Is religion a computer virus for the human mind?

originally posted by: schuyler

originally posted by: DeathSlayer
Computer viruses have NOTHING to do with a human mind.

Your ignorance of the spiritual world and the one true God is numbing....

The fact that you believe in "one true God" is what is numbing. THAT is ignorance of the spiritual world.

Maybe you're just showing your ignorance of the spiritual world by not knowing the difference between God and all the other spiritual entities that exist out there who are competing for your attention and praise. Just saying.

I’m pretty sure the very very 1st religions were all about worshipping celestial bodies (maybe the sun 1st?) that no one understood at the time. Then, like Chinese whispers over minellia they got diluted into 3000 sub religions.

I could be completely wrong here though lol

a reply to: Machshev

NO but extreme political ideology is (Communism, Nazism and Pure unregulated Capitalism).

Politics infected religion, religion is a belief system and the very basis of human civilization without which human organization may never have reached the level of kingdom and state.

Religion feed's a need of the human psyche and also helps to organize and store human society.

Without religion Anarchy enters the equation.

Atheism is not structured though it IS a believe system and so leads to anarchy, there is no order to it and no rules to follow other than a denial of religion and it leaves a void in it's wake.

Without Religion, Ceremony and Tradition people seek to fill the void there absence leaves within there lives, they turn to drug's, extreme political ideology's, gang's anything to give them a sense of purpose and being.

And the very fact is existence is, how did it come into being, how could it always have been, what is consciousness - not thought but Consciousness they are not the same thing a mind without consciousness would be no different to a computer program, it would be a set of response to input and feed nothing but fundamental drives but we are far more than the sum of our part's and that MORE is the important factor here, we have appetites beyond our organic drives, beyond our instinct's.

When Moshe asked God "Who are You" God replied "I AM WHOM I AM".

The universe exists because it is willed into being by a being That/Whom IS.

Now as to which religion is correct, well there you have me but I ascribe to Christianity though My Jesus is the one who said.

15When they had finished eating, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love Me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus replied, “Feed My lambs.” 16Jesus asked a second time, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus told him, “Shepherd My sheep.” 17Jesus asked a third time, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” Peter was deeply hurt that Jesus had asked him a third time, “Do you love Me?” “Lord, You know all things,” he replied. “You know I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep".

So he told his Apostles the government he left on earth to rule over his people and guide them.
Feed the people.
Guide the people for there good.

He also said if you have two coats and your brother has non give him the one you are not using.
And as you treat the least of these so too do you treat me.

A Godless government would not only fall to anarchy in it's need to implement order it would fall to the whim's and ideology's of sick minded people, human breeding program's and eugenic murders, all the stuff the NAZI's and there satanic cultists were planning to do out of clear hatred of God, they were even re-writing the bible to create an evil version to justify there action's and paint Hitler as a messiah which he most definitely was not and the Communists also tried this using the cult of personality just as much as the NAZI's did, in fact they were very alike in some way's.

Often BAD people use good ideal's to justify terrible crimes.

Religion wrongly get's the blame as these same bad people will use anything they can get there proverbial hands upon to rile up and whip the crowd into a frenzy and abusing religion is just one way while the NAZI's and COMMUNISTS hit upon another using belief in a system, denial of the human soul (The NAZI's had an occult wing the Ahnenerb and were linked to many occult groups other than them as well).

Religion therefore is NOT the problem (At least not if it is a GOOD one like Christianity - not the version that those that have abused it for power twisted it into though and the first Crusade was more than justified as it was an act of Self Defence later though they were no different to the Jihadis they were fighting the innocent got trampled by both sides), those whom abuse the power it, political position or control of the system give them, even a flawed AI in charge of a system of governance would be no different as it would fall upon it's logic which would probably be as flawed or even more so than it's creators.

The Virus is EVIL itself, religious faith is the small child reaching for the parent's hand to lead them out of the scary darkness and away from the predators that are all too real in this world.

Humans can NOT be programmed like a machine, to do so would rob them of there free will, of there uniqueness, of there humanity itself and turn them into nothing more than biological machines.

So don't try to replace God with a logic of nothingness that is actually the very opposite of logic, think about it, something is and it believes that something is not, it's not like a logical inverter is a denial of what it can not prove nor disprove.

And then factor in thing's like this that have NO logical explanation.


This is something that can change the very logical state of reality itself, hip bones restored were there was no hip before, blind people suddenly being able to see, cancers vanishing as if they had never been there leaving doctors at a loss to explain a sudden healing that can simply NOT be explained except by faith.

No.

A system of control created by humans to control other humans.


Not that complexed tbh.


a reply to: Machshev

Proof of any of that existing and it wasn't made up by other humans to manipulate other humans?

didnt think so.


a reply to: Deetermined

a reply to: Machshev

A computer virus is a set of tokens which are processed according to a set of rules. The way the tokens are ordered and process has to occur in a specific sequence. There is a built in assumption by the person writing the virus the computer will behave a certain way.

All the same is true with religion. There are statements that are considered to be true without any proof. These assumptions are the axioms of the religion. People will talk and have conversations about the religion taking into account none of the axioms are violated. People talking about the religion is the same thing as the person writing the virus. To someone who holds a set of axioms as absolute truth, then bits of conversation will either sound sane or insane in the same way the tokens making up the virus are commands that are executed during the running of the program.

Both the virus and the person practicing the religion do not change anything in reality. For the most part, just a bunch of bits get flipped or some experiences get stored in memory.

It's very similar executions of thought in thought space.

originally posted by: Lysergic
No.

A system of control created by humans to control other humans.


Not that complexed tbh.


a reply to: Machshev

Many Eastern religions are designed to free the mind from the controls of other people.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
NO but extreme political ideology is (Communism, Nazism and Pure unregulated Capitalism).
Politics infected religion, religion is a belief system and the very basis of human civilization without which human organization may never have reached the level of kingdom and state.

Systems of government have nothing to do with religion. You can have good and bad left-wing and right-wing governments. I find it extremely odd that the King James version of the Bible has monarchy as the type of government chosen by God to be divine. The very same type of government King James was promoting at the time his Bible was created. King James wrote about the divine rights of kings in his book, "True Law of Free Monarchies". You would think an omnipotent God of unlimited power would choose a slightly more egalitarian form of government as the divine word of God.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
Religion feed's a need of the human psyche and also helps to organize and store human society.
Without religion Anarchy enters the equation.

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. A society built on secular laws will do fine as long as justice is blind and the rule of law is enforced. It has nothing to do with religion.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
Atheism is not structured though it IS a believe system and so leads to anarchy, there is no order to it and no rules to follow other than a denial of religion and it leaves a void in it's wake.

Atheism is not a belief system. Atheism is the lack of having a belief in God and nothing more. Not having a justice system and not enforcing the rule of law leads to anarchy.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
Without Religion, Ceremony and Tradition people seek to fill the void there absence leaves within there lives, they turn to drug's, extreme political ideology's, gang's anything to give them a sense of purpose and being.

There are literally millions of people who do not go to church or don't practice any form of religion who live perfectly happy lives without being excessively evil. You have to think through some of what you are saying from a place of critical logic. Think about if the opposite rephrasing of the statement means something.

originally posted by: asabuvsobelow
a reply to: Machshev

Religion a Virus , That is one way of looking at it but not a very accurate one .

A Virus requires a host , A religion does not . A regions only require an Idea or Fear if you will .

Does a Religion™ not require a mind to host it ?

...
Religion is a Man Made Concept albeit an ingenious one but none the less it is synthetic.

Oh ! So then it is just like a Virus™, eh ?

a reply to: Machshev

Has anyone acknowledged this?

I've considered it. I've considered it because about twenty years ago I did fairly deep dive into the study of memetics. I say fairly deep because I am certainly not a memeticist but rather just a lay person who found the field interesting and persuasive.

What we have come now to understand memes to be is ,at least in the popular sense, nothing more than just a fad, a passing fancy that some people grab onto and pay attention to for a while, like the hoola-hoop or say, Wordle. But the serious ideas about memetics goes much deeper than just fad and fancy.

What I remember having read was that memes, though at first simple ideas can spread out into memetic complexes, that is one idea can lead to another and to another until there is a whole structured thought system that holds itself together in a consistent manner. That is if one ignores alternative information that could damage the memetic system itself.

And the thing is is that we, at least for the most part, do not decide, emphasis on the word DECIDE, to allow a meme into our consciousness, rather it can enter into our unconscious mind and lay there without us paying any attention to it at all. That is until.... Until other brain processes call it up and up it comes into our conscious minds. AND as you suggest, like a virus, runs itself in our brains and basically can and does just take over what most of us think of as our own thoughts.

This field study is coupled with some of the field of neuro-psychology . What I've read about this field of study offers the idea that there are two kinds of mental activity going on in humans, conscious and unconscious activity. And for the most part, the unconscious activity outweighs conscious activity on the order of around 98% to 2%.

So, holding with this thought is that a meme can register in our unconscious and indeed pick up more and more information until it becomes a meme-complex which runs in our heads on it's own steam.

When our conscious mind notices it, it seems that it is that our conscious mind is thinking but in reality it is not, it is only reciting that meme that has inflicted itself in our brains.

So religion? Yeah, sure. All belief systems, yep, I think so.

So, hey, if you want to discuss this further, that is if this makes sense to you, I would love to do so, but only if it makes sense. I"m not replying here to push this perspective, just to toss it out for conscious evaluation, if indeed there really is something called conscious thought and not just the babble of mind controlling ideological virus's ..

a reply to: LABTECH767

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
And the very fact is existence is, how did it come into being, how could it always have been, what is consciousness - not thought but Consciousness they are not the same thing a mind without consciousness would be no different to a computer program, it would be a set of response to input and feed nothing but fundamental drives but we are far more than the sum of our part's and that MORE is the important factor here, we have appetites beyond our organic drives, beyond our instinct's.

There are limits to human language. Some questions are unanswerable questions. Our words only have limited meanings based on our own life experiences. Having unanswerable questions makes people extremely uncomfortable. So people invent delusions to answer the unanswerable questions to quell their fears about not knowing. Sometimes its best just to become comfortable with what is uncomfortable.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
When Moshe asked God "Who are You" God replied "I AM WHOM I AM".
The universe exists because it is willed into being by a being That/Whom IS.

I tend to think God is mostly unknowable. I would imagine anyone pretending to speak for God would be delusional if not mentally ill. God is a pretty big consciousness to be understood by or held withing the human mind with all its limitations.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
Now as to which religion is correct, well there you have me but I ascribe to Christianity though My Jesus is the one who said.
15When they had finished eating, Jesus asked Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love Me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus replied, “Feed My lambs.” 16Jesus asked a second time, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord,” he answered, “You know I love You.” Jesus told him, “Shepherd My sheep.” 17Jesus asked a third time, “Simon son of John, do you love Me?” Peter was deeply hurt that Jesus had asked him a third time, “Do you love Me?” “Lord, You know all things,” he replied. “You know I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep".

My main problem with Christianity the way it's written in the King James version of the translation is the excessive used of authoritarian words. The word "Lord" simply cannot exist without obedient "slaves." I doubt very much an omnipotent God would need our obedience. But King James certainly wanted to create a religion where the monarch is revered as if the monarch were speaking diretly for God. One thing I've never understood about Christianity is it's not like an all-powerful God is going to die if too many people end up in Hell. And it's not like an all-powerful God is going to die if not enough people make it into Heaven. I think the King James version of the Bible is just political propaganda for promoting the legitimacy of having the divine rights of the Lord King.

I think an omnipotent God is whole, complete, and perfect without any limitations, needs, or desires. Man is incomplete. Man has needs. Man has desires. I think man is the source of all that is evil in the world. And it is man's needs and desires which are the causes of evil.

Unlike you, I tend to prefer or believe in a God of Love over a God of Judgmment. And omnipotent God of love lets everyone through the gates of Heaven to stair into the face of God and experience eternally Heavenly bliss regardless of our earthly sins which were the result of us having limitations.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
Religion wrongly get's the blame as these same bad people will use anything they can get there proverbial hands upon to rile up and whip the crowd into a frenzy and abusing religion is just one way while the NAZI's and COMMUNISTS hit upon another using belief in a system, denial of the human soul (The NAZI's had an occult wing the Ahnenerb and were linked to many occult groups other than them as well).

I don't know why you hate communism so much. Marx criticized capitalism because workers get paid as little as possible while capitalist get rich. The capitalists shrink wages in order to maximize profit. Then the capitalists overcharge for products and services creating scarcity. People often claim taxes are stealing. But there are two sides to this argument. Corporations are also stealing by overcharging and underpaying workers.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
Religion therefore is NOT the problem

I agree with this statement from a perspective of critical logic. If religion did not exist at all, there would be just as many wars, unnecessary evil, and acts of violence. This because human nature and not religion is the cause of all that is evil in the world.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
The Virus is EVIL itself, religious faith is the small child reaching for the parent's hand to lead them out of the scary darkness and away from the predators that are all too real in this world.

I would not say virus is a EVIL. I would say man having limitations cause man to have desires and needs. It is man's desires and needs which cause acts of evil. People living in poverty are example of how the pressures of having excessive needs will cause extreme acts of evil.

RE: "religious faith is small child reaching for the parent's hand"

I hate this argument. The last thing we need is people looking to a STRONG charismatic daddy figure to save them from all their anxieties and suffering. The difference between a child and an adult is an adult takes care of ALL his own needs. And adult doesn't need to look to a strong daddy figure of the church in order to get his needs met.


Humans can NOT be programmed like a machine, to do so would rob them of there free will, of there uniqueness, of there humanity itself and turn them into nothing more than biological machines.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
So don't try to replace God with a logic of nothingness that is actually the very opposite of logic, think about it, something is and it believes that something is not, it's not like a logical inverter is a denial of what it can not prove nor disprove.

God exists is an axiom of belief. Some people have it. Some people do not. Everyone has human limitations. I prefer having the justice system and secular laws as my go-to place for seeking revenge and justice. I would not put my faith in someone being brought to justice in the afterlife. Until I experience the afterlife, I will continue to put my faith in justice system that exists while I am alive.

originally posted by: AllSeeingEye2025


Many Eastern religions are designed to free the mind from the controls of other people.

Yet their cultures embrace the collective over the individual... so?

a reply to: LABTECH767

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
And then factor in thing's like this that have NO logical explanation.

You are making not having a logical explanation for existence mean something. I choose a different opinion on whether not having a logical explanation means something.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: Machshev
This is something that can change the very logical state of reality itself, hip bones restored were there was no hip before, blind people suddenly being able to see, cancers vanishing as if they had never been there leaving doctors at a loss to explain a sudden healing that can simply NOT be explained except by faith.

In my entire life I have never seen anything happen that did not obey the laws of physics. Sorry, superstition is superstition. The reason science exists is for eliminating silly superstitous beliefs. The fact that somethink exists at all I can't explain. But there is also no proof nothingness ever happened either. So this is an unanwerable question. Assuming we use the word God to represent the mystery of existence, then I would argue the God of Existence is not so much concerned with the affairs of man.

originally posted by: Lysergic

originally posted by: AllSeeingEye2025


Many Eastern religions are designed to free the mind from the controls of other people.

Yet their cultures embrace the collective over the individual... so?

I thought you were saying religion is a system of control. Although for some religions like Christianity I totally agree. What I was trying to say is many Eastern religions are about getting back your control over people manipulating you.

Although many countries having Eastern religions may be promoting systems of government having collectives, I'm not sure this is what is meant by some of the teachings I've studied. There was no mention of participating in a "collective" as the path to enlightenment.

originally posted by: Elton
Richard Dawkins wrote on this: en.wikipedia.org...
Interesting concept, there was an old belief that mental illness was spreadable (like a mind virus), the idea seems similar to me.

I read somewhere there are millions of physical viruses in the environment affecting human beings. The article went on that many of these viruses do strange things like make your ears itch. And then I kept reading and almost towards the end of the article it said, "And there are even some viruses that will lower a person's IQ." And which point I went nuts thinking that one is rampant and out of control all over the planet!!!!

a reply to: Elton

Speaking of "mental illness was spreadable (like a mind virus)", have you ever heard of the idea of a thought virus?

A thought virus is an idea that once think about the idea you become infected. At which point, you will never be able to get the thought virus out of your head.

The idea of a thought virus IS a thought virus!!! Whoever reads this you are now infected!!!

originally posted by: Lysergic
Proof of any of that existing and it wasn't made up by other humans to manipulate other humans?

didnt think so.


a reply to: Deetermined

Spoken like someone who has never had a spiritual experience. No humans needed to experience it and believe in it.

Is religion a computer virus for the human mind?

NO.

originally posted by: Machshev
I mean no disrespect for your faith or any concept of a higher being or God. I am suggesting that the way a religion infects a mind and spreads to others maps out in a way reminiscent of a computer virus. Has anyone acknowledged this?

Nope, it is not a computer virus (that is, if we are to treat the "teachings" and not treat them as "idolized religion and all").
The Dharma (beyond any religions) actually guides people to live harmoniously...
Yet, the "interpretations" of those "religious" (and the creatures who had destroyed, tried to destroy, and is continually destroying the Truth) are the ones that serve as the virus to this Dharma. They are the ones that destroys the Essence of God. They are the ones to be punished most for indoctrinating people based on their perceived ideologies (still, it depends upon their "Intention". God knows everything after all. Therefore, we will be judged accordingly.)

The Truth Liberates. It does not infect and destroy, rather it cleanses, rebuilds, and liberates the shackles of those seeking the Truth of God. God is Everything.

originally posted by: TerryMcGuire
I"m not replying here to push this perspective, just to toss it out for conscious evaluation, if indeed there really is something called conscious thought and not just the babble of mind controlling ideological virus's ..

You have admit, there's a bit of strange loop at the edge of where meaning meets physical reality in regards to the fact we are made of the very stuff it is that we are experiencing.

I'm not arguing that there's a God consciousness at the core of all our minds and are brains are more like a radio receiver than they are like a computer. Of course, if our brains were more like a radio receiver that would explain a lot of paranormal phenomena.

"Regeneration of the alga Acetabularia mediterranea, an unusually large single-celled organism, up to 5cm tall, containing a green cap at the top of a long stalk, anchored at the base by root-like rhizoids. There is a large nucleus (shown as a black oval) in the basal part of the cell. When the stalk is cut off near the bottom, the basal part of the cell regenerates a new stalk and cap, even though it contains no nucleus."

Not all the patterns of cellular growth occur because of DNA blueprints as is the common wisdom. The universe may actually be a living consciousness.