never finished the course. A few of my family learned, and they all quit too. I did discover that some of my friends who were teachers, when I criticised the quality of the scientific research on TM, would try really had to convince me the research was really true. About 1% of research on meditation in general is of good quality. Part of that seems to lie with the advertising mentality of the TMO. Dr. Lorin Roche wrote the following: The Relaxation Response is the term coined by Herbert Benson, M.D., in 1968 or so when looking at the physiological data he was getting from TM (Transcendental Meditation) meditators who were coming to his lab to be measured. Benson soon got tired of our relentless TM zealotry and the way we (TM teachers who were working for him) would sign official research documents with Jai Guru Dev. As TM teachers, we wanted to take the results from his lab and instantly use them as part of our advertising and our public lectures. TM at the time had meditation centers in every major city in the United States, and teachers on most every college campus across the country. It was a hugely popular movement. But Benson needed to be able to clone TM, make it into a laboratory-standardized technique that could be replicated and measured at other labs. That's what science is. So he decided to de-mystify mantras, and he started telling people to just pick their own mantra, such as the word, ONE. This scandalized the whole TM movement, but he had to do it. And truth be told, as far as I know, Benson in his 30 years or so of research on the physiology of meditation, publishing hundreds of scientific papers, is probably the greatest meditation scientist ever. I trust his findings. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, TM meditators were the guinea pigs of choice for scientists, because there were hundreds of thousands of them in the United States alone, and tens of thousands in other countries, their training was standardized, and they were so well trained that they could come into a medical lab and actually MEDITATE while the scientists stuck needles in their arms, electrodes on their heads, hands and hearts, and breathe into oxygen-consumption measuring masks. It's hard to find people like that! Think about it. Who in their right mind would take out part of their day to do such a thing? When I used to do this, in the 70's, it meant driving through ugly traffic to UCI Medical School, then going into a lab with a thousand rats in cages just a couple dozen feet away, the smell of ether in the air, and letting the guys in white coats poke me with huge needles and take blood samples while I meditated. TM blew it, by alienating one of the great scientists at work in the field, and by pushing bad science — publishing in their ads the results of trial studies. But the Buddhists, by comparison, played it very smart, and gradually came to be the favorite of physiological researchers. The Buddhists cheerfully cooperated with the needs of scientists, it is a match made in heaven because Buddhism is a very
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Funny you mention this word. When a journalist in Vlodrop asked who are you really Maharishi, he simply said; I'm just a normal human being. Whereupon Bevan afterwards remarked; today we got a new understanding of what it means to be normal :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : Just to be clear, at no time have I said I was in the highest state of human development. The way I learned it, according to Maharishi, was that enlightenment meant simply, normal, and everything continues from there, as it always has. Draw your own conclusions. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : I have no problem with your friendship with Ann - As she responded, she suspects some of what I said is accurate, M: That would require her to believe that you know my feelings when reading posts or whether or not I even read posts between other people here. It would be equally bogus for her as it is for you who made this absurd claim. I was a bit disappointed when I read that. J: but doesn't let that deter a friendship with you. I don't play the chimp's games, and you, like the chimp, seem to have a difficult time reconciling, one the one hand, denying that I am enlightened, while finding enlightenment a bogus concept, to begin with. A Big Confusing Issue with you two. I recommend TM for both of you for awhile, say 50 years?? Better get started... :-) M: Nothing confusing about those two things at all Jim. The more you insist you are in the highest state of human development the more glaring the contrast with what and how you post here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I'm sure Ann appreciates your straightening her out about me Jim. She was making the mistake of trusting her own impression, but now has the enlightened perspective from you on my dark motives and inner thoughts. At first I wondered how you could know about my inner feelings or whether or not I even read posts between other posters, but then I remembered: Jim is in a superior state of mind and it made more sense. I was amazed that you nailed me on exploiting Barry's posts although I am still a bit unclear how this actually plays out in the, outside of Jim's enlightened head, world. Thanks for clearing up any confusion about my dark motives, because for a second, I read your whole intention as acting out a kindergarten sandbox emotional level scene:NO, Ann is MY friend. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I may not respond point by point Ann. You and I have our clear channel. I think we get each other. I am more of a one one one poster here. Steve nailed me recently. He said I respond to everyone in sympathetic response to how they respond to me. That was a typical insightful naildown from my brother Steve. You and I do not agree with our perspectives on Barry. But you have separated your view of him from my friendliness toward him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that Ann. You are a friend here. And in my world. I can be friends with you AND Barry and appreciate you both for different reasons. That is how I roll. I think you roll that way too. Robin was unable to allow me to be connected to people who were hostile toward him and still be friendly with him. You seem able to go beyond this. I like you, and I like Barry. What you do between yourselves is none of my business. Does that work for you? Ahhh, now I get to talk to you friend to friend. Curtis, you know I support you 100% in what I see as your diligent and love-inspired passionate pursuit of your art, your music. No one can ever take that away from you. As an artist you are rarified, you are special because artists have to wade through tough, weed-choked waters. There is little money in it and there is the need to keep moving on and progressing even when things seem to have become comfortable and even profitable in their way. But real artists are never at rest, so it can be grueling and bone-racking. But, I digress. Of
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/23/2014 11:37 AM, curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: That was a great read, thanks! /It was intersting to see how Xeno tried to enable Barry, by leaving out of the discussion all the interesting stuff Barry believes in - like karma and reincarnation. // // //What happened - I thought you guys all read Sam Harris' book.Go figure. Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. // // //How does that work?/ ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : I think you hit on something here I never considered. Social interaction. I do not think there is any objective measure by which one considers such experiences valuable. There are certain things I like, certain things I do not, and I go for the ones I like. While I do not know why, those things I like I sometimes like to share with others. A piece of music, a movie. Why did you post about Bruce Cockburn's music, his book? I am not sure there is any reliable objective measure why one likes something other than a general propensity to avoid pain and to maintain comfort. Now if you recall Maharishi said the mind seeks a greater field of happiness. Because he was hawking TM, he skewed the concept to correspond with his metaphysic (the transcendental field, the unified field). You do not need a field. Basically I think it comes down to you like stuff, and don't like other stuff. The rationalisations come later. If there is any objective evidence for that previous sentence it might be split brain experiments. When one side of the brain of people with this condition are asked to explain why the other side of the body did something, it makes up an explanation. The whole spiritual trip is a post hoc explanation fabricated to explain why something you like, in this case some kind of meditation for example, or the experience that is supposed to result from that, should be valuable to someone else. Spiritual endeavours are really quite a complex bother, all these things that one has to practice or think about, so to get someone to get involved in it really requires a real snow job. You have to bury them with advertising about how great things will be if they do this. You need an intellectual framework to explain why doing such atypical things will benefit. To get someone to come around to your ideas about what you like, it may not matter if it doesn't really work. You make up this because you are socially wired to a certain extent, and a successful social interaction results in feeling good. So there really is not much of a reason for saying such experiences as spiritual experiences are valuable, you hawk them that way, just as you would a certain artist, a good restaurant, a walk on a nice evening. Because social interactions are on an individual level, I would say the ego is involved, that level of personal identity that thinks it is running the show. The ego provides the explanations. From a scientific level, the experiments that indicate the brain comes to decisions often as far as 7 or 8 seconds prior to that decision comes into conscious awareness. That would mean you are not really in control of anything. Life goes on this and that way. Stuff happens, you think you do stuff. Hawking TM or hawking Bruce or hawking Hawking resuls in satisfaction. Whatever floats your boat. As for experiences of unboundedness, I really don't think of them that way any more. The spiritual trip is the strangest con in the universe. Suppose I put it this way: How would you like to be exactly the way you are for as long as you are? This is what I am offering you. It will take you about 40 or 50 years, and you will have to do all these different things, adopt crazy ideas, do exercises, sit quietly, eat special foods, take weird medicines. Want to jump in an try this out? In order to get people to do what you like, you have to be more devious in your enticements. It all comes down to 'I like this, and I want you to like it too'. Psst, I have some secret stuff that other people do not know, and if you let me tell you, and you do what I say, you will be able to say every day 'I'm gonna help people! Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
It is the closest word I can think of, that describes a life of enlightenment, normal. :-). ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Funny you mention this word. When a journalist in Vlodrop asked who are you really Maharishi, he simply said; I'm just a normal human being. Whereupon Bevan afterwards remarked; today we got a new understanding of what it means to be normal :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : Just to be clear, at no time have I said I was in the highest state of human development. The way I learned it, according to Maharishi, was that enlightenment meant simply, normal, and everything continues from there, as it always has. Draw your own conclusions. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : I have no problem with your friendship with Ann - As she responded, she suspects some of what I said is accurate, M: That would require her to believe that you know my feelings when reading posts or whether or not I even read posts between other people here. It would be equally bogus for her as it is for you who made this absurd claim. I was a bit disappointed when I read that. J: but doesn't let that deter a friendship with you. I don't play the chimp's games, and you, like the chimp, seem to have a difficult time reconciling, one the one hand, denying that I am enlightened, while finding enlightenment a bogus concept, to begin with. A Big Confusing Issue with you two. I recommend TM for both of you for awhile, say 50 years?? Better get started... :-) M: Nothing confusing about those two things at all Jim. The more you insist you are in the highest state of human development the more glaring the contrast with what and how you post here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I'm sure Ann appreciates your straightening her out about me Jim. She was making the mistake of trusting her own impression, but now has the enlightened perspective from you on my dark motives and inner thoughts. At first I wondered how you could know about my inner feelings or whether or not I even read posts between other posters, but then I remembered: Jim is in a superior state of mind and it made more sense. I was amazed that you nailed me on exploiting Barry's posts although I am still a bit unclear how this actually plays out in the, outside of Jim's enlightened head, world. Thanks for clearing up any confusion about my dark motives, because for a second, I read your whole intention as acting out a kindergarten sandbox emotional level scene:NO, Ann is MY friend. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I may not respond point by point Ann. You and I have our clear channel. I think we get each other. I am more of a one one one poster here. Steve nailed me recently. He said I respond to everyone in sympathetic response to how they respond to me. That was a typical insightful naildown from my brother Steve. You and I do not agree with our perspectives on Barry. But you have separated your view of him from my friendliness toward him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that Ann. You are a friend here. And in my world. I can be friends with you AND Barry and appreciate you both for different reasons. That is how I roll. I think you roll that way too. Robin was unable to allow me to be connected to people who were hostile toward him and still be friendly with him. You seem able to go beyond this. I like you, and I like Barry. What you do between yourselves is none of my business. Does that work for you? Ahhh, now I get to talk to you friend to friend. Curtis, you know I support you 100% in what I see as your diligent and love-inspired passionate pursuit of your art, your music. No one can ever take that away from you. As an artist you are rarified, you are special because artists have to wade through tough, weed-choked waters. There is little money in it and there is the need to keep moving on and progressing even when things seem
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : On 10/23/2014 11:37 AM, curtisdeltablues@... mailto:curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: That was a great read, thanks! It was intersting to see how Xeno tried to enable Barry, by leaving out of the discussion all the interesting stuff Barry believes in - like karma and reincarnation. I do not have time to read everything Barry writes. I have no idea what he believes about karma and reincarnation, we have never discussed it and I have not read what he said about it, if anything. We seem to disagree about the nature of free will. No one on this forum needs enabling to post what they think. Of course I never intended to include any of what you say. What happened - I thought you guys all read Sam Harris' book. Go figure. Xeno didn't even recognize the dissonance in Barry's preference for Bruce Cockburn songs. Everyone knows Cockburn is a born-again Christian. What about Barry's claim that a belief in God is a form of mental illness. Why are Cockburn's beliefs of import, Barry likes music and in particular Cockburn's songs and guitar technique. I like Bach (Lutheran), Mozart (Catholic), Brahms (probably agnostic), Glass (Jewish-Taoist-Hindu-Toltec-Buddhist); what does that have to do with [cognitive] dissonance when listening to their music? How does that work? Trolls are not that connected to what others post, with comments skewed tangentially to the ongoing discussion, so you do not need to know how it works, as that is largely irrelevant to your posts. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... mailto:anartaxius@... wrote : I think you hit on something here I never considered. Social interaction. I do not think there is any objective measure by which one considers such experiences valuable. There are certain things I like, certain things I do not, and I go for the ones I like. While I do not know why, those things I like I sometimes like to share with others. A piece of music, a movie. Why did you post about Bruce Cockburn's music, his book? I am not sure there is any reliable objective measure why one likes something other than a general propensity to avoid pain and to maintain comfort. Now if you recall Maharishi said the mind seeks a greater field of happiness. Because he was hawking TM, he skewed the concept to correspond with his metaphysic (the transcendental field, the unified field). You do not need a field. Basically I think it comes down to you like stuff, and don't like other stuff. The rationalisations come later. If there is any objective evidence for that previous sentence it might be split brain experiments. When one side of the brain of people with this condition are asked to explain why the other side of the body did something, it makes up an explanation. Thewhole spiritual trip is a post hoc explanation fabricated to explain why something you like, in this case some kind of meditation for example, or the experience that is supposed to result from that, should be valuable to someone else. Spiritual endeavours are really quite a complex bother, all these things that one has to practice or think about, so to get someone to get involved in it really requires a real snow job. You have to bury them with advertising about how great things will be if they do this. You need an intellectual framework to explain why doing such atypical things will benefit. To get someone to come around to your ideas about what you like, it may not matter if it doesn't really work. You make up this because you are socially wired to a certain extent, and a successful social interaction results in feeling good. So there really is not much of a reason for saying such experiences as spiritual experiences are valuable, you hawk them that way, just as you would a certain artist, a good restaurant, a walk on a nice evening. Because social interactions are on an individual level, I would say the ego is involved, that level of personal identity that thinks it is running the show. The ego provides the explanations. From a scientific level, the experiments that indicate the brain comes to decisions often as far as 7 or 8 seconds prior to that decision comes into conscious awareness. That would mean you are not really in control of anything. Life goes on this and that way. Stuff happens, you think you do stuff. Hawking TM or hawking Bruce or hawking Hawking resuls in satisfaction. Whatever floats your boat. Asfor experiences of unboundedness, I really don't think of them that way any more. The spiritual trip is the strangest con in the universe. Suppose I put it this way: How would you like to be exactly the way you are for as long as you are? This is what I am offering you. It will take you about 40 or 50 years, and you will have to do all these different things, adopt crazy ideas, do exercises, sit quietly,
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
There are many non-physical phenomena that on one hand, cannot be proven, by physical means. On the other hand, if we take them out of the equation of life, life then makes less sense, and becomes less enjoyable. An example would be the love between a child, and its mother or father, or love between friends. The scientist would conclude that it is species preservation and chemicals, but that doesn't jibe with anyone who has ever hugged anyone else. My perspective tends to be the other way 'round, seeing the eventual physical manifestations of all of this world, as an end result, vs. a starting point. I recall Maharishi was rather dismissive, of the coarse nature of a strictly material life, a function of lower consciousness. Odd that those with a scientific bias, allow themselves to feel and integrate non-scientific emotional responses into their lives, and yet be quite imperious on accepting such responses, as they consider them non-scientific. What a mess waking state is. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Fresh air blowing through the Funny Farm Lounge from DC area and Madison. Thanks guys for this example of FFL at its best. On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been We have it all figured out already over Let's find out. The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they announce their assumptions. We need to address how we could be confident of such knowledge knowing how fallible and prone to self delusions humans are with all of our cognitive blind spots. I rarely see this aspect in the intellectual mix of confident assertions from the subjective angle. Then of course you have the whole areas of human knowledge in the arts and humanities which is plenty non physical reality enough for me. We don't have to swing between the polarities of material reductionism and mystical claims to see that there is a lot of worthwhile reality beyond the hard physical. But IMO the better we are prepared to evaluate claims the quicker we will sort out the fascinating and true from the fascinating but bogus. Thanks for opening up a new chapter on the discussion. Does any of this relate to your intention in your post? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, inmadison@... wrote : there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. the first question is too cumbersome for me - having the notion of mental illness imbedded in the question . . . and I can't speak as to what a mental illness is, but the question is believing in the efficacy of trickle-down economics a mental illness could be fun : ) Re the 2nd question, I'm skipping is there a proof for the existence of God since it's pretty clear no such proof exists - and I'm suggesting: is a belief in God justifiable? We may believe in many things where there is no direct evidence, or no proof, but yet that belief is justifiable. For example, we may believe someone lied to us, even though we have no proof. [BTW - I am very much an amateur philosopher] I am going to restate the 2nd question as:Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I may not respond point by point Ann. You and I have our clear channel. I think we get each other. I am more of a one one one poster here. Steve nailed me recently. He said I respond to everyone in sympathetic response to how they respond to me. That was a typical insightful naildown from my brother Steve. You and I do not agree with our perspectives on Barry. But you have separated your view of him from my friendliness toward him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that Ann. You are a friend here. And in my world. I can be friends with you AND Barry and appreciate you both for different reasons. That is how I roll. I think you roll that way too. Robin was unable to allow me to be connected to people who were hostile toward him and still be friendly with him. You seem able to go beyond this. I like you, and I like Barry. What you do between yourselves is none of my business. Does that work for you? Ahhh, now I get to talk to you friend to friend. Curtis, you know I support you 100% in what I see as your diligent and love-inspired passionate pursuit of your art, your music. No one can ever take that away from you. As an artist you are rarified, you are special because artists have to wade through tough, weed-choked waters. There is little money in it and there is the need to keep moving on and progressing even when things seem to have become comfortable and even profitable in their way. But real artists are never at rest, so it can be grueling and bone-racking. But, I digress. Of course I can appreciate/like someone who likes or believes in something I either dislike or don't ascribe to. bawee commented on my applauding Gervais as if I didn't realize he was an athiest. C'mon, really? Of course I can appreciate someone who may believe very different things than I do - especially when it comes to something as silly as religion or lack of it. But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. Curtis, this old internet world is a funny one. Before FFL I never participated in any forums and so I had to figure stuff out. One thing is that while I am a straight shooter (whatever anyone sees of me here is exactly how I am in the flesh) I don't believe this holds true for some others here. For some reason forums are an opportunity to become another part of who they are, or they simply create something they wished they were. I don't know and I don't care. We all operate from where we feel comfortable or even from where we can push ourselves as a sort of exercise in pressing personal limits. But whatever it is, some simply cross the bounds of decency (and I use that word in the old fashioned sense, decency being what is civil, sensitive and truthful). They commit a kind of trespass on the sensibilities of those who are effected by such things. They act like a sort of emotional jack hammer. It's simply not what I seek out in life where so much is beautiful and delicate and can enter your life as the subtlest whisper of revelation and even promise. Jack hammers are a dime a dozen. So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : There are many non-physical phenomena that on one hand, cannot be proven, by physical means. On the other hand, if we take them out of the equation of life, life then makes less sense, and becomes less enjoyable. An example would be the love between a child, and its mother or father, or love between friends. What makes you think that is non-physical? The scientist would conclude that it is species preservation and chemicals, but that doesn't jibe with anyone who has ever hugged anyone else. Astoundingly, scientists do get the occasional hug. How the brain generates subjective experience is the mystery not that it is a subjective metal experience that wouldn't be there without our brains and all their chemicals and electricity. My perspective tends to be the other way 'round, seeing the eventual physical manifestations of all of this world, as an end result, vs. a starting point. I recall Maharishi was rather dismissive, of the coarse nature of a strictly material life, a function of lower consciousness. True, but he had some yagya's to sell you. And I don;t consider him much of an authority anyway simply because he pitched a non-sensical cosmology with no evidence to support it, and a lot of what he claimed is testable but seems to have failed. And a lot of it was wishful thinking and appeals to ancient authority. I give him top marks for optimism though. Odd that those with a scientific bias, allow themselves to feel and integrate non-scientific emotional responses into their lives, and yet be quite imperious on accepting such responses, as they consider them non-scientific. What a mess waking state is. I don;t know how I make it through the day to be honest... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Fresh air blowing through the Funny Farm Lounge from DC area and Madison. Thanks guys for this example of FFL at its best. On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been We have it all figured out already over Let's find out. The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they announce their assumptions. We need to address how we could be confident of such knowledge knowing how fallible and prone to self delusions humans are with all of our cognitive blind spots. I rarely see this aspect in the intellectual mix of confident assertions from the subjective angle. Then of course you have the whole areas of human knowledge in the arts and humanities which is plenty non physical reality enough for me. We don't have to swing between the polarities of material reductionism and mystical claims to see that there is a lot of worthwhile reality beyond the hard physical. But IMO the better we are prepared to evaluate claims the quicker we will sort out the fascinating and true from the fascinating but bogus. Thanks for opening up a new chapter on the discussion. Does any of this relate to your intention in your post? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, inmadison@... wrote : there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. the first question is too cumbersome for me -
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health! Well, before I started moving Ann's messages to the Deranged Stalkers From Hell folder, I seem to remember her being the person who claimed to know for sure that nothing bad had happened to Judy. That would indicate that they were in communication, right? So my bet is that Ann's audience is in fact the person who has been directing her stalking efforts from behind the scenes. But even if this isn't the case, I would suggest that...uh...overestimating one's audience IS, in fact, a sign of mental illness. For example, several times now over the years I have asked Jim Flanegin to settle once and for all the issue of whether anyone actually *believes* his claims to be enlightened by simply ASKING. All it would take is for him to post to FFL, asking those who *do* believe he's enlightened to reply and say so. He has steadfastly refused to do this, all while insinuating that he has friends here, as if the fact that they pat him on the back when he stalks the people he was told to stalk means that they actually believe his claim to be enlightened. Heck, even *Nabby* has never said he thinks Jim is enlightened. Nabby probably thinks David Lynch and the occasional scarecrow next to a crop circle are enlightened, but he doesn't think Jim is. Says a lot, right? :-) The clear sign of poor mental health IMO is the fact that these people -- at this point, primarily Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve -- seem to feel that they have not only the right but a duty to harass and stalk those on this forum they don't like. I suggest that what they're really trying to do is SILENCE these people they stalk, because *they* don't like what they say. The deranged stalkers *pretend* that they're doing this stalking for the good of the forum, or to protect those who might be taken in or misled by what these liars might say, but of course we all know that the members of the original Inquisition said exactly the same thing about why *they* were deranged stalkers. I would suggest that the bottom line about Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve's sanity is whether anyone is actually paying any attention to what they write. I don't read their posts, so they're not talking to me. even though they often pretend to be. Almost no one else bothers to reply to their stalker posts, so it would seem that they aren't really talking to these people they're claiming to be protecting, either. Thus it seems clear that they are either talking exclusively to each other (a strong psychopathic trait among similarly-insane inmates in asylums) or to themselves (an even more psychopathic trait). Wouldn't it be much more sane just to IGNORE the writings -- and the writers -- they don't like? Feeling the need to get the writers or smack them in several posts a day...for months, or even years...seems almost *by definition* insane to me. The lurking reporters
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health! Well, before I started moving Ann's messages to the Deranged Stalkers From Hell folder, I seem to remember her being the person who claimed to know for sure that nothing bad had happened to Judy. That would indicate that they were in communication, right? So my bet is that Ann's audience is in fact the person who has been directing her stalking efforts from behind the scenes. She certainly seems to have taken over the role of principle Barry hater - and you have to admire the gusto! But I don't read any of it either, it's too easy to tell from message view what a post is going to be about with some people. Judy was considerate and always started a Barry post with Note that Barry says so we knew we could safely scroll past those. If Ann wants anyone to read anything that isn't Bawee related she should take up that technique or suffer the realisation one day that nobody real is reading what she obviously spends a lot of time typing. Sometimes you have to admit that you just don't like someone and let them get on with whatever it is they do. Continually going on about it is pointless. But I have similar feelings with TV, some people complain that most of it is crap but if it wasn't there'd be no time to do anything else! My glass is clearly half-full. But even if this isn't the case, I would suggest that...uh...overestimating one's audience IS, in fact, a sign of mental illness. For example, several times now over the years I have asked Jim Flanegin to settle once and for all the issue of whether anyone actually *believes* his claims to be enlightened by simply ASKING. All it would take is for him to post to FFL, asking those who *do* believe he's enlightened to reply and say so. He has steadfastly refused to do this, all while insinuating that he has friends here, as if the fact that they pat him on the back when he stalks the people he was told to stalk means that they actually believe his claim to be enlightened. Heck, even *Nabby* has never said he thinks Jim is enlightened. Nabby probably thinks David Lynch and the occasional scarecrow next to a crop circle are enlightened, but he doesn't think Jim is. Says a lot, right? :-) It's strangely comforting to know that there are some things that Nabby doesn't believe. It betrays a thought process of some sort going on in there that doesn't depend on youtube for confirmation. Good for him. The clear sign of poor mental health IMO is the fact that these people -- at this point, primarily Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve -- seem to feel that they have not only the right but a duty to harass and stalk those on this forum they don't like. I suggest that what they're really trying to do is SILENCE these people they stalk, because *they* don't like what they say. The deranged stalkers *pretend* that they're doing this stalking for the good of the forum, or to protect those who might be taken in or misled by what these liars might say, but of course we all know that the members of the original Inquisition said exactly the same thing about why *they* were deranged stalkers. I would suggest that the bottom line about Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve's sanity is whether anyone is actually paying any attention to what they write. I don't read their posts, so they're not talking to me. even though they often pretend to be. Almost no one else bothers to reply to their stalker posts, so it would seem that they aren't really talking to these people they're claiming to be protecting, either. Thus it seems clear that they are either talking exclusively to each other (a strong psychopathic trait among similarly-insane inmates in asylums) or to themselves (an even more psychopathic trait). Wouldn't it be much more sane just to IGNORE the writings -- and the writers -- they don't like? Feeling the need to get the writers or smack them in several posts a day...for months, or even years...seems almost *by definition* insane to me. The lurking reporters have confirmed that they see Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve this way, as cult apologists stalking critics of their cult. Why can't the stalkers themselves see it? Maybe they are just lonely
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Well, before I started moving Ann's messages to the Deranged Stalkers From Hell folder, I seem to remember her being the person who claimed to know for sure that nothing bad had happened to Judy. That would indicate that they were in communication, right? So my bet is that Ann's audience is in fact the person who has been directing her stalking efforts from behind the scenes. She certainly seems to have taken over the role of principle Barry hater - and you have to admire the gusto! Indeed. Even *Judy* never admitted to having read my book as research material with which to better stalk me the way Ann has admitted to doing lately. Wasn't it Judy herself who once defined stalking as follows: I might also point out that searching the Web for information to use against somebody is standard cyberstalking behavior. -- Judy Stein, FFL, 11 February 2013 But I don't read any of it either, it's too easy to tell from message view what a post is going to be about with some people. Judy was considerate and always started a Barry post with Note that Barry says so we knew we could safely scroll past those. If Ann wants anyone to read anything that isn't Bawee related she should take up that technique or suffer the realisation one day that nobody real is reading what she obviously spends a lot of time typing. I've really never understood those who feel that I or others might be missing important information by merely scanning the Message View of their posts and skipping the rest. One would really have to be a cretin to NOT know what one of these people were going to say in their posts from the first couple of lines of them. It's not, after all, as if they have that much *range* in the things they say. With Ann, one appearance of bawee is a guaranteed tipoff that she needed her Hate Fix for the day and that it's safe to skip the post in which she tried to shoot it up. Sometimes you have to admit that you just don't like someone and let them get on with whatever it is they do. Continually going on about it is pointless. And continuing to claim that she's not obsessing on me while *obviously* obsessing on me is not only pointless, but more than a little insane. But I have similar feelings with TV, some people complain that most of it is crap but if it wasn't there'd be no time to do anything else! My glass is clearly half-full. But even if this isn't the case, I would suggest that...uh...overestimating one's audience IS, in fact, a sign of mental illness. For example, several times now over the years I have asked Jim Flanegin to settle once and for all the issue of whether anyone actually *believes* his claims to be enlightened by simply ASKING. All it would take is for him to post to FFL, asking those who *do* believe he's enlightened to reply and say so. He has steadfastly refused to do this, all while insinuating that he has friends here, as if the fact that they pat him on the back when he stalks the people he was told to stalk means that they actually believe his claim to be enlightened. Heck, even *Nabby* has never said he thinks Jim is enlightened. Nabby probably thinks David Lynch and the occasional scarecrow next to a crop circle are enlightened, but he doesn't think Jim is. Says a lot, right? :-) It's strangely comforting to know that there are some things that Nabby doesn't believe. It betrays a thought process of some sort going on in there that doesn't depend on youtube for confirmation. Good for him. What, after all, would you or anyone else sane THINK of someone who actually *did* believe Jim's claims to be enlightened? The prospect of such a person existing is almost scarier than Jim existing. :-) The clear sign of poor mental health IMO is the fact that these people -- at this point, primarily Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve -- seem to feel that they have not only the right but a duty to harass and stalk those on this forum they don't like. I suggest that what they're really trying to do is SILENCE these people they stalk, because *they* don't like what they say. The deranged stalkers *pretend* that they're doing this stalking for the good of the forum, or to protect those who might be taken in or misled by what these liars might say, but of course we all know that the members of the original Inquisition said exactly the same thing about why *they* were deranged stalkers. I would suggest that the bottom line about Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve's sanity is whether anyone is actually paying any attention to what they write. I don't read their posts, so they're not talking to me. even though they often pretend to be. Almost no one else bothers to reply to their stalker posts, so it would seem that they aren't really talking to these people they're claiming to be protecting, either. Thus it seems clear that they are either talking
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Barry, are you serious! You completely miss the whole intent of Ann's comment. But, like I said, who cares. You point out what you feel is craziness, stupidity and obsession in other people, and they, (including me) do the same to you. You are no different than the people you criticize, with the exception that you make a point (regularly) that you are unattached to your opinions Welcome to FFL. 80% of the content here are personal attacks, pointing out other people's flaws. And what you've written below is just the perfect example of it. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Jesus, salyavin, I gotta tell you, from what I know about you, and what I know about Ann, count me in the Ann camp. On the other hand, maybe there's just not a hell of a lot for you to hang your hat on. A lot of deep thinking perhaps, if that's what you want to call it. P.S. You really play that Judy card, way to often. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/21/2014 9:49 PM, awoelfleba...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Yeah, I've seen $cientologists like this in action, and for the life of me can't tell any difference between them and Richard, Ann, Jimbo, and She Whose Holy Work They Are Continuing In Her Absence. Uber-cultists, the whole lot of them. :-) I admit to causing part of it by withdrawing my attention from them, and depriving them of what they really want -- a captive audience at whom to spew their shit. They're reacting as expected, like junkies deprived of their fix. Ann is predictable because this seems to be what she *always* does when someone dumps her -- she's just substituted me as the object of her revenge-stalking this time instead of Robin. Richard's the same troll he's always been, so no surprise there. There has really never *been* a time during his tenure on a.m.t. and FFL in which he was sane, so IMO it's kinda silly to expect anything approaching sanity from him now. But Jimbo is really the strangest of the lot lately. He's managed to take the money he inherited, turn that in his mind into some kind of success, and then move out into the country, effectively cutting himself off from all human contact and causing him to make more and more and more of his lunatic rants. He probably gets up in the middle of the night and goes out to yell the same thing at the skunks on his property -- I'm BETTER than you are! I'm enlightened, and you're NOT. So there! :-) I am reading these posts today in chronological order so I haven't yet seen anyone's response to this. I would be curious to see Curtis respond point by point to this post. What do you think about what bawee has said here Curtis? Maybe by the time I have read everything up to 7:49 pm my time I will see you have done this already. /Apparently Curtis does not want to talk about Barry's personal beliefs, such as a belief in Buddhas, karma, and reincarnation. Obviously Barry only wants to talk about personalities, not important questions such as does the universe have a beginning and is there an intelligent agent behind creation. Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events. Small minds just like to talk about people. Go figure./ /A belief in Buddhas is not a mental illness - it's just an opinion or a point of view. Unless Barry is experiencing cognitive dissonance. //Apparently Barry did not read any of the messages posted by masked_zebra, so why would Barry be bringing this subject up again when everyone knows that Barry got his nose bloodied by Judy and Robin a few months ago on this same subject - St Thomas Aquinas and the prime mover or first cause. Sometimes, it is difficult to reconcile a personal belief with logic, common sense or science. At times it's helpful to read a book, take a community college course, or consult with your friends about what you believe. Get another point of view from someone like Sam Harris. So, Harris is a neuroscientist and a Buddhist - that's interesting. After reading Harris' books, you'd think that Barry could use some of that information to make an intelligent point about believing in reincarnation and karma. Go figure./ *'Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion**'* by Sam Harris Simon Schuste Amazon reviews: http://tinyurl.com/q6wme6g
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : That's a nice piece Ann. I feel as though I have a pretty good idea of the real person behind people's online persona. I think you might be referring to Barry in some of what you say here. I've had a changing relationship with him. He thinks I've changed. I think he's changed. Honestly. I mean, really honestly. I don't care. I still like him, although I think he is disappointed in me, and I in him, to some extent. But who the hell cares! FFL offers a pleasant back and forth (at least enough of the time), and a chance to hear different perspectives. I like Curtis' input because he will ask you in a genuine way, to justify your position on things, and ask you to share your opinion. Lord knows he is repeatedly asked to defend his position on issues. And it is important, to at some point, say, fair enough, I guess we see things differently and then move on. That has been easier to do, these last four, five, or six months. (however long its been) (-: You know Steve, you have never failed to strike me as a kind man. I think I told you long ago that if I were to fall down on the sidewalk and hurt myself you'd be the first guy to rush over and help me (or anyone) up. And you still come across this way. You are quick to apologize, consistent in your viewpoints in a way that ends up appearing very genuine and honest, you seem to live a balanced and reasonably fulfilling life where you have children and a spouse that no doubt love you very much. It's great to have you on-board. Yours is a voice of reason, balance and humility.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Barry, did you read the following paragraph? I regard it as a culturally spread malady that has its roots in our nervous system. I think it may be that, from an evolutionary viewpoint, a certain gullibility to pick up behaviours and ideas helps a child, and to a lesser extent adults, to quickly grasp useful information, but that tendency also has the defect of lack of discrimination, which is something that must be learned. Scientists, who supposedly have suppressed this tendency sometimes come up with crazy ideas which also do not work out, but eventually it is discovered these ideas are nuts. Religion makes it a proud and worthy stance to guard ideas that have failed to pass muster. The human species lack of hard wiring makes us more flexible for learning; we do not go out and dig burrows and look for nuts in the forest everyday (usually), but it makes us susceptible to the mental equivalent of a viral attack. We here have all experienced the attack, and many here are still dancing to the virus's tune. This is why I called religion a memetic malady or disease. That is different from organic insanity. Religion is induced insanity. The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. Because culture runs along the fault lines of this weakness, it is difficult to construct a civilisation that nurtures rational discrimination. Look at the difference between the founding fathers of the United States, who had rather sceptical and sparkling intellects, with the way the United States has turned out in practice. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/22/2014 7:32 AM, steve.sun...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Jesus, salyavin, I gotta tell you, from what I know about you, and what I know about Ann, count me in the Ann camp. On the other hand, maybe there's just not a hell of a lot for you to hang your hat on. A lot of deep thinking perhaps, if that's what you want to call it. P.S. You really play that Judy card, way to often. /You'd think that after the thrashing Judy gave Salya that he would keep the conversation on the impersonal level, but apparently he thinks she isn't coming back. Go figure.// // //Ad hominem is the second to last resort of someone who is losing a debate and is unable to respond with legitimacy. The last resort, most difficult for the ego, is to consider that he or she might be wrong./ ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : *From:* anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *To:* FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM *Subject:* [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. You may very well be right Mac, because you tend to have a very insightful nature and I, more often than not, find your analyses extremely sophisticated. When I log on to FFL I always start at the bottom (oldest) post and read up answering certain posts as I go and moving past others. As I was quickly scrolling down from the top today I glimpsed some post from bawee who seems to address my personal post to Curtis. I haven't read it yet but I will, at least some of it. From the little I saw it appears rather unkind and very typical of bawee. Let's see what anyone does with this, if anything (although I see Steve made some remarks afterwards). I think you and Judy are on a similar page when it comes to Curtis but I don't always choose to deal with all the machinations that go on here so sometimes I simply find the parts of a person I enjoy or appreciate the most and speak to those. There are definite traits about Curtis that I admire (his music and his teaching) and as for whatever else might be going on I'm not in a position to try and change it. Whatever it is Curtis either sees or is using bawee for that is between them and is not somewhere I need to go.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/22/2014 6:47 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: *From:* salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : ** Well, before I started moving Ann's messages to the Deranged Stalkers From Hell folder, /It looks like maybe Ann pushed one of Barry's buttons. LoL!/ I seem to remember her being the person who claimed to know for sure that nothing bad had happened to Judy. That would indicate that they were in communication, right? So my bet is that Ann's audience is in fact the person who has been directing her stalking efforts from behind the scenes. She certainly seems to have taken over the role of principle Barry hater - and you have to admire the gusto! Indeed. Even *Judy* never admitted to having read my book as research material with which to better stalk me the way Ann has admitted to doing lately. Wasn't it Judy herself who once defined stalking as follows: I might also point out that searching the Web for information to use against somebody is standard cyberstalking behavior. -- Judy Stein, FFL, 11 February 2013 But I don't read any of it either, it's too easy to tell from message view what a post is going to be about with some people. Judy was considerate and always started a Barry post with Note that Barry says so we knew we could safely scroll past those. If Ann wants anyone to read anything that isn't Bawee related she should take up that technique or suffer the realisation one day that nobody real is reading what she obviously spends a lot of time typing. I've really never understood those who feel that I or others might be missing important information by merely scanning the Message View of their posts and skipping the rest. One would really have to be a cretin to NOT know what one of these people were going to say in their posts from the first couple of lines of them. It's not, after all, as if they have that much *range* in the things they say. With Ann, one appearance of bawee is a guaranteed tipoff that she needed her Hate Fix for the day and that it's safe to skip the post in which she tried to shoot it up. Sometimes you have to admit that you just don't like someone and let them get on with whatever it is they do. Continually going on about it is pointless. And continuing to claim that she's not obsessing on me while *obviously* obsessing on me is not only pointless, but more than a little insane. But I have similar feelings with TV, some people complain that most of it is crap but if it wasn't there'd be no time to do anything else! My glass is clearly half-full. But even if this isn't the case, I would suggest that...uh...overestimating one's audience IS, in fact, a sign of mental illness. For example, several times now over the years I have asked Jim Flanegin to settle once and for all the issue of whether anyone actually *believes* his claims to be enlightened by simply ASKING. All it would take is for him to post to FFL, asking those who *do* believe he's enlightened to reply and say so. He has steadfastly refused to do this, all while insinuating that he has friends here, as if the fact that they pat him on the back when he stalks the people he was told to stalk means that they actually believe his claim to be enlightened. Heck, even *Nabby* has never said he thinks Jim is enlightened. Nabby probably thinks David Lynch and the occasional scarecrow next to a crop circle are enlightened, but he doesn't think Jim is. Says a lot, right? :-) It's strangely comforting to know that there are some things that Nabby doesn't believe. It betrays a thought process of some sort going on in there that doesn't depend on youtube for confirmation. Good for him. What, after all, would you or anyone else sane THINK of someone who actually *did* believe Jim's claims to be enlightened? The prospect of such a person existing is almost scarier than Jim existing. :-) The clear sign of poor mental health IMO is the fact that these people -- at this point, primarily Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve -- seem to feel that they have not only the right but a duty to harass and stalk those on this forum they don't like. I suggest that what they're really trying to do is SILENCE these people they stalk, because *they* don't like what they say. The deranged stalkers *pretend* that they're doing this stalking for the good of the forum, or to protect those who might be taken in or misled by what these liars might say, but of course we all know that the members of the original Inquisition said exactly the same thing about why *they* were deranged stalkers. I would suggest that the bottom line about Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve's sanity is whether anyone is actually paying any attention to what they write. I don't read their posts, so they're not talking to me. even though they often pretend to be. Almost no one else bothers to reply to their stalker
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. Oh my God! Still irony challenged, I see. Did you really, really take this seriously? I'm sure Curtis got it but it went clean over your addled head. This is seriously funny, you actually thought I was not being ironic when I said this. Surely the my reward will be in heaven part was the giveaway? See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) On 10/22/2014 6:24 AM, salyavin808 wrote: It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? /Barry?/ Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health! /The applause is every time you respond to a post by Ann - that always indicates that she has pushed one of your buttons. LoL!// // //Ad hominem is the second to last resort of someone who is losing a debate and is unable to respond with legitimacy. The last resort, most difficult for the ego, is to consider that he might be wrong./ Well, before I started moving Ann's messages to the Deranged Stalkers From Hell folder, I seem to remember her being the person who claimed to know for sure that nothing bad had happened to Judy. That would indicate that they were in communication, right? So my bet is that Ann's audience is in fact the person who has been directing her stalking efforts from behind the scenes. She certainly seems to have taken over the role of principle Barry hater - and you have to admire the gusto! But I don't read any of it either, it's too easy to tell from message view what a post is going to be about with some people. Judy was considerate and always started a Barry post with Note that Barry says so we knew we could safely scroll past those. If Ann wants anyone to read anything that isn't Bawee related she should take up that technique or suffer the realisation one day that nobody real is reading what she obviously spends a lot of time typing. Sometimes you have to admit that you just don't like someone and let them get on with whatever it is they do. Continually going on about it is pointless. But I have similar feelings with TV, some people complain that most of it is crap but if it wasn't there'd be no time to do anything else! My glass is clearly half-full. But even if this isn't the case, I would suggest that...uh...overestimating one's audience IS, in fact, a sign of mental illness. For example, several times now over the years I have asked Jim Flanegin to settle once and for all the issue of whether anyone actually *believes* his claims to be enlightened by simply ASKING. All it would take is for him to post to FFL, asking those who *do* believe he's enlightened to reply and say so. He has steadfastly refused to do this, all while insinuating that he has friends here, as if the fact that they pat him on the back when he stalks the people he was told to stalk means that they actually believe his claim to be enlightened. Heck, even *Nabby* has never said he thinks Jim is enlightened. Nabby probably thinks David Lynch and the occasional scarecrow next to a crop circle are enlightened, but he doesn't think Jim is. Says a lot, right? :-) It's strangely comforting to know that there are some things that Nabby doesn't believe. It betrays a thought process of some sort going on in there that doesn't depend on youtube for confirmation. Good for him. The clear sign of poor mental health IMO is the fact that these people -- at this point, primarily Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve -- seem to feel that they have not only the right but a duty to harass and stalk those on this forum they don't like. I suggest that what they're really trying to do is SILENCE these people they stalk, because *they* don't like what they say. The deranged stalkers *pretend* that they're doing this stalking for the good of the forum, or to protect those who might be taken in or misled by what these liars might say, but of course we all know that the members of the original Inquisition said exactly the same thing about why *they* were deranged stalkers. I would suggest that the bottom line about Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve's sanity is whether anyone is actually paying any attention to what they write. I don't read their posts, so they're not talking to me. even though they often pretend to be. Almost no one else bothers to reply to their stalker posts, so it would seem that they aren't really talking to these people they're claiming to be protecting, either. Thus it seems clear that they are either talking exclusively to each other (a strong psychopathic trait among similarly-insane inmates in asylums) or to themselves (an even more psychopathic trait). Wouldn't it be much more sane just to IGNORE the writings -- and the writers -- they don't like? Feeling the need to get the writers or smack them in several posts a day...for months, or even
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health! Sal, and here I thought you were a smart guy. Guess not. Puh-leeze, go look up some chemistry formula 'cause you certainly lack the ability to recognize satire when you see it. Leave the literary pursuits to those who have a sense of humour.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : There are many non-physical phenomena that on one hand, cannot be proven, by physical means. On the other hand, if we take them out of the equation of life, life then makes less sense, and becomes less enjoyable. An example would be the love between a child, and its mother or father, or love between friends. On 10/22/2014 1:46 AM, salyavin808 wrote: What makes you think that is non-physical? /We already went over this: according to Sam Harris, there is nothing in the physical world that would indicate that there is a human state of consciousness. // //If consciousness means self-consciousness then it cannot be identified by logic with the human body. Animals also possess a physical body, but not rational consciousness. If consciousness is a property of the body, it must be perceived like other material properties. But consciousness is neither seen, smelt or tasted nor touched nor heard. Consciousness is private and cannot be shared by others - it is the very constructed character of knowing./ The scientist would conclude that it is species preservation and chemicals, but that doesn't jibe with anyone who has ever hugged anyone else. Astoundingly, scientists do get the occasional hug. How the brain generates subjective experience is the mystery not that it is a subjective metal experience that wouldn't be there without our brains and all their chemicals and electricity. My perspective tends to be the other way 'round, seeing the eventual physical manifestations of all of this world, as an end result, vs. a starting point. I recall Maharishi was rather dismissive, of the coarse nature of a strictly material life, a function of lower consciousness. True, but he had some yagya's to sell you. And I don;t consider him much of an authority anyway simply because he pitched a non-sensical cosmology with no evidence to support it, and a lot of what he claimed is testable but seems to have failed. And a lot of it was wishful thinking and appeals to ancient authority. I give him top marks for optimism though. Odd that those with a scientific bias, allow themselves to feel and integrate non-scientific emotional responses into their lives, and yet be quite imperious on accepting such responses, as they consider them non-scientific. What a mess waking state is. I don;t know how I make it through the day to be honest... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Fresh air blowing through the Funny Farm Lounge from DC area and Madison. Thanks guys for this example of FFL at its best. On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been We have it all figured out already over Let's find out. The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they announce their assumptions. We need to address how we could be confident of such knowledge knowing how fallible and prone to self delusions humans are with all of our cognitive blind spots. I rarely see this aspect in the intellectual mix of confident assertions from the subjective angle. Then of course you have the whole areas of human knowledge in the arts and humanities which is plenty non physical reality enough for me. We don't have to swing
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/21/2014 12:54 PM, curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: I enjoyed your response till you went its all about Barry on my ass Richard. /So, you don't want to talk about Barry and Sam Harris and their belief in Buddhas, karma and reincarnation. Go figure./ I am not on board with your use of the term inference and its validity in gaining knowledge on its own. It is one of the pieces of the epistemological puzzle and fraught with issues. Nor do I accept that the claim of consciousness as the ultimate reality was inferred from anything. I think someone taught you that this was true. I ain't necessarily so IMO. It is certainly a long way from a self evident truth from experience. /There's probably not a single person on the planet that hasn't *inferred* that they are a self-conscious thinking being and that they exist by virtue of being conscious - everyone knows the difference between a man that is alive and a man that is dead. It's the most obvious reality on the planet and dirt simple. The fact that you are conscious is self-evident from just being alive.//From this experience we *infer* that //consciousness is the ultimate reality, based on experience, and on sense perception, and on verbal testimony. It's not complicated.// // //Maybe it's time to review the valid means of knowledge:// // //Sense perception// //Verbal testimony// //Inference/ And what is wrong with non sequitur outside a formal argument? That is what gives juice to our interactions. Trying to restrict everything to only what logically follows is a buzz kill man. I hope you will throw in as many non sequiturs into our conversation as you can come up with. I'll take something new and tangential over more of the same any day. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. /Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. // // //Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change./ /Where is Robin when we need him?/ / /On 10/21/2014 9:56 AM, curtisdeltablues@... mailto:curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life we conflate that's logical with that's true because the former requires another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so careful. The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal with concepts so far from our natural experience. Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like Everything that comes to exist has a cause. are ridiculous as an unchallenged first principle. /It's only normal for average people to assume that there is a reason for things to happen - events seem to follow causes; they don't just happen for no reason, by luck or fortune. Almost everyone assumes causation because it is so logical to the human experience: human excrement always flows downstream; gravity sucks.//There are no chance events./ Turns out quantum events don't follow this
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Barry, what the hell are you saying? Tell me it's not the same 'ol diatribe. Maybe I'll have time to read it later. How many posts have you written denigrating the place here, and it's participants, every hour, every day, letting us know what a waste of time it is for your to participate. That irony is lost on you. But, whatever... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health! Well, before I started moving Ann's messages to the Deranged Stalkers From Hell folder, I seem to remember her being the person who claimed to know for sure that nothing bad had happened to Judy. That would indicate that they were in communication, right? So my bet is that Ann's audience is in fact the person who has been directing her stalking efforts from behind the scenes. But even if this isn't the case, I would suggest that...uh...overestimating one's audience IS, in fact, a sign of mental illness. For example, several times now over the years I have asked Jim Flanegin to settle once and for all the issue of whether anyone actually *believes* his claims to be enlightened by simply ASKING. All it would take is for him to post to FFL, asking those who *do* believe he's enlightened to reply and say so. He has steadfastly refused to do this, all while insinuating that he has friends here, as if the fact that they pat him on the back when he stalks the people he was told to stalk means that they actually believe his claim to be enlightened. Heck, even *Nabby* has never said he thinks Jim is enlightened. Nabby probably thinks David Lynch and the occasional scarecrow next to a crop circle are enlightened, but he doesn't think Jim is. Says a lot, right? :-) The clear sign of poor mental health IMO is the fact that these people -- at this point, primarily Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve -- seem to feel that they have not only the right but a duty to harass and stalk those on this forum they don't like. I suggest that what they're really trying to do is SILENCE these people they stalk, because *they* don't like what they say. The deranged stalkers *pretend* that they're doing this stalking for the good of the forum, or to protect those who might be taken in or misled by what these liars might say, but of course we all know that the members of the original Inquisition said exactly the same thing about why *they* were deranged stalkers. I would suggest that the bottom line about Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve's sanity is whether anyone is actually paying any attention to what they write. I don't read their posts, so they're not talking to me. even though they often pretend to be. Almost no one else bothers to reply to their stalker posts, so it would seem that they aren't really talking to these people they're claiming to
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Ann, it appears that agreement with Barry, trumps any kind of rational thinking with sal. go figger! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health! Sal, and here I thought you were a smart guy. Guess not. Puh-leeze, go look up some chemistry formula 'cause you certainly lack the ability to recognize satire when you see it. Leave the literary pursuits to those who have a sense of humour.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : Ann, it appears that agreement with Barry, trumps any kind of rational thinking with sal. go figger! Yes, but kindness is my goal today (although I always find it easy to be kind to my animals) so I will hold off commenting on this excellent insight of yours. (Oops, I think I did comment by saying it was excellent.)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
okay, good goal Ann, but your normal style of functioning. It's just when we see something that seems out of whack, we comment on it. To Barry that's being obsessed, or stalking. He, of course is beyond most, if not all, human foibles. A model of unattachment. A button pusher on high. Or at least that's what he says. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : Ann, it appears that agreement with Barry, trumps any kind of rational thinking with sal. go figger! Yes, but kindness is my goal today (although I always find it easy to be kind to my animals) so I will hold off commenting on this excellent insight of yours. (Oops, I think I did comment by saying it was excellent.)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : okay, good goal Ann, but your normal style of functioning. It's just when we see something that seems out of whack, we comment on it. To Barry that's being obsessed, or stalking. He, of course is beyond most, if not all, human foibles. A model of unattachment. A button pusher on high. Or at least that's what he says. Steve, just keep being who you are. You're doing great. You're going to heaven for sure (this should get a few people going ;-)) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : Ann, it appears that agreement with Barry, trumps any kind of rational thinking with sal. go figger! Yes, but kindness is my goal today (although I always find it easy to be kind to my animals) so I will hold off commenting on this excellent insight of yours. (Oops, I think I did comment by saying it was excellent.)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Ann, I am sure you have noticed, this reading comprehension issue with Barry. The brain filia that are responsible for nuance, seem to have gotten flattened, or something. I mean, it is sort of funny, but sad too. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:56 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. Oh my God! Still irony challenged, I see. Did you really, really take this seriously? I'm sure Curtis got it but it went clean over your addled head. This is seriously funny, you actually thought I was not being ironic when I said this. Surely the my reward will be in heaven part was the giveaway? See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
who did you say was channeling Judy, sal? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Well, before I started moving Ann's messages to the Deranged Stalkers From Hell folder, I seem to remember her being the person who claimed to know for sure that nothing bad had happened to Judy. That would indicate that they were in communication, right? So my bet is that Ann's audience is in fact the person who has been directing her stalking efforts from behind the scenes. She certainly seems to have taken over the role of principle Barry hater - and you have to admire the gusto! Indeed. Even *Judy* never admitted to having read my book as research material with which to better stalk me the way Ann has admitted to doing lately. Wasn't it Judy herself who once defined stalking as follows: I might also point out that searching the Web for information to use against somebody is standard cyberstalking behavior. -- Judy Stein, FFL, 11 February 2013 But I don't read any of it either, it's too easy to tell from message view what a post is going to be about with some people. Judy was considerate and always started a Barry post with Note that Barry says so we knew we could safely scroll past those. If Ann wants anyone to read anything that isn't Bawee related she should take up that technique or suffer the realisation one day that nobody real is reading what she obviously spends a lot of time typing. I've really never understood those who feel that I or others might be missing important information by merely scanning the Message View of their posts and skipping the rest. One would really have to be a cretin to NOT know what one of these people were going to say in their posts from the first couple of lines of them. It's not, after all, as if they have that much *range* in the things they say. With Ann, one appearance of bawee is a guaranteed tipoff that she needed her Hate Fix for the day and that it's safe to skip the post in which she tried to shoot it up. Sometimes you have to admit that you just don't like someone and let them get on with whatever it is they do. Continually going on about it is pointless. And continuing to claim that she's not obsessing on me while *obviously* obsessing on me is not only pointless, but more than a little insane. But I have similar feelings with TV, some people complain that most of it is crap but if it wasn't there'd be no time to do anything else! My glass is clearly half-full. But even if this isn't the case, I would suggest that...uh...overestimating one's audience IS, in fact, a sign of mental illness. For example, several times now over the years I have asked Jim Flanegin to settle once and for all the issue of whether anyone actually *believes* his claims to be enlightened by simply ASKING. All it would take is for him to post to FFL, asking those who *do* believe he's enlightened to reply and say so. He has steadfastly refused to do this, all while insinuating that he has friends here, as if the fact that they pat him on the back when he stalks the people he was told to stalk means that they actually believe his claim to be enlightened. Heck, even *Nabby* has never said he thinks Jim is enlightened. Nabby probably thinks David Lynch and the occasional scarecrow next to a crop circle are enlightened, but he doesn't think Jim is. Says a lot, right? :-) It's strangely comforting to know that there are some things that Nabby doesn't believe. It betrays a thought process of some sort going on in there that doesn't depend on youtube for confirmation. Good for him. What, after all, would you or anyone else sane THINK of someone who actually *did* believe Jim's claims to be enlightened? The prospect of such a person existing is almost scarier than Jim existing. :-) The clear sign of poor mental health IMO is the fact that these people -- at this point, primarily Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve -- seem to feel that they have not only the right but a duty to harass and stalk those on this forum they don't like. I suggest that what they're really trying to do is SILENCE these people they stalk, because *they* don't like what they say. The deranged stalkers *pretend* that they're doing this stalking for the good of the forum, or to protect those who might be taken in or misled by what these liars might say, but of course we all know that the members of the original Inquisition said exactly the same thing about why *they* were deranged stalkers. I would suggest that the bottom line about Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve's sanity is whether anyone is actually paying any attention to what they write. I don't read their posts, so they're not talking to me. even though they often pretend to be. Almost no one else bothers to reply to their stalker posts, so it would seem that they aren't
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/22/2014 5:36 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: *From:* salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : *From:* anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com As to the first question, mental illness perhaps results from atypical wiring and growth of the brain, causes not necessarily known. Mental illness is not considered a contagious disease. So contrary to the title Barry gave to this thread, the hook if you will, belief in god is not a mental illness. Many people disagree with this. These sociologists, psychologists, and religious historians believe that history shows us that not *only* is religion indistinguishable from mental illness (think the actions that the Inquisition considered holy), it is very, very much communcable (the Inquisition lasted for *800 years*, fucking up Western society in ways that are still felt today). /Non sequitur. Barry sounds very afraid of dialoging about religion or spiritual paths. He's been on the inside of two religious groups, but he doesn't seem to want to talk about it. He won't even tell us about the secret tantra techniques or the secret mantras. Go figure. Apparently he is a TB: True Believers tend to believe in absolutist terms (either l00% true or 100% false) and they can't tolerate situations in which:// // // a. the truth is unknown// // b. the truth is midway between extremes// // c. simply unknowable// // d. variants such as true some of the time, but at other times not true, or true for some people but not others./ Plus, look at how one person defined their religion just today: But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. This person clearly feels not only that they are going to be rewarded with heaven for stalking the person they've chosen to stalk, but it is their duty to stalk him, to smack him into line day after day, as if 1) she was entitled to, or 2) that ever happened. See what I mean about religion being a form of mental illness? Here you have a person who chooses to excuse her stalking behavior and obsession on one particular person she hates by claiming it's her religious duty to act like this. This religious fanatic not only admits to being a stalker, she *celebrates* it and hopes to end up in heaven *for* being a stalker. I'd say that was pretty mentally ill, wouldn't you? :-) :-) :-) It's seriously weird behaviour, channelling Judy perhaps? I wonder who the intended audience is? Maybe there's an imaginary one that applauds every such post. That would be a sign of poor mental health! Well, before I started moving Ann's messages to the Deranged Stalkers From Hell folder, I seem to remember her being the person who claimed to know for sure that nothing bad had happened to Judy. That would indicate that they were in communication, right? So my bet is that Ann's audience is in fact the person who has been directing her stalking efforts from behind the scenes. But even if this isn't the case, I would suggest that...uh...overestimating one's audience IS, in fact, a sign of mental illness. For example, several times now over the years I have asked Jim Flanegin to settle once and for all the issue of whether anyone actually *believes* his claims to be enlightened by simply ASKING. All it would take is for him to post to FFL, asking those who *do* believe he's enlightened to reply and say so. He has steadfastly refused to do this, all while insinuating that he has friends here, as if the fact that they pat him on the back when he stalks the people he was told to stalk means that they actually believe his claim to be enlightened. Heck, even *Nabby* has never said he thinks Jim is enlightened. Nabby probably thinks David Lynch and the occasional scarecrow next to a crop circle are enlightened, but he doesn't think Jim is. Says a lot, right? :-) The clear sign of poor mental health IMO is the fact that these people -- at this point, primarily Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve -- seem to feel that they have not only the right but a duty to harass and stalk those on this forum they don't like. I suggest that what they're really trying to do is SILENCE these people they stalk, because *they* don't like what they say. The deranged stalkers *pretend* that they're doing this stalking for the good of the forum, or to protect those who might be taken in or misled by what these liars might say, but of course we all know that the members of the original Inquisition said exactly the same thing about why *they* were deranged stalkers. I would suggest that the bottom line about Ann, Jim, Richard, and Steve's sanity is whether anyone is actually paying any attention to what
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 3:17 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness The human species lack of hard wiring makes us more flexible for learning; we do not go out and dig burrows and look for nuts in the forest everyday (usually), but it makes us susceptible to the mental equivalent of a viral attack. We here have all experienced the attack, and many here are still dancing to the virus's tune. This is why I called religion a memetic malady or disease. That is different from organic insanity. Religion is induced insanity. I can live with that. But I don't see any difference in the end state that the induced insanity of religion creates and the end state that organic insanity creates. Either way, one is insane. Maybe it's a Buddhist thing...Buddhists aren't really concerned about HOW things got to be the way they are, only THAT they are the way they are, and how to make the best of that. The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first place. Most religions have never tried to do this. They just make declarations like Maharishi did, along the lines of The purpose of life is to achieve these experiences of unboundedness, which then become dogma and are repeated and believed by successive generations of believers. But he never said WHY these experiences were supposedly worth achieving. Start now...what do YOU see as the VALUE of these experiences of unboundedness you speak of? If you can't establish that they *have* a value, then why do we need a system of *any* kind to achieve them?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
I'm sure Ann appreciates your straightening her out about me Jim. She was making the mistake of trusting her own impression, but now has the enlightened perspective from you on my dark motives and inner thoughts. At first I wondered how you could know about my inner feelings or whether or not I even read posts between other posters, but then I remembered: Jim is in a superior state of mind and it made more sense. I was amazed that you nailed me on exploiting Barry's posts although I am still a bit unclear how this actually plays out in the, outside of Jim's enlightened head, world. Thanks for clearing up any confusion about my dark motives, because for a second, I read your whole intention as acting out a kindergarten sandbox emotional level scene:NO, Ann is MY friend. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I may not respond point by point Ann. You and I have our clear channel. I think we get each other. I am more of a one one one poster here. Steve nailed me recently. He said I respond to everyone in sympathetic response to how they respond to me. That was a typical insightful naildown from my brother Steve. You and I do not agree with our perspectives on Barry. But you have separated your view of him from my friendliness toward him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that Ann. You are a friend here. And in my world. I can be friends with you AND Barry and appreciate you both for different reasons. That is how I roll. I think you roll that way too. Robin was unable to allow me to be connected to people who were hostile toward him and still be friendly with him. You seem able to go beyond this. I like you, and I like Barry. What you do between yourselves is none of my business. Does that work for you? Ahhh, now I get to talk to you friend to friend. Curtis, you know I support you 100% in what I see as your diligent and love-inspired passionate pursuit of your art, your music. No one can ever take that away from you. As an artist you are rarified, you are special because artists have to wade through tough, weed-choked waters. There is little money in it and there is the need to keep moving on and progressing even when things seem to have become comfortable and even profitable in their way. But real artists are never at rest, so it can be grueling and bone-racking. But, I digress. Of course I can appreciate/like someone who likes or believes in something I either dislike or don't ascribe to. bawee commented on my applauding Gervais as if I didn't realize he was an athiest. C'mon, really? Of course I can appreciate someone who may believe very different things than I do - especially when it comes to something as silly as religion or lack of it. But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. Curtis, this old internet world is a funny one. Before FFL I never participated in any forums and so I had to figure stuff out. One thing is that while I am a straight shooter (whatever anyone sees of me here is exactly how I am in the flesh) I don't believe this holds true for some others here. For some reason forums are an opportunity to become another part of who they are, or they simply create something they wished they were. I don't know and I don't care. We all operate from where we feel comfortable or even from where we can push ourselves as a sort of exercise in pressing personal limits. But whatever it is, some simply cross the bounds of decency (and I use that word in the old fashioned sense, decency being what is civil, sensitive and truthful). They commit a kind of trespass on the sensibilities of those who are effected by such things. They act like a sort of emotional jack hammer. It's simply not what I seek out in life where so much is beautiful and delicate and can enter your life as the subtlest whisper of revelation and even promise. Jack hammers are a dime a dozen. So, you must be a man of
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Hi, and thanks for that - Yeah, I just wanted to point out who is the hand, and who is the sock monkey, in that equation. Have a great day! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. You may very well be right Mac, because you tend to have a very insightful nature and I, more often than not, find your analyses extremely sophisticated. When I log on to FFL I always start at the bottom (oldest) post and read up answering certain posts as I go and moving past others. As I was quickly scrolling down from the top today I glimpsed some post from bawee who seems to address my personal post to Curtis. I haven't read it yet but I will, at least some of it. From the little I saw it appears rather unkind and very typical of bawee. Let's see what anyone does with this, if anything (although I see Steve made some remarks afterwards). I think you and Judy are on a similar page when it comes to Curtis but I don't always choose to deal with all the machinations that go on here so sometimes I simply find the parts of a person I enjoy or appreciate the most and speak to those. There are definite traits about Curtis that I admire (his music and his teaching) and as for whatever else might be going on I'm not in a position to try and change it. Whatever it is Curtis either sees or is using bawee for that is between them and is not somewhere I need to go.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Richard, it occurs to me that the only thing we can know for sure is that awareness exists. And that's because we're aware. But maybe I'm over simplifying (-: On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 4:02 PM, 'Richard J. Williams' pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: On 10/21/2014 12:07 PM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Curtis, I just had a lunch of veggies and salmon so maybe my brain is a little more up to respond. Maybe! Definitely not as good as Sam Harris (-: According to Sam Harris consciousness is the only thing that cannot be an illusion. Anyway, my questions are: 1. how do we know that we know? We know that we exist because we are self-conscious. Without consciousness there would be no perception or perceiver. Which is kind of abstract and probably just me reliving a past life as a haetera! Non sequitur. The fact of consciousness is dirt simple because everyone has it, otherwise they would be unconscious. Nobody that is conscious goes around saying they don't exist. Consciousness is the basic fact of life that cannot be doubted.- Sam harris 2. what do we mean by knowing? Knowing is having knowledge structured in consciousness; intelligence. Ok, we see a tree fall so we think we know that it fell. Of course, perception could be faulty. If appearances derived through one sensory channel appear contradictory, it is natural to appeal to other senses for corroboration. When they contradict, which sense shall we accept as reliable? If we observe the naive realist closely, we will find that at some times he relies principally on his eyes and, at other times, on his ears. When different senses corroborate an error, he even more baffled. Or, to go into the arts as you suggested, we listen to a song about first love, and from our own memories of that, we recognize the truth of the song. For past experiences, to be compared, they must be remembered. But memory often fails us. What assurance do we have that it is not failing us again? Past experiences may have been erroneous consistently. The materialist thinks he sees directly back into an existing past which in reality has ceased to exist! This is called in philosophy an appeal to instruments and like the appeal to other senses, to past experiences, to repetition, and to other persons, is a confession of failure. For it is a confession that apparently obvious objects are NOT self-evident. But here's my really favorite question, 3. Back to your post: what is meant by worthwhile reality? It is worthwhile to be conscious because that way get to enjoy life and gain knowledge that will set us free. You should know the truth and the truth will set your free. There in knowledge higher than absolute knowledge. Are there some realities that are not worthwhile? There is only one single reality - pure consciousness - duality is an illusion. On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been We have it all figured out already over Let's find out. The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
I have no problem with your friendship with Ann - As she responded, she suspects some of what I said is accurate, but doesn't let that deter a friendship with you. I don't play the chimp's games, and you, like the chimp, seem to have a difficult time reconciling, one the one hand, denying that I am enlightened, while finding enlightenment a bogus concept, to begin with. A Big Confusing Issue with you two. I recommend TM for both of you for awhile, say 50 years?? Better get started... :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I'm sure Ann appreciates your straightening her out about me Jim. She was making the mistake of trusting her own impression, but now has the enlightened perspective from you on my dark motives and inner thoughts. At first I wondered how you could know about my inner feelings or whether or not I even read posts between other posters, but then I remembered: Jim is in a superior state of mind and it made more sense. I was amazed that you nailed me on exploiting Barry's posts although I am still a bit unclear how this actually plays out in the, outside of Jim's enlightened head, world. Thanks for clearing up any confusion about my dark motives, because for a second, I read your whole intention as acting out a kindergarten sandbox emotional level scene:NO, Ann is MY friend. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I may not respond point by point Ann. You and I have our clear channel. I think we get each other. I am more of a one one one poster here. Steve nailed me recently. He said I respond to everyone in sympathetic response to how they respond to me. That was a typical insightful naildown from my brother Steve. You and I do not agree with our perspectives on Barry. But you have separated your view of him from my friendliness toward him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that Ann. You are a friend here. And in my world. I can be friends with you AND Barry and appreciate you both for different reasons. That is how I roll. I think you roll that way too. Robin was unable to allow me to be connected to people who were hostile toward him and still be friendly with him. You seem able to go beyond this. I like you, and I like Barry. What you do between yourselves is none of my business. Does that work for you? Ahhh, now I get to talk to you friend to friend. Curtis, you know I support you 100% in what I see as your diligent and love-inspired passionate pursuit of your art, your music. No one can ever take that away from you. As an artist you are rarified, you are special because artists have to wade through tough, weed-choked waters. There is little money in it and there is the need to keep moving on and progressing even when things seem to have become comfortable and even profitable in their way. But real artists are never at rest, so it can be grueling and bone-racking. But, I digress. Of course I can appreciate/like someone who likes or believes in something I either dislike or don't ascribe to. bawee commented on my applauding Gervais as if I didn't realize he was an athiest. C'mon, really? Of course I can appreciate someone who may believe very different things than I do - especially when it comes to something as silly as religion or lack of it. But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. Curtis, this old internet world is a funny one. Before FFL I never participated in any forums and so I had to figure stuff out. One thing is that while I am a straight shooter (whatever anyone sees of me here is exactly how I am in the flesh) I don't believe this holds true for some others here. For some reason forums are an opportunity to become another part of who they are, or they simply create something they wished they were. I don't know and I don't care. We all operate from where we feel comfortable or even from where we can push ourselves as a sort of
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : I have no problem with your friendship with Ann - As she responded, she suspects some of what I said is accurate, M: That would require her to believe that you know my feelings when reading posts or whether or not I even read posts between other people here. It would be equally bogus for her as it is for you who made this absurd claim. I was a bit disappointed when I read that. J: but doesn't let that deter a friendship with you. I don't play the chimp's games, and you, like the chimp, seem to have a difficult time reconciling, one the one hand, denying that I am enlightened, while finding enlightenment a bogus concept, to begin with. A Big Confusing Issue with you two. I recommend TM for both of you for awhile, say 50 years?? Better get started... :-) M: Nothing confusing about those two things at all Jim. The more you insist you are in the highest state of human development the more glaring the contrast with what and how you post here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I'm sure Ann appreciates your straightening her out about me Jim. She was making the mistake of trusting her own impression, but now has the enlightened perspective from you on my dark motives and inner thoughts. At first I wondered how you could know about my inner feelings or whether or not I even read posts between other posters, but then I remembered: Jim is in a superior state of mind and it made more sense. I was amazed that you nailed me on exploiting Barry's posts although I am still a bit unclear how this actually plays out in the, outside of Jim's enlightened head, world. Thanks for clearing up any confusion about my dark motives, because for a second, I read your whole intention as acting out a kindergarten sandbox emotional level scene:NO, Ann is MY friend. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I may not respond point by point Ann. You and I have our clear channel. I think we get each other. I am more of a one one one poster here. Steve nailed me recently. He said I respond to everyone in sympathetic response to how they respond to me. That was a typical insightful naildown from my brother Steve. You and I do not agree with our perspectives on Barry. But you have separated your view of him from my friendliness toward him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that Ann. You are a friend here. And in my world. I can be friends with you AND Barry and appreciate you both for different reasons. That is how I roll. I think you roll that way too. Robin was unable to allow me to be connected to people who were hostile toward him and still be friendly with him. You seem able to go beyond this. I like you, and I like Barry. What you do between yourselves is none of my business. Does that work for you? Ahhh, now I get to talk to you friend to friend. Curtis, you know I support you 100% in what I see as your diligent and love-inspired passionate pursuit of your art, your music. No one can ever take that away from you. As an artist you are rarified, you are special because artists have to wade through tough, weed-choked waters. There is little money in it and there is the need to keep moving on and progressing even when things seem to have become comfortable and even profitable in their way. But real artists are never at rest, so it can be grueling and bone-racking. But, I digress. Of course I can appreciate/like someone who likes or believes in something I either dislike or don't ascribe to. bawee commented on my applauding Gervais as if I didn't realize he was an athiest. C'mon, really? Of course I can appreciate someone who may believe very different things than I do - especially when it comes to something as silly as religion or lack of it. But let's not talk about bawee, I have my hands full just smacking him into line day after day - it is an exhausting pursuit but someone has to do it so I sacrifice myself on the wheel of necessity. There will be some reward in heaven for my efforts, I am sure. Curtis, this old
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Just to be clear, at no time have I said I was in the highest state of human development. The way I learned it, according to Maharishi, was that enlightenment meant simply, normal, and everything continues from there, as it always has. Draw your own conclusions. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : I have no problem with your friendship with Ann - As she responded, she suspects some of what I said is accurate, M: That would require her to believe that you know my feelings when reading posts or whether or not I even read posts between other people here. It would be equally bogus for her as it is for you who made this absurd claim. I was a bit disappointed when I read that. J: but doesn't let that deter a friendship with you. I don't play the chimp's games, and you, like the chimp, seem to have a difficult time reconciling, one the one hand, denying that I am enlightened, while finding enlightenment a bogus concept, to begin with. A Big Confusing Issue with you two. I recommend TM for both of you for awhile, say 50 years?? Better get started... :-) M: Nothing confusing about those two things at all Jim. The more you insist you are in the highest state of human development the more glaring the contrast with what and how you post here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I'm sure Ann appreciates your straightening her out about me Jim. She was making the mistake of trusting her own impression, but now has the enlightened perspective from you on my dark motives and inner thoughts. At first I wondered how you could know about my inner feelings or whether or not I even read posts between other posters, but then I remembered: Jim is in a superior state of mind and it made more sense. I was amazed that you nailed me on exploiting Barry's posts although I am still a bit unclear how this actually plays out in the, outside of Jim's enlightened head, world. Thanks for clearing up any confusion about my dark motives, because for a second, I read your whole intention as acting out a kindergarten sandbox emotional level scene:NO, Ann is MY friend. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : So, you must be a man of deep capacity to be able to hold within your appreciation myself and someone as different as I am in the form of bawee. Maybe one day I'll get there too. Something to point out, about Curtis, Ann -- Rather than an expression of his social flexibility and capacity to entertain multiple points of view, Curtis enjoys Barry's anti-social nature, and exploits it fully. This way, he enjoys the vicarious pleasure of watching Barry insult and abuse others endlessly, and at the same time, tries to ensure by his uber reasonableness, and kumbaya attitude, that none of the stink gets on him, personally. Curtis is Barry's puppet-master. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, awoelflebater@... wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : I may not respond point by point Ann. You and I have our clear channel. I think we get each other. I am more of a one one one poster here. Steve nailed me recently. He said I respond to everyone in sympathetic response to how they respond to me. That was a typical insightful naildown from my brother Steve. You and I do not agree with our perspectives on Barry. But you have separated your view of him from my friendliness toward him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate that Ann. You are a friend here. And in my world. I can be friends with you AND Barry and appreciate you both for different reasons. That is how I roll. I think you roll that way too. Robin was unable to allow me to be connected to people who were hostile toward him and still be friendly with him. You seem able to go beyond this. I like you, and I like Barry. What you do between yourselves is none of my business. Does that work for you? Ahhh, now I get to talk to you friend to friend. Curtis, you know I support you 100% in what I see as your diligent and love-inspired passionate pursuit of your art, your music. No one can ever take that away from you. As an artist you are rarified, you are special because artists have to wade through tough, weed-choked waters. There is little money in it and there is the need to keep moving on and progressing even when things seem to have become comfortable and even profitable in their way. But real artists are never at rest, so it can be grueling and bone-racking. But, I digress. Of course I can appreciate/like someone who likes or believes in something I either dislike or don't ascribe to. bawee commented on my applauding Gervais as if I didn't realize he was an athiest. C'mon, really? Of course I can appreciate someone who may believe very different things than I do - especially when it comes to
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 2:37 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 3:17 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness The human species lack of hard wiring makes us more flexible for learning; we do not go out and dig burrows and look for nuts in the forest everyday (usually), but it makes us susceptible to the mental equivalent of a viral attack. We here have all experienced the attack, and many here are still dancing to the virus's tune. This is why I called religion a memetic malady or disease. That is different from organic insanity. Religion is induced insanity. I can live with that. But I don't see any difference in the end state that the induced insanity of religion creates and the end state that organic insanity creates. Either way, one is insane. Maybe it's a Buddhist thing...Buddhists aren't really concerned about HOW things got to be the way they are, only THAT they are the way they are, and how to make the best of that. If you do not mind being surrounded by insane people I suppose that is OK. If you (or someone else probably) want to make a diagnosis and want to cure people of the malady, then a proper diagnosis is necessary as organic insanity and intractable, impacted belief systems would have a different treatment. Organic insanity may not be curable but certain forms might be ameliorated by drugs. With memetic insanity, you basically have to dismantle the patient's belief system while at the same time instilling a framework for rational thought. As we see here on FFL, this process does not work on the web, something more visceral is required, an environment where the beliefs and botched reasoning simply do not work at all and provide negative consequences if pursued. If that sounds suspiciously like brainwashing, it probably is, brainwashing to remove brainwashing. The question for 'spiritually' oriented individuals would be, is there a way to construct a system that gives us these experiences of unboundedness that does not also wreak havoc with this gullibility weakness in the human nervous system. But that would presuppose that there is an actual VALUE to these experiences of unboundedness. That has not been established, merely assumed by centuries of religious fanatics trying to convince others that its value trumps everything else. I would suggest going back to the starting point and, if you want to invent a better system, make a case for these types of experience having a value in the first place. Most religions have never tried to do this. They just make declarations like Maharishi did, along the lines of The purpose of life is to achieve these experiences of unboundedness, which then become dogma and are repeated and believed by successive generations of believers. But he never said WHY these experiences were supposedly worth achieving. Start now...what do YOU see as the VALUE of these experiences of unboundedness you speak of? If you can't establish that they *have* a value, then why do we need a system of *any* kind to achieve them? Systems already exist, but they are inefficient and quirky, and at best we just stumble into them. If the value to the individual is great enough, they will find a way. What was of value to me though, might not be of value to another. I have found these experiences valuable, but it has also been very interesting how they have ultimately played out for me. Sam Harris is also promoting those experiences in his new book Waking Up, a Guide to Spirituality without Religion. These experiences can be fantastic, one can get attached to having them but as to how they can be interpreted is another question. What you are told in a particular tradition might not be a particularly good way to describe them if they tend to reinforce an impacted belief system. My view, at the moment, is the nervous system is relieving itself of something, but it is difficult to tell just what that something is. I would say the interesting spiritual experiences are just artefacts of the system normalising itself, so they are not really of real import. If one is seeking heaven and trying to avoid hell, one is missing the point of the search, for the point is to discover the commonality of both, and avoid being sucked either way. For me as time went on such experiences tended to damp out, everything kind of flattened out, until one day on a walk there was this shift in which the world, as it always had been, was identical with what I had been seeking. It was a very low key experience, but seeking
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Jim has lost it before and will lose it again, but this is by far the worst case of losing it so far. Enlightened? At this point he's barely human... I'm interested in why anyone who risks a dissenting voice round here is classed as emotionally immature as well as intellectually lazy. I can see how someone with entrenched beliefs might assume that they must have arrived intellectually at what they think is true, and that therefore anyone who disagrees must be deficient not to have arrived at the same conclusion. But to think that makes them some sort of emotional cripple as well is most puzzling, I can only assume it's a catch all insult that's designed to hurt whoever might be on the receiving end, and sort of a way of saying you must be a TOTAL loser and not just an intellectual one for daring to disagree with me. Like a toddler saying I HATE YOU FOREVER because you won't give them a second biscuit. I think the reason this happens is that Jim and other spiritual/religious types don't realise their beliefs are emotional rather than logical and insult any contrarians in an accordingly similar way to how they feel they've been slighted. The two modes of being don't seem to mix very well, this must be why I feel no emotional pain whatsoever when someone disagrees with me about quantum tunnelling being a likely cause of creation, and why the hell would I? It's only an abstract idea that may or may not be true, if I was hung up on it or actually defined by it then it might be different. That's maybe where the abuse comes from. But Jim is right, we should be looking for the creator, and if we don't find him or it turns out to be merely a flux in relativistic quantum boundary possibilities then so be it. The urge to know is there in me. From: curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 12:12 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : I certainly wouldn't have expected you to agree, Curtis, but your response hasn't changed my assessment of your motives. Sorry. M: I didn't realize that this was a discussion of motives. OK, Well in that case I think your motive for making up a bunch of derogatory shit is to get back at me for not going along with your I am enlightened and you are not routine. I think that gets you angry and you have to lash out. But don't worry Jim,there is always Nabbie. He believes EVERYTHING. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : This was a particularly nasty trollish comment Jim. I will let most of it ride as an indictment of your character. But I will correct this: I am not an outsider in my community. I am a leader in the arts in education movement and just last week addressed 19 Principals in one of my school county districts about the need to bring arts integrated teaching in their schools, at the invitation of the regional arts director who is a fan of my work. As far as making a living in the arts is concerned you got it wrong sorry to disappoint, I am very much an insider working to improve the educational system in my area with my own choice of music from within the system, and recognized by it. So you can fantasize about me not being successful in my chosen field if you want to grind out your own ill will. But it just doesn't fit the actual facts of the work I am doing or how it is being recognized in my community. I was just changing lives one classroom at a time today. Oh yeah: J: But, the argument that only they are right, and the rest of the world, as represented by the other members of this forum, is wrong, is clearly not sane thinking. There are so many funny things about this I hardly know where to start. If fact coming from you the irony is too perfect to comment on. I'll just let the rest of the world think about who just said this! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : Yes, they are both a piece of work. I think both of them take extreme views, in social settings, because both of them feel to be outsiders, in the world they inhabit. Their position reminds me of that of the most vociferous born again christians, often found proselytizing, while working minimum wage jobs. These are not successful people, Barry and Curtis. Both are white, from upper middle class backgrounds, privileged as American citizens, and each with a college degree. Yet, not a hill of beans, between them. I am not necessarily talking about material possessions, but things like strength of character, foresight, humility, social intelligence, and a simple ability to achieve that which they set out to do. All of this, is lacking in them. So, being emotionally immature
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Jim has lost it before and will lose it again, but this is by far the worst case of losing it so far. Enlightened? At this point he's barely human... I'm interested in why anyone who risks a dissenting voice round here is classed as emotionally immature as well as intellectually lazy. I can see how someone with entrenched beliefs might assume that they must have arrived intellectually at what they think is true, and that therefore anyone who disagrees must be deficient not to have arrived at the same conclusion. But to think that makes them some sort of emotional cripple as well is most puzzling, I can only assume it's a catch all insult that's designed to hurt whoever might be on the receiving end, and sort of a way of saying you must be a TOTAL loser and not just an intellectual one for daring to disagree with me. Like a toddler saying I HATE YOU FOREVER because you won't give them a second biscuit. I think the reason this happens is that Jim and other spiritual/religious types don't realise their beliefs are emotional rather than logical and insult any contrarians in an accordingly similar way to how they feel they've been slighted. Exactly. They are OFFENDED that someone like myself or you has overcome the Fear Of God that society tried to imprint us with, and they haven't. They're still terrified that if they express doubt of any kind, their imaginary friend God will smite them. Can't risk that. And they're more than a little pissed of that God has *not* smitten us, so they have to try to make up for him being a slacker and try to smite us themselves. :-) The two modes of being don't seem to mix very well, this must be why I feel no emotional pain whatsoever when someone disagrees with me about quantum tunnelling being a likely cause of creation, and why the hell would I? It's only an abstract idea that may or may not be true, if I was hung up on it or actually defined by it then it might be different. That's maybe where the abuse comes from. I agree, especially in Jim's case. Let's face it...he is basically NOTHING without his story of being enlightened. Without that, he's just another guy who inherited a little money rather than earned it, quit his job, and moved out into the country, where now he's so lonely that the only people he ever gets to talk to are on the screen of his laptop. Or that exist in his imagination, like his imaginary friend God (or The Ghost Of Guru Dev). So naturally he *resents* that some of us live in cities where they have pubs and cafes full of real people, and at which we can sit and talk with these real people. I suspect that what he resents even more is that we can sit there and talk with these real people without having to invent made-up stories to impress them with. Jim feels that the only way he can get anyone to listen to him is to say, Hi, my name is Jim, and I am fully enlightened. We can just say, Hi, I'm Barry, or Hi, I'm Salyavin, or Hi, I'm Curtis, and that's ENOUGH. But Jim is right, we should be looking for the creator, and if we don't find him or it turns out to be merely a flux in relativistic quantum boundary possibilities then so be it. The urge to know is there in me. Me, I don't really give a shit. I think I realized at age 15 that if someone could present me with absolute, irrefutable proof that a God existed, it wouldn't change my life in the slightest. That is still true, because I got over the Fear Of God belief that they tried to imprint me with back during my two weeks of Sunday School attendance. Jim and John never did, so they can't make the leap to living without an imaginary friend who is watching them at every moment to make sure they don't fuck up and he has to send them to everlasting torment in Hell. Some friend. :-) From: curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 12:12 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : I certainly wouldn't have expected you to agree, Curtis, but your response hasn't changed my assessment of your motives. Sorry. M: I didn't realize that this was a discussion of motives. OK, Well in that case I think your motive for making up a bunch of derogatory shit is to get back at me for not going along with your I am enlightened and you are not routine. I think that gets you angry and you have to lash out. But don't worry Jim,there is always Nabbie. He believes EVERYTHING. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : This was a particularly nasty trollish comment Jim. I will let most of it ride as an indictment of your character. But I will correct this: I am not an outsider in my
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Funny, you accusing me of losing something, that you never had, in the first place. lol. You would not know the first thing about Enlightenment, especially after that spiritual criminal taught you and the rest of the chumps that only two people out of the hundreds that worshipped him, even had a *chance* for enlightenment, in this lifetime. Really took it to heart, didn't you? Have a nice day.:-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Jim has lost it before and will lose it again, but this is by far the worst case of losing it so far. Enlightened? At this point he's barely human... From: curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 12:12 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : I certainly wouldn't have expected you to agree, Curtis, but your response hasn't changed my assessment of your motives. Sorry. M: I didn't realize that this was a discussion of motives. OK, Well in that case I think your motive for making up a bunch of derogatory shit is to get back at me for not going along with your I am enlightened and you are not routine. I think that gets you angry and you have to lash out. But don't worry Jim,there is always Nabbie. He believes EVERYTHING. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : This was a particularly nasty trollish comment Jim. I will let most of it ride as an indictment of your character. But I will correct this: I am not an outsider in my community. I am a leader in the arts in education movement and just last week addressed 19 Principals in one of my school county districts about the need to bring arts integrated teaching in their schools, at the invitation of the regional arts director who is a fan of my work. As far as making a living in the arts is concerned you got it wrong sorry to disappoint, I am very much an insider working to improve the educational system in my area with my own choice of music from within the system, and recognized by it. So you can fantasize about me not being successful in my chosen field if you want to grind out your own ill will. But it just doesn't fit the actual facts of the work I am doing or how it is being recognized in my community. I was just changing lives one classroom at a time today. Oh yeah: J: But, the argument that only they are right, and the rest of the world, as represented by the other members of this forum, is wrong, is clearly not sane thinking. There are so many funny things about this I hardly know where to start. If fact coming from you the irony is too perfect to comment on. I'll just let the rest of the world think about who just said this! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : Yes, they are both a piece of work. I think both of them take extreme views, in social settings, because both of them feel to be outsiders, in the world they inhabit. Their position reminds me of that of the most vociferous born again christians, often found proselytizing, while working minimum wage jobs. These are not successful people, Barry and Curtis. Both are white, from upper middle class backgrounds, privileged as American citizens, and each with a college degree. Yet, not a hill of beans, between them. I am not necessarily talking about material possessions, but things like strength of character, foresight, humility, social intelligence, and a simple ability to achieve that which they set out to do. All of this, is lacking in them. So, being emotionally immature, and intellectually lazy, they begin to show their discontent with society, that it hasn't rewarded them for their bad decisions. They profess atheism, and go all out against God, and enlightenment, and any sort of spiritual endeavor that they don't approve of. They see themselves failing by societies norms, and have now taken the position, that, You can't fire me, I quit! But, the argument that only they are right, and the rest of the world, as represented by the other members of this forum, is wrong, is clearly not sane thinking. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote : The ignorant inquisitor.. 'It's not my experience so it does not exist!' Deltablues' technique is the old trick of the materialist's (orthodox) inquisitor, “Tell us, what exactly is your creed?” “Tell us in terms detailed such that we can understand and then the best of sophists of us will argue it out with you trying it point by point. Lot of people have been burned at the stake by uber-intellectualistic people like Deltablues is trying to be here on FFL. -Buck fleetwood_macncheese responding to Turqb: Bye, bye, Lenz, Jr. turquoiseb@... wrote : See what I mean? Curtis refuted John's idiotic
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
, and the Maharishi Effect really IS like winning the Trifecta of Idiocy. How does a mind *become* this weak? From: jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 1:59 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Xeno, I have asked Curtis about his support or evidence for disagreeing with the statements in the Kalam Cosmological Argument. But he just gave me a lot of song and dance about his opinions without providing the evidence for his arguments. Can you give us a solid argument with evidence and support why the statements in the KCA have a flaw? Let's take the KCA which states: Everything that begins to exist has a cause; The universe began to exist; Therefore: The universe has a cause. Do you agree with statement 1 or not? If not, please give us your reasons for disagreeing. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Logical arguments about ultimates always contain a flaw. You can reverse the form of the argument to support atheism and if you do not see the flaw, it will seem equally valid, that is, that atheism is true. Now there are some atheists who definitely believe there is no god and they can be as fanatical as a fundamentalist religionist. Probably they would have no sense of humour about their condition. But a real atheist simply lacks a particular kind of belief because that belief seems neither reasonable or likely. They basically just do not care. Barry is just testing memes to see what happens when they are activated. We all have memes which are basically little snippets of mental routines our minds use. We trade them with each other, but for the most part these mental stances are just our opinions about the world around us and we tend to be be rather uncritical as to how well they really represent what is real, while at the same time taking them as reality itself. Take the TMO memes. On FFL, meditators and former meditators all at one time believed certain things about experience were at least possible, for example, that if you practice TM, which is not a religion, you will find God. The TMO memes specify that we are in a state of ignorance, not knowing the nature of reality. But were we actually in the state of ignorance, we would not have the capability to correctly evaluate what we were told because we would be using delusional thinking to evaluate ideas such as transcendence, states of consciousness and so forth, so our following this system of thought about reality would essentially be an act of insanity, that is, mental illness. The system defines us as in some way incapacitated in knowing what is real, and then expects us to just jump in, and accept what the system says is real. A discussion of the Kalam argument: Cosmological Kalamity http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html Cosmological Kalamity http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html Home » Library » Modern » Dan Barker » Cosmological Kalamity Dan Barker Daddy, if God made everything, who made God? my daughter Kristi asked me, when she was five years old. View on infidels.org http://infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html Preview by Yahoo ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jr_esq@... wrote : Barry, Have you ever thought that atheism is also a belief-- and an unreasonable one at that? The Kalam Cosmological Argument should dispel any of your doubts.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/21/2014 4:33 AM, fleetwood_macnche...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Funny, you accusing me of losing something, that you never had, in the first place. lol. /This is not funny - a guy that has believed in Buddhas for a decade has apparently lost it - lost his faith in karma and reincarnation. It looks like a clear case of transference, and now it's all Jim's and John's fault. A clear case of transference. Barry must be experiencing some roughness - now he is tilting at windmills. Go figure./ You would not know the first thing about Enlightenment, especially after that spiritual criminal taught you and the rest of the chumps that only two people out of the hundreds that worshipped him, even had a *chance* for enlightenment, in this lifetime. Really took it to heart, didn't you? Have a nice day.:-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Jim has lost it before and will lose it again, but this is by far the worst case of losing it so far. Enlightened? At this point he's barely human... *From:* curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *To:* FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com *Sent:* Tuesday, October 21, 2014 12:12 AM *Subject:* Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : I certainly wouldn't have expected you to agree, Curtis, but your response hasn't changed my assessment of your motives. Sorry. M: I didn't realize that this was a discussion of motives. OK, Well in that case I think your motive for making up a bunch of derogatory shit is to get back at me for not going along with your I am enlightened and you are not routine. I think that gets you angry and you have to lash out. But don't worry Jim,there is always Nabbie. He believes EVERYTHING. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues@... wrote : This was a particularly nasty trollish comment Jim. I will let most of it ride as an indictment of your character. But I will correct this: I am not an outsider in my community. I am a leader in the arts in education movement and just last week addressed 19 Principals in one of my school county districts about the need to bring arts integrated teaching in their schools, at the invitation of the regional arts director who is a fan of my work. As far as making a living in the arts is concerned you got it wrong sorry to disappoint, I am very much an insider working to improve the educational system in my area with my own choice of music from within the system, and recognized by it. So you can fantasize about me not being successful in my chosen field if you want to grind out your own ill will. But it just doesn't fit the actual facts of the work I am doing or how it is being recognized in my community. I was just changing lives one classroom at a time today. Oh yeah: J: But, the argument that only they are right, and the rest of the world, as represented by the other members of this forum, is wrong, is clearly not sane thinking. There are so many funny things about this I hardly know where to start. If fact coming from you the irony is too perfect to comment on. I'll just let the rest of the world think about who just said this! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : Yes, they are both a piece of work. I think both of them take extreme views, in social settings, because both of them feel to be outsiders, in the world they inhabit. Their position reminds me of that of the most vociferous born again christians, often found proselytizing, while working minimum wage jobs. These are not successful people, Barry and Curtis. Both are white, from upper middle class backgrounds, privileged as American citizens, and each with a college degree. Yet, not a hill of beans, between them. I am not necessarily talking about material possessions, but things like strength of character, foresight, humility, social intelligence, and a simple ability to achieve that which they set out to do. All of this, is lacking in them. So, being emotionally immature, and intellectually lazy, they begin to show their discontent with society, that it hasn't rewarded them for their bad decisions. They profess atheism, and go all out against God, and enlightenment, and any sort of spiritual endeavor that they don't approve of. They see themselves failing by societies norms, and have now taken the position, that, You can't fire me, I quit! But, the argument that only they are right, and the rest of the world, as represented by the other members of this forum, is wrong, is clearly not sane thinking. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote : The ignorant inquisitor.. 'It's not my experience so it does not exist!' Deltablues' technique is the old trick of the materialist's
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Jim has lost it before and will lose it again, but this is by far the worst case of losing it so far. Enlightened? At this point he's barely human... If you are the benchmark for the def of human then you are absolutely correct - Jim is a long way from that. (You set yourself up so badly every time - you would have made a terrible chess player.)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Jim has lost it before and will lose it again, but this is by far the worst case of losing it so far. Enlightened? At this point he's barely human... I'm interested in why anyone who risks a dissenting voice round here is classed as emotionally immature as well as intellectually lazy. I can see how someone with entrenched beliefs might assume that they must have arrived intellectually at what they think is true, and that therefore anyone who disagrees must be deficient not to have arrived at the same conclusion. But to think that makes them some sort of emotional cripple as well is most puzzling, I can only assume it's a catch all insult that's designed to hurt whoever might be on the receiving end, and sort of a way of saying you must be a TOTAL loser and not just an intellectual one for daring to disagree with me. Like a toddler saying I HATE YOU FOREVER because you won't give them a second biscuit. I think the reason this happens is that Jim and other spiritual/religious types don't realise their beliefs are emotional rather than logical and insult any contrarians in an accordingly similar way to how they feel they've been slighted. The two modes of being don't seem to mix very well, this must be why I feel no emotional pain whatsoever when someone disagrees with me about quantum tunnelling being a likely cause of creation, and why the hell would I? It's only an abstract idea that may or may not be true, if I was hung up on it or actually defined by it then it might be different. That's maybe where the abuse comes from. But Jim is right, we should be looking for the creator, and if we don't find him or it turns out to be merely a flux in relativistic quantum boundary possibilities then so be it. The urge to know is there in me. so, here you are making all sorts of reasonable statements and asking reasonable questions and all the time you are asking the one shmuck who is the one most guilty of every single one of the things you are questioning and commenting on? This is hilarious.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/20/2014 11:43 PM, jr_...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Xeno, I'm flabbergasted at the statements you just said. In the physical existence of human beings here on earth, everyone has to have a mother and a father. Were you not created by your father's sperm that impregnated your mother's egg? Didn't she carry you in her womb for 9 months before you were born here on earth? I'll give you my thoughts about Barker's ideas. But I'm taking the KCA argument one at a time which starts with statement 1. Your statements are so astonishing that we need more clarification about your thoughts and logic. Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. /Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. // // //Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change./ /Where is Robin when we need him?/ ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : 'Everything that exists has no cause' is not the equivalent of 'everything that begins to exist has no cause'. No beginning is stated or implied. I said nothing about 'begins'. I was talking about existence without time. The eternity of space and things but no time. Like a still photograph, frozen being. Have you ever heard the Zen koan 'show me your original face before your parents were born'? As far as my experience is concerned, I have always existed. The body that gives me eyes seems to have had prior causes. The raw components of the body were fashioned in the hearts of collapsing starts billions of years ago. The protons in my body, if science is correct, are 13.5 billion years old. I certainly feel that old sometimes. So every aspect of my sense of 'self' is old or timeless, older than my parents as you appear to imaging them. Presumably you have heard various statements on FFL about pure being, transcendental consciousness, and eternity, you know, beyond life and death. Even though such statements are a bit shy of the truth, they are representative of certain kinds of experiences people have when they practice meditation many times a day for long periods of time. One has experiences that subjectively are timeless. The idea of eternity comes from these kinds of experiences. But if the mind is not really clear about these sorts of experiences it interprets eternity as endless time. If we take a scientific perspective, there is no timelessness in observing the world, though we think we know that if you travel at the speed of light, there would be timelessness. However only photons travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, other particles and hence all other matter cannot be accelerated to the velocity of light because it would take an infinite amount of energy. You still have not really made any significant mention of the Kalam argument. I think Curtis is right that you do not grasp these things very well. Among statements about the world and life I have my favourites, but I do not regard them as true. I particularly do not regard the Kalam argument as true. Curtis already demolished your position and you have not responded to him. You are out of your league with Curtis, as I think I would be. Here is part of an argument by Dan Barker about the Kalam, what do you think? Of course, if you live outside of time, whatever that means, then you don't need a beginning in time. A transcendent being, living Theists regularly talk about a place beyond the universe, a transcendent realm where God exists outside of time. . . . the universe has a cause. This conclusion ought to stagger us, to fill us with awe, for it means that the universe was brought into existence by something which is greater than and beyond it. Of course, if you live outside of time, whatever that means, then you don't need a beginning in time. A transcendent being, living beyond nature, is conveniently exempt from the limitations of natural law, and all complaints that God himself must have had a cause or a designer (using the same natural reasoning that tries to call for his existence) can be dismissed by theists who insist that God is outside the loop, unaffected by natural causality, beyond time.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
** I think the reason this happens is that Jim and other spiritual/religious types don't realise their beliefs are emotional rather than logical and insult any contrarians in an accordingly similar way to how they feel they've been slighted. On 10/21/2014 3:09 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: Exactly. They are OFFENDED that someone like myself or you has overcome the Fear Of God that society tried to imprint us with, and they haven't. They're still terrified that if they express doubt of any kind, their imaginary friend God will smite them. Can't risk that. And they're more than a little pissed of that God has *not* smitten us, so they have to try to make up for him being a slacker and try to smite us themselves. :-) /Straw man argument. For those unfamiliar with the term, a straw man is a common type of argument that someone brings out to intentionally misrepresent the original topic of the argument. // // //It's like when two people are debating something and one guy is losing the argument big time, so he tries to change the subject. The logic of this is that if the debater can't win an argument on his or her own merits they then try to shift the topic of the argument. It's a very common tactic used by anonymous informants on the internet./
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : On 10/20/2014 11:43 PM, jr_esq@... mailto:jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: Xeno, I'm flabbergasted at the statements you just said. In the physical existence of human beings here on earth, everyone has to have a mother and a father. Were you not created by your father's sperm that impregnated your mother's egg? Didn't she carry you in her womb for 9 months before you were born here on earth? I'll give you my thoughts about Barker's ideas. But I'm taking the KCA argument one at a time which starts with statement 1. Your statements are so astonishing that we need more clarification about your thoughts and logic. Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change. Where is Robin when we need him? M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life we conflate that's logical with that's true because the former requires another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so careful. The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal with concepts so far from our natural experience. Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like Everything that comes to exist has a cause. are ridiculous as an unchallenged first principle. Turns out quantum events don't follow this rule that seems so obvious to our natural senses. But even without knowing about quantum events we have learned that such universals are unwise. The Greeks were much more confident about how their world was. We have been humbled by getting our intellectual asses kicked by the growth of scientific knowledge beyond the range of our senses. Resorting to religious arguments using syllogisms are disingenuous for modern people. They trot these out to make their beliefs seem more carefully thought out. If they are probed from the perspective of their epistemology, these arguments are not really why they believe in their idea of God. They believe it for other reasons that they believe they can shield with the pretense of rationality. They want their real reasons for belief to be beyond scrutiny. I guarantee you that this argument is not even on he belief web John has built for himself so he can believe in God. It isn't even a branch on that tree.He thought it would be a useful stick to poke at non believers and it failed because he doesn't understand it himself, it just sounded authoritative. I think all the God beliefs base on scripture are idiotic because it requires someone to assume that God had a hand in writing an obviously human produced work of literature. That people entertain this notion today is beyond me, but it causes many problems in this world. I consider it a very dangerous wrong belief that someone has a book from God with details about our lives. (Like kill the infidels, or God gave us this land.) I am most sympathetic to the mystical experience claims for the existence for God having had enough experiences of my own to understand how compelling they are. I no longer believe that the actual existence of a God is the best explanation for these experiences, but I could certainly be wrong and might be proven wrong some day. But not today. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
It's such a delight to read something written by someone who can still think, Curtis. Thanks. The very IDEA that someone could consider Robin Carlsen or Jim Flanegin or John R rational astounds me. From: curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 4:56 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : On 10/20/2014 11:43 PM, jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: Xeno, I'm flabbergasted at the statements you just said. In the physical existence of human beings here on earth, everyone has to have a mother and a father. Were you not created by your father's sperm that impregnated your mother's egg? Didn't she carry you in her womb for 9 months before you were born here on earth? I'll give you my thoughts about Barker's ideas. But I'm taking the KCA argument one at a time which starts with statement 1. Your statements are so astonishing that we need more clarification about your thoughts and logic. Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change. Where is Robin when we need him? M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life we conflate that's logical with that's true because the former requires another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so careful. The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal with concepts so far from our natural experience. Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like Everything that comes to exist has a cause. are ridiculous as an unchallenged first principle. Turns out quantum events don't follow this rule that seems so obvious to our natural senses. But even without knowing about quantum events we have learned that such universals are unwise. The Greeks were much more confident about how their world was. We have been humbled by getting our intellectual asses kicked by the growth of scientific knowledge beyond the range of our senses. Resorting to religious arguments using syllogisms are disingenuous for modern people. They trot these out to make their beliefs seem more carefully thought out. If they are probed from the perspective of their epistemology, these arguments are not really why they believe in their idea of God. They believe it for other reasons that they believe they can shield with the pretense of rationality. They want their real reasons for belief to be beyond scrutiny. I guarantee you that this argument is not even on he belief web John has built for himself so he can believe in God. It isn't even a branch on that tree.He thought it would be a useful stick to poke at non believers and it failed because he doesn't understand it himself, it just sounded authoritative. I think all the God beliefs base on scripture are idiotic because it requires someone to assume that God had a hand in writing an obviously human produced work of literature. That people entertain this notion today is beyond me, but it causes many problems in this world. I consider it a very dangerous wrong belief that someone has a book from God with details about our lives. (Like kill the infidels, or God gave us
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/21/2014 8:27 AM, anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: You seem to be just trolling. /Now that's a thought-stopper!/ Do you practice TM? /Non sequitur.//TM has not been defined./ I was talking about things that spiritual practices advertise they can bring into one's awareness. These things are private, you cannot prove you have these kinds of experiences. My body has a mother and father, my awareness does not, the essential value of my existence does not. That really is not important since it is true for everyone (except Barry, every rule has an exception. In the handbook of universe fabrication it states on line 203,409,000 subheading B that there must be one individual in any given universe for which truth is a non entity) /Non sequitur.//Spiritual has not been defined./ As for statement 1 of the Kalam argument, I would say it is indeterminate that it is true or not. What is the evidence that it is true? /In Buddhist philosophy, karma is the theory of action and result based on the theory of interdependent co-arising or dependent origination which states: everything arises in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions; nothing exists as a singular, independent entity. / 1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause a. How has it been established that this is true? b. How is this statement different from 'everything that exists has a cause'? That word, 'begins' is the setup to introduce a concept like god, because believers think of god as an uncaused intelligence that causes other things to 'begin to exist' although how that is accomplished is beyond me. /All change must have a beginning and an end. In order to have a beginning there must be a cause. This is simple Philosophy 101. There is nothing in the universe that exists without change. In order for anything to change there must be a cause agent.//Causality is the relation between an event and a second event in which the second event is a consequence of the first./ It is a failed attempt to get around the problem of infinite regression of causes so the uncaused cause idea seems more respectable, which it is not. However in the statement below, we have Fred, an uncaused cause who was the cause of the beginning of the existence of god. /Non sequitur./ SNIP To return to the first statement in the Kalam argument, I have no reason to suppose that that first statement is true. You apparently think it is true. Why? /Obviously consciousness is prior to everything else in the cosmos. In fact, consciousness is all there is in the universe. The only certainty you have is that you are self-conscious that you exist. Time, space and physicality occur within consciousness, not the other way around. The present is the only real moment of experience./ An Atheist’s Guide to Spirituality by Sam Harris http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/an-atheists-guide-to-spirituality If you are flabbergasted at what I said previously, you are clearly unaware of the nature of human imagination, and human nature in general, and the great variability of possible human experiences. /In the Western philosophical tradition, discussion stretches back at least to Aristotle, and the topic remains a staple in contemporary philosophy.// // //Non sequitur./ snip
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
on. I'll just let the rest of the world think about who just said this! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : Yes, they are both a piece of work. I think both of them take extreme views, in social settings, because both of them feel to be outsiders, in the world they inhabit. Their position reminds me of that of the most vociferous born again christians, often found proselytizing, while working minimum wage jobs. These are not successful people, Barry and Curtis. Both are white, from upper middle class backgrounds, privileged as American citizens, and each with a college degree. Yet, not a hill of beans, between them. I am not necessarily talking about material possessions, but things like strength of character, foresight, humility, social intelligence, and a simple ability to achieve that which they set out to do. All of this, is lacking in them. So, being emotionally immature, and intellectually lazy, they begin to show their discontent with society, that it hasn't rewarded them for their bad decisions. They profess atheism, and go all out against God, and enlightenment, and any sort of spiritual endeavor that they don't approve of. They see themselves failing by societies norms, and have now taken the position, that, You can't fire me, I quit! But, the argument that only they are right, and the rest of the world, as represented by the other members of this forum, is wrong, is clearly not sane thinking. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote : The ignorant inquisitor.. 'It's not my experience so it does not exist!' Deltablues' technique is the old trick of the materialist's (orthodox) inquisitor, “Tell us, what exactly is your creed?” “Tell us in terms detailed such that we can understand and then the best of sophists of us will argue it out with you trying it point by point. Lot of people have been burned at the stake by uber-intellectualistic people like Deltablues is trying to be here on FFL. -Buck fleetwood_macncheese responding to Turqb: Bye, bye, Lenz, Jr. turquoiseb@... wrote : See what I mean? Curtis refuted John's idiotic argument point by point, and HE DIDN'T EVEN HEAR IT. The only thing he can do is repeat the same stupid thing he's already repeated -- and had refuted -- here on FFL dozens of time in the past. You really can't deal with anyone as dumb as this. I repeat my contention -- believing in astrology, God, and the Maharishi Effect really IS like winning the Trifecta of Idiocy. How does a mind *become* this weak? From: jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 1:59 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Xeno, I have asked Curtis about his support or evidence for disagreeing with the statements in the Kalam Cosmological Argument. But he just gave me a lot of song and dance about his opinions without providing the evidence for his arguments. Can you give us a solid argument with evidence and support why the statements in the KCA have a flaw? Let's take the KCA which states: Everything that begins to exist has a cause; The universe began to exist; Therefore: The universe has a cause. Do you agree with statement 1 or not? If not, please give us your reasons for disagreeing. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Logical arguments about ultimates always contain a flaw. You can reverse the form of the argument to support atheism and if you do not see the flaw, it will seem equally valid, that is, that atheism is true. Now there are some atheists who definitely believe there is no god and they can be as fanatical as a fundamentalist religionist. Probably they would have no sense of humour about their condition. But a real atheist simply lacks a particular kind of belief because that belief seems neither reasonable or likely. They basically just do not care. Barry is just testing memes to see what happens when they are activated. We all have memes which are basically little snippets of mental routines our minds use. We trade them with each other, but for the most part these mental stances are just our opinions about the world around us and we tend to be be rather uncritical as to how well they really represent what is real, while at the same time taking them as reality itself. Take the TMO memes. On FFL, meditators and former meditators all at one time believed certain things about experience were at least possible, for example, that if you practice TM, which is not a religion, you will find God. The TMO memes specify that we are in a state of ignorance, not knowing the nature of reality. But were we actually in the state of ignorance, we would not have the capability to correctly evaluate what we were told because we would be using delusional thinking to evaluate
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
--In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : It's such a delight to read something written by someone who can still think, Curtis. Thanks. The very IDEA that someone could consider Robin Carlsen or Jim Flanegin or John R rational astounds me. Thanks bro but I think Richard was being a bit facetious. He was pretty clear about the Robin routine himself. Robin was associated with these idiotic arguments and was their champion. I have been having fun lately writing here again since I am at home many days making lesson plans. With all the odd dynamics, I do think the place is vastly improved by a lack of a certain poster. It seems a bit less contentious. I guess that may not be true for you since there is a committee that is still championing the cause. I think you will relate to this video very well. It is kind of frighteningly familiar: Scientology Top Managers In Action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG70fhg0wL4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG70fhg0wL4 Scientology Top Managers In Action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG70fhg0wL4 Three of Scientology's top management personnel ambushing a former member of scientology at Los Angeles International Airport on 10/19/14. View on www.youtube.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG70fhg0wL4 Preview by Yahoo From: curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 4:56 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : On 10/20/2014 11:43 PM, jr_esq@... mailto:jr_esq@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: Xeno, I'm flabbergasted at the statements you just said. In the physical existence of human beings here on earth, everyone has to have a mother and a father. Were you not created by your father's sperm that impregnated your mother's egg? Didn't she carry you in her womb for 9 months before you were born here on earth? I'll give you my thoughts about Barker's ideas. But I'm taking the KCA argument one at a time which starts with statement 1. Your statements are so astonishing that we need more clarification about your thoughts and logic. Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change. Where is Robin when we need him? M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life we conflate that's logical with that's true because the former requires another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so careful. The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal with concepts so far from our natural experience. Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like Everything that comes to exist has a cause. are ridiculous as an unchallenged first principle. Turns out quantum events don't follow this rule that seems so obvious to our natural senses. But even without knowing about quantum events we have learned that such universals are unwise. The Greeks were much more confident about how their world was. We have been humbled by getting our intellectual asses kicked by the growth of scientific knowledge beyond the range of our senses. Resorting to religious arguments using syllogisms
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. the first question is too cumbersome for me - having the notion of mental illness imbedded in the question . . . and I can't speak as to what a mental illness is, but the question is believing in the efficacy of trickle-down economics a mental illness could be fun : ) Re the 2nd question, I'm skipping is there a proof for the existence of God since it's pretty clear no such proof exists - and I'm suggesting: is a belief in God justifiable? We may believe in many things where there is no direct evidence, or no proof, but yet that belief is justifiable. For example, we may believe someone lied to us, even though we have no proof. [BTW - I am very much an amateur philosopher] I am going to restate the 2nd question as:Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. An individual who did not believe a belief in God was justified, would believe that the material/physical world was sufficient to explain all observable phenomenon, including the existence of the of the physical/material world itself. For me, I think the question is a bit of a red herring, but I admit to having read and heard nuanced and elegant expressions regarding the need for the nonphysical (spiritual) to explain stuff like value, and the moment by moment appreciation of an otherwise brutish world.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 5:33 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : It's such a delight to read something written by someone who can still think, Curtis. Thanks. The very IDEA that someone could consider Robin Carlsen or Jim Flanegin or John R rational astounds me. Thanks bro but I think Richard was being a bit facetious. He was pretty clear about the Robin routine himself. Robin was associated with these idiotic arguments and was their champion. I have been having fun lately writing here again since I am at home many days making lesson plans. With all the odd dynamics, I do think the place is vastly improved by a lack of a certain poster. It seems a bit less contentious. I guess that may not be true for you since there is a committee that is still championing the cause. I think you will relate to this video very well. It is kind of frighteningly familiar: Scientology Top Managers In Action Scientology Top Managers In Action Three of Scientology's top management personnel ambushing a former member of scientology at Los Angeles International Airport on 10/19/14. View on www.youtube.comPreview by Yahoo Yeah, I've seen $cientologists like this in action, and for the life of me can't tell any difference between them and Richard, Ann, Jimbo, and She Whose Holy Work They Are Continuing In Her Absence. Uber-cultists, the whole lot of them. :-) I admit to causing part of it by withdrawing my attention from them, and depriving them of what they really want -- a captive audience at whom to spew their shit. They're reacting as expected, like junkies deprived of their fix. Ann is predictable because this seems to be what she *always* does when someone dumps her -- she's just substituted me as the object of her revenge-stalking this time instead of Robin. Richard's the same troll he's always been, so no surprise there. There has really never *been* a time during his tenure on a.m.t. and FFL in which he was sane, so IMO it's kinda silly to expect anything approaching sanity from him now. But Jimbo is really the strangest of the lot lately. He's managed to take the money he inherited, turn that in his mind into some kind of success, and then move out into the country, effectively cutting himself off from all human contact and causing him to make more and more and more of his lunatic rants. He probably gets up in the middle of the night and goes out to yell the same thing at the skunks on his property -- I'm BETTER than you are! I'm enlightened, and you're NOT. So there! :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been We have it all figured out already over Let's find out. The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they announce their assumptions. We need to address how we could be confident of such knowledge knowing how fallible and prone to self delusions humans are with all of our cognitive blind spots. I rarely see this aspect in the intellectual mix of confident assertions from the subjective angle. Then of course you have the whole areas of human knowledge in the arts and humanities which is plenty non physical reality enough for me. We don't have to swing between the polarities of material reductionism and mystical claims to see that there is a lot of worthwhile reality beyond the hard physical. But IMO the better we are prepared to evaluate claims the quicker we will sort out the fascinating and true from the fascinating but bogus. Thanks for opening up a new chapter on the discussion. Does any of this relate to your intention in your post? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, inmadison@... wrote : there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. the first question is too cumbersome for me - having the notion of mental illness imbedded in the question . . . and I can't speak as to what a mental illness is, but the question is believing in the efficacy of trickle-down economics a mental illness could be fun : ) Re the 2nd question, I'm skipping is there a proof for the existence of God since it's pretty clear no such proof exists - and I'm suggesting: is a belief in God justifiable? We may believe in many things where there is no direct evidence, or no proof, but yet that belief is justifiable. For example, we may believe someone lied to us, even though we have no proof. [BTW - I am very much an amateur philosopher] I am going to restate the 2nd question as:Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. An individual who did not believe a belief in God was justified, would believe that the material/physical world was sufficient to explain all observable phenomenon, including the existence of the of the physical/material world itself. For me, I think the question is a bit of a red herring, but I admit to having read and heard nuanced and elegant expressions regarding the need for the nonphysical (spiritual) to explain stuff like value, and the moment by moment appreciation of an otherwise brutish world.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Fresh air blowing through the Funny Farm Lounge from DC area and Madison. Thanks guys for this example of FFL at its best. On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been We have it all figured out already over Let's find out. The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they announce their assumptions. We need to address how we could be confident of such knowledge knowing how fallible and prone to self delusions humans are with all of our cognitive blind spots. I rarely see this aspect in the intellectual mix of confident assertions from the subjective angle. Then of course you have the whole areas of human knowledge in the arts and humanities which is plenty non physical reality enough for me. We don't have to swing between the polarities of material reductionism and mystical claims to see that there is a lot of worthwhile reality beyond the hard physical. But IMO the better we are prepared to evaluate claims the quicker we will sort out the fascinating and true from the fascinating but bogus. Thanks for opening up a new chapter on the discussion. Does any of this relate to your intention in your post? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, inmadison@... wrote : there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. the first question is too cumbersome for me - having the notion of mental illness imbedded in the question . . . and I can't speak as to what a mental illness is, but the question is believing in the efficacy of trickle-down economics a mental illness could be fun : ) Re the 2nd question, I'm skipping is there a proof for the existence of God since it's pretty clear no such proof exists - and I'm suggesting: is a belief in God justifiable? We may believe in many things where there is no direct evidence, or no proof, but yet that belief is justifiable. For example, we may believe someone lied to us, even though we have no proof. [BTW - I am very much an amateur philosopher] I am going to restate the 2nd question as:Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. An individual who did not believe a belief in God was justified, would believe that the material/physical world was sufficient to explain all observable phenomenon, including the existence of the of the physical/material world itself. For me, I think the question is a bit of a red herring, but I admit to having read and heard nuanced and elegant expressions regarding the need for the nonphysical (spiritual) to explain stuff like value, and the moment by moment appreciation of an otherwise brutish world.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Gotta agree with you on this one, Share. I also have to say that if there is anyone on the planet I'd most like to see have a sit-down, on-the-record conversation with Sam Harris, it would be Curtis. From: Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 6:28 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness Fresh air blowing through the Funny Farm Lounge from DC area and Madison. Thanks guys for this example of FFL at its best. On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been We have it all figured out already over Let's find out. The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they announce their assumptions. We need to address how we could be confident of such knowledge knowing how fallible and prone to self delusions humans are with all of our cognitive blind spots. I rarely see this aspect in the intellectual mix of confident assertions from the subjective angle. Then of course you have the whole areas of human knowledge in the arts and humanities which is plenty non physical reality enough for me. We don't have to swing between the polarities of material reductionism and mystical claims to see that there is a lot of worthwhile reality beyond the hard physical. But IMO the better we are prepared to evaluate claims the quicker we will sort out the fascinating and true from the fascinating but bogus. Thanks for opening up a new chapter on the discussion. Does any of this relate to your intention in your post? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, inmadison@... wrote : there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. the first question is too cumbersome for me - having the notion of mental illness imbedded in the question . . . and I can't speak as to what a mental illness is, but the question is believing in the efficacy of trickle-down economics a mental illness could be fun : ) Re the 2nd question, I'm skipping is there a proof for the existence of God since it's pretty clear no such proof exists - and I'm suggesting: is a belief in God justifiable? We may believe in many things where there is no direct evidence, or no proof, but yet that belief is justifiable. For example, we may believe someone lied to us, even though we have no proof. [BTW - I am very much an amateur philosopher] I am going to restate the 2nd question as:Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. An individual who did not believe a belief in God was justified, would believe that the material/physical world was sufficient to explain all observable phenomenon, including the existence of the of the physical/material world itself. For me, I think the question is a bit of a red herring, but I admit to having read and heard nuanced and elegant expressions regarding the need for the nonphysical (spiritual
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
On 10/21/2014 10:42 AM, inmadi...@hotmail.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. /There are actually three questions running through this thread:// // / 1. /Is Barry mentally ill for believing in Buddhas, karma or reincarnation?/ 2. /Are there any proofs for the existence of Buddhas?/ 3. /Why does Barry believe in reincarnation and karma?/ the first question is too cumbersome for me - having the notion of mental illness imbedded in the question . . . and I can't speak as to what a mental illness is, but the question is believing in the efficacy of trickle-down economics a mental illness could be fun : ) /The real question is why is Barry posting his beliefs in Buddhism and at the same time posting atheist messages directed at Hindus or Christians? This seems like a case of cognitive dissonance. Everyone on this list knows Barry has claimed a belief in Buddhas, karma and reincarnation. It's not complicated./ Re the 2nd question, I'm skipping is there a proof for the existence of God since it's pretty clear no such proof exists - and I'm suggesting: is a belief in God justifiable? /We had a very long discussion about this with Robin Carlsen about St. Thomas Aquinas defense of the existence of God using the proofs of Aristotle and Parmenides as to the existence of a prime mover. In this argument everything is based on change and the law of causality. For anything to move or change there must be a cause. There can be no change without movement or change and there must be cause for everything that happens. The purpose of Aristotle's argument, is that there is at least one eternal unmoved mover that must exist, in order to support everyday change. However, the idea of first and only cause, something that does not itself need a cause, is nonsensical and cannot be applied according to Immanuel Kant who attempted to put an end to what he considered an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, while resisting the skepticism of thinkers such as David Hume./ /http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant/ We may believe in many things where there is no direct evidence, or no proof, but yet that belief is justifiable. For example, we may believe someone lied to us, even though we have no proof. /Probably none of us has been up in space to see the curvature of the earth, yet we all believe the earth is spherical in shape. Very often we depend on verbal testimony for our justification for a belief - at other times we use inference, both are valid means of knowledge./ [BTW - I am very much an amateur philosopher] /There are several arm-chair philosophers on this list//, Barry being not one of them: masked_zebra was apparently steeped in Christian and Islamic theology having been a monk for several years; emptybill was apparently a monk in the Eastern Christian church for several years; Curtis has a degree in philosophy from MUM;//and I took Philosophy 101 under Richard Braugham, Ph.D. at a local community college.//I also took Logic 101 and Ethics 101. Go figure./ I am going to restate the 2nd question as:Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. /The ultimate reality is pure consciousness - there is much justification for believing this. According to Ramana, the validity is not metaphysical but it is experiential. Consciousness is the prior condition of every experience; the self or ego is an illusory appearance within it. Consciousness is prior to everything else that exists. Consciousness is all there is - the experience of I-am is the only real certainty./ An individual who did not believe a belief in God was justified, would believe that the material/physical world was sufficient to explain all observable phenomenon, including the existence of the of the physical/material world itself. /Physical science cannot explain consciousness because there is nothing in the physical world to prove the existence of consciousness. Without consciousness there would be no material/physical world. There must be consciousness or else there would be no perception. Consciousness is prior to everything else. According to Parmenides, nothing comes from nothing./ For me, I think the question is a bit of a red herring, but I admit to having read and heard nuanced and elegant expressions regarding the need for the nonphysical (spiritual) to explain stuff like value, and the moment by moment appreciation of an otherwise brutish world. /The thread posted by Barry is really a series of straw man statements, pasted by Barry to deny his cognitive dissonance. There are probably no
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Curtis, I just had a lunch of veggies and salmon so maybe my brain is a little more up to respond. Maybe! Definitely not as good as Sam Harris (-: Anyway, my questions are: 1. how do we know that we know? Which is kind of abstract and probably just me reliving a past life as a haetera! 2. what do we mean by knowing? Ok, we see a tree fall so we think we know that it fell. Of course, perception could be faulty. Or, to go into the arts as you suggested, we listen to a song about first love, and from our own memories of that, we recognize the truth of the song. But here's my really favorite question, 3. Back to your post: what is meant by worthwhile reality? Are there some realities that are not worthwhile? On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. M: It seems to me that in a sense this ship has sailed with the advent of knowledge about a level of matter that is so squirrely to our sense-bound intuitions that it does not resemble matter as we know it, even though technically it IS matter from physics. That we do not know all or in some cases very much about this level of reality should give us all some humility about what is real. But for me those who confidently claim to know about a non physical realm through internal experience have not made their case convincingly to me. We have a lot of mystery to explore and I am dubious that anyone has cleared it up from a mystical tradition. I am putting my bet on neuroscience and physics to push back into the mystery in a more satisfying way than has been accomplished by religious and mystical traditions. The deeper reality may be much more amazing than has been speculated about or assumed in those traditions whose stock in trade has been We have it all figured out already over Let's find out. The question could be: how could we know about something non physical? I wish people proposing these ideas would spend more time studying these questions before they announce their assumptions. We need to address how we could be confident of such knowledge knowing how fallible and prone to self delusions humans are with all of our cognitive blind spots. I rarely see this aspect in the intellectual mix of confident assertions from the subjective angle. Then of course you have the whole areas of human knowledge in the arts and humanities which is plenty non physical reality enough for me. We don't have to swing between the polarities of material reductionism and mystical claims to see that there is a lot of worthwhile reality beyond the hard physical. But IMO the better we are prepared to evaluate claims the quicker we will sort out the fascinating and true from the fascinating but bogus. Thanks for opening up a new chapter on the discussion. Does any of this relate to your intention in your post? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, inmadison@... wrote : there seem to be 2 questions running through this thread: 1) is a belief in God a mental illness and 2) is a belief in God justifiable. the first question is too cumbersome for me - having the notion of mental illness imbedded in the question . . . and I can't speak as to what a mental illness is, but the question is believing in the efficacy of trickle-down economics a mental illness could be fun : ) Re the 2nd question, I'm skipping is there a proof for the existence of God since it's pretty clear no such proof exists - and I'm suggesting: is a belief in God justifiable? We may believe in many things where there is no direct evidence, or no proof, but yet that belief is justifiable. For example, we may believe someone lied to us, even though we have no proof. [BTW - I am very much an amateur philosopher] I am going to restate the 2nd question as:Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is physical/material, or anything that interacts with the physical/material. An individual who did not believe a belief in God was justified, would believe that the material/physical world was sufficient to explain all observable phenomenon, including the existence of the of the physical/material world itself. For me, I think the question is a bit of a red herring, but I admit to having read and heard
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. /Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. // // //Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change./ /Where is Robin when we need him?/ / /On 10/21/2014 9:56 AM, curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life we conflate that's logical with that's true because the former requires another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so careful. The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal with concepts so far from our natural experience. Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like Everything that comes to exist has a cause. are ridiculous as an unchallenged first principle. /It's only normal for average people to assume that there is a reason for things to happen - events seem to follow causes; they don't just happen for no reason, by luck or fortune. Almost everyone assumes causation because it is so logical to the human experience: human excrement always flows downstream; gravity sucks.//There are no chance events./ Turns out quantum events don't follow this rule that seems so obvious to our natural senses. But even without knowing about quantum events we have learned that such universals are unwise. The Greeks were much more confident about how their world was. We have been humbled by getting our intellectual asses kicked by the growth of scientific knowledge beyond the range of our senses. /Beyond the range of our senses is the transcendental field of consciousness. There is no consciousness other than consciousness, or not.// My position, and the position of most transcendentalists, is that we infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and we accept that inference is a valid means of knowledge. Thoughts and ideas, not being material objects, cannot be perceived; they can only be inferred.// // //Mere perception is often found to be untrue. We perceive the earth as being flat but it is almost round. We perceive the earth as static but it is moving around the sun. We perceive the disc of the sun and think it is small, yet it is much larger that the earth.// // //We infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and not caused by a combination of material properties. We further infer the validity of consciousness because we ARE conscious and we are self-conscious. To refuse the validity of inference is to refuse to think or discuss. All thoughts, all discussions, all doctrines, all affirmations, and all denials, all proofs and disproofs are made possible by inference./ Resorting to religious arguments using syllogisms are disingenuous for modern people. /Maybe we should explain this to Barry since he seems only to be able to copy and paste cartoons./ They trot these out to make their beliefs seem more carefully thought out. If they are probed from the perspective of their epistemology, these arguments are not really why they believe in their idea of God. They believe it for other reasons that they believe they can shield with the pretense of rationality. They want their real reasons for belief to be beyond scrutiny. I
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
I enjoyed your response till you went its all about Barry on my ass Richard. I am not on board with your use of the term inference and its validity in gaining knowledge on its own. It is one of the pieces of the epistemological puzzle and fraught with issues. Nor do I accept that the claim of consciousness as the ultimate reality was inferred from anything. I think someone taught you that this was true. I ain't necessarily so IMO. It is certainly a long way from a self evident truth from experience. And what is wrong with non sequitur outside a formal argument? That is what gives juice to our interactions. Trying to restrict everything to only what logically follows is a buzz kill man. I hope you will throw in as many non sequiturs into our conversation as you can come up with. I'll take something new and tangential over more of the same any day. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change. Where is Robin when we need him? On 10/21/2014 9:56 AM, curtisdeltablues@... mailto:curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life we conflate that's logical with that's true because the former requires another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so careful. The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal with concepts so far from our natural experience. Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like Everything that comes to exist has a cause. are ridiculous as an unchallenged first principle. It's only normal for average people to assume that there is a reason for things to happen - events seem to follow causes; they don't just happen for no reason, by luck or fortune. Almost everyone assumes causation because it is so logical to the human experience: human excrement always flows downstream; gravity sucks. There are no chance events. Turns out quantum events don't follow this rule that seems so obvious to our natural senses. But even without knowing about quantum events we have learned that such universals are unwise. The Greeks were much more confident about how their world was. We have been humbled by getting our intellectual asses kicked by the growth of scientific knowledge beyond the range of our senses. Beyond the range of our senses is the transcendental field of consciousness. There is no consciousness other than consciousness, or not. My position, and the position of most transcendentalists, is that we infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and we accept that inference is a valid means of knowledge. Thoughts and ideas, not being material objects, cannot be perceived; they can only be inferred. Mere perception is often found to be untrue. We perceive the earth as being flat but it is almost round. We perceive the earth as static but it is moving around the sun. We perceive the disc of the sun and think it is small, yet it is much larger that the earth. We infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and not caused by a combination of material properties. We further infer the validity of consciousness because we ARE conscious and we are self-conscious. To refuse the
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
From: curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 7:54 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness I enjoyed your response till you went its all about Barry on my ass Richard. I am not on board with your use of the term inference and its validity in gaining knowledge on its own. It is one of the pieces of the epistemological puzzle and fraught with issues. Nor do I accept that the claim of consciousness as the ultimate reality was inferred from anything. I think someone taught you that this was true. I ain't necessarily so IMO. It is certainly a long way from a self evident truth from experience. And what is wrong with non sequitur outside a formal argument? That is what gives juice to our interactions. Trying to restrict everything to only what logically follows is a buzz kill man. I hope you will throw in as many non sequiturs into our conversation as you can come up with. I'll take something new and tangential over more of the same any day. It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation - Herman Melville ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change. Where is Robin when we need him? On 10/21/2014 9:56 AM, curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life we conflate that's logical with that's true because the former requires another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so careful. The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal with concepts so far from our natural experience. Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like Everything that comes to exist has a cause. are ridiculous as an unchallenged first principle. It's only normal for average people to assume that there is a reason for things to happen - events seem to follow causes; they don't just happen for no reason, by luck or fortune. Almost everyone assumes causation because it is so logical to the human experience: human excrement always flows downstream; gravity sucks.There are no chance events. Turns out quantum events don't follow this rule that seems so obvious to our natural senses. But even without knowing about quantum events we have learned that such universals are unwise. The Greeks were much more confident about how their world was. We have been humbled by getting our intellectual asses kicked by the growth of scientific knowledge beyond the range of our senses. Beyond the range of our senses is the transcendental field of consciousness. There is no consciousness other than consciousness, or not. My position, and the position of most transcendentalists, is that we infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and we accept that inference is a valid means of knowledge. Thoughts and ideas, not being material objects, cannot be perceived; they can only be inferred. Mere perception is often found to be untrue. We perceive the earth as being flat but it is almost round. We perceive the earth as static but it is moving around the sun. We perceive the disc of the sun and think it is small, yet it is much larger that the earth. We infer
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Curtis, I just had a lunch of veggies and salmon so maybe my brain is a little more up to respond. Maybe! Definitely not as good as Sam Harris (-: Anyway, my questions are: 1. how do we know that we know? Which is kind of abstract and probably just me reliving a past life as a haetera! M: We all run a system for this consciously or unconsciously. Whatever it is we share a common human tendency to believe that our system is a better one than it actually is. 2. what do we mean by knowing? Ok, we see a tree fall so we think we know that it fell. Of course, perception could be faulty. M: This is too abstract if we remove it from the context. Epistemology or the system to evaluate how we can be confident about our knowledge is context dependent. Good thinking skills are different when dealing with material things or more abstract things but they can exist in each area in more or less degrees. S: Or, to go into the arts as you suggested, we listen to a song about first love, and from our own memories of that, we recognize the truth of the song. M: I think for many arts we do this and deduce the authenticity of the lyrics from matching it to our experience. That is why so many lyrics are formulated out of a the hypnosis language or poetry playbook so more people can relate to them. Some lyrics are purposely individual so that you take a ride into the story. It can still feel true or false to us but we give more leeway to the story lyrics. It has to be consistent for the created character. Here are example from my songs: Abstract The river of missing you , it flows a long long way It starts the day you left me, wont end till judgement day And: Story: Eating hash browns in a diner under a broken neon sign, waitress tries to turn my table, but I just take my time She wont refill my coffee so my cup is gett'n cold Catch my reflection in the window, I sure am looking old And combining both: Well worn at he edges, kinda torn at the seams, try'n to find our way together, where did we lose our dreams She left her head shape in her pillow, blankets falling off the bed, My mind can't stop repeating the last words that she said. All three are my attempts to either express feelings I have had authentically or characters that are genuine enough that you might recognize yourself or someone you know in the story. You add the details from your own life and if I have succeeded you say: I know that guy, or I AM that person. The first offers the least conflicting details so filling in the details is all on you. The second is probably not you, but if I have made the character compelling you wonder what comes next. Is he going to stiff her on the tip or give her an inappropriately big one? What kind of guy is this, we don't know yet. The third is a dance between you filling in your own details in parts and being able to be separate from it all to see another person's life as a fly on the wall. Some of the words might connect with your personal experience. Have you had a relationship that was well worn at the edges, kind of torn at the seams? So you might buy into the story on a more personal level until it goes in a direction you can't relate to personally. It is all a work in progress, songwriting is very hard given our exposure to fabulous songwriters who are geniuses at this. I am going as far as I can with what I have to work with. But here's my really favorite question, 3. Back to your post: what is meant by worthwhile reality? Are there some realities that are not worthwhile? M: I was using that as an evaluation of what we pay attention to. I believe there is a LOT of reality that is not worth focusing on and that is up to us. I also believe that society is judging the value of the humanities and the arts badly these days and not paying attention to some worthwhile realities. It is undervaluing the importance of how human's communicate through stories: visual, linguistic and sensory-moter. We are forgetting how we evolved the brain we have through multi-sensory manipulatives and are making some really unwise decisions in education because of it. Now that I have clarified what I meant would you care to share (pun intended) your perspective? Thanks for the invitation to express! On Tuesday, October 21, 2014 11:18 AM, curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: M: I hope you don't mind me weighing in,this was a particularly thought provoking post. I too am an amateur philosopher. But I am not sure philosophy is the right discipline to answer your question from, except to enhance the discussion of how could we know? Here is the section you quite wisely focused on: Is a believe in the existence of component or realm beyond the physical/material justified? When I use the expression 'physical/material' I include anything that is
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Very, very nice. For somewhat obvious cafe- and waitress-related reasons, I liked your answer to question #2 the best, but all were wonderful. From: curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 8:01 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Curtis, I just had a lunch of veggies and salmon so maybe my brain is a little more up to respond. Maybe! Definitely not as good as Sam Harris (-: Anyway, my questions are: 1. how do we know that we know? Which is kind of abstract and probably just me reliving a past life as a haetera! M: We all run a system for this consciously or unconsciously. Whatever it is we share a common human tendency to believe that our system is a better one than it actually is. 2. what do we mean by knowing? Ok, we see a tree fall so we think we know that it fell. Of course, perception could be faulty. M: This is too abstract if we remove it from the context. Epistemology or the system to evaluate how we can be confident about our knowledge is context dependent. Good thinking skills are different when dealing with material things or more abstract things but they can exist in each area in more or less degrees. S: Or, to go into the arts as you suggested, we listen to a song about first love, and from our own memories of that, we recognize the truth of the song. M: I think for many arts we do this and deduce the authenticity of the lyrics from matching it to our experience. That is why so many lyrics are formulated out of a the hypnosis language or poetry playbook so more people can relate to them. Some lyrics are purposely individual so that you take a ride into the story. It can still feel true or false to us but we give more leeway to the story lyrics. It has to be consistent for the created character. Here are example from my songs: Abstract The river of missing you , it flows a long long way It starts the day you left me, wont end till judgement day And: Story: Eating hash browns in a diner under a broken neon sign, waitress tries to turn my table, but I just take my time She wont refill my coffee so my cup is gett'n cold Catch my reflection in the window, I sure am looking old And combining both: Well worn at he edges, kinda torn at the seams, try'n to find our way together, where did we lose our dreams She left her head shape in her pillow, blankets falling off the bed, My mind can't stop repeating the last words that she said. All three are my attempts to either express feelings I have had authentically or characters that are genuine enough that you might recognize yourself or someone you know in the story. You add the details from your own life and if I have succeeded you say: I know that guy, or I AM that person. The first offers the least conflicting details so filling in the details is all on you. The second is probably not you, but if I have made the character compelling you wonder what comes next. Is he going to stiff her on the tip or give her an inappropriately big one? What kind of guy is this, we don't know yet. The third is a dance between you filling in your own details in parts and being able to be separate from it all to see another person's life as a fly on the wall. Some of the words might connect with your personal experience. Have you had a relationship that was well worn at the edges, kind of torn at the seams? So you might buy into the story on a more personal level until it goes in a direction you can't relate to personally. It is all a work in progress, songwriting is very hard given our exposure to fabulous songwriters who are geniuses at this. I am going as far as I can with what I have to work with. But here's my really favorite question, 3. Back to your post: what is meant by worthwhile reality? Are there some realities that are not worthwhile? M: I was using that as an evaluation of what we pay attention to. I believe there is a LOT of reality that is not worth focusing on and that is up to us. I also believe that society is judging the value of the humanities and the arts badly these days and not paying attention to some worthwhile realities. It is undervaluing the importance of how human's communicate through stories: visual, linguistic and sensory-moter. We are forgetting how we evolved the brain we have through multi-sensory manipulatives and are making some really unwise decisions in education because of it. Now that I have clarified what I meant would you care to share (pun intended) your perspective? Thanks for the invitation to express!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
--In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Very, very nice. For somewhat obvious cafe- and waitress-related reasons, I liked your answer to question #2 the best, but all were wonderful. That is from Hard Luck Shoes so you may already know that we never find out. My guess is number one because this character is not a personal responsibility oriented guy. After sitting too long he might blame the waitress for being rude and then stiff her, cluelessly wondering why he is greeted with a stink face when he comes back the next time! Or maybe you are right and despite giving her a big tip she still wont give him the time of day. He will predictably blame his hard luck shoes for things not turning out well, AGAIN. Thanks for reading. From: curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 8:01 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Curtis, I just had a lunch of veggies and salmon so maybe my brain is a little more up to respond. Maybe! Definitely not as good as Sam Harris (-: Anyway, my questions are: 1. how do we know that we know? Which is kind of abstract and probably just me reliving a past life as a haetera! M: We all run a system for this consciously or unconsciously. Whatever it is we share a common human tendency to believe that our system is a better one than it actually is. 2. what do we mean by knowing? Ok, we see a tree fall so we think we know that it fell. Of course, perception could be faulty. M: This is too abstract if we remove it from the context. Epistemology or the system to evaluate how we can be confident about our knowledge is context dependent. Good thinking skills are different when dealing with material things or more abstract things but they can exist in each area in more or less degrees. S: Or, to go into the arts as you suggested, we listen to a song about first love, and from our own memories of that, we recognize the truth of the song. M: I think for many arts we do this and deduce the authenticity of the lyrics from matching it to our experience. That is why so many lyrics are formulated out of a the hypnosis language or poetry playbook so more people can relate to them. Some lyrics are purposely individual so that you take a ride into the story. It can still feel true or false to us but we give more leeway to the story lyrics. It has to be consistent for the created character. Here are example from my songs: Abstract The river of missing you , it flows a long long way It starts the day you left me, wont end till judgement day And: Story: Eating hash browns in a diner under a broken neon sign, waitress tries to turn my table, but I just take my time She wont refill my coffee so my cup is gett'n cold Catch my reflection in the window, I sure am looking old And combining both: Well worn at he edges, kinda torn at the seams, try'n to find our way together, where did we lose our dreams She left her head shape in her pillow, blankets falling off the bed, My mind can't stop repeating the last words that she said. All three are my attempts to either express feelings I have had authentically or characters that are genuine enough that you might recognize yourself or someone you know in the story. You add the details from your own life and if I have succeeded you say: I know that guy, or I AM that person. The first offers the least conflicting details so filling in the details is all on you. The second is probably not you, but if I have made the character compelling you wonder what comes next. Is he going to stiff her on the tip or give her an inappropriately big one? What kind of guy is this, we don't know yet. The third is a dance between you filling in your own details in parts and being able to be separate from it all to see another person's life as a fly on the wall. Some of the words might connect with your personal experience. Have you had a relationship that was well worn at the edges, kind of torn at the seams? So you might buy into the story on a more personal level until it goes in a direction you can't relate to personally. It is all a work in progress, songwriting is very hard given our exposure to fabulous songwriters who are geniuses at this. I am going as far as I can with what I have to work with. But here's my really favorite question, 3. Back to your post: what is meant by worthwhile reality? Are there some realities that are not worthwhile? M: I was using that as an evaluation of what we pay attention to. I believe there is a LOT of reality that is not worth focusing on and that is up to us. I also believe that society is judging the value of the humanities and the arts badly these days and not paying attention to some worthwhile realities. It is undervaluing
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Belief in God is a form of mental illness
Richard, Your points are excellent. It's good that you reminded us of Aristotle's idea regarding the first cause and principle. But it appears that there are some people here who will disagree with you on this point. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : Everyone in the forum is invited to participate in this discussion to ask Xeno about his revelations regarding his physical existence. Everyone on this forum seems to believe in causation - that for every event there is a cause. The question is if everything that happens has a cause, is there a first cause? This is probably one of the first essay assignments in any Philosophy 101 class at a community college. Everyone knows that Aristotle defines change and motion by first concluding that everything that has a beginning and an end would have to have a first cause or principle. His argument for before and after must have an antecedent state following Parmenides statement: nothing comes from nothing. Aristotle concluded that if the cosmos had a beginning it would require a first cause, an unmoved mover, in order to support change. Where is Robin when we need him? On 10/21/2014 9:56 AM, curtisdeltablues@... mailto:curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: M: Robin didn't understand the problems with unfounded assertions either, he was fond of making them himself. If he did he would have seen through Aquinas' stated presumptions instead of being so enamored with them. In our daily life we conflate that's logical with that's true because the former requires another outside verification for its veracity. Garbage in, garbage out in logical syllogisms. In our daily life we rarely take the trouble to be so careful. The classical philosophers have two things working against them. They were blind to their own presumptive statements that had not been proven, and then were overfond of the logical conclusions they derived from them. The whole history of philosophy was spent cleaning up many of their confusions. The second problem they had in such discussions is their lack of exposure to the non intuitive wold physics and astro-geo-physics has revealed far beyond the range of our senses. A world where the rules for macro objects are sometimes ignored and that we are very poorly prepared to speculate about. It takes physicists years of deep study and advanced math to meaningfully deal with concepts so far from our natural experience. Now that we know about this level of matter, universal claims like Everything that comes to exist has a cause. are ridiculous as an unchallenged first principle. It's only normal for average people to assume that there is a reason for things to happen - events seem to follow causes; they don't just happen for no reason, by luck or fortune. Almost everyone assumes causation because it is so logical to the human experience: human excrement always flows downstream; gravity sucks. There are no chance events. Turns out quantum events don't follow this rule that seems so obvious to our natural senses. But even without knowing about quantum events we have learned that such universals are unwise. The Greeks were much more confident about how their world was. We have been humbled by getting our intellectual asses kicked by the growth of scientific knowledge beyond the range of our senses. Beyond the range of our senses is the transcendental field of consciousness. There is no consciousness other than consciousness, or not. My position, and the position of most transcendentalists, is that we infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and we accept that inference is a valid means of knowledge. Thoughts and ideas, not being material objects, cannot be perceived; they can only be inferred. Mere perception is often found to be untrue. We perceive the earth as being flat but it is almost round. We perceive the earth as static but it is moving around the sun. We perceive the disc of the sun and think it is small, yet it is much larger that the earth. We infer that consciousness is the ultimate reality and not caused by a combination of material properties. We further infer the validity of consciousness because we ARE conscious and we are self-conscious. To refuse the validity of inference is to refuse to think or discuss. All thoughts, all discussions, all doctrines, all affirmations, and all denials, all proofs and disproofs are made possible by inference. Resorting to religious arguments using syllogisms are disingenuous for modern people. Maybe we should explain this to Barry since he seems only to be able to copy and paste cartoons. They trot these out to make their beliefs seem more carefully thought out. If they are probed from the perspective of their epistemology, these arguments are not really why they believe in their idea of God. They believe it for other reasons that