Philosophy Discussion Forums

Steve3007 wrote:YIOSTHEOY:

My favorite theme about History is that it tells us how we got here.

But as you've reminded us in the context of science, past patterns are no foolproof guide to the future. Where we go from here is pure guesswork, yes?

I said no such thing.

I actually believe in past patterns.

YIOSTHEOY:
You said such things as this:

The conclusions about those data by inductive reasoning and deductive repetition on the other hand are just intelligent guesses...

...Hypotheses, theories, and so called laws in science are changing all the time. So you cannot credibly assert that they are "true". They are just best guesses.

The laws/models of science are patterns in observations. We spot patterns in our observations and use them to try to predict whart will happen next all the time. It's how we get through the day. Science just formalizes the process.

You appeared to characterize this as "guessing". As I said at the time, you're free to call it guessing if you like. But I would say is that it's not a very useful way to assign meaning to the word "guess" because it doesn't leave a word to use when we're doing things that really are guesswork, like predicting the outcome of a horse race, a coin toss or what Burning Ghost is going to say about where religion came from.

Ormond: I will better try to respect your concern. But, I am rather convinced this is a philosophical discussion of religion. I do think consistency is important, and I will have to continue to try to maintain that on threads, my posts included. When I cannot face my own inconsistencies, I do not see good things come from it, especially related to philosophy of religion.

Religion arose out of our relationship with nature. That relationship was formed over millions of years, preceding even our existence in human form.

For animals and primitive humans that relationship is/was direct, intimate, immediate, unmediated by symbols. Primitive humans lived in nature every moment of their lives and depended upon it in a very direct way for their survival. In every moment nature might provide the next meal, or a horrific fatal disaster. Thus, early man's relationship with nature was very personal.

And then thought began to blossom in humans. As thought developed a psychological distance was created between man and nature. This perceived apparent distance was created by the inherently divisive nature of thought, which conceptually divides human experience in to "me" and "everything else".

Humans no longer had an intimate deeply personal relationship with nature such as a baby sucking it's mother's tit. As thought developed and the conceptual divisions grew we became observers of nature, feeling separate and apart, the former intimate unity lost. We were evicted from the Garden Of Eden, having eaten the apple of knowledge (ie. thought).

As observers ever more deeply immersed in thought, we became story tellers, we began commenting from a distance upon nature as "that thing over there".

One of the stories told was about our need to "get back to God", that is, recapture the lost intimate unity we once had with reality. And thus religion was born.

The problem for religion has long been that it typically attempts to use thought to recreate the lost unity, the very thing causing the experience of division. It's like a drunk trying to cure his alcoholism with a case of scotch, the harder we try, the behinder we get.

This is easy to observe in any religion. Those most passionately involved in the ideology (ie. thought) are typically those the most divided from others both within and beyond their religion. And they are typically the most divided within themselves as well, as is illustrated by the anger so common to passionate ideologists.

As I've been known to chronically rant until readers start screaming in agony "Somebody make it stop!!", we can't really understand much of anything about being human unless we are willing to examine the nature of what we are made of, thought.

A good philosopher is like the architect with a passionate interest in the properties of the materials his buildings are made of.

-- Updated June 1st, 2016, 9:42 am to add the following --

Steve3007 wrote:YIOSTHEOY:You said such things as this:

Please observe how Steve quoted only the specific section of the earlier post he is responding to.

Ormond wrote:Religion arose out of our relationship with nature. That relationship was formed over millions of years, preceding even our existence in human form.

For animals and primitive humans that relationship is/was direct, intimate, immediate, unmediated by symbols. Primitive humans lived in nature every moment of their lives and depended upon it in a very direct way for their survival. In every moment nature might provide the next meal, or a horrific fatal disaster. Thus, early man's relationship with nature was very personal.

And then thought began to blossom in humans. As thought developed a psychological distance was created between man and nature. This perceived apparent distance was created by the inherently divisive nature of thought, which conceptually divides human experience in to "me" and "everything else".

Humans no longer had an intimate deeply personal relationship with nature such as a baby sucking it's mother's tit. As thought developed and the conceptual divisions grew we became observers of nature, feeling separate and apart, the former intimate unity lost. We were evicted from the Garden Of Eden, having eaten the apple of knowledge (ie. thought).

As observers ever more deeply immersed in thought, we became story tellers, we began commenting from a distance upon nature as "that thing over there".

One of the stories told was about our need to "get back to God", that is, recapture the lost intimate unity we once had with reality. And thus religion was born.

The problem for religion has long been that it typically attempts to use thought to recreate the lost unity, the very thing causing the experience of division. It's like a drunk trying to cure his alcoholism with a case of scotch, the harder we try, the behinder we get.

This is easy to observe in any religion. Those most passionately involved in the ideology (ie. thought) are typically those the most divided from others both within and beyond their religion. And they are typically the most divided within themselves as well, as is illustrated by the anger so common to passionate ideologists.

As I've been known to chronically rant until readers start screaming in agony "Somebody make it stop!!", we can't really understand much of anything about being human unless we are willing to examine the nature of what we are made of, thought.

A good philosopher is like the architect with a passionate interest in the properties of the materials his buildings are made of.

-- Updated June 1st, 2016, 9:42 am to add the following --

Steve3007 wrote:YIOSTHEOY:You said such things as this:

Please observe how Steve quoted only the specific section of the earlier post he is responding to.

The cave paintings at Altamira would certainly lend credence to your view above.

The prehistoric men had to feed themselves and their families so they hunted herd animals and followed these herds.

I like your explanation.

Of course we have no proof, but the cave paintings support your views anyway. Very beautifully spoken.

Burning ghost wrote:Just curious what religious people think religion is?

It depends on the religion but if you mean the religions we're more familiar with in the West it's meant to be a revelation direct from God that leads to man kinds eternal salvation but you probably already knew this and didn't need to ask. There is a social, cultural aspect as well and also set of guides or rules on how to live which are a part of the initial premise that this will be what God had in mind.

Ormond wrote:...

Please observe how Steve quoted only the specific section of the earlier post he is responding to.

Ormond you are getting really bossy in your old age and that is a sign of a grumpy old man.

Better watch out.

Anyway if I did not parse a citation then I had a good reason for not doing so.

Shamanism is a major part of understanding religion. I am talking in anthropological terms and touch other areas.

Shamanism is a broad term. It is what shamans do and the similarities globally between isolated traditions in shamanism that highlight something about human nature.

To put it simply shamans were essentially the first psychologists/psychotherapists and understood well how the mind worked.

Where religion comes into play is in how shamans teach and share information from generation to generation through mneumonics.

Burning ghost wrote:Shamanism is a major part of understanding religion. I am talking in anthropological terms and touch other areas.

Shamanism is a broad term. It is what shamans do and the similarities globally between isolated traditions in shamanism that highlight something about human nature.

To put it simply shamans were essentially the first psychologists/psychotherapists and understood well how the mind worked.

Where religion comes into play is in how shamans teach and share information from generation to generation through mneumonics.

You can also think of the Shamans as philosophers, although they were not really since their shamanism was mostly mystical and not based on rational human though. Whereas psychology clearly evolved through Philosophy combined with Science.

The historical process was (1) first shamanism, then (2) next Greek Philosophy, then finally (3) Science evolved with Galileo in 1610 AD.

These 3, in the guise of modern organized religion rather than pure shamanism today, together with Philosophy and Science have been competing for power over the minds of men (and women) to this day.

Many people forget to keep them apart.

Lots of people make Science their religion. And lots make Religion their science.

This is an easy trap to fall into even for sloppy philosophers.

A good philosopher will the 3 of them completely separate however.

"Mystical" is an ambiguous term which I hope to elucidate.

There are certain practices that all religions have in common in relation to ASC (Altered states of consciousness). This stems from a physiological state that shamanism was/is directly involved with.

My problem here is trying to figure out how best to present what I mean without misleading so I am being very cautious with what I say and how I say it.

YIOSTHEOY wrote:
A good philosopher will the 3 of them completely separate however.

If there is an evolving admixture of disciplines, then some guidance of how to maintain good philosophy - simultaneously keeping science, religion and philosophy absolute in distinction - could clearly be helpful.

Aristocles wrote:

YIOSTHEOY wrote:
A good philosopher will the 3 of them completely separate however.

If there is an evolving admixture of disciplines, then some guidance of how to maintain good philosophy - simultaneously keeping science, religion and philosophy absolute in distinction - could clearly be helpful.

Bertrand Russell goes into this at length in his book "History Of Western Philosophy".

Fuller believed human origins began in south pacific, Indonesia islands, or thereabouts, and then states that, humans may have developed a more aggressive nature when they left the islands and came ashore to mainland of south east Asia and then encountered tigers.

Fuller also makes clear that humans invented numerical language thousand of years before written language. Numbers may have been humans earliest foray into conceptual thinking. See theory in mathematics.

Fuller goes on to say that, it may have been very desire set of circumstances that led some human to verbalize his first concepts. Ex hey dude, ..."I'm sinking in this quicksand, could through me a branch?....

However, if numbers were being conceptualized first, then I think more likely the first spoken words were in regards to another kind of fair play involving trade ex hey dude, that's not fair,' I gave you 10 bananas your two coconuts, but the cocconuts had bad tasting bugs inside'....


Spirit-1 is metaphyscial-1, mind/intellect/concept--- spirit-of-intent ---,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spirit-2 is physical/energy ergo fermions, bosons and any aggregate combination thereof,

Spirit-3 is gravity-- positive shaped outer surface arcs of a torus-like shape,

Spirit-4 is dark energy-- negative shaped outer surface arcs of a torus-like shape.

Morals stem from humans having some common agreements of fair play.

Absolute truths stem from discoveries regarding our finite, occupied space Universe.

When is does 1 + 1 = 4? When does 3 + 3 = 12? What is fair, what is true?

r6

YIOSTHEOY: "You can also think of the Shamans as philosophers, although they were not really since their shamanism was mostly mystical and not based on rational human though."

Shamanism can be both mystical and rational, in fact the highest forms of shamanism are both. Wisdom is understanding the limits and application of both intuition and rational thought.

Felix wrote:

YIOSTHEOY: "You can also think of the Shamans as philosophers, although they were not really since their shamanism was mostly mystical and not based on rational human though."

Shamanism can be both mystical and rational, in fact the highest forms of shamanism are both. Wisdom is understanding the limits and application of both intuition and rational thought.

If Russell philosophically tells us how good philosophy is done keeping religion completely separate from philosophy, why shouldn't we too listen to Fuller about dark energy? If wisdom is of no consequence in any other alleged discipline, then the permission to think of shamans as philosophers may need clarity. Shamans existing before Galileo, using psychological and physiological conclusions does not appear recognized by sanctioned authority. But, do authoritarians not grant the experts in a given discipline a philosophical doctorate? Is this forbidden admixture of philosophy with "completely independent" entities dark energy at work?