Hard News: For Good Friday
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O I *do* Sacha, I do!
(Now, where was that recipe about 3-yrold palms???*)
(*I hate to say it, there is one...) -
That sounds awfully.. specific.
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Yessssss-
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WH,
A bit sad that no-one has taken my carefully-offered fly about the underlying physiological/psycological/indeed,*genetic* reasons as to *why* humans believe in irrational things.
I read that article but found it a bit tendentious, although evolution must have lots of interesting implications for philosophy and religion, you know, with the overman and whatnot.
I think inferring the non-existence of god or spirituality from the fact that our spiritual impulses must have evolved is an example of the genetic fallacy.
What did you think about it?
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WH - I'll skip over 'overman & whatnot.'
There is no evidence that "our spiritual impulses must have evolved."
There is some evidence that our kind of primate has a propensity to
ascribe meaning to random events. There is quite a lot of evidence that our kind of primate 'personalises' much of what occurs, happens to us, as a way of dealing with the summary chaos of being. And again, some evidence that we do this by inventing an outside-of-ourselves factor/being that causes/determines.
Hence the 40,000 or so godlets/entities thus far created by us (goodness knows what Neanderthals or H. floresensis thought about all this, but given they were almost certainly homonins also-) -
WH,
There is some evidence that our kind of primate has a propensity to ascribe meaning to random events.
I split this up into three: our tendency to look for causes, our tendency to look for patterns, and our tendency to interpret the world and ascribe it meaning.
I think it's easy to say something like, 'ha ha, cargo cultists, rain dancing and people believing in fairies, how silly is that, now we know evolution happened, therefore religion is a maladaptive evolutionary response'. I agree that humanity has a tendency to misinterpret the world but am reluctant to extend that into a claim that philosophy and spirituality is the product of a malfunctioning vestige of our primitive brains.
Maladaptive primitive brain = spirituality, advanced rational brain = no spirituality has some real hurdles to clear, not only in the sense that it engages only indirectly with the truth claims under discussion, but also in the way that it prioritises it's own viewpoint before establishing the validity of that viewpoint.
Having said all that, I acknowledge the possibility that you are right.
I'll skip over 'overman & whatnot.
I was being facetious, but that was not directed at you. I'm just feeling intimidated by the fact that I am clearly not as well read as others here.
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Yes, we look for patterns and causes. Some of these have given us material advantages, such as recognising the pattern of the seasons and so knowing when to plant crops. Others, such as believing that the seasons are caused by the gods, might seem ridiculous. But they might have had value, such as giving reassurance to people. Believing irrational things is not necessarily bad for you.
I'm just feeling intimidated by the fact that I am clearly not as well read as others here.
We are just showing off. We do that.
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Yes, we look for patterns and causes. Some of these have given us material advantages, such as recognising the pattern of the seasons and so knowing when to plant crops. Others, such as believing that the seasons are caused by the gods, might seem ridiculous.
Yes, often those stories were very plainly useful, Matariki being a prime example of a mythical narrative enabling the community to mark an important seasonal date. Stories of moral instruction also had a very concrete social purpose.
On the subject of dates and seasons, I've seen two presentationss by an Italian astrophysicist over the last few months concerning the religious and secular history of the Jewish and the Julian/Gregorian calendars, and they were just about the most fascinating things I had ever heard.
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There are really good reasons to explore these circumstances, and they have nothing to do with spookiness. There is mystery associated with bush & sea - because we dont know enough yet-
And the closer we look, the less we know we know. The nature of nature is spooky at its most fundamental level. It offers and promises phenomena that do look a lot like magic in the context of the understandings we use to be human.
The remarkable thing is that we live in an era where our ability to make measurements has become so good that we can more confidently theorise about once-unknowable things. It's a fun time to be a cosmologist.
But that still doesn't mean that it's not rational, salutary and fulfilling to experience awe and wonder at the scale and complexity of the universe. It is awesome.
I realise that the reasons people fall in behind Brian Tamaki are not exactly the same as those I am awed by the universe, but it still puzzles me that people would choose the former over the latter.
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The nature of nature is spooky at its most fundamental level.
Without at all meaning to be glib, the word earthquake has preoccupied me a bit in the last few days.
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We are just showing off. We do that.
I was on the verge of a gentle admonishment about it ...
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The The, Jackson Browne, Christian rock? Come on, give the poster some credit. These are not the sort of people you see at Parachute.
No, they're not Christian rock. It's music that just happens to be made by people who may, or may not, be Christians. And that belief may, or may not, influence their art.
Christian Rock itself is deadly dull for the same reasons that Satanic Metal is deadly dull - it's a one-trick pony. Once you've set your agenda that narrowly, you're bound to run out of good material after about half a track.
And what's so wrong with the letter I that it has to be changed to Y?
How should Y know? Yt can look kynda cool yf done ryght, but you have to be careful not do do yt too much.
I think it's a nod back to mediaeval writing styles, where 'y' was used more or less interchangably with 'i'.
I get my back fixed up by an osteopath, when I know that osteopathy's core tenets are bunkum.
This doesn't actually strike me as an irrational belief. Just because you get your discs manipulated by someone who believes that your body is, uh, 'somatically dysfunctional', doesn't mean it doesn't work.
I wouldn't give a stuff if my car mechanic sincerely believed that a gremlin lived in my engine, and could only be appeased by changing the oil every 20,000K. Right solution, wrong reasons.
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I realise that the reasons people fall in behind Brian Tamaki are not exactly the same as those I am awed by the universe, but it still puzzles me that people would choose the former over the latter.
Some prefer the snake oil to the snake?
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No, they're not Christian rock. It's music that just happens to be made by people who may, or may not, be Christians.
Both Matt Johnson and Jackson Browne are very critical of organised Christianity. It is a shame that people here did not watch the videos before pronouncing judgement. Knee-jerk Atheism is no better than any other prejudice.
Christian Rock itself is deadly dull for the same reasons that Satanic Metal is deadly dull - it's a one-trick pony.
And because the message is more important than the music.
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I was on the verge of a gentle admonishment about it
My bookshelf is bigger than your bookshelf...? :)
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Hey, I like it that people here know way more than me about specialist subjects.
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Speaking of Christian bands. Who remembers Alan Parsons Project and they mysoginisty hit Eve? What a crock of shit that was.
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See, I did not know that and am unlikely to ever devote any braincells to learning about xtian rock.
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The thing about Alan Parsons Project is that I used to like them (I know, I know, there are no excuses) before I started learning English. Sometimes there's nothing like starting to understand lyrics to realise that a musician you liked sucked all along.
(Sting would be another. Are there any worse lyrics in the history of pop than Russian's? Damn, I used to love that song.)
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By which I mean Russians'.
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Luckily I largely ignore lyrics. Was that the one about loving their children too?
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Yes. The opening stanza is a masterpiece of crappitude:
In Europe and America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Khrushchev said we will bury you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
It'd be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children tooBut I'm going OT. Eve as I recall was all about how women really are worthy of maximum contempt.
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Eve as I recall was all about how women really are worthy of maximum contempt.
You Lie Down with Dogs and the ever so subtle I'd Rather Be a Man . Eve struck me as the kind of album a fifteen year old boy would write after breaking up with his first girlfriend.
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I agree that for utterly shite lyrics you can't go past Sting - it's official.
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Eve as I recall was all about how women really are worthy of maximum contempt.
It's a concept album. The concept is hating women.
Until I started looking up the lyrics, two minutes ago, I had thought the Alan Parsons Project was just crap. Now I realise it was quite nasty crap:
Get out and find yourself another lover
Why don't you find yourself another lover
Open up your eyes and realise
You don't mean nothing to me I'm not your mother
You gave me all that you had to give
But there's a whole lotta fish in the seaAren't you glad Alan Parsons is not your mother? This is the sort of thing you learn on PAS.
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