Plus, I Got Religion

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It seems to me that, like many Westerners, your idea of "religion" is based on the Judeo-Christian model, and so your assumptions about religion revolve around it.

Can't be avoided really it's how I was programmed. That said I've never seen any mainstream religion that didn't seem to have devolved into the same "just drink the fucking koolaid and don't ask questions" mentality that I enjoy poking fun at.

I do have a personal vendetta against born-again flavoured christianity, resulting from the time some of the crazy fucks attempted to brainwash me when I was about 12 but for the rest of the religious establishment I simply deride them because I can and they're ridiculous. IMO cheap laughs aren't any less funny than expensive ones.

Sure, but your bias leads you to make statements like "even a tiny amount of religion is harmful", which may be true if your definition of religion requires it to be harmful, but you're still imposing your filters in areas where they may simply not apply. JUST NOW you added the qualifier "mainstream" to "religion", and that may make your filter fit better, but this isn't about "mainstream religion".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

validity (in the math/logic sense) and the real word have *nothing* to do with each other.

What she said. Also, take a fucking math class or STFU. We get that you don't get it. You COULD get it, if you took a math class or read some math books. The fact  that you don't want to do that doesn't invalidate that numbers and math are not restricted to counting real objects.

[Aufenthatt]

Add one lump of clay to one lump of clay = One lump of clay

Numbers much like lizard mice combination metaphors, are simplistic.
This is good for monkey minds.

[Urraco]

Add one lump of clay to one lump of clay = One lump of clay

Numbers much like lizard mice combination metaphors, are simplistic.
This is good for monkey minds.

I suppose technically the mice still exist.
Just as the lumps of clay, although homogenized, are still different lumps of clay (in that to make the single lump as big as it is, you need both lumps).
However, both views are just vistas of the same event.
Any example of numbers in reality can be corrupted in this way.

So basically what I'm saying is that this argument will get nowhere until we all take Nigel's advice or STFU.

S'what I'm sayin'.

[Golden Applesauce]

I somehow never got around to reading this thread, and now I find that I've missed a mathematics argument! 

So anyway, Nigel, if you say something about religion and I start trying to get you to defend it, know that (for me anyway) it's less of a "OMG RELIGION MUST GTFO" thing than a "I wonder how far this will stretch before it snaps?" kind of thing.  I do the exact same thing whenever somebody hands me a plastic doodad.

GA,
destructive testing, bitches!

[Aufenthatt]

Add one lump of clay to one lump of clay = One lump of clay

Numbers much like lizard mice combination metaphors, are simplistic.
This is good for monkey minds.

I suppose technically the mice still exist.
Just as the lumps of clay, although homogenized, are still different lumps of clay (in that to make the single lump as big as it is, you need both lumps).
However, both views are just vistas of the same event.
Any example of numbers in reality can be corrupted in this way.

So basically what I'm saying is that this argument will get nowhere until we all take Nigel's advice or STFU.

S'what I'm sayin'.

Its just one lump of clay. Did you define your mice in terms of the different atoms that make them?

I'm rolling Phoenician style, we have no 0, so no one can ever bet their bottom dollar.

[Soylent Green]

Add one lump of clay to one lump of clay = One lump of clay

Numbers much like lizard mice combination metaphors, are simplistic.
This is good for monkey minds.

I suppose technically the mice still exist.
Just as the lumps of clay, although homogenized, are still different lumps of clay (in that to make the single lump as big as it is, you need both lumps).
However, both views are just vistas of the same event.
Any example of numbers in reality can be corrupted in this way.

So basically what I'm saying is that this argument will get nowhere until we all take Nigel's advice or STFU.

S'what I'm sayin'.

Its just one lump of clay. Did you define your mice in terms of the different atoms that make them?

I'm rolling Phoenician style, we have no 0, so no one can ever bet their bottom dollar.

-.-

0+0+0+0=4

I have 4 numbers. (five now)

So really 0+0+0+0=4=5=6=7=8=9=10...

[Aufenthatt]

Makes sence.

In soviet Russia 2+2=3

[P3nT4gR4m]

It seems to me that, like many Westerners, your idea of "religion" is based on the Judeo-Christian model, and so your assumptions about religion revolve around it.

Can't be avoided really it's how I was programmed. That said I've never seen any mainstream religion that didn't seem to have devolved into the same "just drink the fucking koolaid and don't ask questions" mentality that I enjoy poking fun at.

I do have a personal vendetta against born-again flavoured christianity, resulting from the time some of the crazy fucks attempted to brainwash me when I was about 12 but for the rest of the religious establishment I simply deride them because I can and they're ridiculous. IMO cheap laughs aren't any less funny than expensive ones.

Sure, but your bias leads you to make statements like "even a tiny amount of religion is harmful", which may be true if your definition of religion requires it to be harmful, but you're still imposing your filters in areas where they may simply not apply. JUST NOW you added the qualifier "mainstream" to "religion", and that may make your filter fit better, but this isn't about "mainstream religion".

I'm just trying to clarify my position. The subject of "mainstream" religion came up and yeah, I'm against that. Adopting your own belief system on the basis that you are aware that that's all it is - that's what a smart person would do. Take a step back - I'm pretty sure me and you are in agreement on the religion issue.

I've heard actual, bona fide, dog-collared, pulpit owning clergy say they don't believe a single word of the bible is historical fact but as a personal code of behaviour they see it as being good enough to follow. If there were a few more like that my opinion would do a u-turn pretty fucking rapid.

But, when the fread led, as any with the word "religion" in the title is almost guaranteed to, to the more popular, abdication of thought, school, I chucked in my 2c. That's the problem with the word "religion" lot of negative connotations.

sue me  

[Pope Lecherous]

I've heard actual, bona fide, dog-collared, pulpit owning clergy say they don't believe a single word of the bible is historical fact but as a personal code of behaviour they see it as being good enough to follow. If there were a few more like that my opinion would do a u-turn pretty fucking rapid.

But, when the fread led, as any with the word "religion" in the title is almost guaranteed to, to the more popular, abdication of thought, school, I chucked in my 2c. That's the problem with the word "religion" lot of negative connotations.

sue me  

That would be a nice person to meet, but for me just meet not follow.  If one interprets just the lessons from the bible does he really believe that there is a god in a heaven that created everything? you know what i'm saying?

[Kai]

What it seems to me is a whole bunch of people here need a barstooll....


...in the form of a pi.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

What it seems to me is a whole bunch of people here need a barstooll....


...in the form of a pi.

THIS.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Kevin: "The 2, naturally, already contains the Hidden One, so when it is written '2+2=4', what the formulation actually means is '1+1=4'.  Which, as you can clearly see, means '(1(+1))+(1(+1)) = 4(+1)'.  But these are complex theological discussions which you shouldn't concern yourself with."



Fuck it, I'm gonna become a numerologist and make some money.

I've never understood this "2+2 can =5" stuff.

If you put two apples on a table, then put two more, you don't magically get another apple.

Going back to the beginning of this minor trainwreck (which has been very amusing to watch, btw)

You did realize that LMNO was being satirical, right? And you were going along with it by pretending not to realize that, right?

[Honey]

my own personal opinion is that organized religion is that it is a form of marketing... even to a degree that it uses broad vocabulary to form memes that are suppose to fabricate some type of transcendence but in most cases they don't mean anything... which is something I've notice creeping into the so called new-atheists -at least the ones who are organizing in way's other then similar ideas and or thought processes. You see this a lot on some of the more militant youtube comments, which is why I say it has the "feel" of religion, though I don't think it is, or at least yet...

Where I think the main problem rises with religion is in the texts which were made to pass down the stories in where people try to explain life. Many of these explanations are now useless - for example the Earth was most likely created when small, rocky debris was attracted by gravity to larger debris and through accretion created a large planetary object.

Many of the organized religions explanations for things even outside of those which we have scientific explanations for also make make little if any sense
if x=y in one chapter
and y=z in another
then you must assume that x=yz
but here is a quick example from the bible which we are familiar with
if, as it says many times God is all knowing and omnipotent
then God=all knowing
but then when the people of Sodom and Gomorrah started to get interested in butt sex, God clearly says that he's going down to investigate so that he may "know" how bad it gets
sorry I don't have the quotation, but you could check it out, besides it's the crutch of the story, since he sends down two angels to check things out.
then all knowing must = not knowing
so then x can not = y
or y can not = z
it makes no sense
and there are plenty of other examples. We all know them as basically biblical contradictions

These can make sense to many of those who are religious if they see them as only attempts to explain transcendence. Them sure there would always be human error and just like in science just a flowed hypothesis
But if the texts are God's "direct words", or a collection of divine stores, like in the Abrahamic religions, then in order for x to = z you have to basically start making shit up... which is why I think Christians believe a vast majority of stuff that is not in their sacred texts. For example the Rapture appears no where in John's Apocalypse, or in the Essene Apocalypse (which is the book which John takes his apocalypse from, sometimes word for word), or the Book of Daniel (where the Essene's take their apocalypse from) and the idea of the rapture actually contradicts those books. But that idea is the foundation of which fundamentalists base their beliefs upon.
Which brings me to an interesting question, do religious people base their beliefs on the text, on the interpretation of the texts, or the bullshit that one has to make in order for the text to have continuity?

I too find that to be a very interesting question.  Find myself agreeing with most of your perceptions here too, based on my experiences & observations, especially the marketing angle.  I don't think most religious people are even all that familiar with the sacred texts upon which their religions are based.  Not that long ago, when the majority of people were not able to read (before the Protestant Reformation, the invention of the printing press & other such wonders) this was a bit more understandable.  At that point, people more or less had to go with the interpretations their religious leaders fed to them.  Nowadays tho, I think the idea of organized religion is similar to a marketing scheme or a special interest group lobbying for whatever benefits they can seemingly derive from belonging to said group. 

Personally, I'm a tad baffled by the more glaring bullshit spouted by fundies of all flavors.  & so on.  ("If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.") 

What are some of the reasons we nearly hairless monkeys apparently still need a concept like organized religion to get our acts together?  From my recent foray into various ideologies, what do you think about these: death anxiety, intolerance of ambiguity, lack of openness to experience, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure, need for personal structure, & threat of loss of position or self-esteem?  Curiosity & the desire to know more or to understand better are also high on my list, as is the idea of providing solutions to troubling problems.  What do you think? 

[Thurnez Isa]

1) Biologically I think we're in a little bit of limbo. We still have emotional reactions to things that no longer have any significance, and we have a need to visualize something to fill the gap.
Best way to describe this is an example. When I was a child my little sister used to be scared of a monster under her bed. I used to have go to her room if I heard her cry and look under the bed to make sure there was no monster. If you think of it in a biological sense she was visualizing something that wasn't there to reinforce a fear of something hiding in the places where she could not see. A perfectly exceptional fear through much of our species evolution. Now I think it's very hard to judge peoples motives, cause the world we live in is so drastically different from the one where our perception has evolved from. It is almost like people look for something to bridge that gap.
Sacred communities tend to fill this gap and it gives communal conformation. But there still is a big difference between sacred communities and dogmatic ones. If you think of it PD.com is kind of a sacred community. We are a community who try to make sense, or just react to what we see around us, but there is no dogmatic unifying idea that holds everyone of us together. Think of how easy it  would be here though if we had a unifying fantasy, such as Barrack Obama has connections to Bin Ladan. It probably isn't true but given enough time we would have a ton of dogmatic talking points that would confirm our original idea, or in my example confirm the monster under the bed. We may be able to question the specific talking points but to question the original idea is to lose your faith and your community
2) I think two things to add would be a desire to quantify good and evil in our fellow human beings, and most importantly the search for identity. For a definition of who you are in relation to everyone else.