IMO the application of science - Technology - is driven by inherently human drives - mostly power and money - but occasionally and to a lesser degree - altruism. Technology, as the application of science, can not escape the human condition with all the good and bad that that entails. — Rank Amateur

Yes, that's it. Wise insightful comment, as usual from you.

With all its SO MANY flaws, this is the genius of religion, the realization that the nature of the human condition is central, fundamental.

The other angle we might focus on is the issue of scale.

So long as knowledge and power are limited, of relatively small scale, as has been true throughout human history until very recently...

Then we can afford to make mistakes, learn from them, and then try again, continually building upon what's come before. This is what I call "19th century thinking", and it was valid in the 19th century and earlier, a very long time.

When the power grows to a scale which threatens civilization itself an entirely new equation is born. With powers of such awesome scale, a single failure a single time of a single such power can bring down the entire system, rendering all the many other positive accomplishments irrelevant.

The one great value of nuclear weapons is that they are incredibly simple, a box that goes boom. Thus, they should illustrate this concept to anyone over the age of 10. But sadly, that rarely happens, such is the human condition and the awesome power of wishful thinking.

So my friends, it's on to pain. Sooner or later some city in the world will vanish in an instant, and perhaps then our thinking will enter the 21st century. Not that this worked the last time of course...

I don’t know where we are, but I do know we’re on the right track. — TogetherTurtle

This thread may help:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3728/the-knowledge-explosion

Your mistake is confusing physical scale for our position on a scale of knowledge. — TogetherTurtle

My mistake is in the persistent assumption that discussing such issues will accomplish anything at all. Seriously, not being sarcastic. THAT is my logical flaw, which I freely admit to.

What I've come to realize (ok, so it took a long time) is that our relationship with knowledge is beyond the reach of logic. That relationship will be not be edited by reason, but by pain.

But, I'm an incurable typoholic logic nerd, so I keep doing the only thing I know how to do, until the pain of too much time online stops this irrational behavior.

And why can’t we change ourselves to use technology more safely? Cybernetics to enhance physical strength and memory are advancing all the time. We can change our brains to not feel the anger needed to launch a nuke. — TogetherTurtle

Let's start with something simpler first. Let's change our brains so that we aren't incurably bored by the discussion of the most pressing threat to everything humanity has built over the last 500 years. Once that's done, the rest of your proposal will become more credible.

I know, I know: you'll dismiss what I've said because I'm clever and belong on Facebook. — S

Hey, whaddya know, you're finally right about something! Congratulations!

The fundamental difference between science and religion is that while religion attempts to explain phenomenon, science seeks to understand and control them. This leads to a mastery of nature and benefit to the general populace. — TogetherTurtle

It leads to a mastery of nature, but not a mastery of the human condition. Thus for example, we are brilliant enough to be able to create nuclear weapons, while at the same time being insane and stupid enough to actually do so.

The "benefit to the general populace" continues only until the point at which science hands us one or more enormous powers which we can't successfully manage.

The very common notion that science is leading us step by step towards an ever better future is 19th century thinking in my view.

However, if we want to improve our lives and learn about the universe, that is impossible when we believe fairy tales. — TogetherTurtle

Good post, thanks.

To me, it's a fairy tale that any of us know what is or isn't a fairy tale, in regards to issues the scale of the God theory.

The God idea is a collection of theories about the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere, the ultimate big picture question.

Human beings are a single half insane species only recently living in caves on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies.

Expecting something as small as humans to understand something as large as the nature of everything is like expecting a squirrel to understand the Internet, in my typoholic opinion.

To me, the useful question is, what is our emotional relationship with God or reality, or whatever one prefers to call this place we find ourselves in. This is something we can do something about.

All that said, I plead guilty to forgetting that many forum members may be in their teens or twenties, and thus it's not reasonable to expect them to already have understandings which have taken others of us a lifetime to come to.

I'm not saying this is necessarily what's going on, but it's not uncommon for people to look at "belonging to a religion" as being akin to ethnicity. — Terrapin Station

Agreed, good point. It's in that context that I sometimes label myself as being "Catholic".

I'm not Catholic in the way people typically use that word, as a choice one has made. Instead, I'm Catholic in a manner that is beyond choice. That is, I have hundreds of years of Catholic DNA up my family tree, and this genetic history is a source of influence which was built in to my brain before I was even born. I am a product of Catholic culture (as almost all of us are to one degree or another) but my beliefs don't align with Catholic doctrines very well at all.

I think like a Catholic, but I don't think what most Catholics think.

I am a self-made man who worships his maker. — unenlightened

Best answer by far! :-)

I just don't think they should be taken seriously until they show proof that god exists. — TogetherTurtle

Let's reason together. Let's apply the principle you've articulated in an even handed manner to all beliefs.

Some people believe their holy book is a reliable source of information about the very largest of questions, but they can't prove it.

Some people believe human reason is a reliable source of information about the very largest of questions, but they can't prove it.

No difference so far.

Holy books have proven that they are useful in creating meaning, purpose and comfort for billions of people over thousands of years. But that fact does not prove that they are also qualified to credibly address the very largest of questions.

Human reason has proven itself useful for an uncountable number of practical tasks that humans encounter. But that fact does not prove that human reason is also qualified to credibly address the very largest of questions.

So, still no difference.

Some religious people seem to be motivated to find some way to declare themselves superior to other people, while other religious people are content just to hold their private view. The same is true of atheists.

Again, no difference.

The supposed big divide between theism and atheism is a hoax fueled by ignorance and ego. Both perspectives are built upon faith, as neither side can prove the qualifications of it's chosen authority in regards to the largest of questions.

I've typed this about 1,000 times on the forum and other philosophy forums too. And it makes no difference at all, because readers are generally not interested in reason, but only the appearance of reason. And this is my irrationality, a habit of persistently attempting to do something, in spite of any evidence that it will ever work.

We are brothers and sisters, united as one, embracing illusion with equal enthusiasm. The biggest accomplishment any of us can hope to achieve is to develop a sense of humor about the absurdity of our human condition.

While some particulars of the scientific method can be debated, I can't see anyone arguing that it's entirely wrong. — Echarmion

Wrong in relation to what?

As example, nuclear weapons work perfectly well at the task for which they were designed. Working well doesn't automatically equal that being a good thing.

Science works very well at the task for which it was designed, developing new knowledge. This can fairly be labeled a good thing IF the people receiving that new knowledge can successfully manage it. If the recipients of the new knowledge can't successfully manage the power that flows from that knowledge, then the process that handed them that knowledge very reasonably comes in to question.

As a baby boomer, I would suggest that our primary crime was that we knew better about many things, such as the environment, war, the bomb, consumerism etc, but went ahead and made all these dangerous mistakes anyway. Unlike our parents the WWII generation, we can not plead ignorance.

That said, a key success of the sixties is that today's younger generations take the more open society created during that era for granted, and are largely unable to imagine society without the social changes the sixties unleashed.

I would give the hippy boomer folks (of which I am one) high marks for the more open society changes, but on larger more important issues such as the climate and nuclear weapons, we blew it.

But to be fair to we boomers, today's younger generation is repeating some of our mistakes. Not on climate so much, but for sure on nuclear weapons, the most significant threat to everything they hold dear.

Here's the proof. Watch the upcoming 2020 election through this lens. PRESIDENTIAL election. There will be round the clock blabber on every channel for over a year, and nuclear weapons will barely be mentioned. We boomers are on our way out, so such insanity can not be blamed entirely on us.

Donald Dump, or any president, can order a massive nuclear strike with a single phone call. He doesn't have to get the approval of Congress, he doesn't have to consult with the chain of command, or any other advisors. He can bring on the end of the world all by himself, and the generals and other big shots won't even know it's happening until they see the out going missiles on their radar screens.

And yet....

We are totally bored by this subject and can't be bothered to discuss it, even in a Presidential election where everybody is looking for some edge over somebody else.

Boomers didn't invent insanity, and younger generations have not transcended it.

Climate change (generated by us) is a real threat, and so we are a real threat insofar as we created it and are unwilling or unable to do anything to halt it or even ameliorate its effects by slowing down population and economic growth and exploitation of resources. — Janus

Imho, the real threat is how we will react to climate driven changes to the status quo, and less so the change itself.

The actual changes to the climate are unfolding quickly in historic terms, but still we're talking in terms of years, decades, centuries. Our reaction to climate driven social change could crash civilization literally within a few hours.

Modern urban civilization is very fragile. As just one example, the average urban dweller (most of humanity now) knows little about obtaining food other beyond swiping a credit card at the grocery store. Any source of stress which threatens the highly complex human food supply chain can lead to mass chaos within days.

Climate change could indeed be the deciding source of stress, but there are other more immediate potential sources, such as a 2008 style collapse of the financial system which isn't successfully managed.

I don't know what to say, except don't hold your breath waiting for insights, solutions or even recognition. My own recent thread on the topic was not terribly illuminating. — unenlightened

It might possibly have been, except that you seemed determined to run off anybody who might have actually understood the threat posed by climate change. You get that climate change is going to be socially disruptive, but you haven't thought through what that entails. The real threat is not climate change, but our reaction to climate change. The real threat, as usual, is us.

By my rejecting it. — Banno

Such rejection is largely illusion.

As example, Catholicism dominated every aspect of Western culture to a degree unimaginable today for 1,000 unbroken years. A thousand years. None of us can fully walk away from that influence, however much we may delude ourselves in to thinking we have such a choice.

I left the Catholic Church 50 years ago as a teen. I think the Church structure is a total mess, and I never really connected with the Jesus character. My list of complaints with Catholicism is endless etc. But...

I've been faithful to my wife every day for 40 years, even though if you saw me in person you'd be sure I must have just gotten back from attending Woodstock.

Centuries of Catholic DNA up my family tree still speaking to me, still guiding me, still helping me keep from totally screwing up my life.

The point here being that there are some influences which are beyond choice.

Actually science is naturally agnostic — Anaxagoras

I hear what you're saying and agree.

I'll just add my usual rant that science, and our relationship with science, are two very different things. The later can not be described as being agnostic.

For Christianity is not a formula which makes everything clear, but the radical submission of myself to an incomprehensible Mystery Who has revealed Himself as ineffable love. — Rank Amateur

Thanks Rank, I'm just back on the forum myself.

That's a great quote, thanks for sharing it. A couple thoughts in reply...

First, and this takes us back towards science, I'm wondering if you are familiar with the drug DMT? Here's an introductory documentary of a research study which you might find interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtT6Xkk-kzk

I bring it up here because the test subjects in this study reported visiting another realm which felt even more real to them than our everyday experience, and they attempted to describe this incomprehensible realm as being saturated with a profound indescribable love.

What was interesting to me is that this was a scientific study that had nothing to do with religion, and yet very similar to religion kinds of descriptions emerged from it.

Another thing I liked about it is that the study was experience based instead of theory based. I suspect that philosophy (and thus most of theology) is not really the appropriate channel for exploring such things. It's not so much that this or that idea is right or wrong, but that ideas in general aren't really the right medium for such investigations.

The quote you shared above suggests as much, and as you know I'm fond of quoting the Apostle John who said with brilliant conciseness "God is love".

Language is so limiting. Any words we choose immediately serve to shove the subject in to some little box. This becomes problematic when the phenomena we are attempting to explore is defined as being beyond all division.

Anyway, explore the documentary linked above if you have time, and aren't already familiar with the topic. It's not at all Catholic, but explores similar issues from another direction.

Yeah, and perhaps pigs can fly. Maybe I should write an entire treatise on that. — S

Or, just another option, maybe you could refrain from clogging the forum with your cleverness? You know, there's an appropriate place for what you want to do. It's called Facebook.

Meaning is just a story in the human mind. When the mind goes, presumably all meaning does as well, or at least that is one popular theory. Assuming for now that is true, we might consider this...

A key purpose of every living organism is to create more life. When we attempt to perform this function we are rewarded with an orgasm. The orgasm is a brief psychological death. In the moment of orgasm there is no meaning, no point, no story, no "me", none of the things we typically feel are essential.

And whaddya know, everybody loves orgasms. A lot!

So, just one theory, death may be a process of trading in meaning for something far more rewarding.

Even if society takes 50 to 100 years to fall apart completely, we are already on a down hill slope. — Bitter Crank

My best guess is that a long view is required.

It would take something the scale of an asteroid strike to wipe us out completely, so it seems humans will continue in some form whatever crisis may disrupt the current status quo.

The Romans attempted to build a global civilization and for awhile they were making good progress. And then the whole thing fell apart. I suspect the same kind of thing is happening in our time, just at a faster pace.

If you think about it, it's actually not too logical to assume that we could successfully construct a highly complex interdependent global technological civilization on the first try. We may get there eventually, but it seems more reasonable to assume such a project will take numerous attempts, with many failures along the way.

My generation, the boomers, has the luck of the Irish. We got here after the Great Depression and WWII and arrived at the peak of success for this iteration of global civilization. We lived high on the hog, and had blessed lives. We didn't do a lot to solve the problems, did quite a bit to make things worse, and now we're checking out and leaving the mess to our kids and grandkids. I doubt we will be remembered fondly on balance.

There's a lesson in the boomer story for younger people. When we boomers were twenty somethings we were VERY idealistic and had the noblest of notions. Those young today should not just assume that the idealism they now possess is a permanent fixture of their lives. A great deal of work and sacrifice will be required to hang on to the idealism of youth, and the odds are not with you.

That said, crisis and pain are miracle drugs, so instead of looking to the fat cat softy boomers as a model you might look to the WWII generation. They rose to the challenges presented to them and prevailed, so maybe you can too.

1. Climate change is unstoppable. — unenlightened

This seems to depend on what time frame is being examined. If the chosen time frame is the lifetime of a baby born today, yes, some amount of climate change is already baked in. That is, unless the change can be reversed by some engineering technique, a prospect perhaps more dangerous than the influence we've already had on the climate.

2. Social collapse will be worldwide, and in the next 10 years or so.

This seems exaggerated, though if we include all factors which could lead to social collapse, perhaps not. Climate change as a sole cause of social collapse in ten years? Doesn't seem likely. Climate change as a contributing factor to social collapse over a longer period, ok, seems reasonable.

3. This will involve Flooding caused by sea-level rises displacing huge populations, decline in crop yields leading to starvation even in developed countries, collapse of infra-structure, power, clean water particularly.

Ok, but over what time period? If this happens slowly we can adapt. If it happens quickly, a crisis.

4. There's fuck all to be done to stop it.

Let's define "it". I presume this to mean damage to civilization driven by climate change. Here's the big hole in this paper and this discussion. To the degree the author is correct in his predictions, the main source of damage to civilization will be nuclear weapons and war in general, not climate change. And there is plenty we can do about this source of damage right now today. Ok, maybe not the war, but the nukes can be destroyed any time we are ready to reclaim sanity.

5. So what might we do or think or discuss in the meantime?

Focus on the primary source of damage and discuss how to remove that threat.

The fact is, there are numerous threats to the environment coming from all sorts of sources. — Bitter Crank

True, but none of them can bring civilization crashing down in 30 minutes. When one has a loaded gun in one's mouth that is the only issue. Once the gun is removed, ok, then other issues merit our attention.

I downloaded the paper and searched for "nuclear". I found one very brief and passing mention.

Other intellectual disciplines and traditions may be of interest going forward. Human extinction and the topic of eschatology, or the end of the world, is something that has been discussed in various academic disciplines, as you might expect. In theology it has been widely discussed, while it also appears in literary theory as an interesting element to creative writing and in psychology during the 1980s as a phenomenon related to the threat of nuclear war. The field of psychology seems to be particularly relevant going forward.

Until shown otherwise, I'm happy to accept that the author is an intelligent, well educated expert in his field. And yet, he felt comfortable presenting an academic paper proposing an imminent catastrophic threat presented by climate change, which includes only the most passing reference to nuclear weapons.

What makes this interesting is that the author is clearly not stupid or uninformed, but is better described as an intellectual elite. So understanding such a glaring omission is not as simple as just dismissing the author as a wacko. It seems we have to look elsewhere for an explanation.

The problem would seem to be much larger and more worrisome. That is, the author is writing in a culture suffering from a mass delusion, and is simply doing what all of us do, what is declared "normal", "reasonable", "sensible". He's ignoring the threat from nukes. He's fitting in within the group consensus, and probably wisely so because if he weren't willing to pay the price of conformity to the group think he would likely be casually dismissed as being just another alarmist riding a hobby horse, which is not a very good way to advance one's academic career.

Academics do their work within a fairly tightly controlled group consensus. They have to color pretty closely within the lines. And so if all of us are blindly ignoring the threat of nuclear weapons, they have to as well, or risk brand damage to their career.

But the truth is likely more that the author has internalized the mass delusion himself, and thus sincerely sees no conflict in leaving nuclear weapons out of a catastrophic climate change warning discussion. After all, that's what everyone else is doing, so the author is guilty of nothing more than being normal.

However, none of this changes the fact that it's not possible to have an intelligent discussion about a pending climate change catastrophe without including the subject of nuclear weapons as an integral part of such an investigation. Thus, if one is looking for intelligent discussion of such matters it would likely be best to invest one's time in writings from another more insightful author, should one be able to find one.

As for global social collapse, as I asked earlier, how is it that China is supposed to collapse. — frank

China is held together by the tight grip of a dictatorship. It's already a touch and go operation which could unravel at any time. Add a big pile of stress on to the system, and China most likely unravels in to a collection of local warlord ruled sections.

Please talk about climate change with reference to the paper and the evidence within or elsewhere for its claims along with counterevidence, for those who disagree, from other scientific sources. Everything beyond that will be subject to deletion unless there's a very good reason for its inclusion. — Baden

The very good reason for the inclusion of nuclear weapons in a discussion about climate change is that these weapons will be the reason that climate change will be catastrophic.

Climate change can be catastrophic on it's own. As example, let's say that human populations are reduced by half. We can adapt to that. We can adjust to the new social and environmental reality. A big problem, but a fixable problem.

If climate change triggers the use of nuclear weapons, a very reasonable prospect if climate change does indeed cause widespread social chaos, the equation changes entirely. It's still probably not human extinction, but the set back would be of an entirely different scale. Not only would much of the infrastructure of civilization be destroyed, but the environment would be dramatically affected immediately, not over a period of years, decades, centuries.

What's happening in this conversation is the same thing I am so often bellowing about. Thought operates by a process of conceptual division. And so you are trying to divide climate change from nuclear weapons. Conceptually, that is obviously possible. But...

Climate change and nuclear weapons are not divided from each other in the real world.

Thus, to the degree members and mods insist on such a division, you are engaged in fantasy.

Again, a respectful request. If the mods find it necessary to delete this post, ok, I respect your ownership of the forum. But please delete my account along with the post. Only takes a second, right?

If you can not tolerate reading this post, you are not qualified to read any of the rest of my posts either.

Like an individual cell can not think, perhaps the universe as a whole can exhibit properties like thinking. — Bill Hobba

I'm open to such a theory, but suspect the universe as a whole would be doing something far more advanced than mere human thinking. We could use the word "intelligence" but that concept also relies on a ridiculously small sample of reality, a single species on a single planet in one of billions of galaxies.

I am quite open to the idea that the universe as a whole, matter and energy etc, is more than just a mechanical device. What exactly that might be, no idea.

The urbanization of humanity is one threat factor which probably doesn't receive enough attention.

Until the 20th century the vast majority of humanity lived on the land, and thus knew how to garden, hunt, forage etc. These days all most people know about obtaining food is how to swipe a credit card at the grocery store. Most people don't keep that much food on hand either because after all, who has room to store 3 months of food in the typical urban apartment?

So, if the highly complex human food supply chain is interrupted social chaos will begin almost immediately. It won't start when people run out of food, but when a critical mass of people conclude they will not be able to replenish their food supply via legal means. The vast majority of security personnel whose job it is to maintain order will be in this same situation, and protecting their loved ones will take priority over protecting you and me.

There can be some measure of good news in all this. We're all going to die from something someday anyway, but we're masters at pretending this is not the case. Events such as are being discussed will puncture this fantasy and bring on a higher level of existential awareness. This will be terrifying for many or most, but it does offer philosophers an opportunity.

What is our relationship with death?

We are assuming that climate change driven crisis is bad because we assume that death is worse than life. Is that true? Do we have any rational basis upon which to come to such a conclusion? Isn't really just philosophical laziness which causes us to leap to such conclusions?

Widespread social collapse could realistically begin in the next 30 minutes.

Imagine that I am a brilliant but disturbed philosopher who walks around all day with a hair trigger loaded gun in my mouth. So long as my day to day situation is relatively stable I might be able to pull this off for some time. If my day to day situation becomes chaotic, the chances of the gun going off goes way up to near certainty.

This is the situation we're in. Climate change will disrupt the delicate balance of a highly interconnected global economy, and in the resulting social/political chaos the nuclear gloves will come off.

Some amount of climate change and social disruption is already built in. We can adapt to that. It's the nukes we should be focused on because 1) that's a game ending threat we can't adapt to, and 2) that's something decisive we could do immediately.

What's happening is that human beings are functioning like a cancer on the biosphere, and so the biosphere is responding by attempting to reject the disease.

For Catholics, the authority of the church is a direct and unbroken line from Christ to Peter, to every pope since. — Rank Amateur

Would it be more accurate to say for some Catholics?

My guess is that millions of Catholics would welcome some version of fundamental change, while millions of others clearly wouldn't.

Let's say for example there was a schism and that it resulted in two versions of Catholicism, one run by nuns, one run by male clergy. This would allow us to put the fundamental change theory to a test. If the nun version withered away after a century or two, then I'd be proven wrong, and the question would be settled. Without a real world test of competing theories the situation remains one of "one theory vs. another theory" a recipe for eternal conflict within the Church.

The real question is if there are supernatural realities. — Walter Pound

Or perhaps to be more precise, what does "supernatural" really mean?

Does it mean beyond the laws of nature? Or does it mean beyond the laws of nature as understood by human beings?

My guess is that there are things going on over our heads that would seem supernatural to us, because the phenomena exceeds our understanding of nature. As example, the Internet would seem "supernatural" to a squirrel, even though it obviously isn't.

I would suggest that we might be suspicious of all dualistic polarities such as "natural vs. supernatural". Such either/or paradigms are likely to be more a function of how the human mind works than they are an accurate representation of reality.

As example...

Does space exist, or not, yes or no?

The question assumes a dualistic polarity which may not be relevant to the phenomena of space. Instead of challenging various answers to the question, we might focus instead on challenging the question itself. If the question arises from a profound form of built-in bias, it's unlikely to deliver a useful answer.

Not arguing, explaining. — Rank Amateur

Understood, no problem.

For Catholics, the authority of the church is a direct and unbroken line from Christ to Peter, to every pope since. — Rank Amateur

I understand this theory, and agree you've represented the doctrine accurately (not that I'm expert on such things).

I'm not discussing the theory, but what I see in the real world. There is no authority of the Church. It's gone. The authority of the Church has been flushed down the toilet by clerical greed and incompetence.

So if one believes, as it seems you and I both do, that the Church can be a force for good in the world, the question would seem to become...

How to restore the lost credibility of this institution which has been so central in Western culture?

I agree that the scale of change necessary would likely lead to a schism. So what? As you say, that's already happened before and that didn't impede the growth of Christianity, but rather assisted that growth, because the Reformation made more options available, it made Christianity more accessible to more people.

All that said, I agree with you that none of what I'm suggesting is likely to happen any time soon, if ever. My point is really only that there is a path out of the current disaster, but that doesn't mean the path out will be taken.

Hi Rank,

But for me it is a label, we have to call this entity something so we can somewhat discuss the concept. — Rank Amateur

I'm not disagreeing, just trying to clarify that there may be a conflict between the reality of the situation and our desire to discuss. Discussion requires the use of nouns. Nouns imply an "entity" or some phenomena which is separate and distinct from other phenomena. That process may be appropriate to the reality of the situation, or maybe not.

The best example I've been able to come up with is space. We have a name for space, implying it is something distinct from other phenomena, but in reality space is intrinsic to all phenomena.

What might make us suspicious of nouns and the divisions they require is that we are literally made of (psychologically) an information medium (thought) which operates by a process of conceptual division. So is God a separate entity in reality? Or does God just seem to be a separate entity due to the inherently divisive lens we are looking through?

There is an immovable obstacle in the way of this idea. One that is complete catholic dogma so don't have a reasoned argument against. But the catch is, it has been addressed authoritatively, which means infallibly. — Rank Amateur

Just for the sake of friendly debate, I would ask, what price are Catholics willing to pay for sticking with the failing status quo? The credibility and influence of the Church is collapsing, which from the Catholic perspective will result in lost souls. Is losing these souls worth it, just so the clergy can do one particular job instead of another equally important job, the work of nuns?

Here's who will decide this question in reality. The laity. So long as the laity continues to fund a collapsing leadership structure that structure will continue. At the moment the laity decides to stop funding that leadership structure, some change the scale of what I'm suggesting will unfold.

There is no way around the abuse scandal - none. — Rank Amateur

So long as Catholics keep saying that, it will remain true.

There is of course no way to undo the past, but there is a way to transform the future of the Church. There is a way around the abuse scandal, there is a way to restore the credibility of the Church. It's true that those who got the Church in to this mess have no clue how to find their way out of the mess. That doesn't equal there being no way out.

Imho, the principle at play here is this. The scale of change the Church submits itself to has to match the scale of the crime that's been committed. When those two things line up, the credibility of the Church will be restored.

While I'm ranting...

Spring is underway here in Florida, with fresh new baby green leaves exploding in every direction. The big meeting in Rome has been on my mind, and inspired this...

Think of a tree as The Church, the sun as God, and the leaves as the clergy, the interface between Catholics and God. Let's look how nature, the church that God built, actually works.

After a long summer season the leaves get worn out. They are chewed on by bugs, they get diseases etc and their ability to translate sunlight in to energy for the tree is diminished. So the tree does the sensible thing, it lets go of the leaves and they fall, melt in to the ground, and become nourishment for the tree.

In the spring an entirely new crop of leaves appears, fresh, new, perfect little engines of photosynthesis.

The tree remains the same. The sun remains the same. The leaves perform the same function as always. But, it's not the same old worn out leaves from last season.

As I see it, the current crisis in Catholicism is basically a matter of stubbornly trying to hang on to the old leaves, to prevent them from falling to the ground. The old leaves won't get out of the way, so the new ones can't emerge, and the old leaves keep getting older and older, weaker and weaker with each passing day.

The good news is that the old leaves are unlikely to have the last say in the matter. The laws of nature will intervene and keep the endless cycle of renewal going by some method or another.

When I listened to reports about the recent conference in Rome I was filled with hope. As it becomes clearer and clearer that the old leaves are worn out, it becomes ever more likely that they will drop from the tree and the new leaves will emerge. Just saying, this whole child rape clergy crisis thing might actually be good news for the Church, though it understandably doesn't always feel that way.

The core concept in Ignatian Spirituality is " Seeing God in all things" - for some stuff this is real easy, for some stuff this is near impossible for those of weaker faith like me. But the concept is very much as you describe above. That God is active and present in everything, and if you train yourself to look you will see it. — Rank Amateur

Yes, and it seems the serious question is the practical one, how to best train oneself. Regrettably, there is no one perfect answer to this. For me, it's spending lots of time in nature, for somebody else it might be attending Mass, or doing scientific research, or driving a bus. We spend a lot of time arguing over which is the "one true way" when we probably should instead be focused on the question of "what is the right way for me?"

Words can easily get in the way. As example, if we ask "what is the right way for me to see God" the word God immediately brings to mind a collection of images in Western culture that may be helpful, or may be a fatal distraction. That's why I'm often arguing for ignorance, clearing the mind of theories and conclusions to assist in facilitating experience. Each of us can reach for experiences that transcend the mundane, and there is really no need to then label and categorize the experience. I'm not sure what part of Catholic teaching might address any of this, perhaps you point to something?

As for the second half, it is just human to try and frame such a concept as God in some type of unique anthropomorphic form. It is the only way most can get their hands around such a concept. — Rank Amateur

Yes, which is why I'm unwilling to dismiss Christianity out of hand. It's proven it's usefulness to billions of people over thousands of years, quite an accomplishment. It's obviously not useful to everybody, but so what, that's surely asking too much of any perspective.

The following will be useful to far fewer people, but for what it's worth, if we can shift the focus from concepts to experience, most of these kind of problems can melt away. I do however acknowledge that this way of looking at things will not have the broad reach of an approach like Christianity. I'm offering it only as an option for those who find Christianity, or any religion, to be an obstacle.

As to the clergy, I'm conflicted. My instinct is to decline an intermediate level between man and "Whatever It Is" but then here I am, basically acting like clergy myself by endlessly typing all kinds of explanations.

As far as Catholicism goes the solution I see is simple and straightforward, have the clergy and nuns swap roles. Still an entirely Catholic operation, but all the branding damage is removed as an obstacle. One decisive act and Catholic credibility is back on track in the public realm, but regrettably in it's current form Catholicism appears to be incapable of such clarity. But then, I haven't been Catholic in a long time, so what do I really know about it?

What Jesuit discernment is, is trying to identify the source of these desires, and see if they are ordered or not. Ordered being for the greater love of God and each other. — Rank Amateur

Thanks for adding Catholic doctrine to such threads Rank. Although I'm not qualified to evaluate your interpretations of Catholic teaching, I sense you're doing a good job of it. Although not formally Catholic myself, I find such commentary an inviting jumping off place for my own interpretations. Here's an attempt to translate what you've shared in to Jake-talk.

As I see it, the source of all desire is the experience of division, an illusion generated by the nature of thought.

The will to live is built in to the body, and so any threat to the supposed division between our body and the rest of reality will trigger alarm bells in the form of pain. But this perceived physical division is really a fantasy, just as an ocean wave is not actually divided from the ocean at any point in it's "existence", but only appears to be a separate "thing".

To translate Catholic terminology in to Jake-talk, an "ordered desire" would be one which seeks to relieve the fantasy of division rather than reinforce it. Catholics advise us to love God and each other, which is a method of redirecting our attention away from the tiny prison cell of "me", a compelling form of illusory division which is the source of most of our suffering.

This has sometimes been expressed as "dying to be reborn", which I would translate in to secular language as "letting go of the illusion of division and embracing the reality of unity with all things."

While such secular language may be preferable to many users here, the problem with it is that it's far too abstract to usefully serve most people, who typically are not incurable nerds like us. And so in the attempt to serve as many humans as possible and not just nerds, Catholic culture has created a far more accessible story revolving around "love Jesus" and "love your neighbor" and "get back to God" etc. Love is an act of surrender, and each of these Catholic ideas boil down to advice to surrender the illusion of division, which is indeed good advice.

There are problems with this approach too of course, as there are with any approach.

First, assigning the noun "God" to the single unified reality has the effect of creating more division, because creating conceptual division is after all the purpose of nouns. And so for example the statement "I love God" presumes that "I" is one thing and "God" is another thing, and loving God is suggested as a method of bridging a a gap which doesn't actually exist anywhere but in our thought drenched imaginations. But what does exist is the illusion of division, and love is useful in the attempt to heal that illusion.

Catholic teaching does seem to address this in the doctrine that God is ever present everywhere in all times and places. If one takes that literally what it would seem to mean is that there is actually no division between God and everything else, or in new age talk, "all is one". However, in my experience Catholics usually reject the notion of this unity of all things and instead cling pretty stubbornly to the idea that God is something separate from us and everything else. I don't share that view, but then like I said, I'm no longer Catholic and haven't been for 50 years.

And then of course there is the issue of clerical structure, which preserves itself by reinforcing a division between "Catholics" and "everybody else". There is some hope here though, as in our time the Catholic clerical structure appears to be determined to destroy itself by any and all means available.

In my view, it's a mistake to get sucked in to debating what approach to fundamental human problems is the best. Instead we might focus on trying to understand what the fundamental human situation actually is, and then each of us can try to address that by whatever methodology works best for us personally.

As example, in the East they often approach this very same issue of fantasy division in a different manner by attempting to learn how to better manage that which is generating the illusion of division, thought. Same exact problem, but a different way of approaching it.

Which method is better? Whatever works best for you. And of course we don't really have to chose. One can love one's neighbor and meditate too.

No Nazis to argue about this week in the Bannings thread. Dang, I feel cheated! :-) Sig Bile!

Correct. If there wasn't one, when you stopped thinking you'd cease to exist. — Tim3003

We are made of thought, so we do cease to exist when we stop thinking.

I am often accused by the mindfullness group leader whose group I go to of thinking too much. I think you are guilty of this too. I've learned that it is a mistake to believe thought holds all the answers. I suggest you read a book on Zen to learn more.. — Tim3003

I suggest you read my post above to see I already said what you are saying here, better than you just said it.

You are encouraged to break your identification with your ego, which drives your desire to change the world solely for your own benefit. — Tim3003

Not sure how the following comments relate to Buddhism, which I claim only very limited knowledge of. That disclaimed...

We might focus on the phrase "you are encouraged to break your identification with your ego". Such a conception seems to assume that "you" and "ego" are two different things, and one is supposed to manage the other in some manner.

As example, consider the phrase "my thoughts" or "I am thinking XYZ". All such phrases imply a division between what is sometimes called the observer and the observed.

It's my sense that all such perceived divisions are an illusion generated by the way thought works. If true, then procedures such as "breaking identification with ego" would seem to strengthen that illusion.

As I see it, thought works like this.

A single unified reality is observed, and then broken conceptually in to imaginary parts, ie. "things". These conceptual parts can then be rearranged in our minds, giving us a vision of not just how reality is, but how it might be. That is, this division process allows us to be creative, the source of brilliance in our species.

So far so good, but of course there's always a price tag involved in everything, right? The price tag is that this division process creates an experience of ourselves as being another "thing" which is seen to be divided from everything else. This generates fear, which in turn generates violence and most other human problems.

As I see it, "breaking identification with ego" is a process of entering the illusion of division and attempting to manage imaginary "things" within that illusion. This might be compared to dreaming, where we struggle with imaginary things that don't actually exist while we sleep.

It seems more direct to me to identify what is causing the illusion of division and then turn that off, or at least turn the volume down so that the illusion of division is less compelling. And, from my perspective, the source of the illusion of division is not this idea or that idea, but instead the medium that all ideas are made of, thought itself.

From this view "enlightenment" is not some glamorous elevated state (raw meat for the ego!) but rather an ongoing process of sensibly managing a mechanical process of the body, in this case, thinking. We already engage in such mundane routine management of all other mechanical processes of the body such as breathing, eating, sleeping, expelling waste, sex etc. But when it comes to another mechanical process of the body, thinking, we seem to always want to turn the job in to something esoteric, complicated, sophisticated, elusive, the realm of experts and so on.

The people who have taught us to consider this subject in such an odd manner are, omg, what a coincidence!, the people who make their livings as self appointed experts on such subjects. The business reality for them is that they can't make a living as experts unless the subject is complicated, supposedly beyond the reach of the average man. To be fair, most of these self appointed experts are people of good will who are just following blindly along in the footsteps of those who came before them, repeating what they've heard somebody else say.

Is managing this built in source of division illusion complicated? No, it's not. As example, if our body has accumulated more fat than is healthy the solution is simple, lose some weight. Not always easy for sure, but also not complicated.

The maladies that flourish in a habit of excessive thinking can be considered in the very same way. If we are serious about losing weight, in the body or the mind, simple mechanical solutions are available. If we aren't serious, then nothing will work.

The dirty little secret of "enlightenment" is that we make it complicated on purpose, as a way to hold it at a safe distance, so that we don't have to do the work involved. After all, dreaming about losing weight is a lot easier than cutting calories and exercising more.

Scientific rationality has more in common than one might think to obedience to religious authority. To be rational is to be in conformity with a grounding principle of rationality. This ground itself is generally not questioned by those who see truth in terms of rationality. Thus they don't recognize their obedience to this ground. In the age of Reason,the authority of religious faith was replaced by the authority of scientific rationality, via truth as correspondence. — Joshs

Bingo! Thanks for getting it and expressing it so concisely.

Why are you an atheist?