God is not great: How religion poisons everthing

[astroman]

You Can't Hide from the Flipside
because
It's Fun for Me

cheers, Tom

[astroman]

...Gary has very flawed reasoning. To enjoy it would be insane. "Blue" is a specific color of course it has a meaning. It does not mean any color. "ism" isn't anything specific. Any fool could see that.

maybe I enjoy being in-sane
nahh not really... SANE was the abbreviation for Standard Apple Numeric Environment a programming lib from the 8bit days. I'm not a number, am I ? ...sh*t that's EXCEL error NAN

anyway, the original quote

...that's like saying that "blue" is meaningless because one of the meanings is "a color".

points to a different context - it wasn't meant to be reduced to a spectral part of light ...

cheers, Tom

ps enjoyed Alfonso's reasoning as well

[garyb]

[alfonso]

speaking of precise, you spoke of the "ancient Jewish philosophy", which is complete misunderstanding of reality. "jew-ish" is similar to Judah, which as a tribe was not known for a philosophy. Judah is part of the trive of Israel, that is part of the Hebrew tribe, which is the one with the ancient philosophy. "jewish" is some later European concoction. if you talk of "Jewish philosophy", you'll certainly find yourself repeating basic Pagan Mysticism and there ya go, talk of the Logos and other Hermetic ideals...these things, while nurtured by those who claim "jewish", are not Judean in origin in any way shape or form.

those Colleges and Universities sure do seem to be teaching a wicked curriculum with quite a happy face....

no wonder things are so mean in the world.

I should have used the word Hebraic....I translated from Italian "Ebraico" which in the common Italian language means also Jewish.....it's a limit with a foreign language, There is not a different corresponding word in Italian for Jewish.

My Degree is in international law and politics, but I also read and have done it out of the official studies on the most various subjects from the most various sources....Your opinion about Colleges and Universities that you don't know directly is a bit too ideological. Maybe if you had some experience with one you would discover that one can still keep his individuality and critic ability to agree and disagree and to elaborate notions in an original and comparative way. It's not like swallowing it all from some superstitious text or some "trancey" preacher...

[garyb]

further....

what is a "program"?

it is called "software". it is a set of instructions for "hardware", telling the hardware how to operate.

what is the curriculum in the university called? why are teachers more properly called "instructors"?


as with any system or event, to understand what is really going on, it's good to get to the "root" of the matter. i believe in Latin, the phrase is something like "que bono"(who benefits?). to begin to understand who benefits, or who the system or event was made for, in the world we live in you must follow the money. who funds it and what is their plan/philosophy? unfortunately, NO university is clean, when this test is applied(que bono).

i did NOT say that universities are a waste of time to the programmed, or that there's no good information to be gained or that one shouldn't go or that graduates are stupid or any of that. i'm just telling it like it is, which you validate when you say "Maybe if you had some experience with one you would discover that one can still keep his individuality and critic ability to agree and disagree and to elaborate notions in an original and comparative way".

first off, that's obviously true, and not true. one will have one's veiwpoint changed from the experience, both for bad abd good.

second, there's something known as "academic". this type of thought shows that there IS indeed, a process, where thought is brought into polarized focus. school would be useless in this world otherwise. to deny the process is to be dishonest. it's not necessarily bad.

of COURSE school is like receiving info from a trancy preacher. a non tracny preacher won't hold attention and will be called a "bad" teacher.


finally, i'm not against YOU in any way shape or form, although i obviously disagree with some of the ideas you hold. don't take that personally, those ideas are not your own anyway.

the man i like and respect is the one who obviously cares about his fellow man and would make things better if he could, not worse. this is how i see you alfonso, just so it's said. thanks for arguing in public. i think it's a good thing. sorry for the further ot.....

i would scoff harder at the Hermetic carrot they always hold up to the intelligent, but then a lot of people would have red faces and hurt feelings and i don't want anyone really feeling bad. i'm not the french knight in Holy Grail. we'll see how well these "experts" lead us into Hell while promising the opposite. it's real close right now.

[Liquid Len]

"i would scoff harder at the Hermetic carrot they always hold up to the intelligent"
This is confusing. Do you claim your statements are not full of intelligence? Why would you say them otherwise? I think you are an intelligent person even if I disagree in some ways. Don't take me calling you intelligent as an insult.

Or is intelligence somehow bad, but knowing whether something is true or false (and how on earth could we perceive that without intelligence?) is obviously to you a good thing. You can't have it both ways. Either rational thought is bad, and in which case yours falls by the wayside just like everyone else's, or else you have to consider other peoples' reasons for things because you don't know everything, and someone could know something that you don't.

I like learning. I don't for a minute think I will ever understand 'life the universe and everything', I don't think that it's the ONLY thing that is fun and good to do in this lifetime, I just find it interesting to learn about other topics. I can remember being 7 years old and opening the textbooks of my older siblings to learn about geography, I was fascinated about what countries made up the world. I guess they got me at an early age, eh?

I went to university and I often missed class and just read the book. In lieue of a teacher, did I go into a trance state by reading words? (Often the topic was so dry it was difficult NOT to go into a trance state).

[garyb]

"i would scoff harder at the Hermetic carrot they always hold up to the intelligent"
This is confusing. Do you claim your statements are not full of intelligence? Why would you say them otherwise? I think you are an intelligent person even if I disagree in some ways. Don't take me calling you intelligent as an insult.

Or is intelligence somehow bad, but knowing whether something is true or false (and how on earth could we perceive that without intelligence?) is obviously to you a good thing. You can't have it both ways. Either rational thought is bad, and in which case yours falls by the wayside just like everyone else's, or else you have to consider other peoples' reasons for things because you don't know everything, and someone could know something that you don't.

I like learning. I don't for a minute think I will ever understand 'life the universe and everything', I don't think that it's the ONLY thing that is fun and good to do in this lifetime, I just find it interesting to learn about other topics. I can remember being 7 years old and opening the textbooks of my older siblings to learn about geography, I was fascinated about what countries made up the world. I guess they got me at an early age, eh?

I went to university and I often missed class and just read the book. In lieue of a teacher, did I go into a trance state by reading words? (Often the topic was so dry it was difficult NOT to go into a trance state).

where did i say that learning, intelligence or school were "bad"?

i spoke of a carrot. certainly you are aware of the carrot and the stick?

actually, studies have shown that we often DO enter a trance state when reading. the most damaging aspect is that we hear the words on the page in our own voice.... don't worry though, i read plenty...at least i know i'm being hypnotized. hopefully my antivirus isn't out of date, it always needs to be runniing...

they got us ALL at an early age. we're born into the system, it's not our idea.

[BingoTheClowno]

It is not.

Still stubborn as mule and immaturely not willing to admit your mistakes.
Grow up.

[Shroomz~>]

there's much circular reasoning here.

A Tasmanian smiley... cool. ... must be one of the highlights of the thread.

[Shroomz~>]

Still stubborn as mule and immaturely not willing to admit your mistakes.

Pot - kettle

[astroman]

... I like learning. I don't for a minute think I will ever understand 'life the universe and everything', I don't think that it's the ONLY thing that is fun and good to do in this lifetime, I just find it interesting to learn about other topics. I can remember being 7 years old and opening the textbooks of my older siblings to learn about geography, I was fascinated about what countries made up the world. I guess they got me at an early age, eh?
I went to university and I often missed class and just read the book. In lieue of a teacher, did I go into a trance state by reading words? (Often the topic was so dry it was difficult NOT to go into a trance state).

reminds me much on myself, though I never went to university...
but even as a schoolboy I spent lots of afternoons at the public library developing my own way of learning how to learn... (as it turned out later)
preferably with 'inhouse' books which were way beyond my 'budget' those days.
As there was no instructor - let alone a course plan - it was kind of feeling like freedom and independance...
first I read scientific and technological stuff, but soon it was accompagnied by religion, philosophy, art and... well you'd call it esotheric today, but it wasn't such a 'cosmic debris' back then.

I don't have a problem switching between a strictly 'physical' world according to science and a metaphysical (spiritual?) one, based on ideas, vague concepts or even mysteries.
It all exists - there's a (sorry cliche) infinite view into space as there is into the subatomic universe...
as we describe it - but we do not know it
real 'knowledge' usually is just a pretention - or why else would scientists so often quote their favorite proverb ...every answer puts up 2 new questions... ?

science frequently uses 'math' as a common language to describe some aspects of 'the world'
religion uses pictures or 'pictured ideas' to transport spiritual context
I don't really see a point that those 2 concepts represent exclusive opposites
imho they simply coexist

cheers, Tom

[garyb]

yes.

[alfonso]

further....

what is a "program"?

it is called "software". it is a set of instructions for "hardware", telling the hardware how to operate.

what is the curriculum in the university called? why are teachers more properly called "instructors"?

In Italy instructors are only those who teach a technique or sports. Teachers are just teachers or professors if a certain position is reached.

as with any system or event, to understand what is really going on, it's good to get to the "root" of the matter. i believe in Latin, the phrase is something like "que bono"(who benefits?).

sorry if I laugh...although written in something resembling Spanish more than Latin, it sounds a lot like when in Roman dialect someone (a girl usually), in a not too elegant way, comments the good look of a guy. The thing sounds hilarious to me because the use an expression that sounds so "gross" and somehow folkloric in place of a Latin citation has a comic effect.
The proper expression is "cui bono" or better "cui prodest" (cui= to whom; prodest= is favorable)

to begin to understand who benefits, or who the system or event was made for, in the world we live in you must follow the money. who funds it and what is their plan/philosophy? unfortunately, NO university is clean, when this test is applied

Those are holy words my friend! I've always thought that the cui prodest is the most powerful anaalysis tool. A famous Italian politician, he's almost 90 now, who has survived with incredible ability to decades of scandals and quite muddy stories, covering several times the roles of prime minister and foreign affairs minister, used to say: "If you think bad you make a sin, but you're almost always right".
But I think that in a system like ours, where Universities only get public money and the independence of their administration (police can get in only if called or allowed by the highest authority of the faculty, the "Rector") and the independence of the single professors is stated by the law, you have a complex reality, where corruption exists together with very honest and quite valid teachers and professors, where the research is independent from economical lobbies, even if not so rich like in the countries that have private sponsors, and where, inside a single institute, you can get in touch with opposite views and theories.
Nothing is perfect, but I think that this is the world we must learn to relate with, it's up to each of us how to do it.

i did NOT say that universities are a waste of time to the programmed, or that there's no good information to be gained or that one shouldn't go or that graduates are stupid or any of that. i'm just telling it like it is, which you validate when you say "Maybe if you had some experience with one you would discover that one can still keep his individuality and critic ability to agree and disagree and to elaborate notions in an original and comparative way".

first off, that's obviously true, and not true. one will have one's veiwpoint changed from the experience, both for bad abd good.

I think that's not a problem. All the reality is the same, just reality. More the stimuli, more the differences, more the conflicts of ideas broader will be your sight. After all any experience can be useful as much as it is not the only one.

second, there's something known as "academic". this type of thought shows that there IS indeed, a process, where thought is brought into polarized focus. school would be useless in this world otherwise. to deny the process is to be dishonest. it's not necessarily bad.

Maybe i know what you mean......I had the possibility to start a career in the university as I graduated with the the maximum "cum laude" but i was not interested at all, I've never been able to teach, i don't feel comfortable with it, I prefer to learn.

of COURSE school is like receiving info from a trancy preacher. a non tracny preacher won't hold attention a

nd will be called a "bad" teacher.

That's a bit too generalizing. I've met teachers of the most different kinds, it has been useful, I could observe the "academic anthropology" pretty well and decide that the only knowledge I was interested in was the one that could generate a contradiction.

finally, i'm not against YOU in any way shape or form, although i obviously disagree with some of the ideas you hold. don't take that personally, those ideas are not your own anyway.

Oh no, don't worry Gary, you disagree a lot with my own ideas too...unless you don't think that also your disagreement is not of yours (but I hope both of us are entitled to the ownership of our ideas, not because completely original, but because coming from some mental work anyway).

I feel comfortable with disagreement, having a discussion with someone I completely agree with would make me feel really stupid!
I strongly disagree with some of your own ideas too, which doesn't make me instinctively like you less at all, and I never took it personally.

the man i like and respect is the one who obviously cares about his fellow man and would make things better if he could, not worse. this is how i see you alfonso, just so it's said. thanks for arguing in public. i think it's a good thing.

I think the same of you. I hate loosing my time, I wouldn't argue if I thought that I couldn't gain something new from the confrontation. I think that even if positions remain the same they both benefit of an integration with their opposites.

Thanks.

[Liquid Len]

What I mean GaryB is there is no 'hermetic carrot' - people learn because it is a natural human thing to do, to be interested in why things are the way they are, not just because it will benefit them, but because they are interested. You're referring to hermetic, i.e. obscure, esoteric knowledge and claiming it is used as a significant motivator for intelligent people, but I doubt that anyone, except for kids and a few eccentrics, still go about thinking they will find some 'hidden knowledge' about the world. To discipline yourself enough to learn a science or branch of knowledge well, is a longer process that usually removes the insecurities that cause boasting and unrealistic expectations in this way. (And the more you know, the more you realize you don't know.) Most of the problems I have seen coming out of university style learning, i.e. what actually happened in large percentages of people that I knew, come from combining shallow scientific knowledge with pre-existing attitude of materialism, and overall selfishness, leading to a self-defeating culture that you see today, where people are viewed as simply a movable point between cost and benefit. If this benefits 'the planners' the solution is not less learning, especially learning for its own sake, but more. When I went to university it was the heyday of the 'yuppie' and very few people (except the intense academics, who I couldn't really relate to) would remotely think of using a library for doing their own research, as Astroman said, learning to learn on your own. I was an odd corrupt student, partied day and night but also took courses like analytical chemistry as electives just out of curiosity. (Organic chemistry turned out to be far too much work though).

[garyb]

Len,
most people in the university are no more intelligent than any other. they are often more learned, as far as certain types of learning goes.

that aside, hermeticism IS a carrot for some. just going to school and taking scientific classes does NOT make one intellectual. i KNOW about the scientific and acedemic world as my direct family has been in the forefront of both. the reason i mentioned hermeticism, is that hermetic concepts and ideas have been front and center in certain arguments put forward on these pages.

for fun and further off topic, i'll throw another rock in the pond.

what is done in the university? RE-search. the purpose of the university is to train certain members of society to do certain jobs, which includes "free" thinking.

do you know the true origin of the funny hats and robes in the commencement CEREMONY(can't get more occult than a good ceremony )? i've mentioned it before. the hat is called a hod. it is a tool in masonry for carrying brick and mortar. nice and square, if you look at the wearers from an above veiw(architects must veiw front, back, exploded and overhead), their heads are now square, as in "block heads". there is a term in masonry called the "perfected ashlar stone"(this is some alchemical hermeticism for you in the system's foundation). this stone is the stone created imperfect by God, perfected by the hand of man(perfectly squared). the robes are traditionally black, for the same reason that a judges robes are. black is the color of the father of the gods Saturn(old latin spelling S-a-t-a-n). basically, commencement indicates that one has had his head squared off and is now fit to be a contributor to society(the uneducated masses are just eaters and consumers who need to be led/lead). it means that one had been an individual in the past, but now one has been fix, stupified, made into a square peg for a square hole.

don't take the previous paragraph to mean that i think graduates are dummies, or that there's nothing good about school, far from it! still, i can't deny what it is and how it works for the majority of folks. most end up with their possibilities(thought-wise especially) more limited, not opened up and freed. reality is limited to what the program believes in and graduates often have condescending points of veiw about subjects thay really know nothing of, or similarly, end up with a very narrow range of reality that they know much of, while denying that which they know little of with an inability to examine that which is outside the bounds of the PROGRAM. human nature is a blessing and curse...

personally, i was the focus of some crazy federal experiments in teaching as a child. i skipped grades, came back to grades and was allowed total free access to the whole school while in grade school. as a result, i read the whole library and never learned my multiplication tables until 6th grade. i had a method of counting on fingers which i lost when i memorized the tables, but until then, i was the fastest in all my classes during math exams, so they never knew i was faking it until it was very late in the game. i tell you this fish story because it explains that i was very into studying on my own most of my life, and to show i comprehend where you are coming from vis your education and studies.

as always, i'd love to have some real talks with you someday, i'm at my limits as far as communication goes when it comes to typing. it's always better to talk for days with proper meals and show and tell items.

[ReD_MuZe]

honestly, once this started to be a vocabulary thread rather than a conceptual one, it became a dull read.

[garyb]

[ReD_MuZe]

imo its more of the the same thing.
istead of saying " you are wrong"
its just saying " you don't know what u mean" - which is a little worse imo.

to me its much more interesting to read peoples stand on the subject, rather than reading what they think of english and how it should be used.

most people here are not native speakers, and speak 3-4 languages. for those people i guess the meaning is more important than the historical origin of the word.

english is important, but religion is more, and its kinda the fate of each post here, to end with 4-5 pages of unfounded pseudo etymologic babble.

perhaps im wrong, perhaps im the only one who stops reading those threads at that point, and if so. ignore me and carry on.

but i felt had to say something...
chears!

[garyb]

ideas are made of language and other symbols.

it's only an internet debate for our own amusment. i'm sorry to go so far off topic as to be unamusing to you.

[ReD_MuZe]

ideas are not made out of words and symbols they are just expressed by them.
what i mean remains what i mean regardless of the exact choice of my words (which is obviously limited for a non native speaker like me).
usually when people speak, they try to skip the small nuances in the wording as long as they get the right meaning of the message.

so back to the topic:
if you cant use the word ideology, or isms perhaps we should invent a word to describe total beliefs and carry on using that?