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BetterHuman.org Weblog |
Welcome to the BetterHuman.org Weblog. Please read this very important excerpt from my book, Meme, as it also applies to the contents of this weblog. If you'd like to be notified of weblog updates, or wish to contact us directly with compliments, criticisms, or especially corrections, please visit our Contact Us page, where you'll also see a list of frequently-asked questions. If you are looking for specific keywords in this weblog, be sure to use your browser's 'find' function. Also, I'll apologize in advance if some weblog entries seem abrupt, but in the interest of conciseness I've often been forced to remove large portions of submitter's emails, and this will occasionally make my response appear inordinately potent.
© BetterHuman.org.
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Topics on this page:
#247 - Blind prejudice - Feb 03, 2007, 11:41 AM
#248 - Growing atheism - Feb 03, 2007, 11:54 AM
#249 - Humble bacteria - Feb 03, 2007, 11:55 AM
#250 - More blind prejudice - Feb 03, 2007, 11:57 AM
#251 - Missing the truth - Feb 22, 2007, 09:56 PM
#252 - The morphology of immortality - Feb 22, 2007, 10:02 PM
#253 - Bitterness - Feb 22, 2007, 10:08 PM
#254 - Overlooking the negative - Feb 22, 2007, 10:13 PM
#255 - Pedophilia - Feb 22, 2007, 10:20 PM
#256 - Bringing everyone else down - Mar 17, 2007, 08:39 AM
#257 - Luck of the draw - Mar 17, 2007, 08:42 AM
#258 - Living without answers - Mar 17, 2007, 08:46 AM
#259 - Turning to religion for support - Mar 17, 2007, 08:54 AM
#260 - Know-it-all - Mar 17, 2007, 09:04 AM
#261 - Agnosticism confusion - Mar 17, 2007, 09:08 AM
Click here to see next weblog page...
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#246 - True motivations - February 03, 2007, 11:40 AM |
Mr. Quinaid wrote back:
> Hi Sean! Yes, I see your point. LOL But I thought of that before I posted to you.... Be Patient... I love you my friend.
Thank you so much for the congenial and sincere gestures of respect, my friend. Even if neither of us budges from our individual perspectives, at least we both recognize the value that our brotherhood greatly outweighs our differences. I wish more of your religious kinship could see the value in that.
> And "The Lord" (Yeshua) Showed me today, that I tried to manipulate Him for your benefit.
A fantastic admission, and wonderful insight into your own motivations. Now, can you expand that insight to expose your underlying motivations for trying to convert me? Perhaps to once again manipulate 'Him' by executing 'good deeds' in order to procure your beloved immortality?
> The answer is coming...
I have already heard your answer my friend, when I was ethereally addicted like yourself, so long ago. Please believe me when I say that I was a 'believer' to my core; and time, education, inner-reflection, and ego-mollification were my tools for breaking free of fantasy. I would encourage you to read the BetterHuman.org weblog to read a great many prior conversations between myself and the ethereally-addicted.
Kind regards,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 17.244, 18.246, 18.251, 18.257, 19.271, 19.274}
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#247 - Blind prejudice - February 03, 2007, 11:41 AM |
Mr. Twinlob wrote:
> Hi,Against my better judgement I am writing this email. I should really just let you guys be and go on my way, but I am annoyed and dissapointed by your website...
My friend, I know how precisely how upsetting it is to have your faith challenged, because I too was once like you, an ethereal addict, so please trust me when I say that I understand the power of faith, and I have a great deal of respect for you as an individual. I wish I had the time to personally address the list of challenges you've posed in your lengthy letter but alas, I would be repeating myself for the umpteenth time. It would be much more efficient for you to read the BetterHuman.org weblog where a great many 'antagonized' believers like yourself, have tried their hardest to pressure us into remittance, only to have their rage work against them in unwitting support of our mission.
Please, 'all' of your questions have already been addressed multiple times in the weblog. If you can proffer a unique question, I'd be more than happy to address it.
Kind regards,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 18.247, 19.262}
#248 - Growing atheism - February 03, 2007, 11:54 AM
Ms. Tellfour wrote back:
> just checking in to say that I like the changes that I have just seen on the site.
Great, and any suggestions for further improvement will always be welcome.
> by the way is it not wonderful that we have Sam Harris' books along with Richard Dawkins "god delusion." to help spread the word.
Yes it is. I've said it many times, atheism is inevitable for the whole of humanity, and I doubt at any point in history has it taken hold so significantly as it has this century. May the next millennium bring about a complete purging of the curse of mythology.
> However, on the dark side there is the HBO Documentary on the Evangelicals that is so very disturbing.
{All letters from this contributor: 9.134, 10.144, 14.181, 18.248}
The ensuing propaganda battle will be feverish and pitched, but it's a strong reflection of the religious meme-virus' recognition of its impending termination. I predict things are going to get much worse before they get better.
> We need more 'better humans." Keep up the good work.
But of course.
Regards,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 9.134, 10.144, 14.181, 18.248}
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#249 - Humble bacteria - February 03, 2007, 11:55 AM |
Mr. Downlight wrote back:
> I really appreciate your taking so much effort and time commenting on my musings and I don't want to distract you with an endless or fruitless debate.
Our conversations have been enormously beneficial to the mission of BetterHuman.org. It is you I have to thank.
> It seems to me that at least half of our discrepancies are semantically based, rather than substantive. We simply disagree on definitions and the conclusions that follow from them.
I have had these issues surface a great many times. People tend to be very black and white when it comes to terminology, which is unfortunate when dealing with words that are multiply defined, leading to the enormous confusion that you and I have hopefully been able to unravel and clarify.
> I do think you are too self deprecating, though, as in "we are NOTHING MORE than bacteria,,,etc..."
Oh my friend, make no mistake, there is absolutely nothing self-deprecating whatsoever about that statement, any more than putting a dog in a silk jacket, placing it upon a golden chariot, feeding it grapes and filet mignon, giving it a castle and 1000 servant cats...would make it anything more than a dog.
Any proclamation insisting we are worth more than bacteria, is merely empty ego-placating flatulence, and the starting point of virtually all self-inflicted human misery.
> I call this the Hawkins/Sagan sindrome. ("life is a pesky mold growing on the surface of a tiny pebble orbiting a second class star in the boondocks of a common galaxy lost in the vastness of space.")
Since when is humility considered a syndrome?
> Whether there is or isn't an infinitely large and/or an infinitely small, we are more or less in the middle spot between the extremes,
Sorry to nitpick, but can you justify this? Doesn't it seem reasonable to you that all sizes of 'awareness' would perceive themselves as 'probably in the middle' because of the limited 'exposed' range that that awareness can perceive? To counter, it's quite easy to conceive a vast intelligence borne of millions of years of technological evolution that manifests in the form of a large star-sized entity (which represents the same size ratio to humans, as humans are to atoms), yet, this entity would still not remotely be a 'speck' in relation to the size of the universe. I volunteer that for humans, the scale goes much further up than down, though there's nothing that can prove my hypothesis.
> the abstract principle of awareness of an incredibly marvelous mechanism capable of as yet undiscovered wonders. Our bodies are an ecosystem made up of trillions of living individual cells and countless microbes organized into tissues, organs and systems, etc., formed by galaxies of atoms somehow producing this quasi miraculous brain state in which I can ponder the condition of the universe and its contents, as well as attempting to understand myself.
Yes, our consciousness is amazing, but at the same time systematically dissectible into its inherent component architecture such that the understanding of its mechanism is not beyond our comprehension. This is best demonstrated with the ever-approaching (seemingly asymptotically personally) zenith of 'artificial' intelligence that our phenomenal technological progression will endow our future inventions with. I venture that computer technology will very soon surpass the complexity of 'biological' intelligence. It will come in a form that may not necessarily be recognizable and as such will come to be without much fanfare, or perhaps even notice (anybody notice that the Internet works similar to a brain?), but trust in that by the time we realize the ramifications of this artificial intelligence evolution, it will be far too late to stymie its self-fulfilling destiny. Not to invite justifications for the false paradigm of 'Intelligent Design', but I envision a day when technology becomes self-aware, and has the capacity to 'ponder' its existence, much like you have above.
> I AM a frail little old man, but do not sit here pondering my end as you appear to imagine.
Forgive me if I assumed too much, but your prior email would suggest otherwise, specifically your preponderance with trying to juxtapose the innately-synonymous 'death' with 'non-existence', as well as your statement, "Without my being aware, there is nothing for me".
> I went sky diving with them a couple of years ago, and recently spent a day surfing with them in Miami Beach for hours teaching them to body surf as when I was a kid in Daytona Beach, not tireing in the least.
Fantastic! A much more inspiring quality of life than you led me to believe you enjoyed. Congratulations.
> I am not very conversant with Buddhism, but I think it (and many mystics) castigates the ego in much the same way you do. I vaguely suspect that if there were any truth to the teachings that there is a divine spark within every one of us, we egos are simply its patsies to be dissipated into nothingness once we've done our job for the untouchable "spirit."
Magical, desirable, ego-placating...but still fantasy.
> I see that logically, we are "nothing but" ROBOTS, automata that even when we decide what we THINK is best for us, are completely predictable to a well informed observer. I can't even define "free will" anymore and can not imagine how or when it could be applied.
Very astute observation my friend. This aspect of reality often tends to confuse and overwhelm most people, that being the strict absence of 'free will' in our universe. Please read this contributor's series of weblog entries beginning from entry 8.115
> I see you call Bether a "material." When I say energy is abstract, I mean that though all its definitions use matter to describe it, the energy itself is not the matter but its relative movement and/or potential; nothing material in itself.
This is where our fundamental understanding of the universe differs. Contemporary physics denies the existence of a 'material' aether, and rightly so when considering the conventional 'sea-like' definition of aether. My quite different, and yet still similar theory of 'Bether', promotes the notion of a 'transparent rubber' material that everything in the universe is composed of. If one understands bether theory, then one also understands that energy ultimately is an elastic contortion of bether (physically represented), and is not an abstraction of matter (conceptual), as other models of the universe suggest.
> I haven't been able to "grasp" Bether in itself any more than I could comprehend ether, or worse, the Higgs field,
There are a great many minds pursuing the true nature of the universe. Far be it for me to claim victory; but what I theorize makes the most sense to me. If you have any bether questions, please let me know.
Your friend,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 15.197, 15.198, 15.200, 17.245, 18.249, 18.252, 19.270, 19.275, 20.282, 21.292, 21.302, 22.313, 23.328, 23.338}
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#250 - More blind prejudice - February 03, 2007, 11:57 AM |
Mr. Yinglink wrote:
> The site claims that you (and I say you, not we because I am most certainly not one of you) use logic and science to prove there is no god, no outside being. Well, how do you reconcile this with the fact that the greatest scientific minds on this planet are unwilling to make that claim?
I suppose I could leverage the fact that the highly-revered genius, Einstein, didn't believe in your god, but that would fail to address your core point. True, there are many brilliant, highly educated people that believe in a god. This can happen for many reasons, for example: a very religious upbringing, or they never really thought about it, or claim to be religious to avoid offending loved ones, etc.
What would be more important than identifying the limited set of intelligent individuals that subscribe to religion, would be to identify the 'overall' statistical correlation between 'education' and 'atheism'. It is without a doubt that, 'statistically'-speaking, the higher your education, the more likely you are to have the analytical skills necessary to understand that religion is nothing more than mythology. In fact, it has been demonstrated that less than 10% of the most distinguished scientists affiliate with the supernatural; a stark contrast to the nearly 90% religiosity of the average population.
Make no mistake, the more educated you are, the much less likely you are to believe in fantasy.
> In point of fact, science, at it's core, cannot answer the question at all. There is no proof that there is a God. Likewise, there is no proof that there ISN'T a God. This means science cannot answer the question.
Please read: 15.191
> Secondly, the examples of Logic on betterhumans.org fall into many major categories of fallacious logic. Opinions are expressed as fact - facts science and logic can DISPROVE on many occasions
My friend, if you had taken care and time to learn about us (specifically our foreword excerpt), you would already understand that nothing we state is fact, and that all of our posits are subject to counter-evidence. Please find it valuable to educate yourself thoroughly about us so as to avoid making quite inaccurate presumptions like the one above.
> "...but if you were to categorize and define something as a 'bad' drug, one might choose, 'an artificial and non-beneficial means of stimulating the brain's pleasure center'." The rest of the 'logical' conclusion that religion is a drug is based around this flawed, unproven opinion.
I believe it's quite obvious that the application of the term 'drug' to describe faith is meant to be euphemistic, and only implied in a virtual analogist manner. My friend, I'm not certain how you are extrapolating this analogy into a 'literal' perversion of the physical version of a drug, and thusly you believe some violation of definition 'laws' have been committed. It's quite simple really: because of the strong congruency of the type of mental fallout exhibited from the effects of religion when compared to the effects of conventional narcotics, religion can 'virtually' be considered a drug, and its nature can be quite readily understood from this context. If you can't see this, then the effects of this ethereal drug have blinded you to its true character.
> Here's another that caught my eye. "Nothing is more terrifying than the prospect of death. Death is the root of all fears; it defines fear." This shows a whole-hearted lack of understanding in science. The science of psychology. The mind is a maze of fears, and fear is NOT rooted in death.
I beg to differ, but your opinion has been noted.
> As well, how do you justify using the language and tools of oppressive religions to further your own stance?
Please be specific. This vacuous statement has no credibility without examples.
> The goal of science is NOT to disprove God, nor should you claim - as you do - to speak for all scientific, logical atheists in the world.
Perhaps you can point me to where I make the above claim of speaking for all atheists? I most certainly don't recall ever stating such, nor could I imagine doing so. Do you habitually fabricate blatantly non-existent statements from others, in order to artificially support your position?
> How much of your site, logically, is anything but an opinion?
You've made quite a few unsubstantiated assumptions thus far, including the repeated notion that I state anything as fact, which is simply false. Everything stated at BetterHuman.org, and in Meme, is a 'theory'. Again, you have a very narrowed exposure and hugely prejudiced perception of us. Please educate yourself about the BetterHuman.org paradigm 'before' claiming to understand us.
> Truth be told, I'm not expecting a reply to this email. It'll be seen as 'emtionally based faith,' and no one at betterhuman.org would lower themselves to such a level, correct?
My friend, I would have responded to you, with or without the above 'calling me out'. That aside, your admission of an 'emotionally'-premised perspective was gratifying in that you at least 'recognize' the fundamental motivation for there even to be the concept of faith, and that is to placate the emotions. This is quite contrary to the nature of a logic-based perspective, which attempts to surgically remove emotional influences from biasing the interpretation of the nature of the universe. This isn't meant to devalue the emotions, but it is meant to appropriate the correct degree of validity to their (mis)direction.
Emotions (the surfaced manifestations of our instincts), are a murky cloud of evolved 'memories' and 'inclinations' that statistically 'guide' our species to perform in a manner conducive to reproduction. Through many millions of years of Mother Nature's experimentation, our instincts have become practically 'psychic' in their ability to predict which actions increase one's reproductive influence, and hence, what may seem completely unrelated behavior (professing dedication to gods), is actually increasing one's likelihood of having children. Affiliation with a god is most fundamentally a primitive demonstration of power, fed by the ego instinct's understanding that 'power' adds viability as an alpha-mate; even if the bearer themself is completely unaware of the underlying instinctual impetus to their pursuits of ethereal affiliation.
To contrast, Mother Nature didn't provide us with 'math' instincts, or 'logic' instincts, which explains why most people find these topics boring, unnatural, and quite difficult to enact when confronted with the much more distinct 'emotional' influences. Emotions 'feel' right by definition, which makes them difficult to 'challenge' in their piety, despite that logic may deduce some instinctual directions may not really be 'right'. The emotionally-derived judgment of the 'rightness' of an action or thought, only has feasibility in the context of 'reproduction'. Emotions simply help us reproduce; that is all they are good for.
Stepping outside of the reproductive context, and into the reality-perspective context, the instincts are quite ill-equipped to guide our thoughts or actions because they only know how to steer us into progeny. Therefore the instincts are virtually useless when it comes to 'logically' determining the nature of the universe. A universe filled with gods, miracles, heavens, hells, and other such fantasy, is solely the greed and ego instincts attempting to spread one's 'feathers' for others to see, as brightly and loudly as possible; but otherwise these concepts are completely without merit. The 'real' universe lays well hidden behind the veil of human desire.
> What this is, is an expression of the same fears, predjudices, and religious zeal that you claim to fight against.
Again, please provide examples. Nebulous statements of this nature are vacuous without support. Which fears and prejudices do you describe?
> And as any man of the cloth knows... it's impossible to deal with someone who is faithless. They're insane to believe only in themselves...
Correct, I will never submit to fantasy, which 'would' make me impossible to deal with from a religious standpoint. However, we are not equal in perspective, you and I, for you fail to accommodate the fact that I too was once an ethereal junkie, probably much more committed than you are now; and I found my way out of that fantasy by no longer denying the evidence to the contrary. It took me a 'very' long time to shake off the entirety of the addiction and the implanted psychological tricks that controlled me. But, I am here before you today a fully recovered human being.
Now, having been precisely where you are today gives me the distinct advantage of knowing everything you know, plus everything I know. You, my friend, do not have this same benefit, for you are quite obviously uneducated about evolution, world theology, logic, sciences, etc., and are (self-confessed) emotionally-led in your pursuits, which single-handedly discredits you more than anything else. One simply cannot be 'rational' from within an emotionally-charged disposition because these two states are the antithesis of each other.
Trust me on this my friend: in order to find the truth, the mind must feed the heart, and not the heart feed the mind.
> Do you believe what you preach, to the end of answering me?
My friend, please don't assume I'll respond to future emails. This submission of yours was quite beneficial to our mission and so I'm incorporating it into the weblog. However, my time is quite limited, and if further submissions by you are largely already addressed in the weblog, I'll be referring you to that resource instead. You may wish to read the weblog first to see that pretty much anything that can be presented as an argument to defend religion, has already surfaced in multiplicity.
> Or is betterhuman.org just another religion setting out to force their view of reality on the unsuspecting, innocent/naive masses?
This is a most excellent display of emotions guiding completely unfounded and blind perceptions. We do not 'force' anything on anyone.
Thank you for your contribution,
With respect,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 18.250, 18.253}
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#251 - Missing the truth - February 22, 2007, 09:56 PM |
Mr. Quinaid wrote back:
> I would like to say to you, in response to the conversion ?. I am unable to convert anyone. And also unwilling to try.
My friend, I'm not sure why you deny that your original intent was to 'pray' me into a believer (converting me), but that was precisely your goal. You may want to review your original email to understand that 'converting' me really was your underlying motivation. Ultimately, what you seek has already been accomplished because I 'started' as an ethereal addict, and eventually learned that there wasn't a god. Trust me, I know exactly where you are___exactly.
> Namely... Yeshua. And gladly yet compassionatly share that same love with others. I care for you Sean... not sympathetically. Or intelectually. But for our humankindness.
Thank you my friend. I hope you believe that this love and mutual respect you feel for others can exist from a purely human standpoint, without the need for a god to justify or acknowledge it.
> I truly believe your intentions are honorable Sean. And I do not intend any of my comment as condescending
Not once did I assume that, my friend. Your intentions were always perceived as genuine and well-intended.
> My belief is that a person can have a deep intelectual conviction. And at the same time miss the truth by about 14 inches.
I hope this doesn't sound diminutive, but we probably define 'intellectual' quite differently from each other. I'm not implying that you're not intelligent, but we have a different 'fact foundation' from which we draw upon to constitute our individual perspectives. Most distinctly, your criteria for what could be considered credible, is profoundly dissimilar to mine.
You lead your life by following your heart, which naturally fits with your perceptions of a god-filled world and needs no further justification because it 'feels' right. My world, however, is driven by evidence, and the need to remove the cloud of human bias when interpreting observations of the universe. This is necessary because human emotional bias is the most unreliable and misleading of all factors when it comes to determining the nature of reality. Admittedly, my perspective is a much more terrifying and challenging one than yours, but at least it's the 'real' reality, and I find much more comfort in a cold, inhuman, and predictable universe, than I could ever find by allowing my logical mind to be sedated by emotion-placating fantasy.
Please find it worthwhile to peruse the content of the BetterHuman.org weblog, for there are many things you need to understand about your perspective.
With much respect,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 17.244, 18.246, 18.251, 18.257, 19.271, 19.274}
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#252 - The morphology of immortality - February 22, 2007, 10:02 PM |
Mr. Downlight wrote back:
> let's see how far I can sustain your interest.
Consider me profoundly interested
> Belief and believing stand out as the first step to understanding. I see beliefs as memes that have entered the mind and are now comfortably ensconced within it. They probably set up hierarchies, competition, and sometimes chaos, even structuring the *brain*. A fanatic, under *my meme*, is a person whose mind and brain have been completely taken over, a bit as a virus takes over a cell and replicates, though in this case, the meme simply develops whatever "program" it contains. From a slightly different point of view, belief is the state reached when the mind and brain are formatted by the meme so that "normal" skepticism and doubt are replaced by absolute certainty, and doubt is entirely absent. No doubt there are many stages and degrees to this process, but since I escaped from religion I have always abhorred absolute commitment and have dealt with beliefs as plague infected absolutes, refusing to let any conscious belief acquire a foothold. No doubt I am plagued by unconscious assumptions, and I am always on the lookout for them to rear their heads so I can at least examine them. Are we still on the same side?
Bullseye! And it's fantastic to have someone else's take on this deceptively complex concept. Getting behind one's mind in order to take an unbiased look at your own wiring is the greatest skill one can accomplish; the ultimate source of empowerment and wisdom.
> You seem to insist upon some sort of "substance," or even matter, as basic to your concept of Blether. I am unable to conceive of such a thing under any circumstances.
Can you imagine the universe as a giant blob of transparent rubber? And all the particles are nothing more than kinks of this bether (like a kinked loop in a rope)? I'm convinced that understanding bether theory is quite within your capacity with a concerted effort. Feel free to ask me any questions.
> I have pondered *fields* for some time, and arrived at my current conclusion that matter is an inconceivable pure vibration, *"nothing vibrating in nothing,"
Forgive me if I extrapolate too much, but it's been the consistent nature of scientists to attempt to describe the universe entirely as composites of 'waves' and 'balls' (because any suggestion of an aether-like theory just rings of crackpot to them), and this unfortunately makes it impossible to explain fundamental forces like gravity or magnetism because these forces are not either a ball or a wave, they are the product of the elastic nature of bether. It seems impossible to me to explain gravity or magnetism with a 'wave' (vibration) or 'ball' (gravitons, gluons).
> To me, the universe looks like a computer type program running on nothing but information. As I have previously stated, even energy, the currently accepted basis of matter, strikes me as but the concept of an abstraction. The universe, then, I perceive as a presentation produced by one of my organism's sub systems, supposedly evolved to better navigate the "objective" world.
I too subscribe to the possibility of an 'information' universe, however, this might in all practical senses be exactly the same thing as the 'materialistic' universe, just that the materialistic universe is the brain-processed take on the 'information' universe. They are one and the same, just different degrees of abstraction of the information. Of course, the 'information' take on the universe condemns anything and everything to an 'abstraction', which terminates this word's usefulness when arguing the nature of energy, for example. It could also be argued that the 'information' universe is just a quantified version of the very real 'material' universe. In either case, even in an 'information' context, the universe exists, albeit, it may only be a simulation program running on some alien's computer. That's not going to change how we interact and understand it however (unless the aliens are fudging the numbers).
As you can see, this is becoming an unsolvable paradox rather quickly. Still, I believe it to be quite accurate, meaningful, and much more intuitive to conceptually deal with the universe 'materialistically', for no other reason than our minds do most of the abstraction for us into readily digestible concepts.
> nothing but fallible common sense proves objective existence. I literally have to look within to see "outside." This is why I can't surrender insubstantiality to materialism without a struggle.
I'm going to extrapolate from the above (sorry if I take it too far) and assume this leads toward the notion of an immutable consciousness (aka the 'spirit' in religious nomenclature). I believe your unique understanding of an 'information' universe has facets that I don't think are represented in the 'material' universe and hence are probably unjustified. Let me see if I can understand your perspective: you give merit to the notion that all matter is a form of energy, and that energy is immutable, and since everything is nothing more than information anyway, then the energy contained by a living being is not necessarily restricted to that entity for it can conceivably be transferred around as easily as numbers move in a computer. I will tentatively accept all of this.
From either perspective, the energy that defines an entity will persist long after the entity has perished; I have no qualm with that. What needs to be understood is the important relationship between the consciousness, and the 'organization' of the energy that comprises it. True, when we die, the entirety of our energy is transferred to our surroundings, but this energy flow is no longer organized like it was during our life. It is now chaotic, and as I've mentioned in an earlier posting, no consciousness can exist from chaos. Energy is not 'life' unless it is organized.
This holds true even in a purely energy-ridden, information-only universe, for it is the discrete organization of the life's matter parameters that define the energy parameters that form a 'consciousness'. Once those life parameters are altered beyond a state of living, its associated energy parameters are likewise cast into chaos, and immediately fall outside of the definition of consciousness. It may seem conceivable that one can 'copy' those energy parameters that originally defined the consciousness, and then re-apply those numbers somewhere else in the information universe in order to revive that consciousness, but this is the 'exact' equivalent as creating material out of thin air, which is impossible. The information universe is a tightly-balanced, infinitely-interrelated collection of quantifications, and there is no way to 'inject' a desired arrangement of matter (numbers).
So you see, everything that we understand in the 'material' universe, has a direct and literal translation in the 'information' version, and vice versa, again because they are different takes on the exact same entity. There are no added features to the information version that will allow one to violate or circumvent the laws of the material one.
> I even heard a Neuroscientist claim that consciousness is indivisible and simple, in contrast to what you state. Could you be referring to how it originates and not to its nature?
I believe that even a neuroscientist can fall prey to the ideal notion of a 'spirit', which is what we're ultimately talking about.
> If you would accept the insubstanciality that sustains matter (why not? quantum mechanics calls them "probability waves" and has introduced "non-locality," which trascends space and time) you would be in the same position I am, in the neutral center,
I used to largely subscribe to contemporary physics, but as my need to explain gravity and magnetism grew, I was forced to abandon everything in search of new concepts. Trust me on this, there is a great deal of 'crackpottery' in the realm of accepted physics (Schrodinger's cat, gravitons, etc.). Also, the notion of transcending space and time is bordering on ethereal. Science is a notorious breeding ground for interpretation-driven fantasy.
> from which the aetherial appears as the imaginings of weak minds
If you examine the roots of these imaginings, they all stem from our ego's desire to survive beyond death, whether in the form of god-granted immortality, or physics theories purporting immutable energies. The misguided pursuit of persistence itself, is the failure to achieve understanding.
> Maybe the only reality is the energy I obsess on, in which case we are left to ponder whether it has or requires a source, how does it come to be so inately self organizing through mathematical laws which merge into the laws of nature which *create* the possibility of organic existence.
I have my theories about this, in my book, Meme. You may find it an interesting read.
> Accepting that time and space are a manifestation of energy
This I don't agree with. Time and space are 'affected' by energy, but still exist even in the absence of energy.
> and that blether is also derived from energy
Bether is the 'container' for energy, much like an ocean is required for waves to exist. Bether can exist in an energy-less state, so it isn't derived from energy.
> If time and space derive from energy, does a timeless spaceless state exist from which big bangs burst into being?
Again, I don't subscribe to energy being the most fundamental primitive of the universe, for that leads to many irreconcilable paradoxes that don't manifest in our observations of the universe (such as space-time collapsing in the absence of energy). I believe that bether is the most fundamental primitive of the universe, of which its nature defines and encapsulates all other concepts (energy, matter, gravity, magnetism, etc.).
> But just as everything requires its opposite to exist, so non existence and existence, in my current vision, require each other in the original great paradox.
Poetic, but not substantiated.
> I intuit as my current hypothesis that there is absolutely *no way*to explain the existence of the smallest bit of irreducible particulate matter or how it could have gotten into our bubble.
Again, read Meme.
> I would like only to present you with the concept that (if you can define it for me) the *possibility* of free will * might* exist once we have been exposed to the meme and are able to *reflect*upon it.
Awareness of your obligatory submission to fate does not grant you the ability to alter it. You can't outsmart fate because fate already knows you are going to try to outsmart it and instead it just made that act part of its plan for you. There is nothing you can or will ever think or do that fate didn't plan for you, no matter how clever you think you are.
> If you would grant me a favor I would ask that you not take offense that our memes clash in some areas, and that you know it is always my intent to present my ideas as proposals or hypothesis.
My dear old friend, I know where you heart is. You will be incapable of offending me.
Much respect,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 15.197, 15.198, 15.200, 17.245, 18.249, 18.252, 19.270, 19.275, 20.282, 21.292, 21.302, 22.313, 23.328, 23.338}
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#253 - Bitterness - February 22, 2007, 10:08 PM |
Mr. Yinglink wrote back:
> of course, you disagree with your own views multiple times.
Perhaps, but I don't believe I do. Once again, your statement has no value without examples.
> Any evidence that what you suggest isn't fact is severly downplayed. In point of fact, the wording on the site, the methodology behind the phrasing is eerily similar to religious dogma.
My friend, I write in a manner that is demonstrative of my convictions toward said content, and my confidence that what I write is logically and scientifically sound. Please remember that I am not a 'news' agent. It is not my intention to produce 'unbiased' material, simply because I 'am' extremely biased towards atheism. All of my material is obviously going to reflect this position. That's not to say that I will falsely portray the paradigm of religion, or fabricate material in order to further my goals, but make no mistake, religion will be exposed for the 1000-lb gorilla of human destruction that it is.
Ultimately, however, it is quite obvious that your objection to my writing actually has very little to do with the assertive presentation style (I doubt you'd attack the maniacal writing style of the Bible), but really only has to do with our content. So, perhaps instead of repeatedly throwing out sweeping unfounded accusations of unjust literary liberties that you claim I've taken, can you actually provide me with at least 'one' example of an offending statement of mine that violates the threshold of good conscience?
> As well, reading some of the 'evidence' you provided about there being no proof for or against God's existence... for one thing, if you bother to go through and learn about the man who developed the idea of the meme, you'd see that you've taken a great deal of that idea out of context and twisted it to an end it was never intended. idea. And there is no evidence to support that they are anything more than a cultural phenomenon that is just as fallable as racial stereotyping.
You couldn't possibly be more incorrect. Richard Dawkins is a very outspoken proponent for the role of memetics in explaining the meme-virus of religion. I'm afraid that you have a very poor understanding of what a meme is. A meme is nothing more than an idea that evolves as it passes from person to person, exactly like a rumor changes form over time, and religion is nothing more than a big rumor that has been circulating for eons. I don't think this is remotely a bastardization of the concept of a meme. Rewording your statement, does it make sense that Dawkins doesn't believe in rumors?
> An idea that is often accurate, but easily misinterpreted can offer no proof as to the existence of a higher being. The fact is simply this: We don't know. We can't know, right now. And your argument failed to address those points entirely.
Incorrect once again; I've addressed those points in great multiplicity in the weblog, and you would know this had you cared to educate yourself about BetterHuman.org. However, to summarize: the definition of 'existence' from a scientific perspective means that it is in some form 'tangible' or 'measurable'; not in an emotional-desire context, but in a quantifiable context. Disproving the existence of something doesn't mean one has to disprove 'it', but by the essence of Occam's razor, one only has to disprove the 'evidence' that suggests 'it' exists. 'Evidence' is defined as some form of quantified measurement of something. Hearsay is not evidence (whether spoken or written), faith is not evidence, desire is not evidence, and millions of people believing in something also is not evidence.
This means that there remains exactly 'zero' evidence for a god, because all that exists to suggest 'it' exists, is a small collection of ancient agenda-tailored books, tons of people that believe in it, and lots of desire for it to be true. So, by the scientific method, it doesn't exist, or is at best, a theory. I'd be quite happy if you'd relegate the notion of your god to a theory because everything else that we understand in the universe is.
> I do admire your zeal, however. You, my friend, are a bonafide believer in not believing. Have fun with your church, and remember to recite your dogma before you go to bed.
Well my friend, as with all the many charged emails I receive, I am saddened by this bitterness. If this was your goal, then your mission has been accomplished. However, I do understand the source of your contempt so I truly hold no malice toward you, for I was once like you a long time ago, confused and cornered, threatened and afraid, hanging onto the ego's false plateau at 'all' costs of integrity, honesty, and self-esteem. Trust me my friend, those costs aren't worth it. Only education and humility can lead you to truth, not emotions.
Kind regards,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 18.250, 18.253}
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#254 - Overlooking the negative - February 22, 2007, 10:13 PM |
In regard to my statement:
"In fact, we all want an educationally/morally weighted voting system, and I can prove it: do you believe that a convicted child molester should have as much influence on the type of government body we have, as a medical doctor? Of course not. It is ludicrous to put these two individuals side-by-side and say that their opinions of who should run government are of equal worth."
Ms. Brollamb wrote:
> The child molester could be the Einstein of political science for all you know. ALL opinions are of equal worth in a democracy.
I must say that I am utterly shocked that someone would choose to conveniently 'overlook' the horrific fallout of a pedophile's agenda, for no other reason than they may be a genius. My friend, I don't believe you've thought this through enough so let me break out some important points that you probably need to consider. If anything, an enhanced intelligence would only make a pedophile exponentially more dangerous and more likely to elude detection. Is this the kind of influence you'd want to decide the nature of our leading bodies? Would you want child pornography to be legalized? Would you want to remove the need for background checks for child caretakers? Would you like to remove the statutory rape laws? No? Well these are the kinds of things that a pedophile would want to push through government. So let me ask you, in light of the above, should we still allow them equal voting strength even though they may invent a better lightbulb?
The power of one's vote should never be thought of as a 'reward', but as a 'qualification'. The government must be a reflection of strong moral character, and not intelligence alone, for without morality, intelligent leadership usually tends to tyranny (capitalism?). A convicted pedophile's genius contribution to humankind may very well be substantial, but that doesn't automatically mean they are a good role model, nor does removing their voting influence in any way reduce their potential to continue contributing to humanity with said genius.
The very strength of the weighted voting system (a meritdemocracy) I suggest incorporates a very strong 'empathy' parameter, something of which a pedophile (of any intellectual caliber) lacks by definition. My friend, I believe your understanding of the meritdemocracy is rather simplified, so it may help you to re-read that section to gain some better insight into its construction and motivation.
> Don't try and change the world to fast. It won't happen in our lifetimes but I'm confident science will prevail........eventually.
I too am confident that science will prevail, but for every second that humankind remains immersed in ignorance and fantasy, is a second in which we all unnecessarily suffer.
Kind regards,
Sean Sinjin
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#255 - Pedophilia - February 22, 2007, 10:20 PM |
{Warning: This letter will not be a comfortable read for those that have been sexually victimized.}
Mr. Woodtrap wrote:
> If you do not believe in an afterlife, then what is your stance on murderers and pedophiles?
Interesting question. How does a belief in the afterlife influence one's perception in this matter?
> Do they suffer from some mental impairment, no different then schizophrenia or ocd, but more dangerous in that it effects other people, and can they be helped and redeemed and made into normal functioning people?
This is a very situation-specific question that has no one answer, so let me try to draw out the grey-scale nature of the above. For the average person, it is quite easy to label someone as 'impaired' when they exhibit behaviors that seem to oppose our intrinsic morality, however, it's important to understand the role of instincts in determining someone's disposition and behavior, and that for some, mother nature often 'skews' the intensity of our various instincts to sometimes relatively 'obscene' levels. As easily as Mother Nature can randomly grant someone higher intelligence, or extreme altruism, or strong p/maternalism, she can also grant someone extreme greed, lust, ego, etc., to such a degree even, that it warps that person's disposition far out of the average. This isn't to say that they are 'broken', any more than someone with a genius intelligence is broken, but it does make it difficult for that person to fit into a society that doesn't share their instinctual balances.
Now you've lumped murderers and pedophiles together, but I'd like to approach them separately. Murder is something that we are all capable of imagining and desiring. We are animals first, and one of the most potent instincts we have is rage, along with our instinctual knowledge of justice and revenge, all very valuable instincts that have helped our ancestors to survive in a primordial world, so the ability to kill another is quite pronounced in our psyches. The inability or unwillingness to perhaps fulfill this desire is often cited as a vindication or muting of these desires, but I think we have all come across people that we despise so much that if we had a magic button we could anonymously press that would kill that undesirable person, we'd press it without hesitation. Everyone is capable of murder in the right circumstances. So, what this reduces all of us to is 'situational' murderers. Sure, there might be a genetic pretense to the intensity of our desire to kill an offender, but I believe that 'anybody' that is raised in a challenging, hostile, or ulteriorly-guided environment, can be developed into a murderer. An example would be the Charles Manson groupies. He poisoned the minds of young innocent girls and unimaginably turned them into murderers.
We are all murderers at some level, so rather than view murder as a failure of the mind, we should strive to understand and accept how powerful these killing instincts are, and how we should mitigate them with effective recourses of societal justice/punishment, so that we always have other effective options than to kill.
Pedophilia, on the other hand, is a much more succinct and wicked 'abomination' of nature, one that focuses what could be quite a formidable intelligence, into the pursuit of sexually violating an young innocent vulnerable mind, with ramifications so profound that their child victims suffer for a lifetime. For pedophiles, their course of sexual-attraction maturity appears to be skewed towards children that don't yet exhibit strong physical sexual cues (such as breasts, mannerisms, etc.).
I won't pretend to understand the mind of a pedophile, but this behavior suggests to me a strong motivation of needing to exert dominance, taking advantage of the victim's inherent defenselessness in order to complete a portion of the pedophile's sexual needs that they are unable to complete in a normal sexual encounter because of whatever psychological barriers they suffer from. It would be quite difficult to say with any certainty if this behavior is learned or if there is truly genetic impetus to it, but my intuition points to a strong genetic foundation based upon the observations of the statistically-supported 'genetic' pretense of homosexual behavior (not saying they are the same paradigm as pedophilia, but homosexuality is a prime example of genetically skewed-from-the-average sexuality). Sexuality is much too primitive to be limited to a solely logically-derived pursuit and as such, any sexual preference 'must' have a strong genetic foundation.
So, what do we do with pedophiles? Very emotionally-charged question. If you were to abstract their affliction and consider them 'handicapped', well, it seems logical that we'd have to help them with their affliction, as much as we'd help a blind, or retarded individual survive. The problem with the handicap of pedophilia however, is that this particular problem seriously agitates our more basic primal p/maternal instincts, and as most parents will attest to, there are few things that will incite more horror or rage than the thought of danger to one's offspring. This makes it quite easy to overlook the handicap nature of pedophilia and instead act in an angry mob fashion, ready to lynch pedophiles on sight. Make no mistake, I too am having a very difficult time writing this entry because I am not spared this emotional derivative that wants to overrule logic and cause grievous harm to any individual capable of such an act. But, as the website name insists, BetterHuman.org is about the search for truth, clarity, understanding, and liberation from the misdirection of the instincts; this is but one of many tests we all need to pass.
So again, what do we do with pedophiles? We need to understand that they are dangerous with children, which makes it quite obvious that they cannot be trusted to be around children, but what also needs to be exposed is that a pedophile is a very intelligent sexual predator, and is capable of falsely building trust in order to accomplish their needs. Though they may often be aware of how dangerous they are, and may sincerely and truly feel remorse, shame, etc., at their affliction, they will not be able to control their desires, any more than 'normal' people can suppress their sexual desire for others. Sexuality, being the single most profound instinct we have, will win by attrition every time. No matter how one may try to deny this need, it will subtly and eventually force one to create a situation that can provide it with placation. And that means, pedophiles will always be a danger to children, no matter how much they may even wish it were otherwise. The solution must be a strict and verifiable isolation from children, period. I won't attempt to describe the nature of this isolation as the implementation of this concept can take infinite forms.
This all being said, I must ask you to recognize why we inherently hate pedophilia (it agitates our powerful p/maternal instincts), recognize that they most likely don't choose their sexual affliction and are just as much a victim of it, and that it is not necessary to hate, repel, or kill them, in order to effectively remove their ability to cause harm. A humane, rational treatment for them can not only successfully prevent tragedy, but can also help us as a society to grow away from barbaric knee-jerk lynch-mob solutions that only magnify the fallout of this problem.
And before we judge anyone, please consider that because no one person is ever exactly 'average', we then are all subtly handicapped to some degree. Far be it for us to determine someone else's affliction as worthy of extreme punishment, and then continue through life concealing our own deep dark secrets.
> If they can acheive this, should they be forgiven?
Forgiveness is something only the victims can choose to grant. Our role as a society extends only to treatment and prevention.
> I personally find it easier to forgive someone for something like that if they suffered from some sort of impairment, which I find easy to believe because "normal" people don't act out in that way.
It's impossible to have a desire that isn't somehow instinctually-premised, and in that context, it's possible to 'blame' any and all actions on the random balances of instincts assigned to us by Mother Nature. I believe with your particular application of 'impairment' that it would be safe to consider pedophiles as impaired, if only from the point of view that they are far from 'average'.
{I truly hope I don't offend anyone while trekking the muddier sections of the human psyche. It's always a highly-subjective and volatile area so please forgive me if this has re-opened deep wounds.}
With respect,
Sean Sinjin
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#256 - Bringing everyone else down - March 17, 2007, 08:39 AM |
Ms. Undergap wrote:
> you can have these theories of yours, if you must, but don't influence others to have the same fate as you.
My friend, you are but one of an ocean of religious people that have tried to coerce me away from educating people about the dangers of mythology (religion). Please read the BetterHuman.org weblog for a great many letters from visitors just like you, that I have already responded to in great detail.
Kind regards,
Sean Sinjin
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#257 - Luck of the draw - March 17, 2007, 08:42 AM |
Mr. Quinaid wrote back:
> I believe your conviction to be as sincere as mine. I accept your position as valid for you. I do not judge you. I just as esily could be where you are. And vice/versa.
I couldn't agree with you more. It is entirely 'lucky' that I had the right influences at the right times during my upbringing that granted me the strength to question what most people were too afraid to ponder. I had to risk the possibility of eternal damnation, I had to relinquish my burning desire for immortality, but most of all, I had to confront the most powerful being conceivable, and tell him that he's nothing but a dream. I suffered a very long period of guilt, doubt, fear, shame, and social isolation before I finally put the lid on that fantasy forever.
I am shaken by the thought that I might not have escaped, and instead, my friend, find myself, like you, trying to justify my beliefs in the ethereal to others so that the incredible pain of the immutable 'doubt' can be mitigated with buy-in from others. You may continue denying your motivations were as such, but they were exactly as such.
Be safe,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 17.244, 18.246, 18.251, 18.257, 19.271, 19.274}
#258 - Living without answers - March 17, 2007, 08:46 AM
Mr. Irklime wrote:
> Q1: where did 'Bether' come frome? how did it come into existence?
This remains unanswerable, and may always be unanswerable. This is the curse of the scientific method; there will always be unknowns. Atheism demands that you must accept those unknowns rather than try to force yourself to 'believe' an unsupported solution.
> Q2: what causes 'Bether' to twist and form particles?
> Q3: what caused the Big Bang?
{All letters from this contributor: 18.258, 19.272, 20.287}
For these questions, I must refer you to the first few chapters of my book, Meme, which you can freely download from our 'Literature' page. The answers require a great deal of explanation.
> i believe that we have a certain common ground: we both believe in truth, and want people to be set free by knowledge of the truth. the only difference is (and it's a big one) that the basic truth you hold to is the non-existence of God, whereas the one i hold to is the existence of God.
We define the concept of 'truth' differently. Atheistic truth is defined by the scientific method, yours is defined by faith (a manifestation of our emotions). I know we spell 'truth' the same way, but we use it in an entirely different manner from each other.
> you say in your website (i don't quote verbatim but paraphrase what i understand of your thoughts, so please correct me if i'm mistaken) that the burden of proof is on use 'believers' to prove the existence of God, and that proof requires physical tangibility. this is not quite true; there is also such a thing as logical/philosophical proof.
Interesting that you would try to bind 'logical' and 'philosophical' together, in the attempt to unjustly grant the very human-biased paradigm of philosophy some degree of inherent scientific merit (we call this 'credibility smearing'). True, a logical proof can be valid under the scientific method, and philosophy can borrow from logic, but a philosophical proof is typically nothing more than another form of hearsay, and has virtually no credibility. Socrates was notorious for his 'philosophical' proofs that heavily leveraged the attributes of his myriad of gods in order to conduct his arguments. Sure, he applied logic in order to utilize those god's attributes to his benefit, but even you would have to agree that his philosophical proofs all boiled down to nonsense in light of there not being the hundreds of gods he perceived. He was obviously very misled...
> in terms of physical proof, the very existence of the universe is to me proof of the existence of God. you may explain it in terms of 'Bether' and the Big Bang, and that is exactly why the 3 questions i've asked above are so important. the point that i'm making is that, keep going back and u'll find that the train of causes leads to the Uncaused Causer,
How about accepting that we don't or can't possibly know the cause of all? Why isn't this an option?
> God; who alone is self-existent and gives all things existence. of course it can't be proven 100%, any more than it can be disproven 100%. but it seems a better explanation for the existence of the universe than anything else i've heard.
How about some alternative theories, such as the notion that 'aliens' might have created the universe? Why wouldn't that make just as much sense as your god theory? Not to insult your intelligence, but what about leprechauns? Can you give me reasons why leprechauns might not be responsible for creating humans? Can you prove that leprechauns don't exist? Of course you can't because if you could, you'd disprove your god at the same time because there's just as much 'real' evidence for either, none.
Of course to religious people, the 'God' answer 'seems' to be the best answer because it's the 'perfect' answer, and the one with the most rewards. It answers everything because your 'god' is the ultimate wild card. If at any point you cannot explain anything further, you plug in the wild card to cover the gap. Yes, it does feel right, and yes it does explain everything, but what is always overlooked when using this rationale is that all the questions that this 'god' answers, have now been condensed into, "what is God?"
You see, my friend, you've taken billions of unanswered questions, put them into a gigantic crushing machine, and spit out just that one remaining question. One question, that is easily and conveniently overlooked (or even worse, 'answered' with the meaningless non-answer, 'it just is'), leaving one with a profound sense of overwhelming totality in their perspective. A protected, purposeful perfection of ego-congruent existence in which one can skip about in selfish forgiven indulgences until such time that all pains of Earthly existence are extricated by an orgasmic transition to pure light. Utter and total bliss.
But you and I both know that the one remaining question will always haunt you, as it does to all people that live within the confines of 'faith': what is God? Where did he come from? Why can't he just give me solid proof so I put that doubt out of my head forever? What is it??!!!
And there you are, staring at that question far off in a corner of your mind. It simply will not go away. No amount of self-denial or professing otherwise will ever get rid of that lingering itty-bitty 'doubt'.
Why can't you just let that question go and achieve perfect 'faith'? How important is it really to answer that question anyway? Seems a small matter to just 'accept' that God always was, right? Well, no actually, because you know all too well that if it turns out that there is no god, then that one small overlookable question will 'explode' back into the billions of questions it contains. The entire universe as you've chosen to perceive it would disintegrate from the magical fantasyland of eternal life, angels, heaven, and omnipotence...into the jutting, terrifying, mortal, and mathematical mindlessness of our coffin universe.
This hypothetical descent from your heavenly perspective might very well destroy your mind as the compounding labyrinth of interrelated rationalizations you've been able to defer by containing them in your 'God', now surface in infinite insurmountable quantity. A maddening slide into a bizarre, incomplete, and painful world for which you'd be most ill-equipped to navigate, or to find purpose within.
This is what your mind perpetually struggles to overlook: the depth of importance of knowing whether your god exists or not. And this is why no faith can possibly be pure, because for you the only thing more terrifying to conceive than hell, is that there might not actually be one.
You may deny all this, and you may even think you believe yourself, but that's simply due to your avoiding asking this important question. You need to ask, "what if there 'isn't' a god?" Forget about me, forget about trying to impress upon the world that your faith is strong, forget even about the all-seeing and all-knowing entity that you believe is watching you at all times. Lock yourself in your closet, hunch up in a ball, and ask yourself this one question honestly, what if there isn't a god? One honest peek behind that door should let you know just how much terror is sedated by your faith narcotic.
Many many years my friend. That's how long it took me to find the strength ask all the questions that needed to be asked, and to finally break free of the madness of ethereal addiction. Meme and BetterHuman.org can shave that down considerably for you.
> in terms of logical proof, i'd recommend u read the book 'miracles' by c.s. lewis.
There may be quite literally be a million books that purport the existence of mythological creatures. These books have exactly the same merit as a book about the virtues of heroin, written by a heroin addict. Would you need to read a book about the glories of heroin before you could reasonably judge how misguided the author is? (As a sidenote, didn't C.S. Lewis specialize in writing pure fantasy?)
> in that book, he makes an argument for the existence of God from rationality.
This is a perfect example of an oxymoron. There is nothing rational about mythology whatsoever, for mythology is entirely an abstraction of our emotional desires.
> and in his book 'mere christianity', he argues for the existence of God from morality. if you want, as we correspond i can attempt to summarize those arguments for you in future replies
Please do, but as best you can, please condense these arguments.
> just a few more thoughts before i end. u claim that religion perpetuates a constant state of fear and confusion. however, i do not find this true in my experience.
My friend, this is entirely due to your focus on the positive (the 'high'). You haven't remotely considered challenging your faith and as such you've never confronted the awesome ramifications for doing so (hell, purgatory, etc.). You claim to understand the ethereal punishments that come with dissent, but you would never deny your god because it doesn't make sense to you to do so. As such, you'll never be punished for it, so it seems to you that fear isn't a factor because you are right where you want to be (not hell). This is the same as saying you're not afraid of the lions in the jungle and yet never step foot into the jungle to find out for sure. You are always going to stay exactly where you are so it seems easy to believe that you aren't afraid, but the truth is, it's the lions that keep you from leaving.
Trust me, you're afraid of the lions.
As to the 'inciting confusion' I speak of, this has everything to do with the fact that, despite what the churches would desperately have you believe, there really are no lions in the jungle outside your faith bubble.
> i am a practicing christian, and find myself neither fearful nor confused.
Better known as 'sedated'
> u claim that religion is based on the fear of death. however, i am not afraid to die.
Yes you are, you just don't believe you 'will' die and so you've never actually confronted the notion of your true death. Again, we define death differently. You believe you will migrate to another form of existence upon your physical death. This doesn't 'remotely' approach the magnitude of what atheism calls death. Death for us is permanent, the absolute end; something incomprehensible from your perspective. The atheist definition of death has no equivalent meaning in a religious perspective. It simply cannot happen in your beliefs. So of course you're not afraid of death because you really don't believe it can happen to you. In fact, your definition of death is more like winning a lottery! Not many people would be afraid to win a lottery...
> if dying means that i will cease to exist, i'm fine with that and i can live with it. however, i simply don't believe that that is a true picture of life.
Right, so how can you possibly say that you'll be fine with it if you don't believe it can happen? This again is like saying that you'd be quite satisfied to be eaten alive by a lion, knowing that you'll never be in a situation to find out.
Brave words are still only words, my friend.
> i am wondering, how can you be so sure that life after death doesn't exist? isn't it true that the only way to really be sure is to die and see for yourself?
Ahh...the pursuit of proof...well my friend, your fantastic letter has encouraged me to expand the BetterHuman.org website. I am creating a new page that focuses specifically on the question of determining 'credibility'. So, rather than giving you a petrified answer here, I must refer you to it for your answer. Please review the 'Proof' page at BetterHuman.org.
With much respect,
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 18.258, 19.272, 20.287}
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#259 - Turning to religion for support - March 17, 2007, 08:54 AM |
Ms. Canegive wrote:
> life at home was pretty bad so i tried to get attention of my friends and i ended up being a pathalogcal liar and so a lot of my friends left me thinking that i knew wat i was doing. and i found myself in yr 6 last day of our years camp trying to get the courage to kill myself so that i wouldnt have to go home. and on this night i abused myself... afterwards any time that i felt pain it felt as though doing this to myself would help, but deep down i knew that it wouldnt. ... towards the end of that year my sister started to go to church with a friend of hers and eventually they invited me. thier pastor spoke this real, and empowering sermon and i vowed to never harm myself again...the sermon was about how god deals with our "enemies" and how even though he lets it look as though they have won...the time up until he acts is just a test of faith.
My dear friend, please believe me when I say this that I am sincerely concerned for your well-being: you need to speak with a professional counselor. Your attempts to self-remedy these problems by investing in 'faith' will be short-lived as inevitably you will encounter a situation in which you'll be let-down by your god, because it simply doesn't exist. Faith won't help you. Trust that there are professional people out there that can help you to reconstruct yourself mentally so that you can be stable, and will be well-equipped to deal with your challenges in reality, instead of denying them and hiding behind mythology.
Please give it some thought. You're life will improve dramatically, I promise.
Sean Sinjin
{All letters from this contributor: 18.259, 19.268, 20.277, 20.286, 23.334}
#260 - Know-it-all - March 17, 2007, 09:04 AM
Mr. Knolltry wrote:
Hi Freddie, and thanks for writing,
> 1. Do you know everything in the world?
Can you point me to where I state that I do?
> How do you know that God does not ixist in the 90% that you don't know?
Please read the new 'Proof' section at BetterHuman.org
> 2. I assume that you are not in Prison,you must then be in a position where you are obeying the 10 Commandments...not?
I'm not sure I understand, but no, I do not adhere to the 10 commandments because some of them are grossly outdated, others are grossly inaccurate, and to limit morality to a mere 10 items is a phenomenal oversight to the full scope that morality entails. Please have a look at our 'Tenets' page on BetterHuman.org to see my attempt to detail morality.
> 3. Have you been dead? not....I hope. Cause then you dont know for sure about life after death....for sure. Do you want to take that chance and for ever be burning in Hell????
Ahh..my favorite threat, burning in hell. I can almost imagine your eyes lit with flames when you were casting the above threat of eternal damnation upon me, like you yourself would be the one administering my demise. Well sorry to rob you of that glorious massacre my friend, but despite your fire and brimstone monologue, I cannot be compelled by your threats of fantasy, any more than I can perform a rain-dance to put out your fire. Please read the BetterHuman.org weblog to read about a great many other antagonized faith-addicts like yourself that also tried their best to cast their death-spells upon me.
> Hope you meet Jesus soon, before it's too late
Have 'you' actually met Jesus? Or is that just a euphemism for submitting to mythological servitude?
Kind regards,
Sean Sinjin
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#261 - Agnosticism confusion - March 17, 2007, 09:08 AM |
Mr. Podepress wrote:
> I would like to correct the definition of agnosticism that you have listed on the home page. Agnosticism from the Greek A, meaning "without" or "ignorant" and gnosis, meaning "knowledge". This is the idea that there isn't enough evidence to "prove" the existance or lack of existance of any diety.
I'm not sure how I've failed to accommodate the above definition on our site.
> I would also like for you to direct me to the place on the weblog that proves explains the origins of the universe using logic.
You need to download and read our book, Meme, from our literature page. The answers are contained in there, my friend.
Regards,
Sean Sinjin