You are assuming many classrooms can even HAVE this debate. Most are just trying to get by with the worst behavior problems (mainly in inner cities).. Education is wasted on the youth (mostly). I don't know how many people have told me that they hated history as a kid and it was only as an adult did they actually come to appreciate the understanding it brings to study it. Same with almost everything else..

But you are very right.. The US education system seems to essentially sift out the STEM students.. and tries to nurture them.. They will be the next engineering/science/doctor class used by the corporate overlords to dole out more technology. I have no doubt there was a concerted effort to promote this idea during the Cold War as a policy level decision.

That beings said.. federal decisions on education are usually at the level of funding, not so much curriculum It's up to the states and school boards to actually adopt any national recommendation. However, if they reject the recommendations, it's at their peril of losing funding probably. — schopenhauer1

I do not assume any classroom/school can have the debate about what has gone wrong with education, because no one knows enough to have that debate.

What determines human behavior?

Yes, it was a cold war decision to change the purpose and the focus of education. I remember my teachers walking around in a state of shock when they were told the purpose of education had changed. It was obvious something big had happened and I didn't know what until that afternoon when a male teacher explained the change. He said education was now to prepare us for a technological society with unknown values. That was the end of transmitting the culture that was the priority of education until then? There are good and bad consequences to that. By the way, History was about culture in the US and preparing the young to be good citizens.

The funding situation was not always as it is. The federal government DID NOT have a say in required education and in your list of who did, you forgot to mention parents. Can you think of the good and the bad of parents controlling their children's education? What is the benefit of the federal government getting involved with what children learn? What does our constitution say about the federal government controlling education?

Here you seem to take my position: Enlightenment philosophy hasn't yet trickled down to the rabble.

The Enlightenment was acceptance of what science could do for us and what we have achieved is far beyond what anyone imagined at the time of the enlightenment.
— Athena

Here, again, "we" is used too broadly. What a significant proportion of "we" has achieved is total rejection of science and scientific values. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Thomas Jefferson was very clear that only if our republic was defended in the classroom, would it be defended. He devoted his life to everyone having that education. We no longer know what the education was unless we make the effort to know that. It is easy enough to know. Just look up classical or liberal education. Or education for the enlightenment.

The Enlightenment left us with a belief in the value of learning, of the comprehensive role and scope of education and of its fundamental role in society. Its DNA includes critical thinking and free debate. Over generations, the mission of education developed around those principles.Jul 26, 2016 — Wikipedia

What is wrong here? There are two ways to have social order, culture, or authority over the people. If people want liberty, they must transmit the culture that is essential to that. We stopped doing that in 1958 and are now leaning towards authoritarianism and anarchy. The Texas Republican 2012 agenda opposed education for higher-order thinking skills and some Christians also oppose education for the higher order thinking skills. Christianity has historically been a problem to education and progress.

Even a moron is enjoying the benefits of what we have achieved. The whole world is enjoying the benefits of what we have achieved and I am not overusing the word "we". Humanity has come a long way from when we shared this planet with Neanderthals. We can think of the word "we" as a nation or the whole of humanity and when it comes to global warming, we had better think "we" means all of us.

You're too generous with this pronoun. The bulk of us have learned little. If you need evidence relocate to rural America for a spell.

The Enlightenment exists in the hearts and minds of a tiny minority. The media obscure this by presenting a vision of the universal elite. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I am not accustomed to this forum being one of personal attacks instead of on-topic. Why do you assume I am unaware of rural areas? :rofl: My x kept the family isolated in rural areas and not even in cities are many literate in the Greek and Roman classics that are the foundation of our democracy. Even in the early days of the US when college-level education meant a classical or liberal education, only a tiny minority were aware of the Greek and Roman classics and later philosophies that lead to the democracy of the US.

The US did base public education on that literacy but it was Americanized, leaving us both ignorant of classics but with some knowledge of the principles. The Christian influence on this education and then dropping the transmission of our culture and education for good moral judgment, leaving moral training to the church in 1958, has led to the Christian mythology or our democracy and that makes matters very bad!

I have no idea what you think the "universal elite" know, but I doubt if it is the education that I believe is vital to our democracy.

I do not mind continuing this discussion at all. after all I am in education, though in the Netherlands, not in the US. We have no private schools (yet) for instance, but only community or state education. We do not have Ivy league colleges but nearly all our state universitties are in the top 100 world wide. I am not saying that to brag or anything but display that our system is still much more egalitarian.

I have my own ideas of how the grading system works, what education does, and it is not all positive or a success story. I am a keen reader of Michel Foucault. I do wonder where you got the distinction between the US and 'Hitler's' system of education from. never heard this comparison and it seems way too unnuanced for me. So if you could point out to me where you got these ideas from I would sincerely appreciate it.

I also think you should be careful mixing subjects. International relations is something different from the education system. All kinds of moves are played in the international arena and no, that arena is not democratic. the Westphalian order sees states as sovereign, not subject to some higher democratic body. Focus your ideas and take one step at the time. I sound overly school master like maybe. but focus and you will be able to win your battles.

"Know your enemy and know yourself and you will be victorious in every battle, know neither the enemy nor yourself and you will succumb in every battle "Sun Tzu, the art of war, paraphrased. A Goddess of strategy needs to learn these things. — Tobias

Okay, you know of Foucault so you know the following as well.

"The Prussian education system refers to the system of education established in Prussia as a result of educational reforms in the late 18th and early 19th century, which has had widespread influence since. The Prussian education system was introduced as a basic concept in the late 18th century and was significantly enhanced after Prussia's defeat in the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars. The Prussian educational reforms inspired other countries and remains important as a biopower in the Foucaultian sense for nation-building.[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system — Wikipedia

The Origins of the American Public Education System: Horace Mann & the Prussian Model of Obedience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZp7eVJNJuw

And in his 1899 book "TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY; AND TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS" pg 31-32, William James doesn't have a high opinion of the German model.

That is a start. I have more to say about the subject but it can wait until we resolve a problem.

If you want to discuss the subject with me, make sure you are on-topic and not judging me and putting me on the defensive by telling me what you think I should do. Athena is known to be bad-tempered when she is not respected. And yes, I also have a copy of "Sun Tzu, the art of war".

Don't let the big numbers (2022) fool you. This is still the Dark Age: still the Age of Christs and Kings.

The Enlightenment's down-trickle's discouragingly drip-drip. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I do not agree with that statement. The more we know, the more we can learn and the amount we have learned in the last century is far greater than we learned up to the 21 century. Today it is not a drip-drip but a flood of information and people, in general, can not keep up with it.

As I see the problem today, our demands and expectations are completely unreasonable. It takes much more to satisfy people today than it did before the 21 century. The Enlightenment was acceptance of what science could do for us and what we have achieved is far beyond what anyone imagined at the time of the enlightenment.

Maybe you should skip Bible Study Group next week. Take a breather. :roll: — jgill

:lol: Nicely said.

I like the idea of driving an electric car. As a high school student in the early 1950s I would take the electric buses in Atlanta downtown frequently. But an accident involving electric vehicles is scary. All that electrical energy could fry you to a crisp. Gasoline is dangerous, too, but it's not "alive" like electricity.

But imagine all those cars, buses and trucks running out of power in dire conditions, and then efforts to charge them all to get started again. Whereas along comes a truck squirting a couple of gallons of gas into tanks as it slowly passes by.

However, technology will improve for E-vehicles. — jgill

What a wake-up call! That is a very good objection to electric cars. We had an electric car blow-up stuff where the accident happened and I think we all have novocaine in our brains, including me, What happened was alarming but I don't think any of us thought it through as well as you have. We do not want pieces of the battery crashing into our living rooms!!! That happened and the people who lived in the house are lucky to be alive.

As for the cars stuck on the freeway, no one trapped in snow should keep the car running. Those folks were lucky because the snow was not falling a building up around their cars. North of us, people caught in a snowstorm were asphyxiated as the snow built up around the cars and the cars were filled with exhaust fumes.

What you said about having to recharge all those cars if they were electric, is also alarming! For sure we need to rethink how to manage such situations.

Moral means knowing the laws of Nature? Isn't knowing these laws the cause of the chaos we increasingly observe in Nature?
I know what you mean, but if we don't want to find out how Nature behaves at all levels, in every direction, and at every height and depth, wouldn't that be better for Nature? We are taught from small age that acquiring knowledge is of uttermost importance. The children are treated as ignorant to be filled with a kind of knowledge only possessed by the ruling power, which makes the claim of possessing objective knowledge to be obtained by strict methods. The methods as well as the value judgement of the importance of the subject matter is subjective though, but in modern society it's made the so-called objective norm, while this so-called objectivity is just a label to cover the subjective essence, thereby lending it a justified power position, like God was once used to justify claims on power. — Raymond

Yes, moral is knowing the laws of nature and good manners, and that concept goes with democracy and liberty.

"Isn't knowing these laws the cause of the chaos we increasingly observe in Nature?"

I can understand how someone would think that, but I believe in every case the chaos is the result of not knowing enough. There is no way we could have known enough because we did not have the tools essential to learning what know today. For example, we could not know of bacteria and viruses until we had microscopes. We could not know of the atmosphere before we had the technology essential to measuring what is far above us. We learned a lot by studying other planets and that requires getting to them. We didn't know we polluting rivers and oceans would become a problem until it was, and in some cases, with better knowledge, we have been able to reverse the damage and this is why it is essential we pay attention to science, so we can reverse the damage.

With the tools and knowledge we have today, we can learn far, far more than humanity could have known before. And be clear about this, without the knowledge and technology we have today, our life expectancy would be 45 years and many children would die before they could reproduce. We could not feed the world if we knew only what we knew 100 years ago. Fear of a god, prayers, and burning candles never did as much to end evil as science and technology has done.

Unfortunately, no holy book prepared us for science, and overcoming real evils and religions have become a huge barrier to doing better than infecting people with a virus because we ignore science, and keeps us contributing to global warming because we ignore science. Religion is promoting ignorance and this is a terrible thing.

"The children are treated as ignorant to be filled with a kind of knowledge only possessed by the ruling power,"

That was not so 100 years ago because no one knew enough to do that. The best we could do is prepare the young for independent thinking and lifelong learning. People were encouraged to use local libraries and buy books such as "Science of Citizens". I think a big problem was developed in 1958 when President Eisenhower asked Congress to pass the National Defense Education Act. That act changed everything. It was supposed to end in 4 years but never ended. We replaced liberal education that taught independent thinking, with education for technology and groupthink. We are no longer aware of what science has to do with democracy, morals, and liberty, and we have technology confused with science.

"while this so-called objectivity is just a label to cover the subjective essence, thereby lending it a justified power position, like God was once used to justify claims on power."

You said that very, very well. That is exactly what is wrong with the direction education took in 1958. I could not say that better than you have. Thank you. I sincerely mean that. What you said is why I keep arguing we are as Germany was when Hitler came to power because this is what we educated for. This is why President Eisenhower in his farewell address, warned us of the Military-Industrial Complex that he put in place and the danger of relying too much on experts.

Are you serious or being facetious? Are you choosing religion over science?

Whoo, that was a pretty negative point of view and I immediately thought to President John Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline and Camelot. We loved them. Or how about the pharaohs who kept everything in order and could prevent chaos? We can love our leaders and from the days of Sumer, we can replace them when they obviously are failing. Democracy can mean replacing them peacefully, and granted having to replace them through violent means, is quite problematic. But in general, turning to a leader was a choice because good leaders are essential. However, in the past, rulers did not have the technology to manage the details of our lives. Even the most powerful pharaoh had very little power because s/he just did not have the bureaucratic organization, nor the technology of modern-day rulers.

Today many people appear to love Trump as a god. Now that might justify your cynicism. Biden does not have that benefit because those who voted for Biden were voting against Trump, and from there, they base decisions on reason, not worshipping anyone! Pleasing democrats is more like herding cats. :lol: Good luck with that.

Imagine if all those vehicles stranded on I95 for 24 hours in snow and ice had been electric. — jgill

How would that make a difference?

The only thing left to do is to accept the wrath of the almighty Creator, succumb to His Divine Word, bow to His Infinite Creation, and show eternal gratitude for His Wisdom, given to us by His Word, to be heard by submissive prayer only. Let's pray He will get a grip and restore Natural order. If not, we are doomed for sure. — Raymond

No God can save the planet, only humans can stop the destruction. It is about morals and morals mean knowing the laws of nature and good manners. Those two things would resolve many problems.

Best would be if we all just are put to sleep for a 1000 years and give nature a breather so we can be kissed awake and finally feel home in a world from which we are estranged and only the possessing class seems to feel well and project their silly ways into the world? — Raymond

What I read said within 30 years 50% of the carbon dioxide would be removed from the atmosphere. I think that would stabilize things. However, we need to reduce the number of people on the planet if we are to live in harmony with nature. I think we need to figure out the natural limits for every city, By that, I mean without importing anything, including water, how many people could live off the land? Then make it a goal to maintain a limited population that can live in harmony with the land. This would require adopting an aboriginal reverence for the land like a religion with a crazy notion that violating the laws of nature will have bad consequences. Which in turn requires science to understand the laws of nature and how to live with them.

Catastrophe theory makes it perfectly clear: the Heavenly Holiness should be worshipped with every divinely created bone in our submissive and humble bodies. If not,
He will, without remorse, and firmly, strictly, and justified, bestow humanity with his Ivory Bashing, and catastrophe will descend from His untouchable and unshakeable Sacred Realm, cleansing the Earth from a God-forgotten species, unwillingly to bath in His immaculate light and conform to His unquestionable Will. Brothers and sisters, let's hold hands and prey together. Let's ask the Great Annointed to release us from our pagan ways, and to restore his blissful order before too long. Oh unparalelled Being, our blessed King and Savior! Bless Thou Glorious name, leading us to Ultimate Victory. — Raymond

:gasp: And maybe we should burn "those people" who reject God, out of town so God will stop being angry with us? Or maybe we should be walking from town to town whipping ourselves to appease the God that is punishing us with a deadly disease?

My warning to you is, maybe you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You want democracy and humanist values and you complain that we have now 'become like Hitler Germany', but especially the manichean battle against chaos you mention was a trope for Hitler Germany. The relationship between National socialist thought and green thought is far from clear. You equate national socialism with blind technology, but especially that is what a thinker like Martin Heidegger characerized the US in the 1930s of. In Hitler Germany he saw a 'third way', a rejuvenation, against technology! If anything Hitler Germany was not anti-Green. So the problem is, even though you want the good for the world and you think your points are helping it come about, you might end up with something that is not so amenable to democracy and enlightenment at all. — Tobias

When the priority of US education was education for good citizenship, we used the Conceptual method. That is teaching increasingly complex concepts. Under this system, there are only a few right or wrong answers. Rather than knowing the right answer, there are only are different points of view. This leads to overall uncertainty and some find a problem with that. I see that as the solution to our worst problems. Those who think can know the will of God and absolute truth, are absolutely dangerous and this is our greatest international and national problem today! Good logic acknowledges we do know everything and should always move forward with a little dought in what we think we know.

Education for technology destroyed a much wiser system of education and lead the young to believe that with technology and the right education for technology they can be superior to their elders, and superior to people in other nations, and superior to all those who do not have their education. We have promoted ideas of superiority in obvious ways, such as the notion that going to the "right colleges" makes people superior to those who just went to a community or a state college. Or those who have A grades are superior to those who have C grades. Or those who believe this and not that, are superior. Perhaps if we continue to discuss this I can think of betters words for explaining what has gone terribly wrong! It is not just that what we know that is important but also how we learn to think.

We replaced the Conceptual method with the Behaviorist method and the Behaviorist method is also used for teaching dogs. The Behaviorist method goes with "No Child Left Behind" and core education and teaching to prepare children how to answer correctly on tests. :broken: That is not education for wisdom nor is it education for democracy. I don't know if my words are explaining the importance of the difference? What we have is what Hitler had when he came to power and this is not the democracy we defended in two world wars. Washington was a very humble man who doubted his wisdom. Now we seem to demand our presidents be egomaniacs who throw their weight around and act tough and aren't afraid to make demands of leaders of other countries. That is not democracy but the path to war. I am extremely disappointed with Biden and his get-tough talks that attack the dignity of national leaders. Having an exclusive meeting for democratic leaders and excluding China or any other country is not how democracy works!

I am not sure if this relates to your topic but some people believe that the current climate change and some other problems are the vengeance of God. The Old Testament shows that God has a wrathful anger as well as having the loving and forgiving aspects represented by the figure of Jesus. — Jack Cummins

I understand that and that superstition has led to a very bad situation. The believers and nonbelievers are in a serious conflict. I have found public broadcasting to be very informative and take hope in that.
That is a hope science wins out against superstition.

I am also aware of the ancient prediction that sooner or later there will be more life on earth than the earth can support. I do not believe predictions of doom are just superstition but also the result of observation and logic. I feel so passionate about this because if we believe what is happening is the result of human choices, we can take steps to manage the problem. If we think what is happening is all about a God, we are powerless to make necessary changes. Just as Christians made themselves powerless against Genghis Khan when they believed God sent Genghis Khan to punish them. At this time in history, such superstition should no longer be such a big problem!

Japan is offering us an interesting alternative as it is blending technology with human needs. They are evolving the ability to be very productive with fewer humans. Not only more produtive but also they are building our humanness into that technology. Our technological society needs to increase its human sensitivities.

The New Age holds so much promise and this is such an exciting time. There is a chance of a new enlightenment that will be manifest in consciousness so different from the past, the people of the future will not be able to relate to the primitive lives we have had, of humans exploiting humans, other animals, and the planet with no reverence for our planet and other life forms. We need a different value system and some people know that. :grin:

What you describe is I think currently being developed. It has always been there in Western thought actually but it has not always been dominant. Schwarz and Thompson, two economists and sociologists define it as an 'egalitarian perspective', Sociologist Aaron Wildavsky defines it as a perspective of harmony. Traditional enlightnement values, values we still live with today proritize control of nature through technological means and progress through economic an cultural development.

The harmony perspective on the other hand is the one embraced by ecology. The sociologist and ecologist Anna Bramwell calls much of ecological reasoning and environmentalism 'manichean', presenting a battle between good nature and evil techno-science. Much of philosophy now is busy transllating philosophical ideas to the realm of the environment and to our relationship between man and nature. Martin Heidegger's essay on technology is an early example. Then came Hans Jonas 'The principle of responsibility'.

You might want to delve in ecological thought for answers to your question. I do think currently that we gradually see a shift in perspective, from individualist to egalitarian. However, do not have many illusions about this shift, like every revolution there will be a lot of struggle. Ecology is not necessary friendly to your enlightenment values and your love for democracy. — Tobias

It appears you are very well-read and that is honorable. However, I must address what looks to me as an attack on technology and democracy.

Thomas Jefferson is one of my favorite authors. It is from him and classical philosophy that we learn the pursuit of happiness means lifelong learning and mass education is the only way to protect our democracy and liberty. However, that needs to include a classical or liberal education, math (to learn logical thinking skills), and science. We replaced that education with the German model of education for technology and now have what we defended our democracy against. We are as Germany was when Hitler took power because that is what that education for technology manifest. This is a disaster!

"Good education is essential for every human being. Educated people have a better understanding of the world, and their perspective about different things is better and more informed." Jefferson

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." Jefferson

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." Jefferson

"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day." Jefferson

There is no way we could keep the mass of humanity alive, that fills the earth today, without technology. We would not have growing populations of long-lived people without technology. We could not have the economies that enable us to provide a decent standard of living for so many people without technology.
However, technology is not science, and technology without wisdom can destroy life on this planet.
We need more than education for technology. We need a classical/liberal education as well so we have the wisdom to use our technology well. If we can achieve this before it is too late is questionable. This is going to be a tight horse race and either we will enter a New Age, a time of high tech and peace, and the end of tyranny, or we won't. It depends on how well the masses are educated. With the media we have today, there is no excuse for doing as poorly as we have done.

By "divine judgement" I meant that on Plato's account, as in Christianity, souls are judged after death - by some divine authority, not by other humans. — Apollodorus

This is not what I expected this thread to be about but I have some thoughts on this idea so I will verbalize them.

I have decided if there is life after death it will be the result of what we have done in our present incarnation and the accumulation of past incarnations. That is not a judgment of any being, but more directly the result of our earthly actions and thoughts. Either we learn math or we do not. We learn to manage our anger without being destructive or we do not. We become enlightened through the effort of doing so, or we do not. The essence of our being is what we make it and we are the one who decides what will follow, just as we decide which books to read.

I think I was a prostitute and a crimal who shared life with another woman and two men who were most certainly criminals. Stealing and killing was just a way of life. As the wolves also have their way of life.
My consciousness in this incarnation is different, so are my opportunities different. Like if there were a god in control and one who judges us, certainly if He gives us lives that bring out the best in us, instead of lives that will surely bring out the worst in us, we would do much better. What we experience is not just a matter of free will. It is also a matter of circumstances that we can not control. Granted I am may have never had that incarnation, but what seems like a memory of it very strongly influences all of my thinking and notions of justice.

Hebrews knew they were using stories. They were meant to be interpreted literally.
— Athena
Maybe you mean "They were not meant ..."? — Alkis Piskas

I hate it when I forget the little word "not". It makes a slight difference in what I mean. :lol:

So the trinity is the idea that somehow God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost are separate, but one. Different manifestations of the same being. What I don’t understand is in the Bible, Jesus communicates directly with God. Wouldn’t this amount to nothing more than talking to yourself? How could Jesus feel forsaken, as he famously declares on the cross? Wouldn’t he be privy to all the information or knowledge that God has? I get it that expecting Christianity to make sense is asking too much of it, but I don’t think I’ve seen this objection to the idea of the trinity, and I’m wondering if it has been posed before, and if so what the responses were. — Pinprick

Pinprick, I think you have made an excellent argument that has not been made before. Clearly given that conversation with God, Jesus and God are not the same consciousness.

Zoarastrianism might have been the foundation of what became Pauline doctrine on the separation between the Absolute and the world. These notions were codified by Christian baptism of the works of Aristotle — Gregory

I so wish we all could discuss Zoarastrianism as easily as we discuss Judaism and Christianity because all these ideas were circulating and religions share them in common. Something that is very exciting to me is the notion of the Creator manifesting the universe by giving order to chaos which is also very much the responsibility of pharaohs to maintain that order. I believe we see this theme throughout oriental thinking. Might we have very interesting discussions if we spoke of global warming as the result of man-made chaos?

Scholars and theologians have long debated on the nature of Zoroastrianism, with dualism, monotheism, and polytheism being the main terms applied to the religion.[38][37][39] Some scholars assert that Zoroastrianism's concept of divinity covers both being and mind as immanent entities, describing Zoroastrianism as having a belief in an immanent self-creating universe with consciousness as its special attribute, thereby putting Zoroastrianism in the pantheistic fold sharing its origin with Indian Hinduism.[40][41] In any case, Asha, the main spiritual force which comes from Ahura Mazda,[21] is the cosmic order which is the antithesis of chaos, which is evident as druj, falsehood and disorder.[22] The resulting cosmic conflict involves all of creation, mental/spiritual and material, including humanity at its core, which has an active role to play in the conflict.[42]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism — Wikipedia

Hum, I think I will start a thread about chaos and global warming.

Ironically, the Christian Trinity omits a significant deity from Old Testament : Satan. Originally, he was a heavenly prince, whose job was to serve as legal prosecutor in God's dealings with humans (including the temptation of Jesus in the desert). By contrast, the Holy Spirit was basically a messenger boy, who unlike an Angel, didn't take on human form.

The Roman Christians didn't have a name for the abstract concept of "four" (only a symbol : IV). But they could have used the Greek word "tessera" to describe a four-in-one deity : the Holy Tesseract. The Hindu pantheon included both good and evil gods. For example demonic Kali, who was the 10th avatar of Vishnu. What's the name for a 10-in-one deity? :cool: — Gnomon

Decad is ten. And you have made delightful points. For sure why stop at a trinity? I never thought of that before, but what is the rule that a God can only be a trinity? And what of Satan? He is essential and I can not understand why Jesus wasn't an angel or Satan wasn't a son? Satan was much more popular than he is now. I don't think a church that lectured about Satan would be popular today. For our present understanding of God, we might want to know about Zoroastrians.

Zoroastrians divided the spiritual realm between forces of good and evil. I believe Judaism is a continuum of badness and goodness, not opposing forces. However, it was Cyrus a Persian king and Zoroastrian who freed the Jews from Babylon and ordered that Persia would pay for the rebuilding of the Jewish temple. There was agreement that both religions would be at peace. This eastern influence carried an understanding of demons that did not exist in Judaism and Christians embraced that understanding of demons. They embraced a notion of spiritual reality that has an opposing force of evil. So you are right, the trinity is not the whole of spiritual reality.

PS__I was raised in a back-to-the-Bible fundamentalist church that did not accept add-on Catholic doctrines such as Trinity & Saints & Christmas. Ironically, some of us still celebrated Christmas, as a semi-secular holiday. So, I was always conflicted on that "holy day". With one crucial exception, our teachings were logical and subject to evidence. But the only true source of that evidence was a collection of ancient "scriptures", that were later compiled by the very church whose authority we rejected. :yikes: — Gnomon

:lol: And Christianity rejected the authority of the Jewish system of authority. Perhaps we need a good comedian to help us see the irony in that. Then along comes Mohammid and he retells his people about the same God and prophets. Then comes Mīrzā Ḥosayn ʿAlī Nūrī who starts the Bahai faith with is inclusive of the other three religions.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam break down into many separate groups all competing with each other for the "authority" to tell us about God's truth, and that is really humans telling us different things, and it has always been like this. The Bible was written by humans. This is a very serious matter because if we don't get it right, we do not become immortal. But if the trinity is our reality, we have a soul that is immortal. Ah, that is what hell is for, all those souls who don't get to go to heaven where Satan has control and we are eternally punished. I think Christianity has a problem with spiritual reality? Or for sure I have a problem understanding exactly what Christians believe.

You just pinpointed one of the many inconsistencies existing in the Bible! :smile:
Do this kind of stories ring a bell? To me yes. It reminds me of school essays written by children. It also reminds me how people with insufficient rational abilities argue in discussions, talk and write on various subjects. Arguing with those persons usually leads to nowhere. So is the study of the Bible! — Alkis Piskas

I am unsure of your meaning, but not many of us would be able to write a book on quantum physics, so maybe when people were writing the word of God, they also had a problem with that? Hebrews knew they were using stories. They were meant to be interpreted literally.

I’m not familiar with Egyptian faith but this notion is based on my own spiritual self-exploration. Is an expression of my own personal interpretation of the Bible.

Neither are Egyptians familiar with their ancient gods and reasoning. This is sad to me as they are caught up in religious conflicts with Christians, Jews, and Islam. I don't think anyone has an exclusive hold on "God's truth". As Joseph Campbell said, God came to everyone and their stories are different because they interpreted Him differently. That is going with the first point. We have human interpretations of God's truth, not an invaluable "God's Truth". Much of Christianity is Egyptian. Isis was the bread and water before Jesus became the bread and wine.

I guess that is true. Again this is based on my own personal perspective on faith. What I realize is there is no standard in how to believe, I guess that is why I am a harsh critic of Systematic Faith. I believe is a flawed practice and the only way, you can worship God and understanding the Nature of God is through Spirituality.

We came from a Source and we return to the source.

Whether you believe in Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Native American faith and even Atheism (return to the Universe into a natural elemental state). This theme of return to the source is Universal.

There is an increasing demand for a more spiritual experience. This is where our understanding of the trinity is so important! Some like to say we are spiritual beings having a human experience. That is totally different from an external God and Spirit, and needing to be saved by this external spirit/God.

{quote]I wonder what your "personal" definition of Christianity is? The argument seemed to be based more on technical systematic understanding than spiritual. And Trying to understand the rational reasoning and the mechanics of what makes God, God. Which is a different dynamic and different explanation than spiritual understanding.

Yes, there is a difference. Mine personally includes quantum physics. I am really sitting on the fence between being materialistic or more metaphysical. I have had experiences that can not be explained with a purely material understanding of reality.

My understanding is that we came from God, we are made up of the essence or a part of the spirit of God (Holy Spirit). So you can think in a sense that before we were conceived we were once one with God. Once we were born and took human form we became distinctly different, separate from God but we are from God. In that sense I believe that is what defines a Soul. — TheQuestion

That is contrary to the older Egyptian notion of the trinity of our souls. When we die part of that trinity, the physical part, becomes nonexistent.

Part of the trinity is judged and may enter the good life after death or not.

The Assessors of Maat were 42 minor ancient Egyptian deities of the Maat charged with judging the souls of the dead in the afterlife by joining the judgment of Osiris in the Weighing of the Heart.[1][2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assessors_of_Maat — Wikipedia

Finally, the third part rejoins the source.
That is compatible with the native American notion of the Creator and returning to the source after death.

Christianity externalized the God spirit and made God the trinity.

You lost me on that one. I prefer attempting to imagine a past consciousness and what the Greek effort to understand the mysteries of math has to do with understanding the trinity. A train of thought different from all other people on earth at that time. And to understand the twisting of meaning when Jesus was said to be logos, the laws of nature.

And I like thinking about the difference between being the son of Zeus versus the Son of God. I wish others saw that as an exciting contrast worthy of discussion. As the Greek understanding of math and the laws of nature were different from all others, so is the Christian understanding of God, different from all others. I can not think of any other god that had a son without a woman. The sons of Zeus had real power on earth such as Hercules and Alexander the Great. A son that is a martyr and needs to be sacrificed to save human souls, is a different kind of god. We can not blame the Jews for not accepting that Christian reasoning. Not only is it a different way of understanding God, but it is also a different way of understanding humans.

Judaism holds that adherents do not need personal salvation as Christians believe. Jews do not subscribe to the doctrine of original sin.[7] Instead, they place a high value on individual morality as defined in the law of God—embodied in what Jews know as the Torah or The Law, given to Moses by God on biblical Mount Sinai. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation — Wikipedia

Jews had a god-like all the other gods when people had patron gods. Patron gods had favorite people who they protected and the people with the most powerful god won wars. When Christians won wars pagans thought it meant they had the most powerful god. You know the jealous, revengeful, fearsome, and punishing God, not the God of love Christians worship today. The Jewish notion of God is not a trinity.

Jesus promoted violating the law saying it was not God's law but human ideas of law. I agree it was human ideas of laws, but that does not make the Christian understanding of the trinity any better and twisting the understanding of the laws of nature to mean a deified Jesus is just wrong.

My guess is some people hate vegans for the same reason some people hate Jews. A claim to moral superiority and rejection of normal customs can come back as rejection.

↪Athena Y very w! And of course you are exactly correct. I offer/refer you to this site:
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505183/page/n233/mode/2up
You should find yourself at pp. 221-222 (of the text itself) of a pdf of An Essay on Metaphysics. I point you to the paragraph starting, "Christian writers in the time of the Roman Empire asserted, and no historian today will deny,..." (p. 223 of the text). And to the end of the chapter, a few pages. Of course you can read the whole chapter. And chapter XXV, "Axioms of Intuition," (p. 248 of the text) I find very interesting.

The irony of their fighting over words and meanings and new understandings cannot have been lost on you. What a relief we do not do that today, especially here in TPF, this cloistered reserve of reason. Luc Ferry observes that the conversion of logos in 1 John 1 from a Greek principle of nature to being a man then living was an "intolerable deviance," :"a matter of life and death." (A Brief History of Thought, pp. 62-63.) And so it goes. — tim wood

Whoo, whoo you are doing it to me again! There is so much I do not know and getting through this ignorance to enlightenment is very challenging! There were so many unfamiliar concepts in what you gave me. The notion of self-differentiation is exciting and I recall number 3 has been very important in several early civilizations. There is a Chinese concept of "one, two, infinity". This would be math and metaphysics.

There is the monad, number 1, the un-undifferentiated whole. "The one Godhead, secret in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self of all, presiding over all action, witness, conscious knower and absolute...the One in control over the many who are passive to Nature, fashions one seed in many ways." Swetaswatara Upanishad

Then the Dyad where the action begins. 'In the Two we experience the very essence bring to bind many together into one, to equate plurality and unity. Our mind divides the world into heaven and earth, day and night, light and darkness, right and lift, man and woman, I and you- and the more strongly we sense the separation between these poles, whatever they may be, the more powerfully do we also sense their unity." Karl Menninger

Then the Triad. "All was divided into three." Homer "The Triad has a special beauty and fairness beyond all numbers, primarily because it is the very first to make actual the potentialities of the Monad." Iamblichus

We use scales to symbolize justice because it balances two. All of this is more comprehensible with geometry and actually drawing the two overlapping circles and then connecting where the lines cross getting a triangle.

Where is the emotiocon and the melting brain running out of an ear? Like I think the explanation of the trinity needs an understanding of the math, but that is not what comes through the Bible. The explanation you gave me is clearly more than three men ruling together or three gods Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working together. Without coming to metaphysics through math, we are missing an understanding of the forces involved. Am I am making sense?

"The creative activity of God is the source of motion in the world of nature" (from your link) but did you ever hear this explanation in Sunday school or a church sermon? What you gave me opened a whole new way to understand the Trinity and I so regret that was never the subject in Sunday school.

"That nevertheless there are in this world many different realms, each composing of a class of things peculiar to itself...." and then religion runs off in fantastic imagination of another realm mixed up in a history of a small group of people who justify everything they do with a fanciful notion of a god's will and things get very contentious from here.

I really appreciate the information you shared about the Trinity. I would be more interested in attending a church that presents such information instead of lessons for being good children based on fiction instead of math and science.

At the moment of the big bang there was something. From that moment to the present a lot has changed. A measure of change involves a concept of time. When we look at the universe we see the past, because what we see is no longer as it was but only the traveling light of what was.

You made my day with that question. I had to gather information to explain my meaning and that lead to an enlightening experience as I realized the relationships between concepts I have long held. Merry Christmas to me, you gave me what I want most- enlightenment.

Perhaps my wording was not exacting enough. Three men are not equal to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as one, not three. It is the nature of the one that is in question. How does the 3 become the 1?

I will quote from "Jesus Wars" by Philip Jenkins.

THE NEW LANGUAGE OF GOD.

The Apllinarian crisis also showed how much of the controversy in the church arose from disputes over shades of language. By the end of the fourth century, theologians drew subtle yet critical differences between a number of words that earlier had been thrown around in far vaguer terms....
The most important terms are ousia, physis, hypostasis, and prosopon. — Philip Jenkins

Is that better? Rome and everyone understood 3 men. That is the problem in the Jesus Wars. There is the Father, and there is the Son, and there is the Spirit. Three separate gods! People were killing each other with this understanding of a separate Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because there is only one God! Okay, how do we make this right without the language for 3 being 1? Jews expected a savior, they were not expecting God himself. They still do not accept the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one God. That begins as a language problem and becomes a science problem. How can the impossible be possible?

If Jesus is God, when did this happen? Was he born a God? Or did he become a God when he was baptized and the Holy Spirit entered him? Or, did he become God when he died? Greeks were okay with men being sons gods, but I don't think they took this too seriously. In Rome, a king had to die before becoming a God. First, we need the language to talk about these things, and then we need some scientific thinking to figure out how a man could be God. Not just any god, but the one and only God. Can we wrap our heads around these language/thinking problems and a different Roman and Greek understanding of the God issue? You know, Alexander the Great was the son of Zeus. That is not how the Romans understood such things.

Digging around for more clarification, the argument gets more and more interesting because it is tied to claims to power and land. Greeks gave up liner heritage and this led to the war against the Maccabees (a Jewish group).

"Apotheosis" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotheosis
The conquering Greeks were giving people jobs based on merit. The Jews found that intolerable because in their society everything was based on linage. Martin Luther and some Christians today, believe God determines who is born to rule and who is born to be a servant. Martin Luther thought God decided who is born to be a leader and who is born to serve. We come out of a Judo/Christian society that was very much determined by our lineage, not our merit.

Now look at the word "Divination" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divinization_(Christian)

The term originally was used in Greco-Roman pagan society to venerate a ruler. It was inconceivable to Jewish piety. Yet, with time, it was adopted in Eastern Christianity by the Greek Fathers to describe spiritual transformation of a Christian. The change of human nature was understood by them as a consequence of a baptized person being incorporated into the Church as the Body of Christ. Divinization was thus developed within the context of incarnational theology. — Wikipedia

:rofl: That notion of being divine is a whole lot different from Zeus having sex with your mother. Thank you again for your question. :heart:

I read your article. So Jews would say the Trinity was pagan and although there is 3 in God there is not three persons? Is this how modern Jews see it?
— Gregory
I don't have enough personal experience with Jewish theology to answer that. — Gnomon

It is my understanding the Christians were killing each other during Contanople's time because of the debate of if God was three or one. This was a problem with language. Romans did not have a word for such a trinity but for the Greeks, who had a word for it, had no problem accepting such a trinity. It is my understanding Greek Jews were the first to write a Bible. Using the Greek language would make the trinity of God possible. So the answer to the question is what language were the Jews using. Also, the Romans created a word that made the trinity palatable to them.

Given today's reality, we are thrilled with a loving God, but our understanding of a loving God was not as it is today, until our bellies were full. Not that long ago God was jealous, revengeful, fearsome, and punishing the Satan had demons who could possess us. We are good with arguing the existence of God ignoring the reality of Satan and demons. Today's believers have a whole different understanding of God and Satan because the condition of our lives is so different.

Bottom line, what language are we using, and what is the condition of our lives that makes this or that believable.

Here is an interesting explanation of how concepts evolved to make the trinity of God palatable.

Doctrine, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. The doctrine of the Trinity is considered to be one of the central Christian affirmations about God. It is rooted in the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the incarnated figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the helper or intercessor in the power of the new life. — Britannica

God is the same as his power and his love and his justice and everything about him. He is one thing. That is what monotheism is about. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share an intellect and will. There is ONE God but three relations of consciousness within it.
— Gregory

Yes. Unfortunately, you can't expect atheists and anti-Christians to understand that. Yet they are allowed to dominate the debate and even encouraged for some strange reason. — Apollodorus

Huh? Love and justice are abstracts. A Father and Son can be tangible when they are the result of tangle humans who have sex, but the existence of supernatural beings who some argue is only one being, seems a con game to me, trying to convince something intangible is tangible. I don't know about the Holy Spirit having anything like a tangible existence. The Christian understanding of a god is not the only one, and why would we assume the Christian notion of a god is the only possible one to exist? What about Apollo the power to create and reason? Isn't he also an important god?

Not sure if I’m following this. There would be no time in nothingness, at least in how I conceive of it. Time is something. Also, wouldn’t the possibility of the big bang itself be something? — Paul Michael

Time is not something. Time is not tangible. Time like math is an abstract. It is an invention of our minds and applied to what exists.

According to the explanation of the cosmos I heard last night, nothing existed before the big bang and then gases were the first to exist, and existence, as we know it today, took a very long time to evolve out of nothing, starting with hydrogen and helium.

↪Athena Canada. I used to vote. My friends used to vote. Most don't now, for the reasons I listed. Nobody listens to our letters, might as well burn them, the end result is the same. I figure democracy is a scam: nice sales pitch but the final product isn't worth a damn. — Book273

Democracy is what we make it, but to get something changed requires a huge effort and connecting with the people who are willing to work for the change. Timing is also important. I discovered it is much easier to make change happen when someone like the governor is new to the office and wants to make change. Today our children's services policy is very different from the past and grandparents have rights by law.

I'd agree with you that it becomes increasingly difficult to assess equality when we live in generically different scenarios. I guess it depends on whether you look at humanity via a macro or micro lens. — john27

I think our consideration of equality is equal under that law, not equally beautiful, or equally talented, or equally motivated. As some businesses are discovering today, hiring practices that include those who have been marginalized, is kind of like finding diamonds in ugly stones.

I drive people nuts with my talk of education and values and the Military Industrial Complex but our only hope is becoming aware of how the 1958 National Defense Education Act changed education, and why this has huge, social, economic, and political ramifications.

Equal opportunity is a democratic principle and in a way, education for technology increases that equal opportunity, but in another way, it marginalizes people and destroys their equal opportunity.

When it comes to our voting system, as some are talking about, the education we once had, would prevent the effort to control the voting process that is happening today. This is only one of the political ramifications of the change in education. We now have the reactionary politics that put Hitler in power.

Here we can't do anything until the next election, and then we have a choice about which lying sack of crap gets in, — Book273

Where do you live? Where I live we can write to our representatives, and write letters to the editor, and protest in the streets, attend public hearings on the city, county, and state levels. This activity can lead to people uniting and having a much stronger voice than an individual. Such as the National Rifle Association. It is possible to write a bill and get have a vote on it.

I have actively changed law at a local level and bureaucratic policy at the state level, by working with others. What is really horrible is I seem to be the only one in forums who understands what citizens can do and that the meaning of citizenship is being responsible for such things. Democracy means the people have the power. We just aren't educating for that anymore.

I'm not sure if you've seen a lot of US schools.. but a lot of them have nothing to do with the kind of education needed to engineer weapons.. Are we talking urban or suburban schools? Because urban schools are often just trying to keep the kids and its own funding afloat for four years... — schopenhauer1

You are responding to a post where I said the Military-Industrial Complex has been in control of education since the 1958 National Defense Education Act. That is not an issue of city or rural schools, nor is it about this state or that state. It is about education for technology replacing what Eisenhower called our "domestic education". Our domestic education added on vocational training when we mobilized for the first world war, but we retained education for good citizenship and transmitted an American mythology and education for citizenship, until the National Defense Education Act.

Education is like a genii in a bottle, the defined purpose is the wish and the students are the genii. We changed the wish in 1958.

A primary purpose of domestic education was preparing the young for good moral judgment and that means teaching the children how to think, not what to think. Our liberty and social order really depend on that past education. Education for technology is amoral and tries to program the child's brain to be of use to industry and the military. Does that make sense, the difference between education to achieve a democratic and social goal, or education to achieve industrial and military goals?

I have no argument with the observation that many, many schools are just struggling to survive. Students in those schools are being cheated of having an education because what they are getting will not help them in any way and the environment is largely responsible for the failure of the schools. The 1958 National Defense Education Act was supposed to end in 4 years. It obviously did not end and it may be too late to save our democracy now. We took our culture for granted and that was a big mistake!

That is, we have to fight the enemy within and not just the enemies without. — tim wood

The enemy was welcomed with open arms at the end of WWII, Not only did nations compete for German scientists, but the US also adopted Germany's models of bureaucracy and education. We replaced our education with the German model of education for technology. Only when democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended. That ended in 1958 and yes the enemy is within.

For instance, now we see movies with HEROES in the Viet Nam war. (US-Viet Kong.) At the time the youth was opposing it and condemned it. Famous rockers and philosophers (John Lennon, Bob Dylan et al) condemned the war. People protested against it all over the world, not just on US soil. Now the war is viewed as a just war, producing heroes. And people gobble this new, albeit false, image down, because they still in the same groove as always in the West: believing the facts, believing the commentary. — god must be atheist

And people believe the Military-Industrial Complex is just theory and the same things as Hitler's New World Order.

Charles Sarolea's book "The Angle German Problem" is perhaps one of the most important books to read in order to understand what has happened to the US since implementing the 1958 National Defense Education Act. One of the first things the Prussians did when they took control of the whole of Germany was to centralize public education and focus it on technology for military and industrial purpose. The Prussians lived for military might as the citizens of the US lived for a love of God. Religion is good for war and war is good religion.

The Tea Party that is an essential part of the US history was opposition to Britain taxing US citizens to pay for the military essential to its control of the colonies. When the US entered the second world war its military strength ranked 17th, far below the military strength of much smaller countries. The US and democracy were best known as forces of peace, not forces of war.

Do the math. Are Americans voting sensibly? Does the ballot demonstrate/indicate that education makes a difference? I dunno, just askin'. Edify me, pleeaaase. — TheMadFool

Thank you, you are so right! Americans are not voting sensibly and the change in education is why they are not.

Mad Fool, I don't think you are getting the nuances of my post?

The US Republican-Trump party is now working to install loyalists in swing-state election-admin posts, so that they can manipulate the 2024 count to ensure he wins - all in defense of the stop-the-steal lie, which 2/3 of them still believe. — Tim3003

And they will probably succeed because we have been educated for that. Trump is our Hitler and the supporters of both men have had the same education for technology. Our power and glory is all about our military might, right? That has always made American great, isn't it? (absolutely not!) That and the blessings of a God who takes care of us and favors us above all others.

Here is our great former President Trump. I am posting it because it is exactly what Chis Hedge explains in his book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NsrwH9I9vE

Chris Hedges's book "THE END OF LITERACY AND THE TRIUMPH OF SPECTACLE?" is a must-read for this thread.

"The more we sever ourselves from a literate, print-based world- a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas- for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans, and a celebration of violence, the more we implode."

Deomcracy is, bottom line, a compromise between totalitarianism and anarchy. The deal we've agreed to is a fixed term (4 years in the USA, think Trump) of dictatorship interrupted by short spells of anarchy (elections). There's nothing great about democracy when you look at it that way; as it is authoritarianism is being favored, given we have to live with it for 4 years, in democracy and that speaks volumes. It seems the logic of democracy boils down to getting robbed by different people is better than getting robbed by the same person. I somehow fail to see the difference. — TheMadFool

And if religions put away their holy books and began teaching math and science, they would be as weak as our democracy is now. Autocracy does not require an educated mass. Democracy does require preparing citizens to be responsible adults who live by shared principles and will defend those principles. Our liberty is impossible without that. Knowing the principles of democracy is as important to a democracy as a Christian knowing the 10 commandments is important to Christianity. Knowing the history and philosophy of democracy is as important to democracy, as Bible stories are important to being an indoctrinated Christian. Without that education, we have anarchy, not democracy.