Dr. Jordan Peterson on his religious beliefs

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techstepgenr8tion
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18 Feb 2018, 1:03 pm

Mikah,

I think we're in a deeper sort of trouble that we have to take seriously.

We have to figure out how we'd hold ourselves together in the case where it turned out to be correct that there was no such centralized authority in the heavens. This would be a deeply pressing issue (especially with the power of our technology) in all of the following cases:

1) If reductive or naive physicalism/materialism turned out to be true (which looks doubtful to me).
2) If non-reductive materialism or a sort of semi-animism turned out to be true.
3) If a full on animism turned out to be true where the bloody battle of nature went all the way up a spiritual chain and was the rule of the universe.
4) If we lived in something of a further development of supervening emergence patterns, something like a true polytheism with no either supreme deity nor any one deity that these many deities were sub-aspects of.
5) A pantheistic system where all is God and that God allows the anarchy of nature to form anything and have what works survive and that which doesn't work not survive.

My deeper concern here is that if we do allow things to just have a go it would turn out that every approach to life and good treatment of others that we can think of at the moment always leaves a very vulnerable flank to more base, vicious, and organized forces. Even if one could make the best viable and stable approximation of a utopia on earth it would have to built, successfully, with the following problems in mind 1) it's own success and each generation's increasing blindness to the reasons why the rules were needed (the Old Testament book of Judges almost makes a flu dream of this awful cycle) and 2) whether one wants to use the Genghis Khan analogy, the Napoleon analogy, or the Klingon analogy you will have groups of people who will spend every day training for war, like Roman generals or Japanese samurai they'll demand ritual suicide for failure and will publicly flog a platoon leader for any of the failings of his underlings, and they'll create a structure of brutality which can be successful at conquest but it's the last thing any sane person would want to live under - and any near-utopian system would have be robust enough to handle the assaults of such groups.

I think what turned Europe inside out with respect to Christianity, even through it was probably mostly completed by the end of the 19th century anyway (enter Nietzsche) you had WWI, WWII, communists having half of the continent under subjugation, and the people who really understood the depth of the blood, guts, gore, and agony not to mention industrialized rape and torture involved had to ask themselves what they'd even do with a deity that would sit back, watch all of that happen, and do nothing. If such a deity did exist we're dealing with a very cold sort of pantheism. If no such deity exists and one went further to claim that everyone who claimed that occult or mystical phenomena were from liars and hucksters you have naive materialism. If one believes that there's some actual 'woo' going on - either by supervening emergence or just other aspects of nature we don't have a handle on and also rejects the Platonist/Neoplatonist idea of emanation from one pantheistic godhead - they're stuck somewhere on that line between the non-reductive materialist, animist, or strict polytheist.

Whatever the situation is though it's dangerous and I think there's a lot to suggest that our anchoring to the kinds of morality that we need to keep our culture going frays during challenging times - which is where we seem to, economically and socially (largely due to the AI and technologically accelerated inequality). It's part of why you see far left and right populism on the rise and it's part of why you also see identity politics of the left and right coming into play.

This is why I'd never want to bash the serious atheistic thinkers who are trying to solve these problem with the assumption that there's no God to help us. They very well could be right, and if we don't culturally sort this one out we could easily within the next century be nothing but some space junk and abandoned architecture all because our technological leverage got too hot for us and yet we couldn't figure out how to either stop playing the survival of the fittest game or couldn't figure out how to restructure that game in such a manner that we could survive it with that technological leverage.


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18 Feb 2018, 8:50 pm

Mikah wrote:
Pepe wrote:
Mikah wrote:
Pepe wrote:
Where do you get this simplistic nonsense?...<chuckle>


Your list counters nothing Pepe, they are just different flavours of atheist ice cream. They are all the same in one important way - they all discard a transcendent God as moral arbiter and replace it with themselves or worse some other temporal authority to which they submit. I imagine many have done just that using Jordan Peterson, which is why a cult is rapidly forming around him.


I give up...<chuckle>
Let us simply agree to disagree...
Cheers...


You disagree with that of all things? So there are atheists out there that believe a God not only exists, but is judging their actions?


Que?



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18 Feb 2018, 9:56 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Mikah,

I think we're in a deeper sort of trouble that we have to take seriously.

We have to figure out how we'd hold ourselves together in the case where it turned out to be correct that there was no such centralized authority in the heavens. This would be a deeply pressing issue (especially with the power of our technology) in all of the following cases:

<snip>

My deeper concern here is that if we do allow things to just have a go it would turn out that every approach to life and good treatment of others that we can think of at the moment always leaves a very vulnerable flank to more base, vicious, and organized forces. Even if one could make the best viable and stable approximation of a utopia on earth it would have to built, successfully, with the following problems in mind 1) it's own success and each generation's increasing blindness to the reasons why the rules were needed (the Old Testament book of Judges almost makes a flu dream of this awful cycle) and 2) whether one wants to use the Genghis Khan analogy, the Napoleon analogy, or the Klingon analogy you will have groups of people who will spend every day training for war, like Roman generals or Japanese samurai they'll demand ritual suicide for failure and will publicly flog a platoon leader for any of the failings of his underlings, and they'll create a structure of brutality which can be successful at conquest but it's the last thing any sane person would want to live under - and any near-utopian system would have be robust enough to handle the assaults of such groups.

I think what turned Europe inside out with respect to Christianity, even through it was probably mostly completed by the end of the 19th century anyway (enter Nietzsche) you had WWI, WWII, communists having half of the continent under subjugation, and the people who really understood the depth of the blood, guts, gore, and agony not to mention industrialized rape and torture involved had to ask themselves what they'd even do with a deity that would sit back, watch all of that happen, and do nothing. If such a deity did exist we're dealing with a very cold sort of pantheism. If no such deity exists and one went further to claim that everyone who claimed that occult or mystical phenomena were from liars and hucksters you have naive materialism. If one believes that there's some actual 'woo' going on - either by supervening emergence or just other aspects of nature we don't have a handle on and also rejects the Platonist/Neoplatonist idea of emanation from one pantheistic godhead - they're stuck somewhere on that line between the non-reductive materialist, animist, or strict polytheist.

Whatever the situation is though it's dangerous and I think there's a lot to suggest that our anchoring to the kinds of morality that we need to keep our culture going frays during challenging times - which is where we seem to, economically and socially (largely due to the AI and technologically accelerated inequality). It's part of why you see far left and right populism on the rise and it's part of why you also see identity politics of the left and right coming into play.

This is why I'd never want to bash the serious atheistic thinkers who are trying to solve these problem with the assumption that there's no God to help us. They very well could be right, and if we don't culturally sort this one out we could easily within the next century be nothing but some space junk and abandoned architecture all because our technological leverage got too hot for us and yet we couldn't figure out how to either stop playing the survival of the fittest game or couldn't figure out how to restructure that game in such a manner that we could survive it with that technological leverage.


You talk purdy... :mrgreen:

There is so much in your well thought out post that I am a little overwhelmed...
So in no particular order:

-When you talk about a Utopian society it makes me cringe, since those thinkers with whom I have an affinity consider embracing the utopian ideal a road to Armageddon...
Consider Communism...

-The concept of creating a social system via the mandatory introduction of a false reality through the implementation of false social constructs may appeal to many, but is appaling to me personally, since I made an allegiance to the Truth, good or bad...
Yes, I know...I'm special...My mom told me so... :mrgreen:

If there is no inherent meaning in life, then why the
continuation of the agony of life through procreation?

I believe there are a number of eastern religions that consider this perspective in terms of a hierarchical level of enlightenment where at the apex, there is literally no reason to embrace the lesser animalistic seduction of procreational needs...

Don't quote me, but I think that even St Paul considered this when he indicated that Christians should really dedicate their lives to God, but if they must procreate, so be it...<shrug>

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
This is why I'd never want to bash the serious atheistic thinkers who are trying to solve these problem
with the assumption that there's no God to help us. They very well
could be right,


Atheists " very well could be right"?
Heathen!
Blasphemer!
Is there any doubt? :mrgreen:

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
...and if we don't culturally sort this one out we could
easily within the next century be nothing but some space junk and
abandoned architecture all because our technological leverage got too
hot for us and yet we couldn't figure out how to either stop playing the
survival of the fittest game or couldn't figure out how to restructure
that game in such a manner that we could survive it with that
technological leverage.


Ultimately, assuming humanity doesn't discover intergalactic travel, what does it matter in 5 billion years time?
Ultimately, ultimately, what does it matter when the entirety of all the universes are snuffed out?

What is the point of life?
Hey, how about this: Their is no point... 8O
But in the mean time:
<sing>
Quote:
Some things in life are bad They can really make you mad Other things just make you swear and curse. When you're chewing on life's gristle Don't grumble, give a whistle And this'll help things turn out for the best... And...always look on the bright side of life... Always look on the light side of life... If life seems jolly rotten There's something you've forgotten And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing. When you're feeling in the dumps Don't be silly chumps Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing. And...always look on the bright side of life... Always look on the light side of life... For life is quite absurd And death's the final word You must always face the curtain with a bow. Forget about your sin - give the audience a grin Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow. So always look on the bright side of death Just before you draw your terminal breath Life's a piece of s**t When you look at it Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true. You'll see it's all a show Keep 'em laughing as you go Just remember that the last laugh is on you. And always look on the bright side of life... Always look on the right side of life... (Come on guys, cheer up!) Always look on the bright side of life... Always look on the bright side of life... (Worse things happen at sea, you know.) Always look on the bright side of life... (I mean - what have you got to lose?) (You know, you come from nothing - you're going back to nothing. What have you lost? Nothing!) Always look on the right side of life...


Always Look On The Bright Side of Life - Life Of Brian (Monty Python)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoaktW-Lu38



techstepgenr8tion
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18 Feb 2018, 10:53 pm

This was really intended toward Mikah's criticism of all things atheist, which I think is misguided.

I'll try to clarify a few points that I think you may have misread, misinterpreted, or completely injected your own colors into.

Pepe wrote:
-When you talk about a Utopian society it makes me cringe, since those thinkers with whom I have an affinity consider embracing the utopian ideal a road to Armageddon...
Consider Communism...

I didn't talk about a utopian society.

Pepe wrote:
-The concept of creating a social system via the mandatory introduction of a false reality through the implementation of false social constructs may appeal to many, but is appaling to me personally, since I made an allegiance to the Truth, good or bad...
Yes, I know...I'm special...My mom told me so... :mrgreen:

I didn't talk about creating a social system via the mandatory introduction of a false reality through false social constructs.

Pepe wrote:
If there is no inherent meaning in life, then why the
continuation of the agony of life through procreation?

That's probably a great conversation for it's own thread. For right now I'll just offer that it's a question each person asks themselves and likely comes to their own conclusions on.


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19 Feb 2018, 12:09 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
This was really intended toward Mikah's criticism of all things atheist, which I think is misguided.

Yes, I knew that...
You are one of the good guys, not like that black hat wearing heretical blasphemer, Mikah...
Let us join forces and smite him with glee and self-righteousness! :ninja:
Hoowah! :mrgreen:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I didn't talk about a utopian society.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Even if one could make the best viable and stable approximation of a utopia on earth it would have to built, successfully, with the following problems in mind

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
and any near-utopian system would have be robust enough to handle the assaults of such groups.


No, you didn't talk about "Utopian societies..."
You made reference to "near utopian systems..."
Yes, it was a hypothetical...
Yes, it "concerns" me (well actually it doesn't...it was simply a conversation piece) when people talk about "utopian systems"...
But it isn't a big deal to me...<shrug>

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I didn't talk about creating a social system via the mandatory introduction of a false reality through false social constructs.

You were talking about a hypothetical near utopian system...
Based on my beliefs and understanding of human psychology/biology there can never be a utopian like system, hence the implication of parameters approximating a near utopian system is a fabricated system because it could never exist in the first place, imo...

I am more flexible than the average bear...
Read my signature...
"Autistic/scout motto: Give me a better argument and I will listen..."
My philosophy has been, is now and will forever be a "work in progress..."

I am simply exchanging ideas and contributing to your post because I respect what you have to say and want to hear more...
Perhaps I over reached...<shrug>
Kiss and make up? :heart: :mrgreen:

P.S.
Down with theist tyranny!
May they burn in the pretend hell of their own making... :mrgreen:



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19 Feb 2018, 7:43 am

Pepe wrote:
You were talking about a hypothetical near utopian system...
Based on my beliefs and understanding of human psychology/biology there can never be a utopian like system, hence the implication of parameters approximating a near utopian system is a fabricated system because it could never exist in the first place, imo...

I was mostly making the point that when a culture gets to prosperity it rather has the mechanisms for discipline left - which causes itself to be eaten from both within (corruption) and without (conquest).

I think the only things that have a chance for moving us forward are a careful study of pain, meaninglessness (the gut-wrenching stuff), what we learn from it, and considerations for applying what we learn. We're all different in some respects but quite the same in others it seems. I also deeply doubt that any structure could breed civic perfection but I do think there are rallying points around certain values ( like extending the same sacredness we give to human life out to the individual pursuit of meaning ) which could at least help point us in the right direction even if imperfectly.

Also, from my experience, one of the worst and most demoralizing things that a culture can say is 'Get lost - you're neither wanted nor needed'. In the US we have our small towns drying up and disappearing, the country side is starting to look third world in places, and it's really unclear just how this will end up in the next couple decades. I fear that even with UBI we'll be telling most people in general that they're redundant (to AI). Lowered human population might be better for the planet but the process of people being told to 'go screw' and doing just that seems like a lot of unacceptable anguish.


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21 Feb 2018, 8:05 am

I think Peterson is making a grave error when he's conflating marxism and fascism - though both have had comparable properties. He is, however, not including individualism into his considerations, which, too, has had extremely violent revolutions and phases - and frankly, torturing in the name of individualism and liberal democracy is still very much going on.

Marxism evolved as a techno-religion, trying to put an acceptable goal to industrialization - whereas fascism was the answer to that: a return to a unified society under a king-like ruler. The violence in fascism is an outcome of it ideologically not being up to the challenge of answering the problems of industrialization and urbanization, whereas the violence in marxism comes from it not fitting the pattern of technological determinism.

individualism and democracy with human rights seemed to have been a superior modus operandi, the best distributed algorithm for solving problems, in the 20th century. However, it also neglected problems of the commons, like environment etc., to favour the individual. Making corporations into people then favoured the corporation over the individual,.....
Yuval Harari points out that wit AI and big data, in the near future, a centralized way of decision making may outcompete democratic decision making....

Religion was a way to organize people that worked for a long time. But it wasn't peaceful, or beneficial to the individual. Individualism worked well for a short time, but it was destructive to the commons, and has turned destructive to the majority of individuals, too, while being highly beneficial to a very small number of individual humans and corporations.
But I don't think religions that are thousands of years old are up to the task of solving 21st century problems.
And.... Peterson in some interview said that he wonders if anyone would really want to live for a thousand years, - what would you do? - well. I think if he insists of seeing human meaning as something that, in its entirety, could have been encapsulated 5000 years ago, (and Jung thought that, to some extent, too) - then his approach is just not useful enough for our times.


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21 Feb 2018, 10:02 am

shlaifu wrote:
I think Peterson is making a grave error when he's conflating marxism and fascism - though both have had comparable properties.

I've never heard him do that (you might have listened to a video that I haven't heard yet). I've heard him talk about the disgust reflex linked with Fascism, I heard him and Bret talking about it as if it's an extreme cultural immune response, but I haven't heard him talk about Marxism as anything other than a utopian ideology to date.

shlaifu wrote:
Marxism evolved as a techno-religion, trying to put an acceptable goal to industrialization - whereas fascism was the answer to that: a return to a unified society under a king-like ruler. The violence in fascism is an outcome of it ideologically not being up to the challenge of answering the problems of industrialization and urbanization, whereas the violence in marxism comes from it not fitting the pattern of technological determinism.

I'd say this is a very good representation of both, and I've definitely noticed the 'return to monarchy' flavor of Fascism.

shlaifu wrote:
individualism and democracy with human rights seemed to have been a superior modus operandi, the best distributed algorithm for solving problems, in the 20th century. However, it also neglected problems of the commons, like environment etc., to favour the individual. Making corporations into people then favoured the corporation over the individual,.....
Yuval Harari points out that wit AI and big data, in the near future, a centralized way of decision making may outcompete democratic decision making....

I think we need a better philosophic scalpel to deal with this going forward than what ratio of capitalism and what ratio of socialism we want in our mixed economies. It seems to be too clumsy and bumbling an analogy to deal with what we're really up against.

shlaifu wrote:
Religion was a way to organize people that worked for a long time. But it wasn't peaceful, or beneficial to the individual. Individualism worked well for a short time, but it was destructive to the commons, and has turned destructive to the majority of individuals, too, while being highly beneficial to a very small number of individual humans and corporations.

I do actually think we're going to see a resurgence of occult and esoteric philosophy, and it may get secularized in its expectations in a lot of ways. The reason I say that is we're in a position where our evolutionary drives, competitive drives, etc. left to their own devices will kill us and we need very complex and adaptable philosophic tools that we can use both to take our own psychological cultivation into our own hands and even self-medicate (such as with symbols) in corrective ways when where we're at, or even where we need to be, grinds up against our more base instincts.

Admittedly I know that for me to say that I'm probably bringing my own colors to the table but I think of the extremities I've been through, ie. that brought me to this, as something of an accelerated map of the useleness, redundancy, and other forms of suffering that I think most of us are headed for and I think it'll be especially be bad when the mass culling of the population (more through natural selection narrowing its purview of useful men and women to something like 5-10% - ie. the superstars and hyper-competent). There will probably be varying approaches, some people might choose to go more the Sam Harris meditation route and others might want to work with the Lemagaton, Tree of Life, etc. to get under their issues.

Regardless I think what's coming at us will possibly be more psychologically and emotionally grueling than anything humanity's seen to date and it's part of why we'll be looking to internal solutions. The claim that science gave us planes, internet, modern medicine, and thousands of years of contemplation gave us f%^&-all, which is a really popular Youtube critique of all things inward and subjective these days, works great in the external setting or with people who think all these things could have been achieved by some form of low magic (good luck to them), but as far as us getting ground to bits by our internal landscapes that may be a very different story and I think contemplation, mysticism, etc. are really only a bad or embarrassingly antiquated thing if they're being applied to improper domains.

shlaifu wrote:
But I don't think religions that are thousands of years old are up to the task of solving 21st century problems.
And.... Peterson in some interview said that he wonders if anyone would really want to live for a thousand years, - what would you do? - well. I think if he insists of seeing human meaning as something that, in its entirety, could have been encapsulated 5000 years ago, (and Jung thought that, to some extent, too) - then his approach is just not useful enough for our times.

I do think he's made a mistake to whatever extent that he's hinted people should consider going back to the Catholicism or Protestant denominations of their parents or grandparents. They won't get the content-splicing he's giving, and they'll also be getting their priorities straightened for the moral and cultural battles of 500BC or 100 AD.

Before I had heard of Peterson, and before I'd read much of Jung, I spent quite a while with Manly P Hall. IMHO his own assumptions about reality had their particular set of problems, and when he started talking about things like Atlantis it was really tough not to tune out. He was able to splice and dice the historical, Greco-Alexandrian, etc. traditions in a very useful way as well as separating Christianity and Judaism in their constituent components. In some ways his work might be a bit redundant to Jungs, ie. they seem to have arrived at similar conclusions, but I think the overall idea was that the ancients had a way of broadcasting their big ideas and cultural advancements against the natural environment - whether the night sky, forces in nature, etc.. Those stories got personified often into deities and, as Jordan Peterson is oft to bring up, not all of those ideas are necessarily inoperable or unuseful today.

The thing I worry about is that on certain fronts we've gotten really, really dumb. The modern social justice cult seems to be showing the desperation of Heavens Gate or the kinds of people who would have followed Reverend Jones to French Guyana. Our media's putting us in high chairs, in bibs, and feeding us baby food - admittedly they've been forced to pass us at least a few solids here and there to keep up with some of what's on Youtube these days but we're still in an environment where the money comes from the masses and so the lowest common denominator based on advertising revenue dictates how things are done.

I'm perfectly willing to admit that while there are a lot of intimations of what people think will work I have no idea what will. Guess we'll just have to keep brainstorming on that front.


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25 Feb 2018, 1:29 am

I've been suffering from food poisoning the last few days and I still am, I'm afraid I don't have it in me to write huge essays at the moment. Not feeling great, apologies if I am a bit incoherent.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
My deeper concern here is that if we do allow things to just have a go it would turn out that every approach to life and good treatment of others that we can think of at the moment always leaves a very vulnerable flank to more base, vicious, and organized forces.


No kidding. Have you ever heard an atheist pondering why religion is so widespread? How can billions of people believe such fairy tales? Well, they should use their own knowledge to answer that question: there is a significant evolutionary advantage to religion. There is a great atheist disappointment coming when they remove the last vestiges of Christianity and find it replaced with not with "a society based on the principles of Lucretius, Democritus, Galileo, Spinoza, Darwin, Russell, Jefferson and Thomas Paine" to channel Christopher Hitchens but instead with Islam, or some other regressive formation.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I think what turned Europe inside out with respect to Christianity, even through it was probably mostly completed by the end of the 19th century anyway (enter Nietzsche) you had WWI, WWII, communists having half of the continent under subjugation, and the people who really understood the depth of the blood, guts, gore, and agony not to mention industrialized rape and torture involved had to ask themselves what they'd even do with a deity that would sit back, watch all of that happen, and do nothing. If such a deity did exist we're dealing with a very cold sort of pantheism.


Christianity is cold in that sense. I know there is an (apparently recent American) idea of God looking over your shoulder, tweaking the world in your favour. Every depraved rap artist seems to think God had a personal stake in their career, they always thank him at awards shows. This is rightly mocked and you should tease any "Christian" that says something like that, because they know little of the faith. Material rewards are not the product of faith directly. The Christian God does not do these things. As it relates to the 20th century: there is a chilling narrative of God giving up on trying to create perfect or even half decent human societies, focussing instead on personal salvation, rather than group salvation. My kingdom is not of this world.

Send Moses up a mountain for a bit and he'll return to find his people fornicating with animals in the shadows of idolatrous statues, murder, rape and plunder abound. The 20th century was yet another return to that fine human tradition. "Why didn't God intervene" is a question children and atheists ask, not serious Christians. I don't think you can put the crisis of Christianity in Europe down to that.

There was definitely a loss of faith in the Churches who encouraged men on both sides to fight in the war and in turn the Christian structures on which Europe was built, but that is a different thing to being disappointed that God didn't step in to stop a human war.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
This is why I'd never want to bash the serious atheistic thinkers who are trying to solve these problem with the assumption that there's no God to help us.


Ah, I don't do that. The problem is the severe lack of serious atheistic thinkers hehe


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25 Feb 2018, 1:22 pm

I hate to say it but that reply completely side-steps the point of my earlier post.

If we care at all about the future of the human race enough serious thought has to be given to contingency plans for the possibility that Yahweh - quite literally - doesn't exist.

If we don't have the equipment to survive as a race, without massive societal degeneration and even nuclear suicide, to get on without a God then we have to consider the possibility that our race will almost certainly make itself extinct in the next couple centuries. If that God doesn't exist, in that case, then we're just screwed and everything we've worked for is about to go up in smoke forever. There would be no possibility that faith-atheism's 'It's not true - but pretend it is' could cut muster for the whole project because buy-in levels would be nowhere close to the universality you'd need to keep things afloat. We'd need powerfully well thought out alternatives, ways of understanding our ethics and enforcing them that don't hang on the contingency of whether the victor of a henotheistic cultural battle back in antiquity is a real entity in the context of what modern Christians believe.

Modern Christians are free to have full faith in an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent Yahweh but in doing so they're opting out of the responsibility the rest of us have toward finding new ways to philosophically underpin our culture and keep it not only morally and technologically progressing but keeping it from self-annihilation. They could be right just that, unfortunately, Yahweh's given us zero evidence in that direction. What's worse - everyone thinks they have miracles, visions, gusts of the holy spirit, synchronicities, healings, etc. and that it's proof of the bible. Unfortunately that's everywhere, everyone from Hindus and Buddhists to neopagans and spiritualists have it, and it offers no proof of anything other than offering that physicalism or naive materialism is something of a stodgy political maneuver (ie. for people to just shout down people they don't like) with no relationship to reality.

If there's any possibility, at all, that we we can devise a way to cement our moral progress in regardless of whether there's a Yahweh, regardless of whether there's a human soul, regardless of whether we go on, reincarnate, or cease to exist at death, then we need to think about it from every angle and approximate whatever path we can where we can find some hope of us surviving our own evolutionary frame.

I really hope I was misreading the intention of your earlier posts and that you weren't criticizing all atheists, or non-monotheists, for not being Christians or brazenly declaring any attempts to find alternative routes to solving our moral dilemmas useless because we all know Yahweh's real but just don't want to admit it. I don't even want to get into the implications of that unless you actually verified that that's precisely what you believe.


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25 Feb 2018, 3:22 pm

I was going to write something like this yesterday but I was feeling too sick.

I think you are too worried about the whole human race. The end of Christianity means the end of our ways, not the end of the world or the end of the entire human race. You can have a form of morality and society with atheism, I just think it must be inferior to a Christian one. The East Asians have fairly godless societies and China at least hasn't started a nuclear war due to lack of hope in the eternal. You could say equally godless North Korea is trying, but their society is so poor and malnourished, they aren't much of a threat even with nuclear weapons.

The only way I can see to enforce the moral codes and self sacrifice required of a Christian civilisation would be highly intrusive 1984-style mass surveillance, spy networks and the boot of the state (what the Chinese and North Koreans do) or soul-crushing conformism (what the Japanese do), but these methods are not just inferior, they are antithetical to the liberties we enjoy - it wouldn't be the West we know any more.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
If we don't have the equipment to survive as a race, without massive societal degeneration


This is a White European problem, not a human problem. Putting the Asians to one side, Muslims by and large do not care about atheist rhetoric, who knows why. They just laugh at the degenerate atheists preaching "obvious falsehoods" as their Godless societies dissolve around them. If we somehow did discover proof of the non-existence of God, they really. wouldn't. care. They would not believe it. If the Christian god disappears, his extra-beardy twin will gladly take up the space he once occupied. The human race will tick along fine without us.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
and even nuclear suicide


A couple of things here, slightly off the track.

- You're assuming the world at large will maintain the current level of technology we have?
- Also that technology ever marches forward regardless of the culture/religion involved? Such that humans will eventually face an existential crisis brought on by knowledge of the material world if it isn't solved by atheists now?

I don't think either is true. I can easily see humans not only regressing as they have before, but happily bumbling along at the Malthusian limit in perpetuity.

Quote:
I really hope I was misreading the intention of your earlier posts and that you weren't criticizing all atheists


Not all, my posts on this are usually aimed at armchair internet atheists of the type I used to be. I wish "serious atheists" luck in replacing Christianity, though I think they are trying to rebuild an old beautiful house without fixing the foundations. It will fall over with the first strong wind, replaced sooner or later by third world anarchy, or the Caliphate or perhaps a police state if they are lucky.

Any atheist that sees:

- the tendency towards (and possible necessity of) state power replacing God
- the inferiority of a Godless system in controlling human behaviour
- the infinite malleability of a Godless morality

is definitely worth listening to.


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25 Feb 2018, 4:35 pm

Mikah wrote:
I think you are too worried about the whole human race. The end of Christianity means the end of our ways, not the end of the world or the end of the entire human race. You can have a form of morality and society with atheism, I just think it must be inferior to a Christian one.

That last point isn't likely to matter though if the specifically Christian frame of reference is undermined to oblivion.

Mikah wrote:
The East Asians have fairly godless societies and China at least hasn't started a nuclear war due to lack of hope in the eternal. You could say equally godless North Korea is trying, but their society is so poor and malnourished, they aren't much of a threat even with nuclear weapons.

I think the broader concern is that human nature is the same across borders and the temptations to chase limitless economic growth, because we can't figure out another alternative, puts us in a place where we have no problem sacrificing the future for the present. That's likely the most pervasive danger we have to deal with. There probably are variations on how this manifests in certain cultures and it seems like regardless of how hard Mao ground down on Confucius traces of the mentality still seem to be present in China. Similarly India's a very mixed bag - a lot of Christians, a lot of radical atheists, and also hundreds of millions of Hindus and Muslims - the Hindus having as much of their usual resignation to the cycles of birth, rebirth, and karma probably as ever.

Mikah wrote:
The only way I can see to enforce the moral codes and self sacrifice required of a Christian civilisation would be highly intrusive 1984-style mass surveillance, spy networks and the boot of the state (what the Chinese and North Koreans do) or soul-crushing conformism (what the Japanese do), but these methods are not just inferior, they are antithetical to the liberties we enjoy - it wouldn't be the West we know any more.

If we can't think of something better we're likely almost guaranteed to see them in the west within the next few generations.

Mikah wrote:
This is a White European problem, not a human problem. Putting the Asians to one side, Muslims by and large do not care about atheist rhetoric, who knows why. They just laugh at the degenerate atheists preaching "obvious falsehoods" as their Godless societies dissolve around them. If we somehow did discover proof of the non-existence of God, they really. wouldn't. care. They would not believe it. If the Christian god disappears, his extra-beardy twin will gladly take up the space he once occupied. The human race will tick along fine without us.

I would reframe that like this - if the west loses all integrity and refuses to take the search for meaning and the value of civics, to the point that it won't fight for its rights anymore, it'll be overcome by more base and archaic elements and get to enjoy submission to their deity.

It's a bad outcome and it's part of why I think its critical for us to mind our social cohesion.

Mikah wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
and even nuclear suicide


A couple of things here, slightly off the track.

- You're assuming the world at large will maintain the current level of technology we have?
- Also that technology ever marches forward regardless of the culture/religion involved? Such that humans will eventually face an existential crisis brought on by knowledge of the material world if it isn't solved by atheists now?

I don't think either is true. I can easily see humans not only regressing as they have before, but happily bumbling along at the Malthusian limit in perpetuity.

There's no guarantee of anything, just that the intensification of AI, deep learning, and all kinds of things are amplifying existential threats and we're likely to see some pretty radical changes in both the technology and the degree of anchoring the technology has within the next few decades. What I am pretty sure of is once we hit a certain level of advancement, where we're not stacked so precariously on resource contingencies, a certain boiler-plate level of progress probably won't be reversible short of major cataclysm.

Admittedly I have spent a fair amount of time in the past listening to guys like John Michael Greer and their take on the myth of progress, the proposal that we're already technologically degenerating (confusing complexity for progress), the possibility that we might either run out of important rare earth metals or have some other set of conditions that cause us to either stagnate or deteriorate is interesting but I think such a thing would have to happen in the next forty or fifty years and it would have to be a very sharp event. The decline of the Roman empire into the European dark ages took centuries. From that I'm guessing it's highly unlikely that our new found environmental approach to tech and refactoring for sustainability is likely to be clipped by a comet, asteroid, pandemic flue, or anything like that.

Mikah wrote:
Quote:
I really hope I was misreading the intention of your earlier posts and that you weren't criticizing all atheists


Not all, my posts on this are usually aimed at armchair internet atheists of the type I used to be. I wish "serious atheists" luck in replacing Christianity, though I think they are trying to rebuild an old beautiful house without fixing the foundations. It will fall over with the first strong wind, replaced sooner or later by third world anarchy, or the Caliphate or perhaps a police state if they are lucky.

Any atheist that sees:

- the tendency towards (and possible necessity of) state power replacing God
- the inferiority of a Godless system in controlling human behaviour
- the infinite malleability of a Godless morality

is definitely worth listening to.

So you're talking about people who despise Christianity for its own sake, have a pop-leftist view that it's a form of oppression and needs to be destroyed, and they're dumb enough to believe in a Marxist, Socialist, or An-Cap utopia of some kind?

I think the problem is bigger than that. Christianity's suffering enough blows to its fundamentalist interpretation, and even to its more liberal interpretations, that as far as I can tell it'll either morph into a form of Neoplatonism with decorative reference to Christ and Mary in the archetypal sense or it'll just be thrown overboard outright by a decadent culture. The problem with a Neoplatonist or mystic and personalized take on Christianity is it has the same problem that Hermeticism and Neoplatonism had in the first few centuries of the common era - ie. they're wonderful philosophies but it seems like only a small percentage of people, with the highest IQ's and virtues in the culture, can really relate to that - so it's great for 'making good men better' but everyone else is at a loss on it.

I liken this issue to UBI (universal basic income) - it probably will be worse than what we have now, just that with what's coming in the way of automation it will eventually be better than the alternatives. Similarly you may think that any sort of atheistic philosophic values or stand ins for Christianity will be inferior but - it's a moot point if that ends up being all we have left.


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26 Feb 2018, 2:21 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwbwEZtpEZU

Back on, "Jordan Peterson On His religious beliefs; I found his Book
for the 12 rules he brings for Navigating away from what he sees as
Potential Chaos in Life and my first impression was, wow; this isn't just
another Book Watered Down for Mass Appeal on an 8th Grade Reading Level
to appeal to the Masses for he went 'down town' and 'purchased' a Target Audience
online first as what is common these days, even in Poetry town; get a Social Media Presence;
Bring in the Target Audience one is looking for and a year or so down the road, sell directly to
whatever masses one acquires in avenues like Blogs, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook as that list
continues to grow to make potential money if one is successful in drawing a target audience
in as comes to fruition
in Book Covers now of
Dollar Bills. Interestingly,
his appeal also traveled to what usually
would not be his target audience in out
of the box places like "Pewdiepie", amongst
the New Generation of non-religious YouTube hipster-like
folks as part of the Millennials too and even when he reviewed
the book he (PP) had to admit it had value although the religious talk
turned him off as he warned his target audience that 'God' was part of the
mix too; sort of like what happens on the 'Wrong Planet' too; but of course not
unlike one of the most brilliant persons ever to walk the Earth in both so-called
left brain thinking ways of rationality and right brain ways of creativity, Tesla saw
a much larger God too; not restricted to a Beard and Penis as such; both recognizing
per Tesla and Peterson that Human Potential goes far beyond what is recorded History
so far for what we actually have of it as is as written down through ages of Censorship
for what didn't fit the
'left brain' ruling of
those more restricted to
details than bigger picture views.
Tradition sticks together. Tradition goes to
Church together. Tradition is more likely to Vote
together. And Tradition is more afraid of getting outcast
from Tradition; so, Tradition is less likely to accept and tolerate
the different and explore places far out of Plato's Cave with New
Art that has nothing to do with a Cave at all. Of course, Jonathan Haidt's
research backs this up as also does his research on the transcendent ascendent
and ecstatic potential of being Human in much greater mindful and body full awareness too;
as the same goes with Jordan Peterson too; and in this case, even Sam Harris with his Experience
of Meditation too. Jordan Peterson, elaborates too, in his personal experiences of the Mystical with
many occurrences in his personal life with Synchronistic Events, too; where Tesla, viewed the Mystical
of life as all Natural and even at the 'very beginning', Socrates addressed the 'occult' of life too. But of course
as Science is beginning to show better now this is just another part of the color spectrum of Human Potential
that is a use it or lose it proposition in life, too. Work Programming a Computer day in and day out and voila;
on course, one becomes Mostly a Computer Programmer reflecting what they feed their mind and body as a day
in and day out experience of life. Hug and Kiss a child by the village as whole by birth with clear social roles
to be and do and voila, as Social Science shows, the 20 most Peaceful Societies live in more of a small give
and share group where folks work together and actually touch what they produce and create and touch
each other with it, with flesh and blood reciprocal social communication too. For me it's easy to see
that the current Human Experiment is not working for we are no longer doing what we are actually
evolved to do in flesh and blood touch over thousands and thousands of years as just another
less furry primate with empathy and a touch of tribal instinct too of course and yes,
con-social potential emotions and pro-social emotions more when actually
practiced as such. Now, add in the increasing automation plus less now in
clearly defined social roles and what to do to make a living at all where/
when/now/here Humans Need not apply and yes, this works great for
the folks running the button pushes and the buttons
as the cream of the crop still making
the big bucks with social
status and roles that
work for them too as clearly defined
That continue not to work for more than
obvious reasons as stuff like huge swaths
of the population addicted to opiates in areas
of the Country that/who are more impacted by fading
social roles to make a living where the tradition of a security
blanket in thousands of years as a tradition of religion becomes even
more important to them as well as voting for "T"saviors and stuff like that;
even if they go against every single rule of love their religion teaches which
brings about greater cognitive dissonance and greater overall dissatisfaction of
being on the 'wrong side' of history now. It's true, I wasn't able to read two or three
books for free in Barnes and Nobles at the usual 8th Grade Reading speed for me while
dancing and listening to Meditative Movement at the same time to light up all areas of my
brain from head to toe for ascendence and transcendence and ecstasy while continuing all for
free my Autodidact education 'cross the lifespan tHere. Yes, Jordan Peterson's book came along,
written more like a text book than anything I've come across on the best seller list at that place
for mass consumption, before. The First 100 Pages with Norman Dodge introducing the book.
As a forerunner for the Science of Neuroplasticity and the Value of the Subconscious Mind
in understanding why humans do what they do and how to improve what they do
next in areas of Mental Organic Challenges, set the tone for what was to
come in the book. All Peterson's talk about 'Christ' will probably turn off
most any "Material Reductionist" but it's true he isn't just
a 'Traditional Thinker' as he brings all the details
away from a bigger picture too. It's a worth
while book to me but not likely any
'traditionalist' will make it past the
first 30 pages, either or so, now and
yes that's okay; for it's true the folks
who 'think' they are the smArTest of all are
sometimes the one's most divided away from
their Animal Nature and the archetypes of subconscious
mind that are a potential major source of their general angst
and discontent of life. Peterson serves his Target Audience well; And
I personally give his book an A+ Review for what he brings to the Barnes
and Nobles Book-Cases of life. But it's true; he's still singing to an 'ivory tower crowd'
And it's also true, those are some of the folks that i know and feel and sense from very
personal experience do
need to get back
to Nature
and
traditions
someway
to get Happy again.
As Far as I'm concerned, it is a book now
that I would recommend for every person on the
'Wrong Planet' to read; even if some have to hold
their nose through parts of it like other folks did when
they voted for Trump. It's true, don't discount all the Babies of life
for the so-called Dirty water for metaphor of Dark Matter, and Junk DNA;
I don't discount any opinion, including the Dirty Water and the Dark Matter
and the Junk DNA; and while all of that may comprise most of life; that's reality too;
To avoid it
is to only
get a much smaller
picture and potential
benefit out of life. For true,
life is Art and Science; And Left
and Right Brain; And Male and Female
too if one reaches the Archetypes of all of that
and so much more potential in one lifetime now.
It's not gonna solve the World's Problems but hey; the Sun
is still shining out side; the Birds are still singing; the Grass
is Green in an early Spring where i live with Dog Wood Trees Blooming
and all the fats and sugars one can possibly eat in moderation of course
with virtual virgins online, numbering more than any dream of Hadith Heaven can count;
once again, in moderation of course to keep room for the rest of human potential too. Not
likely that Jordan, Mentioned any of that in the rest of his book; but it's true that's what really
smART folks do; yes, they do the Aphrodite Dance from the Matrix Celebration before the Machines
take over the
rest of their
body again;
sort of like the Terminator
Series of Movies as this Common
Archetype of Yang suffocating Yin
has been around since the first armored
suits and public drainage systems that eliminate
lots of 'stuff' in life, including more of Nature that
makes us what we even are as Human mostly Furry and
Naked in a Forage of Life for Survive that brings a heARTy
belly laugh and a smile and a dance and a song all free verse
together again. All the stuff in the world as tools will never replace
a flesh and
blood naked
Dance and Song
ToGeTHeR AGaiN;
True, life will go on
other wise too as is visible now too
in all the other hemisphere(s) of life, too.
And really, as far as the general book goes, as i've
seen Jordan condense it all down into a 10 Minute YouTube
Video where it made him angry that the 'School Crowd' didn't
like the Skating Crowd doing aerobatics atop concrete in School Business
associated areas; while it's true, it's not smART not to develop the Shadow
Side, no psychologist worth any real common sense would suggest that doing
that without a helmet makes any more sense than knocking heads in Football as
Science also shows that can and will create permanent Brain Damage too and many
Neuro-problems down the road. It's true, one can become a Standing Tall Lobster
and never harm
anyone else
or themselves;
Shadow Martial Arts
is not what Lobsters do;
it's what Humans with common
sense who want to keep their 'egg heads'
from cracking can/will do as a work of art over foolish trauma
and injury now to prove something the truly meek who are strong
enough in defense will never have to do with enough practice of
a Shadow Martial Art that brings that Lobster out of the Shell with
never a tail
tucked
underneath
again to use a
canine example
of submission too.
It's true, from what i can see amongst
the 'College Crowds' that's what's missing
most 'these days' for without a Fearless Nature away
from Anxiety, Fuller Human Potential will never 'actually' come.
NoW, Fear, destroys everything Good in life; sure, it saves lives too.
ReAlly smART Humans get both jobs done in Fearless and Due Caution too.
It's obvious that Jordan is an overall Tortured Soul and he doesn't hide that fact.
What he's missing still is a free dance out of his mind for at least a day a week.
Some folks
name
that
Sunday.
But still some of those
folks refuse to Dance and Sing on Sunday.
SmART Tribes of ReAlly Happy Indigenous
Humans still do.
Result:
Happy
most oF aLL;
at least in empirical
terms of Social Science
Measure in the most Peaceful
Smaller Societies that and who do exist still now;
Also, Jordan needs to do some more research into
the Bonobo that and who is much more like a Peaceful
Matriarchal Primitive Human Society than the Chimpanzee as
that other Primate Specialized and Studied Group does show true, too;
They literally make Love Peace overall over violence and Wars but it's true
their key advantage
is small Ape
Societies,
Homogenous
where there are no
foreign invaders even
of the same species too.
Let's face it; Humans are not
evolved to live in insanely Large Populations
in Peace and Harmony fuller in diverse ways
of culture in one big melting pot without mucho trouble.
We Got Mucho Problems; they are hear to stay for decades.
But again, the Sun is still shining outside and at least some
humans are dancing in bliss like a Thoth Fool Tarot Card Number 0 in
as a Kingdom (and just as a tarot side note, i do have a feral yellow cat)
of Heaven within
now as that deeper
more mystical reality of
life as promised in gnostic
versions away from literal
is as true now as it ever
was for a mostly
hairless
primate
for those
who seek and find
that Peace and Harmony
and Bliss all Naked away from Cultural/
Religious 'Big Lies' of Cultural Clothes that
strangle the Heaven out of a Food and Drink
of life that feel and senses so much more than Drink
and Food alone or the organs of hear and see without so much
Deeper Heaven real now in ascendence transcendence and ecstasy
in the eternal now where there is zero feel and sense or know of Death
in Heaven
now;
in other words,
Death is a Moot Point
when Heaven is real now.
It's a within inside gAMe won that
most folks have no clue about on the outside out;
Needles, Camels and all that other metaphorical Jazz too, For
Truth and Light that is a real as what the color blind will
never
see
as
red and green
where green becomes red
Per Pill Metaphor too as a mix of blue 'tooth' too;
In, other words, technology is mastered as slave
instead of Humans slave to and as technology as
an ever present growing outside inside greater
reality
now
as extension
of us away from 'Life'..:)


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