empathy is nothing more than a tool to project your own ego on others — Gus Lamarch

Empathy/love/compassion is to understand and value something beyond the ego. It is spiritual maturity.

There needs to be a distinction here between thought and the concepts and images produced by thought. Thought is the energy of the mind. The mind has being because it is alive. The intellectual products of thought are abstractions and models of reality, they are not all of what thought is.

I don't think one can flatly state that God is an invention of the mind or a mere thinking process. This is a proclamation that needs to be justified.

The Deity is a formation of thought, it is not a concrete substance. — JerseyFlight

Thought is being 'I think, therefore I am'. Being is God. The power of thought is God, in our minds. When the mind thinks it moves through God as a fish moves through the sea.

Hitler brought himself into power through the zealous actions of a minority. — JerseyFlight

It was the banks that brought him to power. https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/hitlers-bankers-finally-face-up-to-their-sorry-past-26400645.html

I do it because ideology is dangerous, it destroys lives and sabotages democratic freedom, paving the way to irreparable systems of violence. — JerseyFlight

Like state atheism?

The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism".[50][51] It sought to make religion disappear by various means.[52][53]

Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed (a much greater number was subjected to persecution)

More than 200 clerics of various faiths were imprisoned, others were forced to seek work in either industry or agriculture, and some were executed or starved to death.

a government-sanctioned demolition work crew drove a bulldozer over two Chinese Christians who protested the demolition of their church by refusing to step aside

Human Rights Overview reported in 2004 that North Korea remains one of the most repressive governments, with isolation and disregard for international law making monitoring almost impossible.[134] After 1,500 churches were destroyed during the rule of Kim Il Sung from 1948 to 1994,

The Mongol leader at that time was Khorloogiin Choibalsan, a follower of Joseph Stalin, who emulated many of the policies that Stalin had previously implemented in the Soviet Union. The purge virtually succeeded in eliminating Lamaism and cost an estimated thirty to thirty-five thousand lives.

On June 14, 1926, President Calles enacted anticlerical legislation known formally as The Law Reforming the Penal Code and unofficially as the Calles Law.[146] His anti-Catholic actions included outlawing religious orders, depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties, including their right to a trial by jury

the Mexican government persecuted the clergy, killing suspected Cristeros and supporters and often retaliating against innocent individuals.[151] On May 28, 1926, Calles was awarded a medal of merit from the head of Mexico's Scottish rite of Freemasonry for his actions against the Catholics

Calles' insistence on a complete state monopoly on education, suppressing all Catholic education and introducing "socialist" education in its place: "We must enter and take possession of the mind of childhood, the mind of youth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism

The People's Republic of Albania had an objective for the eventual elimination of all religion in Albania with the goal of creating an atheist nation, which it declared it had achieved in 1967. In 1976, Albania implemented a constitutional ban on religious activity and propaganda.[14] The government nationalised most property of religious institutions and used it for non-religious purposes, such as cultural centers for young people. Religious literature was banned. Many clergy and theists were tried, tortured, and executed. All foreign Roman Catholic clergy were expelled in 1946.[14][15] Albania was the only country that ever officially banned religion.

The Khmer Rouge attempted to eliminate Cambodia's cultural heritage, including its religions, particularly Theravada Buddhism.[18] Over the four years of Khmer Rouge rule, at least 1.5 million Cambodians perished. Of the sixty thousand Buddhist monks that previously existed, only three thousand survived the Cambodian genocide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antireligion

The amount of revolutionary research and progress in psychology, in the last 20 years alone, is breathtaking. — JerseyFlight

A great deal of psychology is a tautology; they have renamed and relabeled many elements of the psyche and bleached it of spiritual reality. What is the psyche? Ask a psychologist. I doubt that many of them care much so long as the tautological edifice is self sustaining. At least Peterson realizes it is not an abstraction.

1) The role that religion plays in poisoning life — JerseyFlight

What do you mean by this?

JerseyFlight — JerseyFlight

I think what he is saying - S. Weil says something similar - is that abstract intellectual cogitation will not resolve the issue. One must find something better.

"But is there any coherent alternative, given the self-evident horrors of existence? Can Being
itself, with its malarial mosquitoes, child soldiers and degenerative neurological diseases, truly
be justified?... I... don’t think it is possible to answer the question by thinking.
Thinking leads inexorably to the abyss." — JerseyFlight

I think this needs to be put in context. What does he mean by 'thinking'? Trying to think it through and come to some kind of conclusion or resolution? Perhaps he is right in this but it is a good thing to think and see that 'naive' thinking won't resolve the issue; there is no Eureka moment. He goes on the say-

thinking collapses in on itself. In such situations—in the depths—it’s noticing, not thinking, that does the trick. — JerseyFlight

So things can be resolved? When thinking ends, being begins. Being is a more exalted form of thought. You might be interested in Simone Weil's 'The need for roots' which deals with these issues.

how ever do you get out of this circle once you enter in? — JerseyFlight

If the intellect is to discern truth its only hope is if it is allied to consciousness.

The bottom line is that you are going to believe what you want to believe — JerseyFlight

I disagree. My beliefs are convictions not the fulfilment of unconscious desires. Of course you can say 'How do you know that if your desires are unconscious?' But you can refute anyone by positing unconscious motivations for what they are saying.

you have already admitted to the futility and bankruptcy of thought. — JerseyFlight

I would not say thought is futile. I'm saying abstract 'rationalizations' cannot answer realities that exist in the realm of consciousness. Religion is about awareness and intuition. Going the intellectual route is a poor choice when it comes to resolving these issues.

The purpose of philosophy is to teach us that the intellect cannot attain truth. — EnPassant

Here you have not transcended the presupposition of the criteria of radical skepticism. — JerseyFlight

My statement is slightly tongue-in-cheek. But it has truth in it; the intellect is labyrinthine. So is philosophy.

dp

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death — JerseyFlight

Looked him up on wiki. Honestly, he just takes the "immortality project" and runs with it. It is so easy to do this. You can take some psychoanalytic notion and fit the whole world into it. Like Freud's Oedipus and Electra complexes. You can easily build the whole world around them and make a convincing theory. Here goes-

Psychonalysis is an "immortality project" in the sense that the practitioner wants god like knowledge of all things and pretends to be able to map the human mind; unravel the greatest mysteries of the mind and thereby achieve immortality by way of god-like knowledge.

the thinker doesn't even realize, in the process of thinking thus, he has departed from reality to wander through an abstract aesthetic. — JerseyFlight

The purpose of philosophy is to teach us that the intellect cannot attain truth. Truth exists in the realm of consciousness. The a/theist's rationalizations are post hoc. The real issue is more subtle.

The motivation is a subconscious drive to prevent psychological pain. — JerseyFlight

Well, if that is what it is it has not worked very well. The human condition is steeped in pain and religion does not change that. But I am also wary of psychoanalytical definitions of religion. It is too easy to invent these theories and they come in all shapes an colours.

A great deal of creativity goes into probing the mechanism of action of a novel cellular protein...exploring the unknown. This is not base or primitive. This is merely a part of a constellation of human interests and activities. — Marco Colombini

Yes I agree but I am talking about science as knowledge not as a creative activity. Scientific and mathematical knowledge is primitive. By primitive I don't mean base or degraded, I mean rudimentary. Questions concerning consciousness go beyond the nuts-and-bolts of materialism.

While the purpose of science is to develop knowledge about reality, I think religion is better described as an effort to develop our relationship with reality. What confuses this issue is that religions often make claims about reality as part of the attempt to manage that relationship. — Hippyhead

Very often people argue about religion in terms of whether the mythology is 'true' or 'false'. That is like arguing whether a painting by Cezanne is 'true' or 'false'. Cezanne's painting is obviously not literally true because he does not represent things literally. Cezanne's truth is on a more subtle level. Likewise, religion is mythological because people need mythology. People need truth in a mythological form because myth is the oldest language of mankind, maybe older even than the spoken word. It is our first language.

Because myth is not literally true does not mean it contains no truth. It is a poetic image of the truth. It is also a practical context in which people can practice their faith. Truth is within religion. The outer myth is only a poetic image. (But religion is more than myth as it also makes direct claims about reality).

As evidence we might consider space, that is, the overwhelming vast majority of reality. There are no divisions in space. — Hippyhead

Yes, all is one. Consider the following. Let x^2 mean x squared. Now consider the squares;-
1^2 = 1
2^2 = 4
3^2 = 9
4^2 = 16 and so on. This squaring is an abstract, mental concept. Now draw a graph of x squared on a 2 dimensional sheet of paper. The graph will represent precisely the squares of real numbers. But how can this be? How can a mental concept be mapped onto space? The only way this can happen is if there is a natural affinity between mind and space. That is, mind and space must share the same nature. If they did not it would not be possible to map the squares onto a graph. There are many examples of how things on one level of reality can be mapped onto another level of reality. This is because nature is universal. The universe is an image of God's nature and God's nature is expressed on many different levels. But ultimately it is all one thing, as you say.

Point being, our attempts to define God would seem to be in rather substantial conflict with the vast majority of reality. All of our definitions presume that boundaries are real. Are they? — Hippyhead

But humans need simple definitions of God. They may not be ultimate but they are useful.

I think you are forgetting that established physics are nowhere near to explaining everything in and about our universe so using god to explain what is unknown is not a realistic explanation for his existence. — Leiton Baynes

I don't think god is simply invented to explain things. Belief is often based on intuition. Yes, people may use god to 'fill in the gaps' but even then they are not necessarily wrong because God really does move the planets. It is just that God's actions are more complex then we originally thought.

I see art, music, literature, and emotion as being soft, malleable, unreliable, and thus rather useless tools if one wants to know anything with any confidence. — Marco Colombini

The subtext here is that only 'provable' rudimentary truths are admissible; subjective things are open to debate, established science and mathematics are not. All that seems reasonable but the problem is provable, objective truths that can be agreed upon are rudimentary, primitive. They are almost useless.

Imagine a luxury ocean liner on a cruise. In the bowels of the ship you have the engineers tending to the engine and the basic running of the ship. But on the upper decks there is opera at night. This is an art exhibition. The passengers occupy themselves with discussions about higher things; art, philosophy, religion, creativity and so on.

Why would the people on the upper decks summon one of the engineers to comment on these things? Because he is an expert engineer and knows every nut and bolt of the engine? Why would this qualify him to make judgements on art and religion or music?

I'm not denigrating science or mathematics but in the modern age we have this fixation with the scientist because he knows weird stuff that intimidates regular folk. They are 'geniuses' and are held in awe. So we tend to think they are experts on all manner of things outside their area of expertise. But two minutes reflection will show that they are no more qualified in philosophical matters than anyone else. Indeed, there might be more truth in folk wisdom than there is in a library of science books.

In fact, scientists are often poor judges of matters concerning consciousness because they are scientists. This is because people can be 'hypnotized' or drunk on their own knowledge and expertise; they are blinded by it and are locked inside the consensus box. Very often it takes someone who is willing to think outside the box to break the spell. And 'spell' is the exact word here because academic excellence can cast a spell on the mind and prevent it from going outside the consensus. In this respect, scientists can often be very poor philosophers. How many times have you heard science writers parroting the consensus simply because it is the consensus rather than rigorously established science?

To assert that art, music and literature are higher in any way than science and mathematics is merely a personal opinion to which anyone is entitled to have or not to have. As to primitive, I think archeology would indicate that art preceded mathematics and thus is more primitive based on the depictions on the walls of caves. — Marco Colombini

When I say primitive I don't mean historically or culturally primitive, I mean they are rudimentary. Atoms and numbers are rudimentary compared to the more sophisticated realms of consciousness. They are the nuts and bolts of existence. The 'music' of reality is on a more evolved and sophisticated realm.

The hydrogen atom is a physical image of energy. It is not an ultimate physical substance because there is no ultimate physical substance. All physical objects are images of energy. Likewise with physical music, art and religion. They are images or metaphors of something else. The question I am asking is what do these metaphors/images represent? Art and religion are images of the contents of our consciousness. So what is the reality behind the image?

All human, physical life is an image of something else. Science is concerned with the invisible order behind the physical world. Religion is concerned with the invisible order behind the image that human life is. In this respect science and religion are both attempts to grasp the 'world beyond the world'.

It is important to see this because it's the psychological motivation behind our drive to prove their transcendence, and this motivation stops us from comprehending reality. — JerseyFlight

What, in your understanding, is this motivation?

I agree, these things do exist. You ask, what do they mean? This is a strange question, because you seem to be assuming some extra-dimension to which they correspond? — JerseyFlight

I am saying the reality of these things cannot be hammered into the limited confines of scientific knowledge. Science can not explain these things so we have to find a better way of coming to terms with them.

I think it was meant to be rhetorical. I mean, you are free to prove the existence of "higher things," if you can? I'm all ears. — JerseyFlight

There is no need to prove the reality of these things. Art is really there. So is music, religion, consciousness. The question is not whether these things are real, the question is 'what do they mean?'

Did you just assert the general existence of "higher things?" Well this is certainly proof of a strong, Primate imagination. — JerseyFlight

I'm not sure what your question is asking. I am asserting the reality of art, music, religion...
When I say primitive I am not referring to primates, I am referring to basic things. These are the things that lend themselves to 'proof'. Can you restate your question?

As I see it, science is concerned with primitive realities. Matter is primitive and so is much of mathematics. It is naive to think that the science of the primitive could answer questions concerning higher things: art, religion, consciousness, God, creativity, emotion, music, literature... these things are far beyond science. Trying to reduce these things to scientific 'proofs' is like trying to reduce oil painting to the chemistry of pigments or reduce music to an analysis of the sine wave.

It this respect it is unfair to ask for proof and unrealistic to try to limit knowledge to things that can be 'proved' because proof almost always concerns primitive things. If our world view is to be limited to provable things then our world view will be wrong because much of reality cannot be proved in this primitive way (if you have a thought can you prove you had it? can someone prove you did not have it? Thought is the source of much of the world we live in and is, in many respects, more potent than physical energy or matter)

The question about God being an explanation comes down to the opinion that 'God' is the most convincing explanation for the world.

Arguing about the reality of God within the context of religion is fraught with all kinds of complications. Better to argue in terms of God as the source of the world and not complicate it with particular religious viewpoints.

Anyone willing to help me reason through this issue? — Gregory

I would be hard pressed to describe anything that is demonstrably anti mathematical.

I’m not saying the preexistence of spirits is impossible I’m saying we don’t nearly have enough evidence to assume it — khaled

Yes, I understand that. I'm just putting forward an observation that needs to be answered.

none of what you are sending requires the existence of spirits. It could still be explained in terms of genetics and nurture. I don’t know why you think those two aren’t enough. — khaled

But can it be explained in terms of genetics and nurture? It hasn't been so the question of preexistence of our spirits is still open.

Doesn’t take long to develop at all you already have qualities that make you distinct from birth. — khaled

I have known children who have almost adult characters from an early age. Some children have a level of maturity that normally takes decades to arrive at.

Tell me exactly what you mean by “character” and why you think it takes so long to develop. I don’t know what young Mozart was like so I don’t know what you think is so special about him that the only way to explain it is by saying he is some kind of “old soul” or something — khaled

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/character

Mozart was a child genius. https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/pictures/composer/classical-musics-child-prodigies/mozart-child/

I believe there are two fundamental types of exist in our universe. That of objects with shape and location such as quarks and of properties of these objects which is not their shape/location that govern their behavior in relation to other objects. — Francis

The properties of a sub atomic particle are the particle; they are its nature. The distinction is artificial.

Mind-brain (or mind-body) is a feedback loop. One affects the other.

The second major difference between evolution of the mind and evolution of purely physical features of an organism is the mind itself. Not only is there a change in the structure of the matter in the body – as would happen in the evolution of any new feature – there is another aspect of reality that is altered along with the structure of the matter in the organism. In the Property-Dualist Interactionist model which I subscribe to we call this other aspect of reality a non-physical property. — Francis

Consciousness is of the mind (the five senses are a physical imitation of the mind's consciousness). Brain development allows more of the mind to participate in physical reality. As the brain evolves it enables more of the mind to become manifest in a physical context.

Some people will just be born with the right genes for the right environment to be considered geniuses. There is no need for past lives or spirits to explain that. I tend to favor the metaphysics that “creates” the fewest things and makes sense. You don’t need spirits to explain differences in intelligence and performance so I don’t believe in them. — khaled

It takes decades to develop character and some children are already born with highly developed characters - bad and good...

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” ~ Keats

"Mathematics is beautiful. If it is not, nothing is beautiful" ~ Paul Erdős

I think beauty is beyond biology but biological forms can be a context for beauty.

And this means? — schopenhauer1

It lends credibility to the idea that our spirits exist before we are born. It is clear that many children have highly developed characters at a very early age. This cannot easily be explained by physical science.

It seems that a theory of reincarnation that's based on the existence of verifiable memories of past lives is unfalsifiable, ergo isn't a scientific theory. — TheMadFool

Even unscientific theories can be true. Also, if a person remembers a past life how can we be sure it is their past life? It may be someone else's life they are remembering.

There is no you prior to your birth that could have been something else. — schopenhauer1

Are you sure about this? Many children are born highly developed - Mozart, Picasso, child geniuses etc.

So material cause thus becomes some bare notion of contingency or accident or fluctuation. It is whatever is logically complementary to formal cause. That leads to a Peircean ontology of constraints on contingency. Matter arises from action being given a direction. — apokrisis

As I understand it, the laws of nature are not separate from nature or imposed on nature from outside. Things behave as they do because it is their nature to behave that way. There is only nature, not nature and laws of nature. Matter is what it is because non material energy condensed in a particular way. The Fine Tuning Argument says that energy condensed in a very precise way and as a result the creative potential of matter was optimized. The combinatorial possibilities of matter are immense (Lego!) and this is because of the way energy condensed into matter. If things happened in a different way, matter might just be a blob without much creative potential.

I was simply saying above that we don't fully know what matter is. You say it's energy. But do you know what energy is? How close is the relationship between energy and matter? When energy becomes matter, is there true change or simply a rearrangement or condensation or something? This is what I'm interested in. I am not sure philosophy really has an answer — Gregory

Suppose you have a lump of bronze and you make a statue of an eagle from it. Nothing of substance has been added. Only form has been created - the form of an eagle. When energy condenses into matter only material form is created, nothing of substance is added.

What is energy? If energy is also contingent then there must be a deeper underlying 'energy' upon which energy is contingent. But it's not 'turtles all the way down', there must be a fundamental substance.