01 Jun 2008, 8:10 am
01 Jun 2008, 8:13 am
01 Jun 2008, 9:21 am
01 Jun 2008, 9:30 am
01 Jun 2008, 10:03 am
01 Jun 2008, 12:17 pm
01 Jun 2008, 1:08 pm
slowmutant wrote:
What is a Gallus gallus?
Thats what Sand is
.
01 Jun 2008, 8:35 pm
01 Jun 2008, 8:36 pm
Yeah, I thought so. Much easier than "chicken." 
02 Jun 2008, 7:52 am
jonk wrote:
Most morals we today associate with religion did NOT come from religion but instead from seeing and experiencing and talking about it. Religions merely collected these into a ritualized system and then pretended to be the source. I've not found more than a mutation of ideas within the body of religion. And I've very often been able to find precursors elsewhere, in opposition to religious claims of ownership of the ideas.
In the early days of the unified Christian church, the one following Constantine's 325AD Nicaea council, was a situation of rigorous destruction of errant materials (those seen as not supporting the othodoxy) and repression. I think much of this was, and always was, about power and the accumulation of power at the expense of others, though within the context of the accumulation of power and the destructive exercise of that power, there is always eyes of the storm, so to speak. Places of calm in the storm. Places where great good takes place.
One of the areas within the christian church that developed over time was the Jesuits, who actively pursued knowledge apart from an entirely religious perspective, even though they were under the real and political control of the top echelon. In addition, the tradition of scribes -- which generated copies of important texts we may enjoy to this day in some part due to their efforts. But the price? We paid for some books copied by scribes with the loss of the library of Alexandria, for example.
Our society is so twisted out of shape by the impacts of religion, that it is hard to know how things might have been if... Jon
In the early days of the unified Christian church, the one following Constantine's 325AD Nicaea council, was a situation of rigorous destruction of errant materials (those seen as not supporting the othodoxy) and repression. I think much of this was, and always was, about power and the accumulation of power at the expense of others, though within the context of the accumulation of power and the destructive exercise of that power, there is always eyes of the storm, so to speak. Places of calm in the storm. Places where great good takes place.
One of the areas within the christian church that developed over time was the Jesuits, who actively pursued knowledge apart from an entirely religious perspective, even though they were under the real and political control of the top echelon. In addition, the tradition of scribes -- which generated copies of important texts we may enjoy to this day in some part due to their efforts. But the price? We paid for some books copied by scribes with the loss of the library of Alexandria, for example.
Our society is so twisted out of shape by the impacts of religion, that it is hard to know how things might have been if... Jon
Four months later, I think your posts finally hit home about religion.
Took a while for them to filter through. ( http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt67507.html )
What's funny is that I criticise Christianity more now that I believe in god, than I did when was atheist.
02 Jun 2008, 11:49 am
02 Jun 2008, 12:11 pm
I don't belong to any religion, but I believe in god some of the time.
My experience is that it is entirely subjective. Any thing/entity/lifeform with objective, verifiable existence is not god, in my opinion. It couldn't be because it would be measurable to some extent if that were the case. And this, again in my opinion, would disqualify it from being god.
If on the other hand the alien(s) remain utterly unknowable by objective means then they would be a matter of personal faith/belief, and there is no difference between aliens and god, except in name and what the person believing in their existence experiences them as doing in their life etc.
02 Jun 2008, 12:18 pm
02 Jun 2008, 12:36 pm
02 Jun 2008, 12:37 pm
Sand wrote:
A sufficiently advanced alien would be no more analyzable by our science than a Neanderthal cave man could understand television or radar or even a simple vacuum cleaner.
So long as it was just someone's word about it, the alien, I would accept it in the same way as I accept people's descriptions of their experiences of god now, as subjective. As their experience. No more.
02 Jun 2008, 12:50 pm
