Are Atheists Air Brushing History?

Trilokadharmishtasutta

reply to post by wytworm

I challenge the assertion that Buddhism is a religion.

Does this relate to anything I posted earlier on? Well, you're not about to get a rebuttal from me. For one thing, I'm not a Buddhist. For another, there are two kinds of Buddhism. One is the sort familiar to Westerners. it is what you might call 'pure' or doctrinaire Buddhism. It is essentially a moral philosophy and code of conduct based on (1) a belief in reincarnation, (2) the proposition that all life is suffering and that therefore (3) it is best not to exist -- or if one cannot yet manage that, at least live with as little attachment to reality as possible. This kind of Buddhism may or may not be a religion; I'll leave it to any Buddhist members on the thread to debate that (and I shall read their words with interest). But the other kind of Buddhism, practised by millions of ordinary unphilosophical folk around the world, which involves jataka tales, prayers and prayer-wheels, mandalas and other objects of veneration and power, the recruitment of Hindu and local folk deities as Buddhist saints, the Mahayana cult of the bodhisattva (at the popular level, it is roughly equivalent to the Roman Catholic veneration and petitioning of saints) and so on, is indubitably a religion in every conceivable sense. And in fact there are two great streams of it -- like Catholic and Protestant, Sunni and Shia -- they're called Mahayana and Theravada (which Mahayanists call Hinayana, a bit of a put-down). There are also numerous sub-sects and cults, many of which have died out in the 2,500 years or so since the death of the Buddha. Some of them involved human sacrifce, blood-drinking and the most outrageous debauchery.

I'm trying to revive one of those, actually...

Originally posted by pubbing
So do any of you know of a species actually giving birth to an entirely different species. I don't believe that is the case. I don't know about some of you but I am not a decendent of a monkey. It is clear as day that there is something that seperates humans from the animal world, something intangable that can not be explained by science. Are we that arrogant to think that we can know all of the secrets to the universe. Do we view ourselves as gods.

I think what you are asking is, does it ever occur that lateral genetic transfer takes place? The answer is yes. There are examples where this occurs.

It is inarguable that humans are in fact animals. It is more correct to state that there are differences between humans and other species. If you are looking to quantify the genetic differences say, between humans and chimps, that difference is very tangible and very small (1.2% difference in base DNA units).

The universe doesn't have secrets. The chunk of the universe that we understand is probably smaller than the chunk that we do. It isn't arrogant to walk toward knowing more than we know now, any more than it would be to teach a child to read. Both are walking from a state of less to a state of more.

Originally posted by Astyanax
Trilokadharmishtasutta

reply to post by wytworm

 

I challenge the assertion that Buddhism is a religion.

Does this relate to anything I posted earlier on? Well, you're not about to get a rebuttal from me. For one thing, I'm not a Buddhist. For another, there are two kinds of Buddhism. One is the sort familiar to Westerners. it is what you might call 'pure' or doctrinaire Buddhism. It is essentially a moral philosophy and code of conduct based on (1) a belief in reincarnation, (2) the proposition that all life is suffering and that therefore (3) it is best not to exist -- or if one cannot yet manage that, at least live with as little attachment to reality as possible. This kind of Buddhism may or may not be a religion; I'll leave it to any Buddhist members on the thread to debate that (and I shall read their words with interest). But the other kind of Buddhism, practised by millions of ordinary unphilosophical folk around the world, which involves jataka tales, prayers and prayer-wheels, mandalas and other objects of veneration and power, the recruitment of Hindu and local folk deities as Buddhist saints, the Mahayana cult of the bodhisattva (at the popular level, it is roughly equivalent to the Roman Catholic veneration and petitioning of saints) and so on, is indubitably a religion in every conceivable sense. And in fact there are two great streams of it -- like Catholic and Protestant, Sunni and Shia -- they're called Mahayana and Theravada (which Mahayanists call Hinayana, a bit of a put-down). There are also numerous sub-sects and cults, many of which have died out in the 2,500 years or so since the death of the Buddha. Some of them involved human sacrifce, blood-drinking and the most outrageous debauchery.

I'm trying to revive one of those, actually...

Someone listed it next to Christianity and Islam as a religion. I resist that simplistic interpretation.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by wytworm

 

Very well put, as regards the concepts behind deism.
Notice, however, that although he may have disagreed with
organized religion, he and his fellows were essentially men
of like belief, which constitutes an organized belief system.

Let's skip the fineries, shall we? Black is still black. Red is still red.
Green is still green. A group of believers in a particular philosophical
ideal, are still organized "religion." He was a fine gentleman and a scholar
but he was afterall, just as "religious" and "organized" as any other
group of like believers.

So Plato and Aristotle were religious leaders?

Both are walking from a state of less to a state of more.

that's IF it were a human prediliction to do so, but it isn't.
it's a human prediliction to only change the established "facts,"
when other, very specific, criteria are present such as:

1. the probability the individual advancing the idea will be widely accepted as capable of knowing anything new or spectacular, or making controversial changes to established "facts".
this, by its very nature, is the singlemost racist and sexist agenda you will find anywhere outside a church building. it isn't just based on who they are, but who they know, where they went to school, how much money they have in the bank, their gender, their race, and etc.

2. the probability the idea advanced by the individual is not going to dramatically step on the toes of currently beloved theories, advanced by the past saints of science, which are invested with the passage of time and legend, into something approximating religious fervor.

reply to post by wytworm


naturally.
religion is philosophy, isn't it?

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by wytworm

 

naturally.
religion is philosophy, isn't it?

no. religion is about providing answers [correct or not].. philosophy is about asking questions.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by wytworm

 

naturally.
religion is philosophy, isn't it?

It isn't.

Philosophy: a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means

Religion: Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.

Originally posted by undo

Both are walking from a state of less to a state of more.

that's IF it were a human prediliction to do so, but it isn't.
it's a human prediliction to only change the established "facts,"
when other, very specific, criteria are present such as:

1. the probability the individual advancing the idea will be widely accepted as capable of knowing anything new or spectacular, or making controversial changes to established "facts".
this, by its very nature, is the singlemost racist and sexist agenda you will find anywhere outside a church building. it isn't just based on who they are, but who they know, where they went to school, how much money they have in the bank, their gender, their race, and etc.

2. the probability the idea advanced by the individual is not going to dramatically step on the toes of currently beloved theories, advanced by the past saints of science, which are invested with the passage of time and legend, into something approximating religious fervor.

Facts can not be established nor can they be changed. The most one can do is observe it.

1. Is it your assertion that inside the church building there are agendas that are more racist and sexist? Or are you saying that racist and sexist agendas only exist outside the church buildng?

2. Science is not a religion. Therefore it cannot have saints. It is also true that science is 'evolutionary' for lack of a better term in that one generation build on the next. i.e. Newton's work made it possible for us to be 'lifted up' to the point where we landed men on the moon. This isn't religous fervor. Science in fact overthrows paradigms with much derision and vitriol when it discovers someone was wrong about something.

I think it is self evident that the arguable nature of man is to organize. One could argure whether social organization is moving forward to a state of value (more), but I won't. :-)

[edit on 23-3-2008 by wytworm]

Some great ideas on Creation, evolution and alien intervention can be found in this book www.12-21-2012-a-prophecy.com/
We rewrote american history books in 1992. What I learned and what my kids have learned are very different.

Chemical Bonds

Originally posted by undo

Yes: love, too, is a sign of fitness, of having what it takes to survive.

Can you describe it with science?

Sure, though the book I referenced at the end of my previous post will do it much better, and far more comprehensively and correctly, than I can.

Love: sexual love: we may not be able to define it, but we all know it when we feel it -- though if the relationship goes wrong we sometimes tell ourselves later that it wasn't so, it was just infatuation. But what is love in biological terms? A response, or complex of responses, that is triggered in us when we see, hear, interact with or even recall another, particular human being. We may not even know why we are attracted to this particular person; or we may think we know, we may have all kinds of very convincing explanations, and some of these may even be true; but love seems to go beyond all reason, speaking to something inward and deep and unreasoning.

It's a feeling. Actually, a whole complex of feelings. Where do they come from? If you're looking for ultimate causes, you could say they came from God, or Destiny, or that you were doped by an arrow from Cupid's quiver -- it's hard to tell. But if you're looking for proximate -- immediate -- causes, the answer is very simple. They come from the cocktail of chemicals washing about in your bloodstream, which are secreted by your own glands (your built-in personal drugstore; slogan: HOOKED OR YOUR MONEY BACK) whenever you see, hear, smell, touch, taste or even think about the object of your affections.

Back one step. Where do the chemicals come from? Okay, we know. We can dissect you and identify the culprits: your glands. Why do they do it? What's in it for them? Well, they're following the orders of your brain. Not the thinking part -- when you're in love, that part doesn't function so well -- but the instinctive part, the part that makes your heart beat and your lungs pump and your irises react to light and all the rest of it. Your glands are following a built-in program to make you feel like that.

Back one more step. Why does your brain have a built-in program to make you feel like that? It can't be very good for fitness, can it, feeling like the soft centre of a Belgian chocolate, if fitness means being all alert and aggressive and coiled up ready to spring?

Creationists may want to stop here, answering either 'because God made you like that, sucker!' or, if they're a little more sophisticated, 'because it was part of His grand Design to perpetuate the human race.' But us atheists don't find those answers satisfying. Darwin and his successors provide a more satisfactory answer, so we have turned to them instead. Remember that there were atheists before Darwin.

The answer suggested by Darwin (and elaborated in his second great work, now largely ignored in the kerfuffle surrounding the first -- The Descent of Man) is that such feelings, along with the attributes that trigger them (the attributes of hotness and lovability) are evolved attributes. Being hot and sexy and strong and pretty and intelligent and kind and giving and loving -- all, evolved. Because them what has them are fitter -- they have a better chance of attracting high-status mates with first class genes, and of holding on to those mates, through the chemical bond we call love, until both are thoroughly committed and the kids are born and toddling around and there's no getting out of it now, not without a lot of pain and struggle and loss and heartbreak.

That's what love is. Psychologists have concluded that in its natural state it lasts three years, about the time it takes to have a kid, raise it to toddler stage and get pregnant again. Just long enough to get you to the point where you're well and truly stuck. Of course, smart couples can make love last a lifetime. People who cannot love, on the other hand -- people who are too selfish, shy or just plain crazy to love -- don't make successful grandparents very often.

It just goes to show that we are not the slaves of our genes, any more than we are the slaves of history or circumstances. Our freedom -- men and women both -- may simply boil down to a choice among masters, but that's a subject for another thread.

reply to post by wytworm


you can't speculate without observation.
and if you observe and then speculated on that observation,
you've advanced a possible answer of what that observation revealed.

so when a person who believes in the potential of a SUPERnatural force, proceeds to
pray to that SUPERnatural force, they ask specific questions of that SUPERnatural: this is a speculation based on answers have been observed in the past.

it's all the same banana. it's just one likes to pretend it has nothing to do with the other.

i figure what happened was something like this:

joe likes to eat at outback steakhouse.
tom likes to eat at chilis.

one day, a food critic rolls into town and eats at both places.
he then writes a summary of his observations of dining at these two places.
in his observation he declares one superior to the other, so much so, that he speculates that the founders were probably criminals trying to poison people with their nasty food and making people pay for it. the other, he observed had tasty food, but was also asking people to pay exorbitant amounts of money for what boiled down to food with no nutritional value, althoguh at the very least, observably superior in quality of taste.

now this critic had alot of clout in the restaurant business, so it was later observed that while advertising their establishments, other restaurants would
use the 2 restaurants the critic disdained as examples of where you SHOULDN'T EAT (a sort of negative marketing ploy) and that by definition, since they KNEW this, their food was obviously going to be observably superior to those other 2 places.

so instead of being called restaurants, they changed their names to things like "eateries," or "buffets" or anything that would distance them from the 2 places that were so lambasted by the critic.

beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

reply to post by wytworm

in that one generation build on the next.

Not exactly. Its process is exceedingly prejudicial.
And i mean that emphatically! You have to see it from where I'm standing.
Let me give you an example.

When Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray discovered the Osirieon at Abydos, Egypt, in something like 1903, Margaret firmly believed, based on her "expert opinion and observations" that Seti did not build it,that it was far older than Seti's time and she made one very important statement that is, to this day, IGNORED by officialdom in egyptology and archaeology.

She said, "It is the style of the building, the type of masonry, the tooling of the stone, and not the name of a king, which date a building in Egypt’.”

Do you know why she was ignored?



[edit on 23-3-2008 by undo]

The observation is the address of the two places and what he ate. The speculation is the declaration of superiority. Speculation = opinion. Observation = Fact.

Heinlein understood this through his concept of the 'Fair Witness':

A Fair Witness is an individual trained to observe events and report exactly what he or she sees and hears, making no extrapolations or assumptions. An eidetic memory is a prerequisite for the job, although this may be attainable with suitable training.

Fair Witnesses are prohibited from drawing conclusions about what they observe. The character Jubal Harshaw asks one of his assistants, who is also a Fair Witness, to describe the color of a house in the distance. She responds, "It's white on this side." She would not testify as to the color of any other part of the house without being able to see it.

Observation = Fact.

No, observation only equals fact by those who are willing to accept it as fact. You know this is true.

Originally posted by wytworm


I think what you are asking is, does it ever occur that lateral genetic transfer takes place? The answer is yes. There are examples where this occurs.

It is inarguable that humans are in fact animals. It is more correct to state that there are differences between humans and other species. If you are looking to quantify the genetic differences say, between humans and chimps, that difference is very tangible and very small (1.2% difference in base DNA units).

The universe doesn't have secrets. The chunk of the universe that we understand is probably smaller than the chunk that we do. It isn't arrogant to walk toward knowing more than we know now, any more than it would be to teach a child to read. Both are walking from a state of less to a state of more.

No what I am asking is when did a monkey give birth to a human. If this is the case then why are humans not giving birth to other species.

I understand that humans and animals and plants for that matter are made up of organic chemestry and all have various protiens that code their
DNA. But the difference between humans and monkeys is not genetic. Why are ther not books written by monkeys or other animals. Why do monkeys not build civilizations, buildings, and nations. You are saying that the human spirit and all human acomplishments can be explained by a 1.2% DNA difference.

When you understand the chemestry of the human body and all of the things that must take place for us to live, there is no dout that we are the product of some intellegent design. It takes more faith to believe that we are the products of some random DNA shuffeling then it does to believe that we were created.

It is not arrogent to strive to know more about the world that we live in but it is arrogent to think that we can know everything there is to know.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by wytworm

 

in that one generation build on the next.

Not exactly. Its process is exceedingly prejudicial.
And i mean that emphatically! You have to see it from where I'm standing.
Let me give you an example.

When Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray discovered the Osirieon at Abydos, Egypt, in something like 1903, Margaret firmly believed, based on her "expert opinion and observations" that Seti did not build it,that it was far older than Seti's time and she made one very important statement that is, to this day, IGNORED by officialdom in egyptology and archaeology.

She said, "It is the style of the building, the type of masonry, the tooling of the stone, and not the name of a king, which date a building in Egypt’.”

Do you know why she was ignored?
[edit on 23-3-2008 by undo]

The scicence of archaeology is fact based. This extends to and ends with the obervable: i.e. carbon dating results. The interpretation of those facts is speculative and thus subject to the predjudices that you allude to. Regardless of who she was and who listened or didn't, what they were listening to was her 'opinion' expert or not.



[edit on 23-3-2008 by wytworm]

reply to post by Astyanax


Thanks for putting so much time into that answer!
Personally, since I can love another person without any reason other than
it's a good idea, I don't think it's biological. For example, two people can
fall in love over the internet. No exchange of phermones or chemically compatibility has taken place, so it becomes an IDEA. Now it falls into the
category of philosophy and religion. Are we all in love with ideas? Well
if they are good ideas, I sure hope so!

Originally posted by undo
Pretty much everyone believes that micro evolution is scientifically proven. Where the problem appears to arise is in macro evolution.

Look at it this way, something micro-evolves (bad use of terms I know) and is now 0.0001% different from its parent. If its kid micro-evolves 0.0001% more, its now 0.00002% different from the original creature, have this over millions of years and you will get a creature that 2.5% different from the original. 2.5% is difference between humans and apes

Regardless of who she was and who listened or didn't, what they were listening to was her 'opinion' expert or not.

And whose opinion do you think finalized their decision? Are you assuming they "carbon-dated" it? Just think a moment: If she was right, what would that change about our timeline and understanding of evolution?

Do you know for CERTAIN they ignored her because she was wrong?