The least obtrusive and most reliable way to discover how other animals think is to observe them in their natural habitat, solving the problems nature throws at them. — Vera Mont

Which is how Lars Chittka figured out so much about The Mind of A Bee, his 2023 book about bee perception, cognition, and success. One of his observations is "Bees live a very fast life; they have about 3 weeks from leaving their wax cell as an adult to their likely death. They have to actually learn a lot--it isn't all pre-programmed in their genes. In order to do this, their neurons seem to be far more efficient than ours. And they have very capable sensory capacities -- a sense of smell, touch, taste, hearing, the ability to see different parts of the spectrum than we do, a directional capacity, and so on.

When they land on a flower--which they did because the flower met certain specs--they can immediately tell whether another bee has recently foraged there. If so, they fly off. They 'know' it takes a flower a few hours to refill its nectar dispensers.

It takes a lot of unobtrusive observation to discover these things, something bee scientists have been doing for decades.

But the suggestion that I and you don't exist is absurd. — Ludwig V

It isn't that 'I' or 'you' don't exist; rather, the identity that I have doesn't occupy a specific region of the brain called "the self" -- at least they haven't been able to find it, and they've been looking, What seems to be the case is that various facilities in the brain maintain our identity as a seemingly solid self.

If it's a fiction (which wouldn't be my choice of words) then it's a fairly solid fiction in a healthy, intact brain.

Why do you separate composing from typing? — Ludwig V

Several different areas of the brain are involved in composing this sentence. Obviously Broca's area, (language production) is involved; thought creation areas are involved; memory, etc. None of these areas control motor functions (like typing). So, once the sentence is ready, the motor centers are in charge of the typing.

Granted, the brain has some degree of plasticity, and an unused area can be recruited for some other purpose, but in adults, especially, this isn't a quick process. For example, were I to be blinded, the visual cortex would have a lot less to do. It might be recruited to process sensory input from the fingers in order to understand braille.

The idea that saying something is somehow unspooling what the brain has already done just pushes the issue back a stage into an infinite regress. — Ludwig V

There isn't "something else unspooling what the brain has done". The brain itself is managing the process of issuing a statement from inspiration to expression. Broca's area alone can't produce speech without coordinated effort by the motor system controlling tongue, lips, jaw, and breathing. Brain injuries and brain manipulation (during surgery) reveal that different areas of the brain control different aspects of our whole behavior.

I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. — Ludwig V

That's why I asked, "who are you?"

No matter what you say, what you think, what you do, it issues from the brain labeled "Ludwig V". What the neurological researcher is saying is that the "representation called the self of Ludwig V" is not doing the thinking, Almost everything the brain does is silent; we don't hear it thinking. We can't watch it retrieve a memory if a grade school teacher; we can't observe it coming up with a new idea. It feels like "we" are doing the thinking, but that's part of the fiction of the self.

Ludwig: Your brain is doing your thinking, it's just that "your thinking" happens in your brain below your radar.

Hey, show a little gratitude. The brain controls everything about you from your happy smile to your asshole and everything in between. You don't want to know everything your brain is doing. Yes it does your thinking, which you want to claim. Why don't you claim the task of keeping yourself upright when walking; blinking regularly to keep your eyeballs moist; keeping track of your temperature, blood pressure, heart beat, and breathing; waking up every morning (rather than not waking up); registering a patch of itchy skin; and hundreds of other services going on all the time?

You don't claim all these functions because you probably feel thinking is more noble and important than managing your bladder and rectal sphincters. Well, Ludwig, just wait until those bladder and rectal sphincters stop working, and you'll no longer consider their control beneath your dignity.

Thinking is just one of many things that we are not 'personally' responsible for.

I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. — Ludwig V

And who are you? Where did you come from? Who do you think you are?

So, some neurological researchers and thinkers propose that the 'self' -- you, I -- is a convenient fiction. The self is a creation of the brain, and we don't know how this is accomplished. As a fiction, the self is an extremely compelling story. But, you know, as I type this, it is somewhat clear to me that "I" am not composing these sentences. I'm reading them as they appear. The composer is a mental facility composed of various brain circuits. This facility outputs the text to the motor facility which causes my fingers to move in just the right way to produce this text.

"I" have edited the text; I decided to change some words here and there. But again, Neurological research shows that the decision to act is made BEFORE we are aware that we want to act. The "I" editor operates a couple of beats behind the brain circuits that actually made the decision.

That's OK, because most of the time the various parts of my brain are in accord on the importance of keeping "me", body and brain, together in one piece. Risk-reduction circuits in the brain try to keep "me" from getting beat up in The Philosophy Forum, and possibly killed (figuratively here, for real out on the street).

There is a lot "I" don't like about these loosey-goosey theories of self, consciousness, and all that, even if I grant them plausibility.

One could argue that the powers are less secret than they seemed to be back then. — Ludwig V

When it comes to our power of thought, it's still hidden. We don't know at this point how the brain thinks BECAUSE we do not have access to enough of the brain's processing to figure it out. Yes, we have fMRI, EEGs, direct measurement of neuron's firing, etc. But these just don't reveal in anything close to granular detail how the brain produces the self, consciousness, novels, symphonies, mechanical inventions, and so on and so forth. There are clues, but the case isn't solved by a long shot.

Will it be solved? I don't know. Depends on the stability of civilization over the next century or two. The brain's 90 billion neurons (give or take a half dozen) and their trillion trillion interconnections are literally beyond our reach at this point. C. elegans' brain (all 300 neurons) has been fully charted, but that's a far cry from even a rat's brain, let alone the extraordinary brain of Ludwig V.

If we don't figure out what ever neuron does, that's fine. We don't need to know. Our brains are not so reliable that they should have more knowledge than they can safely use.

No, mate. I don't participate in guiri things. — javi2541997

Google said 'guiri' means "uncouth foreign tourists, usually those with Northern European looks".

Well, of course thrifty Northern Europeans would have to go south to find tomatoes cheap enough to throw at each other. On the other hand, the Northern European Lutherans around here (the upper midwest of North America) aren't accustomed to engaging in public disorder, especially a public food fight. Are you sure it isn't Russians and Bulgarians who are the guiri?

The availability of fruit emoji's might be sufficient reason to move the whole TPF site to Discord! One could use the pineapple emoji to efficiently welcome new members, for instance (pineapples were once a symbol of welcoming, so I have heard). Banana and banana peel emoji's would have several uses. Sour grapes, kiwis, nuts, cherries, peaches, apricots, eggplant, raspberries (the Bronx cheer) rotten tomatoes, etc. Speaking of tomatoes, did you participate in the big Spanish tomato fight?

I just find Discord an ugly user interface with annoying operating features. I generally avoid social media sites like FaceBook et al, because I don't like having content pushed at me. I prefer to "pull" content by actively seeking content -- as one does with TPF or on-line newspapers. The drivel quotient at most social media sites is high, too.

All that said, sites can go down, and it can be a rude shock, especially if it lasts for more than a short (minutes, a couple of hours) time. The old PF site went down for several days once and it was quite distressing. It IS a good idea to have a location where news about the outage or outrage can be shared and digital antidepressants can be dispensed. .

Welcome to TPF; I don't like discord, either.

I deleted my account. Solved several issues with one click.

I used up my available chances to edit my account, so now I have to wait 3 days. Fine. 3 days, 3 years, whatever. Screw it.

What are we at risk from? — Amity

Brain worms, mostly. Robotic devils, viruses up the ying yang, subversives of every variety -- nothing too unusual. Dark mode is very dark, indeed -- an outcropping of the dark web.

Personally, I resent having to deal with yet another sign-in rigamarole. It wanted a password. Safari produced a non-memorable password, but doesn't seem to have put it anywhere. Now I'm stuck. Fuck.

Usually these sorts of discussions begin on the wrong foot by conflating communism with state capitalism under a ruling party. — sime

Exactly to the point.

Simply won't happen — Shawn

Hey, Shawn; I don't think it's going to happen either--not because the population is so satisfied, but because the capitalists are so entrenched and well fortified.

But it remains the case that in advanced capitalist economies, workers--as a group--have the knowledge to operate businesses without capitalists being in charge. Claiming that they are knowledgable enough to take over the economy isn't the same as claiming they will take over, or that they would do a splendid job of running society--we primates being the flawed species we are.

Advanced capitalist economies account for a minority of the world's population--think the G8: France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Canada, and Russia. China and India? Not quite there yet. So, most people are either in developing or undeveloped capitalist economies, where work is not so technically advanced.

Do those workers in less advanced economies, those societies, find communism appealing? I don't know.

I don't believe it is applicable towards the current state of affairs of many developed and developing countries. — Shawn

Why the hell not? Isn't one of the consequences of capitalism that the proletariat (working class) become increasingly proficient in the complex workplaces produced by advancing capitalism? As time goes on, the proletariat acquires more and more skills and knowledge until they are able to operate capitalist enterprises. We are there, comrade.

Take any of the major tech giants: they run on code. Who produces the code? Their workers. Really? Yes! Workers have been learning how to code in college and other levels of education, and also acquiring the mathematics, statistics, marketing knowledge, and so forth they need to produce reliable effective code for all sorts of operations. The (now 'ancient') COBOL programs that are still running some critical systems were not written by God on Mount Sinai. They were written by working mortals who learned how to write Cobol back in the 1960s. ***

True enough, workers are kept out of the executive suites on the upper floors of the skyscraper where the execs make the big decisions -- like selling Twitter to Elon Musk. Though, workers can get in the way of such decisions, as happened in the case of the AI company a few years ago.

Across all industries, workers carry out a vast array of complex operations resulting in the robust profitability of the companies in which they work.

The proletariat--workers--could, were they properly organized by communist organizers (another group of highly skilled workers) take over the firms in which they work. Would the stockholders take that sitting down? Certainly not! They would be on their well-shod feet shaking their feeble fists in the air. Stockholders hate it when communists take over, because they end up having to become workers like everybody else -- their wealth having disappeared. Such a comedown. No more penthouses. No more mansions in France. No more chauffeured travel around town. No more $1000 meals. It's just tragic.

***

By the way, COBOL was invented by Grace Brewster Hopper in 1959. Among other things she had a PhD in Mathematics from Yale. A guided-missile destroyer, USS Hopper, was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC, as was the Nvidia Superchip "Grace Hopper". During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor.

The world wa very grateful for COBOL.

Emma Goldman, the famous early 20th Century anarchist allegedly said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution," As is often the case for famous quotes, there is no record of Goldman ever having said that. However, on one occasion she had been dancing with great enthusiasm when this brat (a cousin of Alexander Berkman) told her it was unbecoming for her to be dancing.

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal,
for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice,
should demand the denial of life and joy.

My questions to you:

How many people see 'communism' as a beautiful ideal?
How many think that 'communism' will bring release and freedom from conventions and prejudice?
(How many even approve of abandonment of convention and prejudice?)
How many people look to 'communism' as an affirmation of life and joy?

STATING one's ideals is not the same as acting on them, and is not the same as having one's stated ideals become reality. The realization of one's often stated ideals could be the worst possible outcome.

Among the socialists and communists I have known (not a very large number), a minority seemed to find joy in their missionary labor. I was closer to being a drive-by communist than an ardent activist. I was supportive, but the idea of militant activity in support of communism wasn't (isn't) very attractive.

With the above said, I want to ask, to whom would communism appeal towards, nowadays? — Shawn

Are there no oppressed masses yearning to be free? No exploited-to-exhaustion workers? No lumpen proles? Where's the alienation, the anomie, the despair?

the United States is more cosmopolitan than ever. — Shawn

Communism is an obscene perversity wherever Capitalism is the dominant ideology and economic system.

Our cosmopolitan power elite have done (and do) a pretty good job of managing the public's perception of reality. (It's not a conspiracy, it's a modus operandi.) Nothing new in that. It isn't that 'the people' have not heard of the gross disparities in wealth between the 1% and the 99%; it isn't that a lot of our work is boring and unsatisfying; it isn't that everyone has enough food, clothing, shelter, and financial security (many do, many don't). It isn't that nobody has noticed the life as we know it sucks.

What is the case is that 'the people', the 99%, have little access to the levers of power by which significant changes can be made in government and the economy. Yes, I know that The People can vote, and I know that everyone can exercise economic choices to maximize their wellbeing. Except that voting in a rigged system is futile, and exercising economic choice over scraps from the master's table doesn't amount to much.

The typical American has a standard of living that is quite similar to his and her neighbors. That's important, because people are much more disturbed by small inequalities in their close social group than they are with gross inequalities among people that are socially distant.

Given that a large share of the population believe that they live in a free society with abundant opportunity to become wealthy and financially secure, they are pretty happy.

And I am reasonably happy too, at this point in my life. I'm not in the workforce, and I haven't forgotten how wretched work can be. I still think socialism is better than capitalism, but I understand that it is not within reach. I still think that an egalitarian society is better than a hierarchy run by oligarchs, but the oligarchs have a tight grip on power. I still think that the way we live--our civil society such as it is, our economy, our way of being in the world as a technological society--is unsustainable and that we will crash and burn--hopefully only figuratively and not literally. Not just the US, but the whole world.

What should the EU do when Trump wins the next election?

Have you no highly skilled assassins? Have you no advanced voting machine hackers? Have you no experts at insidious anti-Trump propaganda? Have you no skilled spies, infiltrators, and manipulators? Have you no personal-sized warhead guided missiles? Have you no war ships to mine our harbors in protest? Could you not seize control of Tesla's navigation systems to direct Elon's cars to attack Trump wherever he is? Ram, blow up, whatever?

Or is the EU just a bunch of feckless liberals with a sickly inability to use force?

Have you no balls?

Kant asked, "What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?" — BC

What are your answers? — Athena

At the risk of foot-in-mouth-disease...

a) the world is understandable.
b) our sensory information is reasonably reliable
c) BUT we are perfectly capable of ignoring reality
d) AND we often believe our own bullshit over the facts of the matter

e) what we OUGHT to do is often clear enough
f) BUT that doesn't mean we want to do it or will do it
g) BECAUSE we are neurotic semi-evolved primates and not divine beings

h) we can hope that we will be sensible
i) we can hope we won't be disappointed too often in our hope for sensibility

Conclusion: It's not looking good for us.

My knowledge of Kant is from snippets I've read elsewhere. His work IS, however, on my list of things I would have read had I been born in an alternate universe.

His anchorage in Königsberg is, perhaps surprising for a seminal intellectual of the time. Some people certainly traveled around at that time, thinking of composers like Haydn or Mozart. Napoleon covered a lot of territory. On the other hand, there is Blake's "To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour". A quick look at his bio in Wikipedia showed that he published a paper showing how the gravity of the moon slowed the rotation of the earth and eventually became tidally locked. He also explained that the great Lisbon earthquake was caused by caverns of hot gases. Not the case, but at least it's a theory based in nature rather than theology. Plate tectonics weren't discovered until the 20th century.

I'm not a big fan of traveling, though I have been to Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C.,San Francisco, Denver, and the Grand Canyon; East Africa, England, the Netherlands, and--high point of anyone's travels--Winnipeg, Manitoba. What can compare to Winnipeg? Well, it's colder than Minneapolis, but otherwise not much different. Probably won't make it to Omaha, Cleveland, or Buffalo.

How about you? Traveled much?

We all lose a certain number of brain cells every day, about 1 cell every second. Tick, tick tick. Since yesterday at this time you have lost 86,400 brain cells. Between the ages of 18 and 91, we lose around 9% of our brains.

A 91 year old may not display many deficits resulting from that missing 9%. On the other hand, a 35 year old with severe brain injury may have lost so many brain cells that he or she no longer recognizes a spouse, children, their surroundings, or self.

Does the person who has lost his or her identity still have one? Does it matter if everyone else knows who this person's identity is, but the subject does not? If I don't know who I am, what good does it do me if there are a million people who know my identity? No good at all!

Our identity is as secure as the structure of our brain. Brain disease, traumatic brain injury, and stroke can wipe out our identity, never to return,

A neurosurgeon, poking around in your brain, could make a bad slice here or there and you would not be present in the recovery room after surgery. Your body would, your brain would, and but for those unfortunately severed connections you would be there too.

The upshot for me is that our identities are quite perishable.

Probably the worst sermon topic for any preacher, priest, or pastor is what they have to deal with on Trinity Sunday. Explaining the Trinity, and why/if/how it is important to following Jesus is damned hard, if not nigh unto impossible. It's worse than the Immaculate Conception the Virgin birth, miracles in the wine cellar, and so on.

Suppose you somehow became convinced that Christianity is false. Suppose you came to believe that Jesus was just a man. — Art48

Been there, done that.

Except that I don't consider Christianity "false". There are no "true" religions so there can't be any "false" ones. Religions begin; grow and flourish because they satisfy the needs of their members; increase in complexity; continue on for a long time; or begin to fail and may go extinct. As far as I know, nobody is making sacrifices to Jupiter or praying to Zeus. Competition is a factor, as is outright suppression. Christianity both competed and suppressed.

Jesus was a man. Unfortunately, his biography was a highly partisan project. There weren't any impartial inquiries into his activities and ideas. I believe Jesus was an itinerant preacher who attracted a following. He had some very good ideas which remain worthwhile.

It's a lot easier to put up with this (probably) very scruffy, (quite possibly difficult) man, than his latter day followers, and the 2000 year accretion of dogma.

4. None of the above. I would do something else. — Art48

I first did what a lot of Christians have done -- I absented myself from the church. Later on I developed more specific objections to Christian belief and practice (and the beliefs and practices of the other two received religions).

I may believe in God (some days yes, some days no) but in any case, I'm not an atheist. Atheists seem to feel their non-belief is some sort of great accomplishment. It's not.

One way to avoid Covid is to shun other people, who are nothing but hell, according to J. P. Sartre. Fuck Sartre.

Kant asked, "What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?"

There are clear positive answers to the first two questions, which we can at least hope is the case.

Very interesting. I first heard about the EUB when I was a freshman at Winona State. The 'house parents' of the Wesley Foundation house were an EUB couple, one of them a local EUB pastor. I had never been alerted to the schismatic parentage of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Once again I must ask the staff, "Why was I not informed?"

Protestants do more splitting than an atom smasher, which, I think, keeps them strong and healthy, at least until they grievances all cool off. Everybody leaves the schism refreshed and energized. In time they merge with some similar group and after an appropriately long union, split again. The United Methodist Church is in the process of splitting over gay clergy, gay marriage, and all that.

No LSD in my bucket.

Per my favorite New York Jew, Woody Allen: "I'm not afraid of dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens."

I'm 78; I scheduled hip replacement surgery (3 months hence), and I hope to get at least five years of use out of it. My siblings are all in the 80s and are mostly doing well, except a brother who has metastatic prostate cancer and likely won't be with us much longer. I had a cancer removed from my throat almost 5 years ago and there is no sign of recurrence. My skin seems cancer prone. Sunbathing on gay nude beaches can lead to AIDS; that could have been me. It could still lead to melanoma. I take a statin, a BP med, an antidepressant, and drops for glaucoma.

There are a lot of problems I don't have, and I feel physically healthy, apart from joint pain.

I've been happy and content, more or less, since 2012, I have gotten better at avoiding sturm and drang. I can certainly get torqued out, but that doesn't happen so often now. I don't get around much any more, so run into few high drama situations with other people. A lot of crap has been flushed down the river that runs through it.

I have not done everything I want to do. I have not seen Paris, Berlin, or Rome. But then, I haven't seen Omaha, Cleveland, or Detroit either. On the other hand, I've seen London, Amsterdam, Nairobi, Kampala, Duluth, Des Moines, and Denver. There are many unknown topics I want to learn about, at least to some extent. I'll stumble onto those in due time. I wanted to be suave, sophisticated, and multilingual. That boat left the dock in so many ways so long ago.

I never ran a marathon, but I did do 2 century rides on my bike (100 miles per day). I never got over my fear of heights (no rock climbing, ferris wheel rides, or roller coaster nightmares, thank you). Spiders and centipedes bother me much less than they used to. I haven't seen a snake in a long time, so don't know how I feel about them.

I came out and dove into gay life at about the right time. That was a good thing. I probably drank too much and smoked too many cigarettes, but it was all worth while. I found a lot of great sex and long-lasting love. I had a long fling with socialism, which is over. The group I belonged to died a merciful death. I planted some successful gardens, and several that were failures. The raspberry patch has turned malevolent and threatens to engulf the back yard.

The genre of "gospel" music is quite large and a lot of it is very singable for otherwise unskilled congregations. "Power in the Blood" is a good example. The Methodist Church I grew up in didn't use much of this genre -- it stuck to mainline hymns like "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing".

"Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" is a hymn written by the pastor and hymnodist Robert Robinson, who penned the words in the year 1758 at the age of 22. It was set to a number of tunes, including shape-note tunes which were generally sung at a fast clip, a cappella. Here is a Primitive Baptist congregation a cappella performance to its most familiar tune.

"Sacred Harp" was a popular late 18th/19th century style of singing for congregations without the wherewithal (or desire?) for instruments. It was sung a cappella in a manner that sounds harsh to our ears. Myself, I'm a church music snob and prefer high-church music to low-church Primitive Baptist styles. Here's an example:

On the other hand, this is more distinctive that the Mormon Tabernacle Cheese Press in Salt Lake City whose mass choir size and big organ crushes everything into a very similar but pleasant sound.

The title of the thread is actually a slogan from the Soviet Union. — Shawn

Proof of the difficulty of talking about the happiness of the masses.

Certainly the USSR had a properly functioning social fabric. They wouldn't have been able to survive Stalin's and Hitler's pathological programs if they hadn't had a tough social fabric. Social fabric, however, isn't the same as happiness.

I'm not suggesting that nobody in the USSR was happy, or that unhappiness was the daily lot of soviet citizens. It just seems like that the USSR presented significant barriers to individual happiness, and the collective joy and happiness of the people was more a Potemkin village than a reality.

I'm not suggesting that everybody in the USA is happy, or that unhappiness is a rarity here. Here (USA) barriers to individual happiness are erected by private agencies rather than public ones: employers, retail companies, advertising companies (looking at you, Edward Bernays), political parties, churches (you're going to hell IF...). real estate developers, banks, and so on.

In the US, the collective joy and happiness of the people is a Disneyland rather than a Potemkin village.

I don't think it is difficult for the basic human to feel contented and happy. It seems to be the case that people living in small, pre-industrial, at least somewhat isolated cultures achieve contentment and happiness with much less effort than we do in big, industrial, integrated, striving, rat race cultures.

Dropping out (as in "“Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out,” encapsulated the spirit of a generation seeking enlightenment, freedom, and a break from societal norms. The phrase was first uttered by Leary during the Human Be-in on January 14, 1967, a pivotal moment at the peak of the Summer of Love) is one way of attempting happiness and contentment in this society.

I didn't turn on with LSD, but I did tune in and drop out intermittently, between jobs to maintain a viable if minimal budget. (Homeless encampments are nobody's idea of happiness.) This strategy worked pretty well because I was readily employable and had lots of interests to pursue when I wasn't wage slaving.

I could have done better (been happier more often) had I planned this out more carefully. I wasted a lot of time working out this strategy, and maintaining delusions of professional social service occupations.

Shawn: Are you happy and contented?

I don't know how to think about "The Happiness of All Mankind", all 8 billion individuals -- one by one or collectively.

Only individuals can experience happiness, and it's a subjective experience. Even commies can only pursue happiness one prole at a time. The way I read it, Jefferson's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (whatever he was thinking of at the time) is a one-by-one project. MAYBE one can organize a society so that it is easier to have life, liberty, and happiness, but it will still be the individual's initiative that gets the job done.

Universal happiness, universal peace, universal fairness, etc. sound nice until one begins thinking about the absurd amount of social engineering it would take to achieve a fair, just peace that would satisfy every one of the 8 billion beneficiaries.

Too pessimistic? BC is short for Bitter Crank, after all. People who live in a society which has a certain amount of "fluidity" -- where people can fairly easily select circumstances that contribute to their happiness -- have a better chance of happiness than people can achieve in a rigid, dogmatic society like Taliban-plagued Afghanistan.

What are we to make of this? — Gregory

What I make of it is that eventually the dogma becomes crushingly heavy and squeezes the life out of whatever liberation a religious movement might have offered in its beginning. That's just me. Hundreds of millions of believers find dogma quite tolerable, or find ways of dealing with it.

Jesus without dogma was apparently an itinerate Jewish preacher who attracted a following. In the hands of the church he later became Christ; the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; miracle worker; healer; the great judge.

For what it's worth, the Jesus Project discarded much of what is attributed to Jesus. I gather they saw in many of his sayings later dogma that was back dated into his mouth or just not convincing.

The program of the church (from the New Testament on down to summer camp) is compelling enough, especially if it was not rammed down ones throat. I found it pleasant enough, even compelling at times, for many years.

I have no idea what you mean by "The Linguistic Quantum World" but the phrase does trip a switch in my head, maybe in the medulla oblongata.

When we 'drill down' from large objects to the sub-atomic, we end up in the spooky quantum world, about which I know nothing. I have heard it's weird. Something sort of vaguely kind of similar happens when we drill down from "apparent reality", the level where 'what is IS and what is not IS NOT", where my individual self is clearly me, where reality is as solid as bedrock, to your linguistic quantum world. There perception, belief, self, reality, meaning, and so on become slippery, We learn from brain science that our "self" is a fantasy created by the brain. Perceptions are often misleading; Reality is a bit rubbery; beliefs play an outsized role, and so on.

At this "quantum level" belief can seem to be reality. We seem to make our own world. It's all kind of spooky, a boggy swamp.

Were one to get stuck in this mire, one might be admitted to a psych ward, at least for observation and maybe for a prolonged stay.

Fortunately for most of us, and I'm looking at you, Noble Dust, we awake with a startled jerk from these reveries and it's back to what we call "the real world". The ground is solid again, the self isn't some hoax perpetrated by a batch of gray matter in our skulls, and god is in his heaven and all is right with the world, so to speak.

BUT such reveries can leave a lingering doubt about just how substantial the real world is. God damn it, I just spilled coffee all over my keyboard!!! Son of a bitch, the bread in the toaster just caught fire. Fuck! I just missed the bus, I'll miss the concert for which I paid $150, and there are no refunds. And it's starting to rain and my fancy leather shoes are getting wet!

Reality intervenes. The soaked keyboard really won't work. The toaster really is shot. Missed buses have real consequences. Rain can really ruin fancy shoes. Finding a hundred dollars isn't a good reality intervention. Losing a hundred dollars is.

Belief is reality — Noble Dust

It's a good thing and a bad thing that "belief is reality" is false, to the extent that your reality conflicts with mine.

Beliefs certainly exist -- that is a piece of reality but not the same thing as reality.

How about "believing is seeing"? Some times we do not see reality because we do not believe that it is real; and visa versa, we see the non-existent because we believe it exists. Some see god's purposes in every bird song and car crash.

Sheol looks a lot like the oil deposits under the Middle East. They were ahead of their time.

they are all varieties of fanfiction of course — schopenhauer1

At this point, it's like we are just interpreting poor rules made up by a Dungeon and Dragons designer on a poorly thought new early edition... — schopenhauer1

It's the Great Apostolic Blunder Machine***, made of patches, work arounds, bridges to nowhere, arcana, fog machines, heresies even to the heretics, schisms and scandals, drama, mysterious goings on, holy holy holy, books piled upon books, rituals in the dark, all the way to bright shiny aluminum Christmas trees and chocolate bunnies. WTF

Why would anyone bother with it? The whole thing, though, has been powerfully inspirational to any number of very highly motivated preachers who were determined to convince us pagans that THIS IS THE TRUTH. Believe it, or else! Jews, Christians and Moslems, have gotten roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of the people to more or less believe it.

Because the world is an unsatisfactory place (referencing the title of this thread, "Is the real world fair and just?" -- clearly not) there is religion, and...

The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

-Uncle Karl-

There is a reason why religion is the opium of the people, and--dragging in chemical dependency--why giving people opium for 2000 years is a bad policy.

What we must do is change the heartless, oppressive, world. There--just like that. Simple, right? Just fix the world and people won't need religion. Good luck on that, he says to himself.

***The title of an unpopular book by John Fry.

Whatever we are doing, thank heavens it works.

:naughty:

I've liked David Sedaris ever since I heard his story about being a Christmas elf at Macy's, which includes his rendition of "I'd love to be an Oscar Meyer Wiener" in the style of Billy Holliday. I used to like George Carlin, and some of his bits really are good -- his "just happens to be" piece is funny and on target. I tend to avoid him now (he being dead and all).

The idea of a god who is not all powerful, who sacrificed himself to become Jesus, who in turn was sacrificed as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, belongs to a respectable theologian whose work I read and whose book title and name I can't remember.

I do like to write with some levity and in a jokey way. I'm not trying to make my "thought" more accessible -- I'm expressing an idea which includes the advisory that we should not take all this stuff too seriously.

I don't know whether I believe in god -- omnipotent, hairy thunderer, or cosmic muffin -- or not. Most years not, some days yes. The family and institutional programming we receive early on is generally hard to overwrite. So, I used to like to read theology (a limited sample, anyway, mostly very liberal stuff). I haven't read any for maybe 20 years. Is there a Theology Anonymous group? I could get a 20 year pin.

@Schopenhauer1 I was awakened in the middle of last night by a train of thought passing near my bed on a rarely used track.

My preferred claim for the nature of God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.

There is another contrary claim about God that deletes the "omni" prefixes, leaving God with only some power, some knowledge, and some, limited, presence. This God is still a creator, but not the manager of the expanding universe. This God is profoundly loving, but doesn't have perpetual patience and isn't above getting very angry with us paragons of animals, us crowns of creation, and smiting us when He just can't stand us any longer. The ultimate expression of this very loving God is that He became man in Christ. God ceased being God.

This theogony hasn't been very popular, because among other things, if God isn't God anymore, Who is in charge and to Whom have we been praying to for the last 2000 years? What about the Holy Ghost? Is the Holy Ghost the ghost of God, hovers over the world?

So, God didn't create a perfect world. Apparently, it wasn't clear to God that all the things that could go haywire in creation definitely would, and they definitely have. We paragons of animals, we crowns of creation don't perform all that well, either. From the POV of God we probably come off as ungrateful hateful fbastards. Not only do we suffer, we are the authors of a lot of our own suffering. God probably didn't foresee the unbridled growth of cancer cells which causes suffering, and evidently didn't see any problem with running the urethra through the prostate which eventually swells up and causes all sorts of annoying problems. That's for men. For women he unwisely made the urethra so short they get UTIs easily causing more suffering.

At least God foresaw the futility of plants and animals that reproduce but don't die. The world would have long ago suffocated itself under the weight of it all. So death and rot was absolutely necessary. Good call on that one, God! Maybe death could have operated differently -- like after 50, 60, 70, or 80 years--whatever--we would just drop dead. Splat! Healthy up to end, then dead. God decided to let nature, such as it is, keep things under control over the long run. Nature has, and--paragons of animals take note--will keep things under control. If fossil fuel companies heat the planet up too much, then one of the species that will be weeded out will be ourselves, and many others too. Nature plays a very long game and our esteemed species becoming extinct is conveniently doable! God has almost certainly rethought the advisability of granting great intelligence to primates.

Eventually this train of thought moved on, out of sight and earshot.

How could we appreciate health without sickness or happiness without suffering ? Justice without injustice etc … — kindred

We experience the good things in life in parallel with the bad things, not in a sequence of contrasts. The good and bad things come and go in our lives, sometimes at the same moment. One day we are robbed, but we enjoy robust health. One day we win $1000 at the casino but a week later we feel very depressed. One day we we feel very happy but the killing in Gaza goes on. One day we are diagnosed with cancer, and two weeks later our body is sliced open, causing great pain. One month later we feel great, lose $1000 buy lottery tickets, our cancer is cured, the cat runs away, and we discover our daughter is turning tricks.

We don't need bad thing to experience good things, and conversely, we don't need the good things to experience bad things. Both of them "just are". There is gladness, good health, and joy. and there is depression, sickness, and misery.

When I am in great pain, how good I felt a week ago doesn't help. When I feel on top of the world, last month's sadness doesn't hurt me.

Humans and God share common traits — MoK

We can however have access to our past experiences, so-called flashbacks. — MoK

These statements suggests that your concept of God is too small. A being who is present in all times--past, present, and future; and in all places, knows all, and has unlimited power can't be contemplated using humanoid traits, like thrift or duty, or by comparing God's omniscience to our measly flashbacks.

An altogether unlimited God presents problems. We ask, "Well, why didn't God create a world without suffering? Or, why didn't God make people who were good from the start and stayed that way? And so on. We look at this unlimited being from our extraordinarily limited being's perspectives, and think we see God's mistakes. Highly presumptuous.

Look, I don't know any more about God than anybody else. It's just that if we want to CLAIM that god is unlimited, then we have to accept that we will never understand such a being, will never understand the Divine plan of Salvation, or anything else about God. We don't have to reject the existence of this unlimited God, but our severe limitations in understanding God put the ball back in our court.

In other words, our problems are our problems.

sub specie aeternitatis — boundless

I like to drop in a Latin phrase every now and then too, but it's helpful to provide a translation or English definition, especially when one's Latin gem is NOT common knowledge (like et cetera).

Thomas Nagel says "If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair."

Is that what you meant? Were you being ironic? Just guessing, probably not.

I find some amusement in the length this thread has reached, given what seems so obvious to me, that life is definitely, obviously, overwhelmingly NOT fair and just. Maybe we who are here to comment are the lucky beneficiaries of life's unfairness and injustice?

To make sure that the outcome of life is proper. — MoK

What do you mean, "proper"?

I think God cannot create humans in one instant since God cannot cheat life. So we have to get through, evolve, and grow. — MoK

So, according to some theologians, God is omnipresent, and omni everything else--meaning that God is aware of and present in everything that happens in creation. So, when the first molecules formed the first cell, God is there and is present and is aware of the first cell and the death of the last cell, and everything in between. Time, as creation experiences it, is not a thing God experiences, God being eternal.

God, being eternal and all-powerful after all, gets to do that.

Seems like the most powerful and all knowing thing would have no need for plans or need to be “happy or satisfied” that they are carried out or not. It all seems conveniently anthropocentric :chin: — schopenhauer1

How could God NOT be anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, anthropic in all ways, since God is OUR creation? Even if we ditch the hairy thunderer in the sky and go for the elevated omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent all-loving God (which is some sort of wishful thinking on our part) God is still ours.

Even if a divinity actually exists. we evolved apes don't have anything remotely close to direct access to this divinity. We have to "make it up", which we have done several times over.