b_chocolatey @b_chocolatey@qoto.org
Taking a sabbatical from all social apps for the time being. Later, guys
Joined Nov 2022
@lack what I’m saying is that the reverence emotion is morally correct, objectively speaking; and that somebody totally lacking it is morally defective. There is of course some level of reasonable disagreement over how to express it and to what end; because “now we see through a glass, darkly”. #1Cor13 #1Corinthians13 #Bible
@lack @MtnStateNomad “and whoever disagrees goes voluntarily to the madhouse. In the former days, all the world was mad, they say… and they blink”
@lack @MtnStateNomad my observation here “you didn’t even read the brochure” is the exact, diametrically opposed position from Newton’s standing on the shoulders of giants. It is actually the sort of thing that #Nietzsche had in mind prophesying of the Last Man. “We have invented happiness, they say, and they blink”
@lack @MtnStateNomad like dude, you didn’t even read the brochure! He already addressed this obvious question. Do you have a counter-argument?
@lack @MtnStateNomad the Buddha himself addressed this very question in numerous sutras. “And if a man holds to Wrong View, will he abstain from alcoholic and intoxicating drink, from the shedding of blood, from gambling, from unlawful intercourse with other men’s wives, from telling lies?”
@lack @MtnStateNomad not really… but if an idea is obviously true and the opposite is obviously false to any reasonable adult, surely it would have caught on, somewhere, in the historical record.
@lack @MtnStateNomad “when one holds to Wrong View, monks, at the breakup of the body, he enters into a bad destination, a lower world, in hell…”
@lack @MtnStateNomad so godless materialism is something that the Athenian prosecutor denounced, also something that the Buddha denounced as the opposite of Right View. “And what, monks, is Right View? Right View is that one hold that there is Father and Mother, monks and saints, holy-days and offerings, good and bad action, good and bad karma in this life and the next…”
@lack @MtnStateNomad and the Athenian belief of “the sun is a god, the sun shines on us because it loves us” differs from monotheism only because monotheism teaches that the sun-god is also the moon-god and the maker of the entire universe. The Sermon on the Mount: the sun shines on us because God loves us! All of us!
@lack @MtnStateNomad and aside from that other obscure Greek, Socrates was accused (perhaps wrongfully) of conspiracy against the Athenian state; because he had secretly taught his younger students that the sun is just a ball of fire and not a god (he denied this at trial)
@lack @MtnStateNomad Materialism isn’t actually an extremely difficult concept to figure out! There was an obscure Greek philosopher back in the day who said that the gods were imaginary and that the wind and rain are random events. Why didn’t it catch on? Why did the Greek pantheon have such staying power - and evolve into the Roman pantheon, until the time of Theodosius?
@lack this second and third definition seems to be what Kipling was referring to in the poetic demand to “take up the white man’s burden.” Look closely at the line, “and weigh your gods, and you.”
@lack Perhaps a third definition is in order, which somewhat overlaps with the first two. The symbolic, the sympathetic magic, that points to the first two. The Statue of Liberty is an example of this: a personified, anthromorphized representation of a philosophical abstraction, namely, liberty. The statue is beautiful and well-made, and is intended to refer to an Idea that is beautiful and timeless. This is, after all, why religious icons were first introduced in pre-Abrahamic times. The Statue of Liberty is a goddess in the literal, historical sense.
@lack definition 2: God is what is rightfully deserving of worship - that which is encountered through religious experience. Certain things people naturally discuss- and should discuss, in reverential tones, when they try to describe it accurately. When people speak of the Vastness of the Universe, the Beauty of Music, the Finality of Death, and so forth; these are things that, when I capitalize them, you know why. These are all emanations of God. It has always been understood thus.
@lack That having been said, it is possible that Consciousness has naturalistic origins that have yet to be discovered, at the quantum level. That, for example, it arises when energy is transformed into information, passes through logic-gates on very very fast timescales - that certain types of computers are naturally sentient. I think the odds are against it; I think that the problem of consciousness will remain a hard problem that is never cracked via scientific inquiry.
@lack definition 1: God is Soul. God is Person. God is Life. God is Mind. The origin of the inner experience of sentient organisms. Sensation, memory, intention, emotion, survival instinct… love, bonding, companionship. Everything that separates us from mere mechanical cause-and-effect that controls steam engines and stopwatches.
@lack definition 1: God is Soul. God is Person. God is Life. God is Mind. The origin of the inner experience of sentient organisms. Sensation, memory, intention, emotion, survival instinct… love, bonding, companionship. Everything that separates us from mere mechanical cause-and-effect that controls steam engines and stopwatches.
Taking a sabbatical from all social apps for the time being. Later, guys
Joined Nov 2022
