Secular Intolerance

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Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

Belinda wrote: Tue May 23, 2017 11:34 pm Nick_A wrote:
Objective purpose is one thing and subjective purpose is another. You are a secularist so only accept the concept of subjective purpose. CIRET would only be annoying for you since it assumes the potential for an objective conscious purpose for Man in addition to that of the man animal. This is lunacy for the secularist so leads to intolerance.
But how can there be a purpose floating around unattached to any subject?
The purpose odf philosophy as opposed to psychology and binary reason is to exercise the higher parts of the human soul and allow it to develop, to “mature.” A person has to write a book to do justice to this but in short, look at it this way. These ideas that have inspired me aren’t to be blindly believed but instead consciously contemplated in order to open the mind.

Plato wrote of the tripartite soul. In other words, the collective human soul or essence has three parts: intellect, spiritedness (emotions) and appetites (sensory desires.)

Modern psychology has expanded on this as can be seen here

http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/p ... e_soul.htm

The human organism is a mini universe. It is structured as is our great universe in three parts. Plato described a society as analogous to a large human organism and should be structured as is the tripartite soul. Others who have influenced me assert that the great universe is also a tripartite soul. From this perspective the universe is the body of God or what Plotinus called the ONE and Plato called the GOOD. Attempts to put a face on it and secularize it are just self serving idolatry.

Our body changes every day. Cells die and new ones are created. Each of these cells have a purpose but each cell isn’t essential for the health and objective purpose of the body which is to serve the higher conscious parts.

An acorn has the purpose of becoming an oak. If it doesn’t succeed it becomes food for animals or just decays and becomes food for the earth. The fact that only a few acorns become oaks doesn’t negate the purpose of the acorn. A thing can have a purpose but it doesn’t have to actualize. It just serves a lower purpose

I’ve read that the relationship between a body cell and a brain cell is analogous to man on earth - a psychological slave to Plato’s cave and conscious man which is a brain cell that evolved from the limitations of a body cell and lives the life of the body. The purpose of things isn’t revealed in a static part of their being but is seen in the movement of its being as it participates in breaking down through involution or rising up through evolution and uniting with other things
“Time in Buddhist cosmology is measured in kalpas. Originally, a kalpa was considered to be 4,320,000 years. Buddhist scholars expanded it with a metaphor: rub a one-mile cube of rock once every hundred years with a piece of silk, until the rock is worn away -- and a kalpa still hasn’t passed! During a kalpa, the world comes into being, exists, is destroyed, and a period of emptiness ensues. Then it all starts again.”
Universal existence is a process. Its purpose is revealed in the process, not in things. Objective human meaning and purpose is an attribute of the cyclical process of involution and evolution. Secularization has influenced modern man to focus on things to define meaning as opposed to the big picture in which the value of the process becomes more evident to satisfy the needs of the heart to feel “value.”
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Greta
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Wed May 24, 2017 1:21 amPlato wrote of the tripartite soul. In other words, the collective human soul or essence has three parts: intellect, spiritedness (emotions) and appetites (sensory desires.)

Modern psychology has expanded on this as can be seen here

http://www.scandalon.co.uk/philosophy/p ... e_soul.htm

The human organism is a mini universe. It is structured as is our great universe in three parts. Plato described a society as analogous to a large human organism and should be structured as is the tripartite soul. Others who have influenced me assert that the great universe is also a tripartite soul. From this perspective the universe is the body of God or what Plotinus called the ONE and Plato called the GOOD. Attempts to put a face on it and secularize it are just self serving idolatry.

Our body changes every day. Cells die and new ones are created. Each of these cells have a purpose but each cell isn’t essential for the health and objective purpose of the body which is to serve the higher conscious parts.

An acorn has the purpose of becoming an oak. If it doesn’t succeed it becomes food for animals or just decays and becomes food for the earth. The fact that only a few acorns become oaks doesn’t negate the purpose of the acorn. A thing can have a purpose but it doesn’t have to actualize. It just serves a lower purpose

I’ve read that the relationship between a body cell and a brain cell is analogous to man on earth - a psychological slave to Plato’s cave and conscious man which is a brain cell that evolved from the limitations of a body cell and lives the life of the body. The purpose of things isn’t revealed in a static part of their being but is seen in the movement of its being as it participates in breaking down through involution or rising up through evolution and uniting with other things
“Time in Buddhist cosmology is measured in kalpas. Originally, a kalpa was considered to be 4,320,000 years. Buddhist scholars expanded it with a metaphor: rub a one-mile cube of rock once every hundred years with a piece of silk, until the rock is worn away -- and a kalpa still hasn’t passed! During a kalpa, the world comes into being, exists, is destroyed, and a period of emptiness ensues. Then it all starts again.”
Universal existence is a process. Its purpose is revealed in the process, not in things. Objective human meaning and purpose is an attribute of the cyclical process of involution and evolution. Secularization has influenced modern man to focus on things to define meaning as opposed to the big picture in which the value of the process becomes more evident to satisfy the needs of the heart to feel “value.”
Beautiful post, Nick. I like the Tripartate Soul link. Reading the post, I'm struggling to find ideas there that "secularists" would have a problem with, aside from, "Attempts to put a face on it and secularize it are just self serving idolatry".

That is a strangely harsh judgement and the weakest point of an otherwise fine post. Attempts "to put a face on it" are just attempts to feel more secure in life, with a special "Father" to call upon. Completely understandable. Attempts to "secularise" (I assume you mean to objectify and depersonify) are attempts to better understand how things work.
marjoram_blues
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by marjoram_blues »

Some interesting responses to this thread. And some different perspectives explored.
But when push comes to shove, and using basic intuition - no painstaking reading or analysis of complex posts - it is time for me to conclude.

We can have no real idea of what another's reality is, what they've been through, to assume a certain position - in philosophy or education - of what is right (for them).
To use a wide brush to divide humans into 2 classes: secularist or religious, and then generalise about each group, made up of individuals with different degrees of tolerance - well, that's plain daft. And people who do this, on a philosophy forum, are not, I think, daft - rather they continue the age old conflict. To what end?

Pick the right brush for the job. Don't paint your thinking into a corner by assuming and holding an unnecessarily aggressive attitude to people, who are religious or non-religious, by eg using an unhelpful wide-sweeping term like 'Secular Intolerance'. Continual use of this is a bit like brainwashing - and if that is not a 'spirit-killer', I don't know what is.

Perceptions can be clouded with judgements based on wrong assumptions - perhaps generalising about a group from particular actions of a few we don't like or respect.

The How of any action to improve human life is ongoing - clear up perceptions, sharpen focus, and move on with baby steps from the basic essential facts of life. Find a way - starting with yourself.

That's all I have right now. Best wishes.
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Greta
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Tue May 23, 2017 3:59 pmAgain, you do not recognize the difference between human conscious evolution and human adaptation even theoretically. Those like you and F4 even become insulted when people question their answers.
I have no problem with being questioned, just not having false assumptions pinned on me. Who does?
Nick_A wrote: Tue May 23, 2017 3:59 pmYou don’t realize that true philosophy doesn’t provide answers but inspires questions worthy of conscious contemplation. This is insulting for the secularist.
Is that how I think? I thought that all I wanted was to better understand nature and reality in general. Now I find that I have this wicked hidden agenda. Gosh.
Nick_A wrote:Those like Plato and Plotinus provide a logical scale of creation within which human meaning and purpose can be inwardly remembered and understood through contemplation rather than superficially argued from a position of imagined secular superiority. You are better off thinking wonderful thoughts and leave philosophy to those who have felt the attraction to eros and admitted their nothingness in front of this attraction and at the same time be willing to "annoy the Great Beast" as Simone Weil remarked in pursuit of eros.
I gather that you are claiming superiority over me here in some way that I am apparently too shallow to ascertain. You claim suggests that you discount my peak experiences while valuing your own.

Your willingness to "annoy the Great Beast" appears to be theoretical. If you actually did annoy TGB, you'd either be behind bars, dead, discredited in the media or persecuted by police. It seems to me that you have not annoyed TGB; it has not yet noticed you. Be glad for that.
Nick_A wrote:
"The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." Albert Einstein
The great insult to secularism. Is there any better reason for secular intolerance? Imagine a scientist skilled in associative thought admitting his nothingness when secularism knows there is nothing more intelligent than Man. Talk about an insult! Where was Richard Dawkins when we needed him?
Silly chatter. You can do better than this, as shown in your other post.
Walker
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Walker »

marjoram_blues wrote: Wed May 24, 2017 8:50 am Some interesting responses to this thread. And some different perspectives explored.
But when push comes to shove, and using basic intuition - no painstaking reading or analysis of complex posts - it is time for me to conclude.

We can have no real idea of what another's reality is, what they've been through, to assume a certain position - in philosophy or education - of what is right (for them).
To use a wide brush to divide humans into 2 classes: secularist or religious, and then generalise about each group, made up of individuals with different degrees of tolerance - well, that's plain daft. And people who do this, on a philosophy forum, are not, I think, daft - rather they continue the age old conflict. To what end?

Pick the right brush for the job. Don't paint your thinking into a corner by assuming and holding an unnecessarily aggressive attitude to people, who are religious or non-religious, by eg using an unhelpful wide-sweeping term like 'Secular Intolerance'. Continual use of this is a bit like brainwashing - and if that is not a 'spirit-killer', I don't know what is.

Perceptions can be clouded with judgements based on wrong assumptions - perhaps generalising about a group from particular actions of a few we don't like or respect.

The How of any action to improve human life is ongoing - clear up perceptions, sharpen focus, and move on with baby steps from the basic essential facts of life. Find a way - starting with yourself.

That's all I have right now. Best wishes.
Call: We can have no real idea of what another's reality is, what they've been through, to assume a certain position - in philosophy or education - of what is right (for them).
- Response: Disagree. Mentoring is a formal aspect of education beyond the classroom walls.

Call: To use a wide brush to divide humans into 2 classes: secularist or religious, and then generalise about each group, made up of individuals with different degrees of tolerance - well, that's plain daft.
- Response: Agree, but not in light of your own stated “end.”

Call: And people who do this, on a philosophy forum, are not, I think, daft - rather they continue the age old conflict. To what end?
- Response: You stated to what end: “The How of any action to improve human life is ongoing - clear up perceptions, sharpen focus, and move on with baby steps from the basic essential facts of life. Find a way - starting with yourself.”

Best wishes to you, too.
Belinda
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Belinda »

Nick_A wrote:
The purpose odf philosophy as opposed to psychology and binary reason is to exercise the higher parts of the human soul and allow it to develop, to “mature.”
But you are mesmerised by the grammar. "The purpose of philosophy" implies that many if not most people understand that that is what philosophy is for. It does not imply that philosophy is an autonomous living energy. Did Plato think that the Forms are ideas in the mind of God before they are ideas in the minds of men?

Nick wrote:
The human organism is a mini universe. It is structured as is our great universe in three parts. Plato described a society as analogous to a large human organism and should be structured as is the tripartite soul. Others who have influenced me assert that the great universe is also a tripartite soul. From this perspective the universe is the body of God or what Plotinus called the ONE and Plato called the GOOD. Attempts to put a face on it and secularize it are just self serving idolatry.
It's a model which serves the good by placing soul in the most meaningful category. The model is like : what would it be for the world, and for men, if
there was nothing but living and dying but no soul, no pursuit of good? Where you and I differ, Nick, is that you think that soul is pre-established, and I think that men make their souls through hard work and imagination. True,there is a material foundation for soul which we see in young children and in natural beauty, but those have to be carefully and lovingly tended and it's dangerous to take them for granted. It is when a good man dies at the end of a long life that we see soul as a work accomplished.

Nick wrote:
An acorn has the purpose of becoming an oak.
This is pre-Darwinian. Nature doesn't purpose and is not a designer. The human soul and if you like the soul of the universe don't depend upon nature as designer.On the contrary soul-making is often not according to nature at all. If soul-making were to always accord with nature we would be fatalists who did not make sure that our children are vaccinated.

Nick wrote:
The purpose of things isn’t revealed in a static part of their being but is seen in the movement of its being as it participates in breaking down through involution or rising up through evolution and uniting with other things
That seems to accord with what I am saying. Purposes are concepts not things. The concept which you describe above serves the good , and a concept does not have to be a thing but can be a process in order for it to serve the good. The idea can remain an idea in the minds and culture of men and still serve the good. If there is a God Who pre-established good ideas that does not relieve men of our responsibility to actively make the good through hard work and imagination.

Nick wrote:
Secularization has influenced modern man to focus on things to define meaning as opposed to the big picture in which the value of the process becomes more evident to satisfy the needs of the heart to feel “value.”
Secularisation is a stage that men have arrived at for historical reasons. It's true that with secularisation men have become less interested in souls and more concerned with material possessions. With the advent of climate change, and of global information retrieval, we are to be forced to concern ourselves with value as never before during the bygone age of faith. Quality is now more concerning than quantity. We cannot return to the age of faith but now must engage with a post-secular age, and at the same time fight the forces of extreme secularisation which are fascism and terrorism, and men's old enemies greed and fear.
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

marjoram_blues
We can have no real idea of what another's reality is, what they've been through, to assume a certain position - in philosophy or education - of what is right (for them).
To use a wide brush to divide humans into 2 classes: secularist or religious, and then generalise about each group, made up of individuals with different degrees of tolerance - well, that's plain daft. And people who do this, on a philosophy forum, are not, I think, daft - rather they continue the age old conflict. To what end?

Pick the right brush for the job. Don't paint your thinking into a corner by assuming and holding an unnecessarily aggressive attitude to people, who are religious or non-religious, by eg using an unhelpful wide-sweeping term like 'Secular Intolerance'. Continual use of this is a bit like brainwashing - and if that is not a 'spirit-killer', I don't know what is.
You don’t seem to accept a basic distinction between people that I do. You are in the majority. However, is admitting it hostile or just compassionate towards those who suffer because of secular intolerance?

I’ll admit to being weird. One of my ancestors was an archbishop in the Armenian church and friendly with Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy. Another was an artist who had few if any peers in his ability to depict the interactions of elemental forces in nature arousing the feelings of awe and wonder. This is weird. But at the same time it has allowed me to meet and learn from people whose minds and hearts are far more advanced than mine. Would I want to exchange being weird for secular life for the advantages of deriving the belief in meaning through what the Great Beast offers. NO.
IN a recent work, Henri Nouwen emphasizes the essence of spirituality in a most succinct fashion: “To whom do we belong? This is the core question of the spiritual life. Do we belong to the world, its worries, its people and its endless chain of urgencies and emergencies, or do we belong to God and God’s people.”
Restricting the idea to a personal God takes away from its importance. Are there people whose lives are dominated by earthly considerations and completely oblivious of the needs and potentials for people who feel the attraction to a higher reality which is the source of meaning for them.?
"To believe in God is not a decision we can make. All we can do is decide not to give our love to false gods. In the first place, we can decide not to believe that the future contains for us an all-sufficient good. The future is made of the same stuff as the present....

"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©
This is really it in a nutshell. A secularist can be appreciated as follows:
Atheism is a lack of belief in gods. Secularism simply provides a framework for a democratic society. Atheists have an obvious interest in supporting secularism, but secularism itself does not seek to challenge the tenets of any particular religion or belief, neither does it seek to impose atheism on anyone.
Secularism is simply a framework for ensuring equality throughout society – in politics, education, the law and elsewhere, for believers and non-believers alike.
Secularism demands the freedom to establish its own beliefs and values from the ground up. It denies the psychological help and support of grace to experience human normality so assures the victory of hypocrisy. It will say one thing and do another. It is the nature of the Beast. The only society that can survive in hypocrisy is tyranny. Slavery assures the peace and equality of psychological slavery.

The educated spirit killers dominating institutions of psychological child abuse called schools do not understand those students who don’t belong to the Beast. They must be educated and the process they use kills the growing soul and potential for a conscious being. I support those who understand the reality of this distinction.

The world is what it is and when dominated by secularism cannot do other than react in accordance with the nature of the Beast.
The How of any action to improve human life is ongoing - clear up perceptions, sharpen focus, and move on with baby steps from the basic essential facts of life. Find a way - starting with yourself.
It sounds good but if we don’t even admit the problem of the human condition how can we avoid turning in circles. People I admire have verified the problem of the human condition within themselves and strive to become more realistic. I support these people and learn from them. Others believe secular and other forms of intolerance is proof of intelligence. It is impossible to clear up perceptions without first experiencing and admitting what they are. Without this humility, we are doomed to turn in circles.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain -
I’ve paused and reflected. I’ve decided to stick with the minority and support the defenseless who now, through no fault of their own, are at the mercy of the spirit killers.
marjoram_blues
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by marjoram_blues »

That's OK - it's really easy to be both smart and daft at the same time. Weird is alright too. So is vanilla ice-cream.
Thanks for the discussion.
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Harbal
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Harbal »

marjoram_blues wrote: Wed May 24, 2017 5:30 pm Thanks for the discussion.
I think you made the right choice to bail out before your nerves start jangling. :D
Nick_A
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

Belinda
It's a model which serves the good by placing soul in the most meaningful category. The model is like : what would it be for the world, and for men, if
there was nothing but living and dying but no soul, no pursuit of good? Where you and I differ, Nick, is that you think that soul is pre-established, and I think that men make their souls through hard work and imagination. True,there is a material foundation for soul which we see in young children and in natural beauty, but those have to be carefully and lovingly tended and it's dangerous to take them for granted. It is when a good man dies at the end of a long life that we see soul as a work accomplished.
Buddhism asserts no soul. Christendom asserts a fully developed soul. I believe that the human organism acquires a seed of the soul with the conscious potential of becoming a soul. Imagination and consciousness are mutually exclusive. Imagination takes the place of consciousness. When a person practices conscious attention, imagination vanishes. The development of the human soul requires the nourishment from conscious attention and freedom from the dominance of fantasy. When a good man dies without damaging the seed of the soul he becomes “good seed” The potential is saved for the future.
This is pre-Darwinian. Nature doesn't purpose and is not a designer. The human soul and if you like the soul of the universe don't depend upon nature as designer.On the contrary soul-making is often not according to nature at all. If soul-making were to always accord with nature we would be fatalists who did not make sure that our children are vaccinated.
Nature doesn’t create purpose. It is the result of cosmic purpose. Nature is a living machine that eats itself and reproduces in order to serve its purpose. The living machine lacks consciousness but has a conscious source which has created through the application of universal laws and conscious devolution.
That seems to accord with what I am saying. Purposes are concepts not things. The concept which you describe above serves the good , and a concept does not have to be a thing but can be a process in order for it to serve the good. The idea can remain an idea in the minds and culture of men and still serve the good. If there is a God Who pre-established good ideas that does not relieve men of our responsibility to actively make the good through hard work and imagination
Man unlike the rest of organic life on earth is dual natured. Man has a lower animal purpose common to all organic life on earth. He also has the potential for a higher conscious purpose. All the great traditions initiating with a conscious source seek to awaken us to our potential in their own way. The purpose of organic life on earth, dust to dust, serves the cosmic good. Man has the potential to serve a higher conscious purpose leading to more than dust to dust.
Secularisation is a stage that men have arrived at for historical reasons. It's true that with secularisation men have become less interested in souls and more concerned with material possessions. With the advent of climate change, and of global information retrieval, we are to be forced to concern ourselves with value as never before during the bygone age of faith. Quality is now more concerning than quantity. We cannot return to the age of faith but now must engage with a post-secular age, and at the same time fight the forces of extreme secularisation which are fascism and terrorism, and men's old enemies greed and fear.
In short you seem to be describing the value of becoming normal and awakening to the reality of objective quality. The dominance of secular intolerance along with all other forms of defensive egoistic intolerance struggles against opening to the inner experience of objective quality believing it already knows what it is. How to become normal? It is the essential human question necessary for freedom from the psychological confines of Plato’s cave. Can philosophy help or must it only serve the egoistic purpose of self justification?
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

Greta;
I have no problem with being questioned, just not having false assumptions pinned on me. Who does?
I have false assumptions pinned on me all the time. Just look at your posts on this thread. My advantage is that it doesn’t bother me since I consider it normal for the unfortunate condition of secular intolerance.

As a secularist the idea of levels of reality must be offensive to you since it threatens the ultimate superiority of humanity in the universe. Of course you will be offended by such questions. You have that in common with F4
Is that how I think? I thought that all I wanted was to better understand nature and reality in general. Now I find that I have this wicked hidden agenda. Gosh.
There is nothing wicked here. You just underestimate the purpose and importance of philosophy for the evolution of human being. Actually that is one reason for the Ten Questions of the Heart thread I just started. I want to meet those who believe philosophy to be more than intellectually arguing details.
I gather that you are claiming superiority over me here in some way that I am apparently too shallow to ascertain. You claim suggests that you discount my peak experiences while valuing your own.
The trouble is that the meaning and value of peak experiences is easily lost. Krishnamurti explains.
“You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, “What did that man pick up?” “He picked up a piece of Truth,” said the devil. “That is a very bad business for you, then,” said his friend. “Oh, not at all,” the devil replied, “I am going to let him organize it."
Experience is one thing and interpretation is another. Once the experts get a hold of it, it is all over but the shouting.
Your willingness to "annoy the Great Beast" appears to be theoretical. If you actually did annoy TGB, you'd either be behind bars, dead, discredited in the media or persecuted by police. It seems to me that you have not annoyed TGB; it has not yet noticed you. Be glad for that.
Granted, I’m no Jesus, Socrates, or even Simone so I have a way to go before it can be sincerely written on my tombstone that I annoyed TGB. But at least I am making progress.
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Greta
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Greta »

Nicko, we should be retitling this thread 'Nick's intolerance of "secularists"'.
Nick_A wrote: Wed May 24, 2017 11:32 pm
I thought that all I wanted was to better understand nature and reality in general.
You just underestimate the purpose and importance of philosophy for the evolution of human being. Actually that is one reason for the Ten Questions of the Heart thread I just started. I want to meet those who believe philosophy to be more than intellectually arguing details.
I am not trying to evolve "the human being", just myself and don't care about "the importance of philosophy".

I am simply more interested in nature than human cultural nonsense. Humanity and its works are only a small subset of nature - an expression of nature, a function or larger nature. Yet we naively claim that we are above nature. Humans are just one of the Earth's many agents of change and is at the vanguard of nature's progression towards greater complexity, flexibility and control.
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Nick_A »

Greta wrote: Thu May 25, 2017 12:31 am Nicko, we should be retitling this thread 'Nick's intolerance of "secularists"'.
Nick_A wrote: Wed May 24, 2017 11:32 pm
I thought that all I wanted was to better understand nature and reality in general.
You just underestimate the purpose and importance of philosophy for the evolution of human being. Actually that is one reason for the Ten Questions of the Heart thread I just started. I want to meet those who believe philosophy to be more than intellectually arguing details.
I am not trying to evolve "the human being", just myself and don't care about "the importance of philosophy".

I am simply more interested in nature than human cultural nonsense. Humanity and its works are only a small subset of nature - an expression of nature, a function or larger nature. Yet we naively claim that we are above nature. Humans are just one of the Earth's many agents of change and is at the vanguard of nature's progression towards greater complexity, flexibility and control.
This of course raises the question if you lack concern for the importance of philosophy, why be involved in a philosophy site? Even if you are unaware of it, why should I support the secular need for spirit killing especially in the young?

Nature is a living machine governed by the mechanics of universal laws. it is a wonderful and necessary machine. You would equate this REACTING living machine with the potential for conscious human being capable of conscious ACTION. I cannot see how mechanical REACTION is equal in objective quality with conscious ACTION.

Secularism only recognizes one level or reality. What would happen to some kid in school defending the idea that God is simultaneously 1 and 3? He feels the reality of it yet is ridiculed to such a degree that he suffers metaphysical repression and hides what should be developing in his being and opening him to objective human meaning and purpose. You are not interested in the quality of philosophy that would enable the kid to deepen his understanding. It is an insult to dominant secularism. You are limited to one level of reality and I am open to the levels of reality which comprise our great universe and the conscious evolutionary potential for human being.
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Greta
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Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Greta »

Nick_A wrote: Thu May 25, 2017 1:12 amNature is a living machine governed by the mechanics of universal laws. it is a wonderful and necessary machine. You would equate this REACTING living machine with the potential for conscious human being capable of conscious ACTION. I cannot see how mechanical REACTION is equal in objective quality with conscious ACTION.
This view is now outdated. Plenty of species engage in conscious action. The old view that humans alone are conscious while all else is mechanical is dead, completely discredited by numerous behavioural and brain studies of dynamics and structure.

Regarding our subservient role in nature, consider why human beings huddled together in ever larger groups when living in close quarters creates for them so much restriction, discord and discomfort? Reason: those who huddled in large groups for security survived in greater numbers than those who didn't.

Larger intelligent systems are forming (evolution never stops), larger than any seen before, and in which we humans appear to be a key, but thoroughly manipulated part. We also appear to be increasingly ever more manipulated and controlled. In time we may become almost as controlled as the mitochondria in our cells or the biota in our gut.

In that context, that would make your rebellion against TGB akin to a mitochondrion that happened to be repelled by the symbiont archaea that others joined forces with. Good luck with that project. May I also suggest removing China's Great Wall, one grain of sand at a time.
Nick_A wrote:Secularism only recognizes one level or reality. What would happen to some kid in school defending the idea that God is simultaneously 1 and 3? He feels the reality of it yet is ridiculed to such a degree that he suffers metaphysical repression and hides what should be developing in his being and opening him to objective human meaning and purpose.

In reality, the religious kids in school are not usually much bothered; rather they are more likely to be ignored because they are just "those religious kids" (there's always some). Most "secularists" don't care what religious people believe, just as long as they don't interfere with their lives.
Nick_A wrote:You are not interested in the quality of philosophy that would enable the kid to deepen his understanding. It is an insult to dominant secularism. You are limited to one level of reality and I am open to the levels of reality which comprise our great universe and the conscious evolutionary potential for human being.
Indeed Nick, there is nothing to me. Each day or me is the same and goes like this:

Mostly I just stare blankly ahead, occasionally noticing movement here or there, maybe noticing an odour that may be food. Then I think: I am hungry. I go to the fridge. I find food and I eat. It tastes good. I feel the need to go to the toilet. I go. It is a relief. Then I watch TV and believe all of it. Then I go to bed. Then another day.

As you correctly noticed there is nothing more to me, with barely even the sensibilities of a supermarket checkout AI. No thoughts, feelings, ideas, creativity - no actual mentality or depth - just a shallow, self-directed, mindless quasi-amphibioid existence. That's me. What's St Nick's recipe for turning this mindless *gag! ptui!* secular drone into something even close to human?
Walker
Posts: 14280
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:00 am

Re: Secular Intolerance

Post by Walker »

Nick_A wrote: Wed May 24, 2017 3:37 pm\
I’ll admit to being weird. One of my ancestors was an archbishop in the Armenian church and friendly with Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy. Another was an artist who had few if any peers in his ability to depict the interactions of elemental forces in nature arousing the feelings of awe and wonder. This is weird. But at the same time it has allowed me to meet and learn from people whose minds and hearts are far more advanced than mine. Would I want to exchange being weird for secular life for the advantages of deriving the belief in meaning through what the Great Beast offers. NO.
Do you know of the Brockwood School?

It may be the secular model you seek.

https://www.brockwood.org.uk
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