+1

You seem to be convinced that a top-down solution is how we reach the ideal. You seem to presuppose this with so much certainty that you assume everyone else agrees with that idea and we are all competing to enforce our preferred top-down system. I don’t agree and that’s not what I’m doing.

The idea that if we enforced your preferred top-down system on everyone in the world and we all shared the same propositional beliefs, then we will instantly attain the ideal - it’s a misunderstanding of what a human being is, what this world is, and what reality is.

Christianity, for instance, is not simply a top-down system for disseminating a set of propositional beliefs. If we only view it through that perspective and get rid of it, we risk throwing out the baby, not just bath water.

It's not top-down as much as it's "this world versus made up world." I'm not certain, I exist in the mystery. I moved it from dogmatic religious certainty to The Great Mystery. It is the religious who claim certainty and that they have the answer. Instead of beginning with presupposing some other world, just keep it in this one. You don't get to make up another world and then say you can't throw out the other world, any more than I can make up a pink polka dot unicorn and then tell a zoologist you can't throw out my pink polka dot unicorn. It puts the whole thing outside of established reality.

+1

What does it mean when it is pointed up and established, even accepted, that the doctrine one is espousing is based on magic, the response, instead of "Whoops, maybe I should at least consider re-considering," is to incorporate magic expressly into the belief system? And then for good measure throw in insults about the irrationality about the person pointing out the magic.

It's rhetorical. There is a saying about a mind that can't or won't change is no longer mind. It's a good saying.

Can you not see that an imagined better version of this world is a 2nd world? Anyone who desires this world to be better believes in multiple versions of this world, or multiple worlds.

Before converging the idealized version of this world with the present world, it’s necessary to first bi-identify with both the present world and the better world. This requires separating the two worlds.

You speak of improving this current world, but from the other side of your mouth you insist that the current version of this world is the only reality. The latter negates the former since you are resisting the necessity to divide your identity by dividing reality between the two worlds.

Adam identifies with the current world. The Son of Man identifies with the ideal world. Adam and the SoM are one who then become two.

Jesus calls himself the SoM but he has also been called the second Adam.

first off , a better world idea has many different ideas of what it should be because everyone can have imaginary different ideas (ie: many different religions )

why focus solely on reality ?
because reality is the true link that attach us all together regardless what we think the ideal world should be (ie: advanced in medical science that benefit us all, regardless our beliefs/faith).

Reality checks gradually mold and prune the multiple into the one within each individual.

The following is an excerpt from a debate that took place on the now-defunct website debate.org. I don’t know the “real” identities of either debater. I made of “hard copy” of this debate (which commenced 1/9/2017) about two years ago.

I made some minor edits since I had to retype the original to make this post.

This is the brain on religion:

If all the children, infants and fetuses on earth are killed because of what previous adult did, because they have "inherited" those transgressions ... we call this righteous, holy, and loving.

If a bigoted culture claimed once upon a time in a superstitious and magic believing time that bigotry is good, then we are justified in AND THAT IS OUR REASON for espousing bigotry today. Again, it's holy and good.

"We are justified in killing infidels" ... flying planes into buildings and suicide bombing is good, holy, and righteous.

There is a spaceship tailing a comet to take us to paradise ...and this is the true way and path.

"I believe in utterly transparent fraud prophet stories as a function of faith."

"I believe the pharaoh or the emperor is god."

"I exempt religious and metaphysics beliefs from the nature of reality ... mostly because that is the only way to believe the outrageous that I have been indoctrinated in."

Etc. etc. Times a million (not times a million minus one).

Of course there is the option to reassess and acknowledge the problems, and employ religion in a different way.

"I exist on the foundation of something I do not know." -- Carl Jung.

A beautiful sentiment by Jung. One familiar with him can hear the unspoken: "And you don't get to make up what that foundation is, and if you choose to swallow the foundation imagined thousands of years ago by magic believers, you aren't even attempting to be in the discussion of the reality we pursue, but have defaulted on that sacred task. It's okay as a throwback sentimental poem, religion is, but we are looking for more than just that."

End of thread.

“ you aren't even attempting to be in the discussion of the reality we pursue”

Is that what it’s about for you? The discussion? Or is it about actually attaining the pursued reality?

If the only thing that you allow yourself to identify about the pursued reality is that it’s a mystery, then you will never attain it. The wise person imagines something about the pursued reality — beyond its mystery — so that he actually gives himself a chance to attain it.

You are right that the people who allow for no mystery are not in the game of truth seeking, but neither are the people who believe it’s all mystery. Again, it’s about holding the contradiction.

"Quantum fields in place of god" (they are omnipresent, house all knowledge, create all by amplifying it into existence), my idea, is a far cry from surrendering to unknowable mystery. And some magic supernatural god poofed everything into existence and then started murdering his loved ones, because they believed such thousands of years ago, is the abandonment of the pursuit.

You know this trumps your position so why don't you admit it? It's more honest. Some things are far more moral than apologizing for the bizarre.

Try serving life rather than the intellect.

Serving life and serving a murderous myth are two different things ... he conveniently neglects to mention.

Certainly did not believe in god growing up. At 11 it became clear that lolreligion was ridiculous, on many counts. I had associated religion with the existence of god, and did not believe in any of it.

Life events happened questioning my entire frame-work of reality. I kept trying to calc odds of chance/coincidence or give excuses about cognitive biases perceptional errors etc... Yet, life events kept happening, more intense and with more serendipity. Eventually I had no explanations other than a higher power at work.

It was easy to go from a confused young child to not believing. It was much more difficult to go from not believing to believing. I think it would be an order of magnitude more difficult to go back to not believing.

Man are know to be extremely bad at evaluating odds .

Yeah I'm aware, I mean as a seasoned pro-poker player and amateur psychologist that was quite clear me, of course. I've always been the type of under-estimate my abilities, not over-estimate.

In retrospect, I was so stuck in mainstream western scientific dogma.. Upon scrutiny. I didn't even hold rational beliefs, and reason was my supposed god. Underlying it all, I had a set of assumptions built up from the programming via culture/society. There were bugs and it crumbled with enough questioning.

Modern science(esp quantum physics and related fields) can actually support the existence of god in many cases. I simply was mostly exposed to secondary sources that suited the cultural narrative. I didn't really investigate some primary sources of modern science and sort of brushed them off as interesting.. I believed that critical mass in science was my god, and strange new ideas that were not completely supported by everyone didn't hold water. So, my lol-belief system was resting on the decisions of funding members of a global industrial complex. I didn't even realize how corrupt science is..

For me, It had to be a series of undeniable, obscure events that finally slapped me in the face. Slapped me hard enough to be undeniable. Intense enough that I couldn't rationalize the experience away to a series of biases'.

Anyways, given the length of this thread I'm sure that my comments are echoing the experiences of dozens. I'm mostly sharing for the sake of expression, I don't expect to be changing anyone's mind with my sharing here.

It's hard to answer your post as it is devoid of specifics and only speaks in vague generalities and references subjective experiences.

Your faith made the past reality checks undeniable. Your faith is what will make future reality checks undeniable.

Yes I see the rationale for a higher power at work. It just probably isn't the one that creates life and kills it for misbehaving because it loves it. So, let serendipity, synchronicity and spirituality be your guide ... not fables, myths, and claims of supernatural magic of millenia ago.

Well yes, I'm not going to write a short story here. Yes, it is all based on subjective experience and observation.

I realize that knowledge acquired through experience is ridiculed by the mainstream scientific paradigm, and in many cases isn't reliable. Although, it can be useful and even can be reliable in some cases. Example: You walk off a raised deck and fall to the earth. You have learned via experience. You may try to walk off a roof and see if the same principles apply. You may try to walk off of railing, highway shoulder, and many other things to see what happens. You can develop knowledge this way. Sure, you have to be careful with assumptions. To make sweeping assumptions like "walking off anything everywhere results in falling" would be false, as you don't know what you don't know about say... gravity in space, for instance, what its like to walk off a plank into a bowl of 100hp+ fans.

My point is you don't need "objective" pubmed analysis to validate the experience of gravity.

*edit: I'm going to leave what I wrote initially, but I think I misinterpreted what you meant with your statement. Perhaps you could expand?*

I cant agree with this.
I think someone's decision to change a belief system has to do with their openness to change a belief system, not their current belief.
A closed-minded person with a belief system won't change.
A open-minded person can change a belief system, but won't necessarily always do it so.

Obviously, given that my belief systems have shifted over time it should be clear that I am open-minded(or at least was) and capable of changing my belief system.

The reason why I said it would be much harder for me to go back to not believing god was not because I am closed minded. It was because of the nature of experiences I had. If someone gave me sugar and I ate it and got a sugar high, and did that in many ways with many different types of sugar.. I'd feel pretty confident that future sugar ingestion would lead to sugar highs. Sure, its not guaranteed. Maybe I develop some sort of health condition where I can process sugar or cant feel or whatever unlikely situation.

I think perhaps using loaded terms like "faith" is misleading, although all these terms, including "god" are very loaded. The nature of communicating via words is pretty limited anyways. I'm sure what I'm trying to express is not what is being interpreted exactly as intended.

Yeah, I can at least mostly agree with this. I do believe religion is quite incentivized to control belief systems and has seriously mislead people to the nature of god.

Yes, the experience of life, the serendipity and synchronicity you speak of, these are ways in which to connect with god. Science, while it is a great tool.. It is quite limited in its ability to deal with phenonium where the nature of observation influences the results of the experiment. The nature of observation is subjective, very difficult to measure, and not easily quantifiable.

I'm surprised to see someone post with this perspective. I figured this thread would be atheist heavy which a healthy dash of fence sitters.

I do think myths and fables have some value, but they have been seriously distorted by our perception and assumptions about past civilizations. In most modern interpretations, they'd be more misleading than useful.

A belief system is associated with identity. It’s something we identify with, even if it’s mostly unconscious. Our default is to be confirming and affirming with regard to identity so as to avoid the chaos and suffering associated with identity crisis.

Similarly, the default is to confirm our belief system since it serves as a protective layer to a primary motivation which is to maintain order to identity. To entertain doubt against our belief system requires a level of dis-identification which weakens identity, making us more vulnerable to identity crisis.

We cannot weaken our identity and risk identity crisis without simultaneously identifying with something greater (more true, more real, more alive).

The move of identifying beyond your belief system is a faith move since you are identifying beyond what you believe in, beyond what your belief system confirms. Otherwise, it would already be contained within your belief system and your belief system would maintain.