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- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / Atheist Shrewds❤
No. of Recommendations: 3
Imagining a ‘god’ of any ilk, thought to be manifesting present experience, identifies a surrogate for instigation of whatever’s now happening, thankfully exonerating oneself of any responsibility.
And then, of course, there’s confession of all you’ve done wrong to a priestly fellow-human anointed to absolve you of otherwise potentially eternal consequences. This practice was initiated during the fifth century CE, and then formalized as a Catholic sacrament in the thirteenth century.
Early on it afforded priests with all the confidentiality of believers. Imagine a local guy who’s influential in the community having all the dope on everyone present, right down to their most recent ‘impure’ thought.
Tom
No. of Recommendations: 4
Imagine a local guy who’s influential in the community having all the dope on everyone present, right down to their most recent ‘impure’ thought.
That's how Scientology works. I saw a documentary on it a few years ago. And they record all the sessions.
No. of Recommendations: 2
I came across Scientology several decades ago, and checked it out. It struck me as aberrational.
Tom
No. of Recommendations: 5
IMHO, all religions are varying degrees of "aberrational". With the newer ones, it's just more easy to track the history and evolution of the religions (e.g. Scientology, Mormonism, JW). For example, Joseph Smith was a con-man. Convicted and served time for it. We also know about the missing original manuscript (as I recall, the wife of a friend absconded with it), so the re-write didn't match exactly (even with the same "seeing stones" and gold plates).
We can't be sure that Jesus was a real person, but there is enough circumstantial evidence to imply he was. It was long enough ago that we don't have really reliable records. But something created within the past 150 years, we can know a lot more about it.
The Scientologists record their confession sessions (I forget what they call them...trying to delve deep into your psyche/soul). Then they have you, assuming you told them anything embarrassing (which you have to do, or else you don't "elevate" in level). They also follow people that leave their cult, harass them, and sometimes their families. It was a very interesting documentary. I think it may have been Frontline.
No. of Recommendations: 4
'God' is a placeholder for an absence of understanding – a default response to unanswered questions.
If god is seen as universal experience – endless quarks to boundless cosmic exuberance – I can get with that, though I prefer to label it as 'nothing', or perhaps 'vacuum', rather than to conflate it with a finitely discriminated otherwise presumed omnipotent 'god'.
Tom
No. of Recommendations: 7
'God' is a placeholder for an absence of understanding – a default response to unanswered questions.
Well-put.
It has always been so. There used to be a god for everything we didn't understand (Poseidon, Bacchus, Ares, etc). The Hebrew people actually acknowledged those gods (e.g. "thou shalt have no gods [plural] before me"), but yahweh ruled them all. Not sure precisely when, but they ended up moving to yahweh as a one-stop shop. Then, as we learned more, there was less attributed to a deity. Except for reality-denying fundies, it's mostly just what occurred before the first Planck time, and life/consciousness. We have verified models for pretty much everything else.
A lot of people are uncomfortable with "I don't know". Which is sad, because that spurs investigation. If you say "god did it", then you're sorta done. No investigation needed. But, so far, every time that was given as an answer, someone else dug into it and figured out "no, it's really like this". Every time.
No. of Recommendations: 2
A lot of people are uncomfortable with "I don't know". Which is sad, because that spurs investigation. If you say "god did it", then you're sorta done. No investigation needed. But, so far, every time that was given as an answer, someone else dug into it and figured out "no, it's really like this". Every time.
Right. There's no evidence for an omnipotent being dictating the flow of existence. Abandoning that demands of us an exploration of the genesis of experience.
First to mind is a recognition that organically evolving perception is at once parent to/product of boundless quanta negotiating infinite potential.
Implicit probabilities emerge as present experience; encompassing sensation, recognition, anticipation, expression and remembrance.
Our best bet is to optimize knowledge via careful – i.e., scientific – observation.
Tom
No. of Recommendations: 4
Our best bet is to optimize knowledge via careful – i.e., scientific – observation.
I agree with that.
I'm not sure about the rest of it. You seem to be implying that without sentience, there is no existence. Sort of like "if a tree falls in the woods" thing. Yes, it makes a sound, even if no one is there to hear it. Physics tells us that. Same with a universe. If there were no life in this universe (which seems wildly unlikely, excluding us, because the natural chemical processes seem to make life inevitable, there would still be a universe. No sentient "recognition" or "perception" required.
No. of Recommendations: 2
You seem to be implying that without sentience, there is no existence.Not at all ... in fact just the opposite. Quantum processes, which underlie all of what we might call existence, are atemporal. Along with universal instantiation, this allows for meaningful human experience, where our expressions influence subsequent events.
Coincidentally, this provocative article just appeared in the (free) Science X newsletter from PhysOrg a couple of days ago:
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-physicists-uncover-e...Physicists uncover evidence of two arrows of time emerging from the quantum realm
What if time is not as fixed as we thought? Imagine that instead of flowing in one direction—from past to future—time could flow forward or backwards due to processes taking place at the quantum level. This is the thought-provoking discovery made by researchers at the University of Surrey, as a new study reveals that opposing arrows of time can theoretically emerge from certain quantum systems.I'm not sure the article substantiates the conclusion provided in that summary, but quantum atemporality has long been recognized.
Tom
