But the question is whether the supposed divinity of a text can even in principle survive the activity of interpretation — tim wood

Your question is valid. The Divine speaks, we hear it, what's to interpret? But your view is that of the outsider. For the insider (the believer in the Divine Being) a second, third, or fourth look at the text is a friendly, cooperating-with-God project. Interpretation isn't an adversarial process. For the believer, there can't be a conclusion of "this doesn't mean anything". Rather, it's an attempt to obtain the full meaning.

This is true of all scripture -- whether it be the speech of the Sybil at Eleusis, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Jeremiah, Deuteronomy, Mohammed, the Vedas, and so on.

Time always places a requirement on scripture for interpretation because realities change. Some people have said that one of the problems of Islam is that it has not gone through a reformation where the Koran would be reinterpreted -- not rewritten -- for the modern age (now several hundred years old.

Another thing about scripture is that it periodically needs to be lifted out of its tribal setting. Jews in pre-Roman Israel didn't have the same culture as the Jews in medieval Spain, and the Spanish Jews didn't have the same culture as the post-Spanish-expulsion Jews of Poland and Ukraine. Buddhists in Boston have different cultural problems than the Buddhists of Beijing, and so on.

We secular non-believing people don't usually buy into the truth of the various scriptures in the first place, so all that scriptural study seems counterproductive. When we are insiders, the situation is different.

Look how much debate goes into the scripture of the U.S. Constitution. Endless debate about what the authors meant. Did they mean that everybody is entitled to carry a gun around with them everywhere, or did they mean that the citizens of the new country were entitled to form armies with which to defend themselves from foreign threats?

Where I'm coming from is the proposition that with most texts meaning is in play. — tim wood

Well, I don't think that proposition is valid. Most of the Bible is quite clear. How can I say that? Well, you can take the liturgical books: The Psalms are not loaded with ambiguity, it's a hymnal. Then there is the prophetic material. The prophets generally do not speak in riddles. There are the law books -- the rules and regs. They are pretty clear. There are the wisdom books - Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. They are not real mysterious either. There are the historical accounts. There's the Apocrypha narratives. Most of this stuff is straight forward.

Of course, one can suppose that there are hidden meanings in any particular verse, just as one can believe that the television is sending you secret messages. Some people have gone that route -- both with the Bible and their TV set.

A lot of the debate is focused in the law (in the Pentateuch -- Gen, Ex, Lev, Num, Deut. -- where interpretation is critical. (Lawyers are always chewing over the law.) There is a lot of debate over law texts because the circumstances of the Jews kept changing, and how to obey the law in Babylon (no temple, for example) was quite different from obeying the law in Jerusalem.

Then in the diaspora, (66 A.D.) the Jews were evicted from Jerusalem, more or less, and the temple was taken over by the Romans for pagan worship of Jupiter--the Abomination of Desolation.

(Before the destruction of the temple even occurred) there were synagogues and rabbis teaching. After the diaspora the synagog and the rabbis didn't "take the place of" the Temple, animal sacrifice, the priestly order, and the worship activities that went on there. Judaism without the cult of the temple required a wholesale reinterpretation. The early Christians, deprived of the physical Jesus, also had a disjuncture which required some deep re-interpretation.

My view of the Bible is that it was written by humans, lock, stock, and barrel, and that God himself is our creation. Of course, the people "in the Bible" never looked at things that way. Whoever the prophets were believed they were speaking for God. They didn't think they were engaged in some sort of pious fraud.

Most religious people don't think they are engaged in some sort of elaborate theatrical scheme without any reality. One either has to "get with the program", just play along (not believing a word of it, but acting as if one does), or one needs to admit one just doesn't believe it. (Actually, quite a few Christians don't really believe the doctrine.) What they do believe in is Jesus, and they like the model he offers. For that approach, you don't have to think of him as a supernatural being from heaven, any more than one has to consider Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, or Angela Merkel as heaven-sent.

I hadn't heard that Paul invented Jesus, but in certain circles it isn't surprising that somebody would claim such a thing. Could be, I suppose, but I doubt it. Even by the time of Paul there were already Christians (whatever they called themselves at that point). It was a rapidly growing group. I am not going to claim that Jesus had to have been divine, but something very compelling had to have happened to result in quite a few people scattered around the Aegean Sea, Asia Minor, the area around Jerusalem, and Rome thinking Jesus was the a real and important person.

Maybe Plato invented Socrates? Does that sound reasonable? I doubt Plato invented Socrates.

I am inclined to think the Jesus Seminar people have it at least somewhat right: Some things claimed in the Gospels probably didn't happen--like Jesus walking on water. That seems to be fabulistic. Causing someone to think they were healed, sure. Hysterical blindness for example. (Curing leprosy? Leprosy is/was a real disease, but the term used also covered a variety of skin diseases that were not malignant like Hansons Disease is.) Raising Lazarus? Lazarus wasn't merely dead -- he was most sincerely dead, and was well on the way to decomposition when he was allegedly rousted out of his tomb. I doubt any such thing happened.

Paul inventing Jesus and springing a fictional character on the world and in an historically very short period of time having the Roman Empire take up the religion of the fictional Jesus just doesn't seem plausible. (It's as implausible as the ghost of Jesus showing up at the disciples' condo on the Sea of Galilee.)

call into dispute its validity and his all-mightiness — Sir2u

I think what they call into question is meaning. If it wasn't the valid word of God, then there wouldn't be any reason to struggle to get it right for 3,000 years.

"Now it’s a simple question: how does the word of God come to fall under any interpretation at all? — tim wood

One reason is that God has spoken over the course of many years, in disparate circumstances. As the years and the reasons pass out of immediate memory, we have no choice but to ask "What did God mean when He said such and such to Moses (or whoever it was)?"

Another reason is that while God is straight up and down about obedience, we are equivocators par excellence.

A third reason is that people just disagree about what God said, or what God meant. Not only that, just because "what God said" was settled theology this year doesn't mean it will stay settled theology.

A fourth reason is that for various and sundry reasons, people engage in special pleading "Well sure, God said no work on the Sabbath, but what about feeding the oxen? They get hungry and thirsty." "True, God said no lusting after thy neighbor's manservant, but by Jove, he is SUCH A HUNK. How could anybody be expected to not lust after this crown of creation?"

And more besides.

What is one to believe about the Jesus Seminar findings?

One could certainly believe that they don't know, either.

By the time the Gospels were written, three distinct periods had occurred:

1. The active years of Jesus before his death (maybe 4 years, but we don't really know)
2. A partially undocumented growth period following Jesus' death
3. A period of consolidation, contained within a century of Jesus' death.

Jesus was remembered. The individuals who assembled the oral, and perhaps written, accounts of Jesus, circulating among the believers who regularly met to remember Jesus, were not remembered. We know almost nothing about the writers or the material they had at hand. So, if we have faith in God, that Jesus existed, that Jesus did what the Gospels say he did, then we must also have faith that the Gospel authors were divinely inspired.

You think there are problems with the Old Testament! Have you heard of the Jesus Seminar? It's a group of people--some of them actual NT scholars--who decided to winnow the wheat from the chaff from a distance of 2000 years. One might wonder why the Gospel writers weren't able to separate the wheat from the chaff say, 40 years distance from the death of Jesus.

These imminent worthies have concluded the following:

• Jesus of Nazareth was born during the reign of Herod the Great.
• His mother's name was Mary, and he had a human father whose name may not have been Joseph.
• Jesus was born in Nazareth, not in Bethlehem.
• Jesus was an itinerant sage who shared meals with social outcasts.
• Jesus practiced faith healing without the use of ancient medicine or magic, relieving afflictions we now consider psychosomatic.
• He did not walk on water, feed the multitude with loaves and fishes, change water into wine or raise Lazarus from the dead.
• Jesus was arrested in Jerusalem and crucified by the Romans.
• He was executed as a public nuisance, not for claiming to be the Son of God.
• The empty tomb is a fiction – Jesus was not raised bodily from the dead.
• Belief in the resurrection is based on the visionary experiences of Paul, Peter and Mary Magdalene.

The seminar's criteria for authenticity was:

• Orality: According to current estimates, the gospels weren't written until decades after Jesus' death. Parables, aphorisms, and stories were passed down orally (30 – 50 CE). The fellows judged whether a saying was a short, catchy pericope that could possibly survive intact from the speaker's death until decades later when it was first written down. If so, it's more likely to be authentic. For example, "turn the other cheek".
• Irony: Based on several important narrative parables (such as the Parable of the Good Samaritan), the fellows decided that irony, reversal, and frustration of expectations were characteristic of Jesus' style. Does a pericope present opposites or impossibilities? If it does, it's more likely to be authentic. For example, "love your enemies".
• Trust in God: A long discourse attested in three gospels has Jesus telling his listeners not to fret but to trust in the Father. Fellows looked for this theme in other sayings they deemed authentic. For example, "Ask – it'll be given to you".

The Seminar's criteria for Inauthenticity were:

The seminar looked for several characteristics that, in their judgment, identified a saying as inauthentic, including self-reference, leadership issues, and apocalyptic themes.[4]

• Self-reference: Does the text have Jesus referring to himself? For example, "I am the way, and I am the truth, and I am life" (John 14:1–14).
• Framing Material: Are the verses used to introduce, explain, or frame other material, which might itself be authentic? For example, in Luke, the "red" parable of the good samaritan is framed by scenes about Jesus telling the parable, and the seminar deemed Jesus' framing words in these scenes to be "black".
• Community Issues: Do the verses refer to the concerns of the early Christian community, such as instructions for missionaries or issues of leadership? For example, Peter as "the rock" on which Jesus builds his church (Matthew 16:17–19).
• Theological Agenda: Do the verses support an opinion or outlook that is unique to the gospel, possibly indicating redactor bias? For example, the prophecy of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31–46) was voted black[clarification needed] because the fellows saw it as representing Matthew's agenda of speaking out against unworthy members of the Christian community.

So, one might ask whether everyone on the Jesus Seminar was actually an authentic New Testament scholar, and the answer to that would be a short fact:

• No.

.

Are you asking me to play pretend? — Reece

Not at all. What I am suggesting is that you make a real commitment to something--a cause, a project, a reading program (whatever you like to read), politics, a job, serving others--anything, really that you can find an interest in, and pursue it.

Why do such a thing? Commitment, involvement, energetic work (even if mental work) is healthy, and it helps "stuff" fall into place--to some degree, anyway.

I have so many questions as to why, what or who put us here. It's scientifically clear we didn't evolve. — Reece

"Who put us here and why" is a pressing question that has bothered people for a long time. There are religious answers to this question; perhaps you would find them satisfying -- billions of people have found them so. Myself -- I think there is evidence we did evolve--that all life evolved--but that doesn't solve the problem of who put us here and why. Many people think that god put us here through the process of evolution, and the 4 billion year story of life on earth is the story of creation told in minute detail.

We are the only species that isn't natural to this planet. — Reece

Whether we were created or evolved, we belong here. We are natural to the planet, and we are natural in ourselves. Now, "humans" tend to be rather hard on the rest of creation -- careless, exploitative, wasteful, etc. -- but that's just us. We are a very mixed bag of good and bad characteristics. Some people are a bit nicer than others, and on the whole we behave reasonably well towards each other, except when we don't.

I adamantly refuse to speculate, assume or believe in insufficient 'knowledge' that doesn't lead anywhere. — Reece

That's fine, but in order to discriminate between knowledge that does, and does not lead anywhere, you yourself have to be extremely knowledgeable. You might want to focus on getting more knowledge.

The only thing I can think of is to try imagine there is 'greater good' at work, because in the end we're all slaves to our own society. — Reece

Sorry, but that's a non-sequitur. If the only thing you can imagine is that there is a greater good at work, then it simply doesn't follow we are slaves to our own society. We aren't slaves, we are participants. Humans are social beings, and we can't exist apart from society. Someone has to feed us and change our diapers when we are infants, and as we grow older we need to be reared to learn how to take care of ourselves and each other.

Focus on the idea of the greater good.

You know it's an issue when the basic necessities for survival come at a cost. — Reece

Of course the basic necessities come at a cost. Birds can not raise their young without a cost to insects and worms. Whales can not exist without a cost to fish. Our existence comes at a cost too. There is a absurdly complex web of costs and benefits that is too complicated for any one person to grasp.

We don't have the freedom of choice. We all have to go to school, we all have to work or contribute in someway. Where's the 'wild' aspect in our 'civilized' way of life? There isn't one. — Reece

If you think going to school limits your free choice, try never going to school, never learning how to read and write, and never learning how to exist as a 'civilized' person if you think you have no freedom of choice. The more resources you can bring to the concerns of the day, the more freedom of choice you have.

I hated some of the jobs I worked at, over the 40-odd years of my work life. I really felt like if I had to do such and such a job for the rest of my life, I'd rather be dead. But... bad jobs or not, having money of your own (even if not a lot) gives you much more freedom than not having any money at all of your own.

And some of the jobs I had were good jobs that I really enjoyed doing, and I got paid to boot. But don't expect fulfillment to come from most of the jobs you might have. It would be nice if that's what happened, but don't hold your breath. But... having an income is a very good thing, and it generally takes having a job to produce an income.

Right, there's not much wildness in one's ordinary life -- but you can resist, if you want to. People do find ways to step out of the more or less controlled aspects of life, to experience some "wildness".

The point was that you might find their accounts interesting. You might find them ridiculous or compelling.

Reece confesses, "I Need Help On Reality".

Well, don't we all.

Everything feels like a gimmick from what we’re ‘allegedly’ told.

I’m not religious as I feel to believe in something is to not ‘know’ sufficient enough information. I would rather start a sentence with “I know...” rather than “I believe...”. Unfortunately nothing can be proven.

24 years old and I feel like I’m living for the sake of it, I feel stripped of any aspiration/motivation and only have unanswered questions. — Reece

You are suffering from late onset Holden Caulfield Syndrome. Everybody is a phony and everything is a gimmick. You get hung up on semantics. Nothing can be proven. You are experiencing ennui, anomie, alienation, depersonalization. Life has become one big headache.

You feel bad. What can be done about it?

My suggestion is that you immediately embark on a program of acting like life is meaningful and entirely worth living and that what you do with you life in the near future matters.

You will probably say, "your advice is just one more gimmick" and you would be partially right. But as gimmicks go, it has some advantages over wallowing in the slough of despond.

William James, an American psychologist (the first Professor of Psychology at Harvard) observed that there is a clear relationship between how we behave, act, feel and think. If the kind of thoughts we have are not helping us, then we need to act. . So, if you want to feel alive and engaged in a meaningful life, then you need to begin living AS IF you were engaged in a meaningful life.

I don't know anything about you, except that you are human (presumably not a bot) and that your psychology is pretty much like everybody else's. So go find yourself something to do that you suspect might be a meaningful, socially useful, and interesting gimmick. Then stick with it. Find several socially useful, interesting, and personally meaningful gimmicks to keep your mind occupied by positive things instead of negative crap. But the important thing is ACT LIKE YOU WANT TO FEEL.

Have you gone back to look at testimonials about the spirit world? In the mid to late Victorian period a lot of bright, educated people were very interested in communication with the dead, attended seances, and thought there was something to it. To be fair, there were a lot of Victorians who also thought it was total nonsense.

Indeed there might be one ethical position that is best. However, whether TR is trying to be too pure or not... well, some of this is an effect of age. Younger people, swept up in enthusiasm for the topic, (or crotchety old cranks swept up in enthusiasm) tend to take up "pure" positions rather than more equivocal positions. We think more clearly when we are not possessed by a god. enthusiasm, (early 17th cent.: from Greek enthousiastikos, from enthous ‘possessed by a god')

Then there are people who are possessed by the devil, which is a lot like god-possessed enthusiasm, too. They just aren't as nice about it. (I'm not referring to you, btw.)

Almost all will be found wanting — Jake Tarragon

They may be wanting, but why do you think they will be found deficient?

Obviously. But in discussion, calling someone's ideas stupid and a waste of time is a "terminating response". Calling out "stupid" and "waste of time" ends useful talk.

If you want to convince someone that there is a better way of thinking about things than the one which they are displaying, you have to be polite, and specific. Sure, I think a lot of people are full of shit. If I want to just dismiss them then telling them they are full of shit is an effective, if crude, way of doing it.

TranscendentRealms' OP was not defective. He related his experience (which we do not know the details of, so can't really dismiss as stupid) and then he related a positive upside of his very negative experiences.

Above you say "everyone thinks their life is the worst, get over yourself" but you know nothing of what he experienced. Most people don't, but some people actually have world class bad experiences, and they aren't exaggerating. You don't know (I don't either) but philosophical discussions are supposed to tease apart problems with a fine surgical knife and not a chain saw, which is kind of the way you're going about it.

You can do better.

I think you two have passed the point of diminished returns for this topic.

I just realize that humans have such a poor grasp of reality and they like to make up stupid crap to deal with that lack of understanding. — Jeremiah

In what way are you exempt from your own judgement?

Look, the point is that telling someone that their ideas are stupid and a waste of time doesn't advance a discussion. We are all prone to the practice of believing our own bullshit, me and thee included. But someone telling us we are full of shit sheds very little light on our sad state.

I prefer materialist explanations of mental events; but if someone frames their experience in spiritual terms, then we are just not going to agree on what is going on. That fact of our differing frame of reference doesn't mean that the spiritual framework is just BS.

Most the people in the world are stupid. — Jeremiah

Hmmmm, yes, I've read that too. Everybody is stupid except me and thee, of course, but even thee is as blunt as an ox at times.

Mixed Emotions: Now, if you were in a situation where you had mixed emotions, then you would be perceiving both good and bad value at the same time. It would be something like 20% good and 80% bad in regards to certain things and situations. It all depends on the degree of positive and negative emotions that are there. So, the fact that these miserable genius artists still saw their lives and art as beautiful means they would have to have had some degree of positive emotion mixed in. Otherwise, they would just be deluding themselves.

Lastly, as for life experience and getting out, I do this all the time. I go out in nature and out in the community. So, there is no problem here. — TranscendedRealms

The reason why everything got underlined here is that you are missing a "[/u]" at the end of what you wanted underlined. Every "u, i, and/or b" in brackets [ ] has to be followed by a "/u, /i, and/or /b" in brackets [ ].

When I am in my most miserable and hopeless state due to an emotional trauma, then my whole entire reality is the most horrible hell. But when I reach a state of full recovery, I am able to see harmony, peace, joy, beauty, and goodness. This is a perception that I never had during that miserable moment. This is a perception that goes beyond a value judgment. In other words, it goes beyond a mere thought and it is like a blind person recovering his sight. — TranscendedRealms

Yes. When we are walking through our personal valleys of death, the horror of it is pretty much 100%. But then, with any luck, we come out of that dark place, into bright sunshine, lush green fields, peace, and serenity.

Based on this, I conclude that we might have a sense like sight that allows us to see our entire world as good and beautiful. I would personally call it the "Divine Sense." It is a new sense that has yet to be discovered by science. When we are in a positive mood or emotional state, then that is this sense allowing us to perceive stable qualities of good value as well as enhanced and more profound qualities of good value and beauty in our lives. Likewise, negative emotions such as misery and hopelessness are this sense allowing us to truly see things as horrible, bad, disgusting, etc. That is why I say that positive emotions are an objective good while negative emotions are an objective bad. So, this objective good and bad would be an intrinsic quality (our positive and negative emotions). — TranscendedRealms

Maybe we have a "Divine Sense" but it is not "new" as much as you have recently discovered it. One might identify this sense as an inner light; one might also identify it as the loving presence of Jesus or the Holy Spirit, or an inner illumination. Various terms in various traditions.

"Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!

John Henry Newman, hymn, Lead Kindly light — Cardinal Newman

Even from a rather dry materialist point of view, we have the capacity to experience what other people would call transcendent peace, happiness, love, beauty, and so on. Whether one calls it Grace or a flood of oxytocin and serotonin, it feels much the same. And so does the opposite -- one's nightmarish experiences.

So, when a person is completely miserable and hopeless and a person comes along, giving the suggestion to just work at developing a new mindset, then that is only focusing away from one's own inner light which is the very vital and precious thing that allows us to see the goodness in our lives in the first place. — TranscendedRealms

Right. "Just snap out of it" is extremely unhelpful advice. If one could just snap out of it, or just upload a new mindset, obviously one would.

I am fed up with people in my life dismissing my inner light as nonexistence and all in my head. They think it is just my value judgment. — TranscendedRealms

Just tell them to fuck off, and stop casting your pearls before swine.

Look, I don't know exactly what you are experiencing. I know next to nothing about you. I have no idea what you will be thinking a year from now or in the next 15 minutes. But good heavens, you are hardly alone in thinking there is a divine light which you can follow. Millions of people have expressed this idea in various ways.

We live in a time when bold materialists thinkers are going to dump on any sort of spiritualism. They hear "Inner light" and alarm bells ring. They think the vote is in and materialism has won the election by a massive landslide. It seems that way to them because they talk to each other, and they keep hearing the same thing. Actually, most of the people in the world believe in some kind of religion, and accept the idea of God, transcendent realms, divine light, and so on.

the fact is, killing a sleeping person is murder — TheMadFool

It's murder because persons have rights that are protected by a host of conventions (legal, ethical, social, moral, religious...). Whether a person is awake or sleeping is irrelevant. Even if someone had been in a coma for 10 years, just shooting him or her would be murder (there are legal procedures for removing life support in cases of brain death or the patients previously expressed wishes...)

Of course you are right about that, and then where would we be?

The whole argument about free will and predetermination of an act is a waste of time IF we can not distinguish between acts that really are freely chosen and acts that are really determined by other factors. I think I can make that discrimination some of the time but not all the time -- and that is in my own case. I have only the vaguest idea of what is going on in your case (or anybody else).

Like, sometimes we find that we have done something without really intending to do it. "It just happened". Like, I wasn't intending to go to the bar and pick up a stranger and go home with him but you know, without my making a decision about it, that's what happened. It isn't that I was in a trance, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. I just intended to go have a beer.

Now I have gone to the bar with every intention of picking up a stranger and going home with him, but not that time.

I wasn't intending to buy a blueberry pie when I was at the store -- I went in to get some milk, breakfast food, and some lettuce. But there the display of pastries was and I just picked up the pie and put it in the cart. Now, sometimes I intended to buy pie, but not that time.

When I started to write a paper on ethics and decision making in a time of epidemic transmittable diseases, I didn't intend to conclude that people should be quarantined if they are found to be infectious, but that's where the logic of my argument took me. Now, I have written policy papers with unpopular conclusions, but not that time.

Another problem with free will (or not) is that the agent about whom we are talking is also the agent providing the evidence for free will, or not -- a clear conflict of interest.

If we can't prove it on the basis of what the brain--producer of mind--is doing, then we just can't. Some philosophers (and neurologists) have suggested that we might not be able to understand our minds beyond a certain point -- because we are both the subject and object of that study.

No smoking Edit: Everything is perfect.

the conscious I, in a sense, dissolves into the lower levels of this stratification in the mind’s agencies — javra

a conductor to the orchestra of the mind’s agencies — javra

I like your idea of consciousness 'dissolving into the lower levels' much more than Blue Banana's 'ceases to exist'. To play off your idea of the orchestra and conductor, let me propose a model based on the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra or the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra which perform without a conductor.

I suspect the conscious mind is produced by the brain, the same way a directorless orchestra produces music. The parts put it together and put it out there. Similarly the brain constructs our consciousness, but it doesn't 'spin it off' as a manager. Where is the brain's manager? There isn't one, there are several. For instance, whether you are awake or asleep isn't managed by your conscious mind. As I mentioned, there are two small cell-clusters in the brain stem that signal other parts of the brain to sleep or to awake. If people experience strokes in the wakeful manager, they go to sleep (not die) and don't wake up again -- because the trigger that wakes us up is broken. These two clusters don't do much else.

The conscious mind doesn't alone decide what it will think about, if it decides at all. There are 100 billion neurons between one's ears, and more connections possible among those 100 billion than there are atoms in the universe. So... whether the number of connections is real or hyperbole, there is clearly lots of power under the surface, and my guess is that it isn't waiting for the conscious mind to think of something. More like the other way around.

Where, for instance, do "intrusive thoughts" come from? Here you are, sitting in your chair reading a good book and annoying, distracting thoughts keep occurring to you. Who is sending these messages? Aliens? Hackers? Commie agents? Advertisers? Maybe it is a small area of the brain which monitors blood sugar, and it wants you to eat--so food thoughts burrow into your conscious mind's nice reading experience. Or maybe some memories of a slightly unpleasant nature are being accessed and the message of discomfort is being telegraphed to your front desk, covering up the text of the book your were reading.

Consciousness is emergent rather than a stable feature like language production. (We know exactly where language production is located. We don't know where consciousness is located.)

Thoughts — BlueBanana

"Consciousness" and "self-awareness" are features of mind of which we are especially fond, but they are not the only components of a person. The brain where "I" dwell does not close down when a small cluster of cells in the brain stem sends the consciousness into abeyance and I fall asleep. (Another cluster of cells near by signals the consciousness to come back in full force, and I wake up.) While sleeping, some areas of the brain are quite active. Memory, for instance, is being processed. We dream, and while we dream the brain paralyzes are muscles so that we do not thrash about. Plus the small clusters of cells that watch over blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, peristalsis, and temperature are active all the time--24/7. All of that goes into "me".

There is so much about us that is processed out of reach of the conscious mind. "I" am witnessing some of these words flow into the computer through my fingers. I am not consciously composing the sentences, for the most part. Composition flows from below, through the motor cortex and the 9 busy fingers (my left thumb doesn't do much on the keyboard.)

As one drives, bicycles, or walks one doesn't calculate the arc of a turn -- one just turns. Clearly some facility in the brain has figured out how the curve can be negotiated, but I am not aware of it. Only when we do something unusual do we consciously think about it. I consciously figure what size can on the shelf is the best deal. When I come across a French word in an English novel, I'll try to guess what it means, and decide whether to look it up in the French dictionary.

Then too, our body is part of the unified self. We disposed of mind/body dualism, right. My arthritis-annoyed knees, shoulders, fingers, and ankles sometimes wake me to complain. "Wouldn't a little anti-inflammatory be nice about now?" they say. Or maybe we awake aroused and turned on. Or feeling sad. Or feeling hungry. Or full bladder. Or nauseated. Or any number of things that is part of our experimental 'flow'. Sometimes we wake up feeling existential despair--not just thinking it, feeling it.

Does killing a sleeping person count as a murder? — BlueBanana

Killing a sleeping person is eminently murderous. You'll hang for doing so.

I don't know about you, but I don't stop existing when I sleep.

If biochemistry didn't apply to the gods, why were they drinking on Mt. Olympus? (granted, they were drinking nectar -- but what was that? High fructose corn syrup soft drink. Was Coca Cola stolen from the gods too? Also, there's a reference in the Gilgamesh epic, a sacrifice is offered to the gods who were hungry. "The gods gathered around the altar like flies in their eagerness to eat the meat." Apparently the Gods can chew.

When I googled Ganymede to check out what he was pouring, the first return was "Bizarre Bulge Found on Ganymede" -- I thought they were referring to a statue or a mosaic. Oh, intriguing! But no, just some moon.

The last time I checked, murder means killing someone who actually, decidedly, and emphatically exists.

Your pronatalist argument is as weighty as the antinatalist argument that having children violates the rights of persons who did not exist. After all, if you didn't get the consent of the unborn to be conceived, their right to not exist has been violated.

You remind me of Anna in the King and I who sings...

A flock of sheep and you the only ram
No wonder you're the wonder of Siam. — Oscar Hammerstein II

I know, it's such a drag that nicotine and its associated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and ethanol should have such negative effects on us. Just thinking about it makes me want a beer and a cigarette, or several.

Did Ganymede know how much risk he was putting Zeus to when he brought him the god-sized flagon of gin?

I don't know whether we have absolute free will or not. My suspicion is that we can not know whether we are perfectly free to choose.

If I say I freely decided to eat a yellow apple instead of a red apple, someone will say "Ach! It's just physics and chemistry." I can't prove that physics and chemistry weren't directing my behavior a little, some, or altogether. On the other hand, when people portray themselves as puppets of physics, it sounds like a choice to think that way.

The truth is almost certainly somewhere in-between those two extreme positions. Let's say I am very hungry. I am presented with a raspberry / lemon danish on my left and a slice of 100% whole wheat bread on my right. How much free will might I exercise? My guess is that the chemistry of low blood sugar will drive the decision towards the danish. On the other hand, when I am shopping, I'll choose a loaf of 100% whole wheat over a box of danish. I freely decide to avoid the pastry counter.

It's difficult to imagine what kind of chemistry and physics would favor conversion to Buddhism. It would seem that the reasons would be "meta physical" rather than physical or chemical.

We'd all be better off if we carnivores limited our meat consumption to 3 oz. of meat per day, on average--including fish and eggs (or 68 pounds a year). 3 oz. is the USDA recommendation for a 2000 calorie daily diet. It amounts to using meat as an enhancer, rather than a twice-a-day main course. The amount of animal protein a carnivore needs for good health just isn't that high.

Instead of 68 pounds a year, Americans on average eat an average 270 pounds of meat per year, or 12 oz. of meat per day. All that greatly exceeds what anyone needs.

It's a long ways back, but agriculture was a major innovation, if not a discrete invention. Presumably it began inadvertently: proto-agriculturists started collecting seeds -- barley grains, maybe, and planted some of them. They apparently discovered that the biggest seeds produced more big seeds. The people who created the 15th century tomato that the Spanish brought back to Europe started with a very small fruit, more like champaign grape (1/4" in diameter). The maize/corn plant was a very short plant, bearing just a few seeds. Most of our crops started out as rather unimpressive progenitors.

The domestication of cattle, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and horses was likewise very important. For the most part, these animals are all herd animals, and relatively calm in their wild state The American buffalo, on the other hand, is a quick-to-respond aggressive herd animal.

Every improvement on a sharp stick moving towards a proper plow was important inventive work. Figuring out how to use animal power was important -- from pulling things to carrying us on their backs. Learning how to ferment food (cheese, bread, beer, wine, sausage, etc.) was a big innovation.

Agriculture may have been a very early "invention", but you know, it took us a long time to get there after we became homo sapiens.

If we are going back as far as agriculture, what about the atlatl -- the spear thrower? It enabled the North American aboriginals to hunt mastodons successfully -- by the simple expedient of leverage. They also developed the detachable dart head.

Or stone knapping technology that enabled all our predecessors to make tools?

Obviously, and obviously not what was meant.

All of which are conditions on what love is. — John Days

A description isn't a condition, in the sense that "if you don't pay the overdue rent, you will be evicted". A description isn't an "if/then" statement. A description is just a description. "The house is painted a light gray" isn't a conditional statement. It either is gray, or it is not gray.

Do you consider erotic love to be conditional? Is "You turn me on - I want to have sex with you" a conditional statement? It's conditional.

Do you expect erotic love to be 100% in order to qualify as erotic? If you are 80% turned on by somebody, you are still experiencing erotic love, even if it isn't 100%.

Further, "unconditional" is perhaps not the best term. When agapē was imported into English in the 17th century, it was used in the sense of 'selfless love". Erotic love isn't normally thought of as "selfless" because the physical self is so intimately involved in erotic love--it's really physical and selfie.

agapē is about the other person, not the self.

Of course, Men's Liberation isn't very concerned about women's suffering either.

Try this; think of it as a 12 step program. These will put you well on your way to unconditional love. I Corinthians, 13:

• Love is patient
• love is kind and is not jealous
• love does not brag and is not arrogant
• does not act unbecomingly
• it does not seek its own
• is not provoked
• does not take into account a wrong suffered
• bears all things
• believes all things
• hopes all things
• endures all things.
• Love never fails

An old time socialist identified certain party members "who liked games of uproar". They liked to start disputes they weren't especially interested in -- the gamers just liked the sturm and drang they produced. Not quite the same thing as a cloak of maliciousness, but related.

Don't expect an enthusiastic embrace by the moderators of your proposal. It isn't that they are hostile to criticism, or that they are dyed in the wool feminist, antifa, SJW types who will brook no deviance. Rather, they have a difficult, unpaid, mostly thankless job of policing badly written, badly conceived, poorly thought out posts, and enforcing rules.

Even generally good posters at times have a yen to delve into subjects which lead to conflict with the rules -- like people who might want to open a discussion about... Nazis, pedophiles, or lesbian-separatist vegan (not all in the same thread, one hopes). They don't want the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable to get too muddied so they can't tell where the line is. Therefore, some topics are verboten.

Is the Bell Curve by Charles A. Murray and Richard Herrnstein debatable? Maybe. Murray is very unpopular among leftists, but he apparently presents evidence to support his views. A recent thread that asserted that Africans were, at best, dull-normal was shut down pretty quickly. IF one had some sort of evidence that several hundred million Africans were stupid, that would be one thing -- but to just make a claim that they are all stupid, is outside of the permitted boundary.

I would assert that many poor children will grow up with intelligence deficits because they are plagued by parasites, chronic enteric bacterial illnesses, and poor nutrition. They just can't develop normally. That's not the same as saying that poor people are stupid and so are their children.

So, HOW sensitive topics are approached makes a difference.

I suppose you have some sort of logical grounds for your moral edicts regarding child raising, or ought i suppose these to be merely your arbitary opinion and conjecture? — Victoribus Spolia

Since you are living in "The Cold and Snowy Part of The Heroin Addicted Rural Rust Belt" I'm sure you've seen the tragic consequences of people who aren't really able to take care of their children. Children born of addicted mothers are born addicted, and fairly often damaged as well. Same for fetal alcohol syndrome.

Logical ground: Children who are nurtured and protected from harm and guided by their parents as they grow up tend to be more successful and happier adults than people who were not nurtured and protected from harm. It isn't rocket science: We know what healthy children look like and sadly, we know what unhealthy neglected children look like.

So no, it's not just my arbitrary judgement.

Not that its any of your business — Victoribus Spolia

Well, Victoribus, I didn't pry into your drinking and smoking habits -- you acknowledged that you smoke and drink. Fine by me -- I spent quite a few years smoking and drinking as well, and I liked it. It's something of a knee jerk -- I've spent quite a few years doing public health education. Sure, some people who smoked a lot lived to be very old. My father lived to be 102, and he smoked. However, he suffered from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease which made the last 15 years of his life more difficult than they otherwise would have been.

I will eat bacon, drink beer, and smoke and kick ass while doing it....with a name like "bitter crank" I would of expected you to sympathize itstead of being such a pussy. — Victoribus Spolia

I like to eat bacon, drink beer, gin, and whiskey. I quit smoking because it was becoming noticeably counter-productive for me. Bitter cranks come in many varieties, including pussies. I don't think I am a pussy, and I'm actually not bitter either. It's a handle, not a personality summary.

As for being a crank... Well, that's possible, but I'm a fairly happy crank. And my profile picture is the philosopher Isaiah (not Irving) Berlin. I don't know much about Berlin, but I liked this portrait of Berlin by Richard Avedon. He was a liberal Jew, so I'd probably like him just fine.

I wouldn't expect unconditional love to occur in a 3 month (or 30 minute) romance begun in a bar unless, of course, I happened to pick up Jesus. Would he be simply divine? Don't know. However, people who live in ordinary life may, on occasion, express and experience unconditional love. And even if one doesn't achieve Agape in combination with other kinds of love (like eros or storge) one can move toward unconditional love--dismissing one's own conditions, one by one.

Agape stands apart from eros, filio, and storge, but if one can not love at those depths, one certainly will not be able to experience the deep, deep love which characterizes unconditional love, either.

Then beside ourselves, for those who believe there is the unconditional love of God. They who believe in God believe that God loves them unconditionally. Unconditionally, because that is the only way God can love creation, of which were are a part. We can love unconditionally if God gives us that capacity.

(I think that is an accurate reflection the theology of believers, whatever I may happen to believe.)