[quote]Damici wrote:
Because if you pick wrongly, you’re fucked! (As per the teachings of most of them anyway).[/quote]
Not with mine. All religions lead to the same God.
Ftw.
[quote]Makavali wrote:
Ftw.[/quote]
What does Ftw. mean?
[quote]BlakeAJackson wrote:
Makavali wrote:
Ftw.
What does Ftw. mean?[/quote]
ftw= For The Win
[quote]abcd1234 wrote:
Ahh, but this is where I disagree. People don’t always think 100% rationally. I believe religion will always be present in the minds of humans. In fact, some evolutionary psychologists believe there’s a biological predisposition and basis for religion in humans(some even argue Neanderthals were as well).
If this is true, then religion is not solely a social construct. It would be, rather, a primal feeling and suppressing might be akin to suppressing sexual/reproductive urges. If anyone has had an existential crisis, you know the amount of anxiety that comes with it. Religion solves the problem, however, and allows people to continue without angst-ridden feelings of pointlessness. And since most undoubtedly prefer the calm that comes from believing in a greater good and higher power, they will continue to do so.
Whether a parent instills a child with these beliefs or they discover them themselves is irrelevant. Many will still reach a theistic viewpoint at some point in their lives, which may be due(in part) to an ingenious evolutionary defense mechanism. [/quote]
LOL at bringing in the views of evolutionary psychologists. Even many evolutionists regard evolutionary psychology as vacuous. It can make up just-so stories to explain any state of affairs, so really explains nothing.
I like how the New Scientist’s reviewer of Geoffrey Miller’s book The Mating Mind put it:
“How does one actually test these ideas? Without a concerted effort to do this, evolutionary psychology will remain in the realms of armchair entertainment rather than real science.”
I’m a parent, I’m going to teach my kids how to think. It’s my job. I’m going to teach what I think is right. That’s also my job.
And it’s no ones business how I do that as long as they are law abiding, respectful citizens.
[quote]tom63 wrote:
And it’s no ones business how I do that as long as they are law abiding, respectful citizens.[/quote]
And that’s all I care about.
[quote]tom63 wrote:
I’m a parent, I’m going to teach my kids how to think. It’s my job. I’m going to teach what I think is right. That’s also my job.
And it’s no ones business how I do that as long as they are law abiding, respectful citizens.[/quote]
Yes, I completely agree with the first sentence. You should teach your children how to think. Not what to think.
[quote]BlakeAJackson wrote:
The problem is that you are viewing your life as individual blocks of time. You have that luxury in the present but are not able to see the future with certainty. So you can make the mistake of believing that a certain portion of your past could have been left out or done differently to get you where you are now, but there is no medium to verify that is the case. You have to realize that what is in the past had to happen, by nature of what the past is. Already over.
I do not believe in predestination or anything for the record. I believe in an age of accountability as some have described it , and that not all people reach this level of cognition. There are probably varying levels and some achieve different amounts of each, it helps explain why the world is the way it is better than any other explanation I have come across. Education is certainly a great method to increasing ones cognition as is experience its self.
[/quote]
My use of the word ‘individual’ may have been careless. Individual implies a few things that I do not believe one can say of most people. Also, I do believe that we are all connected. Deeply so. ‘free thinking’ may also have been an unfortunate choice of words, as the process of thought can never be free. It is limited to division. Big, small. Bad, good. White, black etc. I do, however, believe that the world could be made a much better place, even with humans operating within the world of thought and not breaking out of that prison. Education is so abysmal at the present time. It really would be easier to make things better than to make things worse at this point.
When you talk about accountability, do you mean it in the same way as "‘responsibility’? Because I believe that the feeling of responsibility really ties in with interconnectedness. When we understand that everything is relationship, and that none of us are seperate from anyone else, we immedately feel responsible for everything. When we feel this responsibility and really see it, the world probably changes instantly. It can not be an abstraction though, an imaginary creation of thought. One must actually see it, feel it.
Someone said something to the effect of “I’ll raise my kids the way I want and it’s nobody elses business as long as they’re not commiting crimes”. I don’t believe that’s true. First of all, the law is not a roadmap of what is right. Second, our actions affect other people, and that brings up back to the original topic.
[quote]whoami wrote:
My use of the word ‘individual’ may have been careless. Individual implies a few things that I do not believe one can say of most people. Also, I do believe that we are all connected. Deeply so. ‘free thinking’ may also have been an unfortunate choice of words, as the process of thought can never be free. It is limited to division. Big, small. Bad, good. White, black etc. I do, however, believe that the world could be made a much better place, even with humans operating within the world of thought and not breaking out of that prison. Education is so abysmal at the present time. It really would be easier to make things better than to make things worse at this point.
When you talk about accountability, do you mean it in the same way as "‘responsibility’? Because I believe that the feeling of responsibility really ties in with interconnectedness. When we understand that everything is relationship, and that none of us are seperate from anyone else, we immedately feel responsible for everything. When we feel this responsibility and really see it, the world probably changes instantly. It can not be an abstraction though, an imaginary creation of thought. One must actually see it, feel it.
Someone said something to the effect of “I’ll raise my kids the way I want and it’s nobody elses business as long as they’re not commiting crimes”. I don’t believe that’s true. First of all, the law is not a roadmap of what is right. Second, our actions affect other people, and that brings up back to the original topic.
[/quote]
I used accountability because I have had it explained to me that way by a religious person before. Children often make mistakes or bad choices due to inexperience or lack of education. There for they are not accountable for their mistakes the same way a person who knows wrong and chooses is. A reaction may occur as a result of their choices but their understanding of wrong doesn’t until this reaction. If they continue to make the same choice knowing the reaction/result then they must hold them selves accountable at that point.
There is always more then one road to reach this age of accountability and there is no age that it will defiantly occur at. Often tragedy/suffering, education, or any other experience will bring a person to this level of awareness. It is the awareness that they are responsible for their own actions and for the reality that they chose to create. That can seem obscure when I read what I have just typed.
All of the responsibility and awareness of interconnectedness that you spoke of is a huge part of that.
The resentment of the way the world is and realizing that it could be better and wanting to change it came next for me in my own experience.
The most recent and hardest thing that I had to do was accept the world for the way it is and do what I can in my own reality to make it better. I often say, just do what you are supposed to do and everything will be fine. The problem is that while most people have been taught right and wrong they have not understood or reached a level of cognition where they are aware of how every choice you make is impacting their reality. That is why people continually make choices that yield negative results for them. They know what is right but they have not accepted or seen that they are being held accountable, as is everyone they come in contact with, for not accepting responsibility for their actions.
One of the big pieces of the puzzle for me was a saying, “I don�??t believe in hell, but you can make it if you try.” I add or if you are not willing to accept accountability / responsibility you will be condemned to your own personal hell.
If I had not had the moment that I had when I held my mothers hand as she took her last breath and held it till her heart stopped beating at the exact moment in my life that I did, I may have never gained the desire to make a better world or finally reached my best explanation of how I can achieve this.
Without getting to far out there, I do not believe in time when it comes to the universe. I believe that it is relevant to a person�??s everyday life and is a useful measurement that we created to explain other parts of our world. If we want to create a world other than the one we have then the removal of time from our perspective seems to be essential. Some mathematicians are working on removing it from many equations. My life is measurable because it has a distance beginning and will have a distinct end. The universe may only have a beginning in the view of the cosmos the process has never stopped so to measure the process is not possible, it is still occurring.
This may seem unrelated but humans do not exist separate from this. It is part of the illusion that the mind/god/devil/what the fuck ever you want to use to explain it, uses to interpret reality and nothing more than an illusion. The future is an assumption that holds some predictability and the past is presently over. The present is always just missed by the mind. Time does not exist with out human observation as a reference point.