Thursday, April 28, 2016

Why Is it Right to Hate All Religion?

Is it right to hate all religion? Hate may be a too strong word, dislike... disrespect... not consider as important... fear... consider the followers as idiots in need of education, particularly scientific education...  and try to hi-jack there social and community building features.

Considering the rules of evidence for science and law and the seven or nine point truth scale, what is right about religions?

These are belief systems, not based on evidence or science, but based on tradition. Is that something to respect, believe, and not question? Written books are not evidence in the legal system unless the author is available as expert witness, nor are they in science unless sufficient detail are provided that what is said is possible to confirm by examination and testing. Religions are just not able to support the claims to scientific standards.

Based on scientific standards it can be said then that god does not exist. Lack of any evidence is evidence of non existence in science after a bit of time. There are no little green men either, but there are blue men. Well, artificially anyway, (the blue man group).  There is no scientific evidence of the existence of any supernatural phenomena, there are some that we do not yet understand, and lots that I do not understand, but there is understanding by others.

So what is there about religion that we should respect and honor? Sure they teach ethics, but philosophy does a better job and it has logic's and reasoning as well. Christianity plagiarized from the Stoics. Islam is just insane, when we look at what he says, when compared with the Stoics, Buddhism, Confucianism, Tao, Hindi, and Positive Psychology's Seligman. So what does religion have to offer a person of science?

Anything they preach is wrong mostly. They do some good, they promote good social action, but for the wrong reasons. That is the sad part. They have nice structures, nice art, and promote music. They promote community, which is good. They promote belief in supernatural concepts which is bad, so on the whole, are they good or bad? They do not deserve tax concessions, nor any right to not be questioned. There organization does not stand the tests of science. Too bad, they were sometimes fun.

So what is wrong with hating people who cannot scientifically defend there belief system? Well we know that some of there beliefs are opposed with other belief systems, so somebody or all are wrong; they are mutually exclusive. There are those areas that do not matter, and there either is OK. There is likely many areas that this is the case, it just does not matter... especially in an over populated world.

There are also religions that are so idealistic that I cannot see how they could function in the world as it currently exists. Gandi like, and the total non-violence movement may have a future after humans evolve a bit more and get rid of criminals and terrorists.

In the future, the proper attitude will be one child per couple. Some of us have held to that or less now. That will come to be the standard until the population gets to a reasonable level again. Oh well. Shit happens. But what do I know?

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Bloody Obvious

 Bloody Obvious

Evidence that many places in the world are just unsafe... http://www.630ched.com/syn/60/132256/executed-canadian-hostage-john-ridsdels-family-devastated

The way to protect ourselves is to stay out of those Islamic crazy countries.

It is prudent not to go into those places and not to let anymore of those people to come into our environment, regardless of what the government says. The government does not have our best interests forefront in their minds, they have their interests in their minds.Their interests are more people, more money. If we are nice, they may be nice back, or not. The government people live in a protected environment, while the citizens do not.

But what do I know? 

Friday, April 22, 2016

Godfree

Godfree is a term that is by Andrew Sneddon in  'A Is for Atheist: An A to Z of the Godfree Life'.

He is a professor. I can see why his students give him such a wide range of reviews if his classes are like his book. The material is arranged alphabetical, not in a logic progression. This makes it difficult to grasp unless you more or less already know the information, as it is for me, in this case. I do not know how else one would order such spaghetti thinking though.

It is also short of some of the big changes necessary in the change from believer to godfree, after becoming godfree. Social change and meeting other godfree people in a religion based society is rather limited. There are so many depraved, angry  and caustic personalities within our ranks. Also responsibility has many aspects that are different than reported here. 


After becoming godfree our belief system needs further cleaning and examination. This is a concept of looking at each belief, value and concept and examining it to see if it fits with what is logical in light of our new thinking. 

Consider freewill as a concept. It is a Catholic concept I expect. As described in Christian literature and in modern philosophy, it is essentially a illusion, as Sam Harris says, in my opinion. But in Stoic philosophy, stoic thinking, free will is real and really free within it's tiny domain within the triune mind. Cognitive dissonance what? Conflict with Sam Harris what?

Some things are up to us, some are not. We can divide all things into a bunch of heaps and separate out first that which we have complete control over. This is not much to start with. We have control over our ability to accept a mental proposition, our judgements and little else initially. As we exchange our learned beliefs for truly our own, we develop complete control over our beliefs, our judgements, our impulses, our desires and aversions, our mental facilities in general. These we have free will over, but the free will choices are set by our beliefs, and these only become ours after we own them. And yet this beliefs system, our preferences system pre-makes many of those choices, so our free will is even smaller. It is essentially those first time choices; after that precedence is set. We are free to believe what ever we want, as long as it does not cause cognitive dissonance.  Heavy what? This is the land of free choice, small and entirely within our control or our rules.

The next heap is just beyond complete control, that is the stuff we are responsible for, according to society, yet do not have complete control over. Our memory resides in this heap unfortunately. That seems unfair, but it is the way it is. This includes our body, our actions, our behavior, our speech, our economic outlook, our personality, our attitudes, and the like. These are influenced by our complete control heap, but of these we do not have complete control. 

There are a number of other heaps: controlled by others, influenced by others, and the big one, beyond everyone's control or influence. This is the land of cause, random choices not taken, random events, choices of others and nature, where shit happens. Oh well.  

So the modern thinking is a conglomerate thinking, while stoic is dis-aggregate thinking, from model theory of years ago. In conglomerate thinking, free will is an illusion, while in stoic dis-aggregate thinking it applies to only one heap, and then only until the rules of the automatic part of the mind become set. It applies only when the logic part of the mind is active and in use.

But what do I know?

    






Monday, April 18, 2016

Food Cravings

Food Cravings... do they exist... are they a thing? Some individuals think they do not exist.

Well those of us who suffer from them know that they are real and very strong. Other, who never experience them, do not accept that they are real. Oh well.

We see the same thing in religion, those that feel the "presence of god" and those of us who do not and even know that there is no god; yet I can accept that they may feel that, even if there is no god. The feeling drives them, regardless of the existence. Those of us who live godfree know otherwise. (contribute that word to Andrew Sneddon, A to Z)

That is different from the food craving, eating craving, in that food is frequently available, and it is easy to overeat. Resisting the urge, recovery, for this I am responsible. Are these cravings any different that other OCD behaviors? Hording, collecting, self harming, or other compulsive - obsessive behaviors? Is it just one more behavior of a specific subset of compulsive-obsessive behaviors. We see many of the "recovered" (weight stable at the low end) still obsessing about there food. The obsession has changed to weighing and measuring there food, and it is still the obsession driving them. 

Obsessing about beating this obsession may be the only way to beat this problem.

But what do I know?

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Anger

http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/stoicismtoday/2016/04/02/stoic-philosophy-and-anger/

All that and nobody says anger is often caused by our desires, expectations, delusions of how life should be, how thing should go are being frustrated by other or things.

There is no point getting angry at things, it is not there fault. They are inanimate objects, they do not plan things. They were built the way they are.

Plug in people, for they have no free will, even if they think they have. The ignorant drivers have no choice, for they are just ignorant. It is their fault, it is what they learned, and what they want to do. Some people do not want to learn, it is not their fault. They have no free will. Some are too lazy to learn. It is not their fault, it is the way their parents were, it is their nature, or by training, either way, they have no free will, for free will is an illusion.  

There are none so dumb as those who do not realize that they do not know. And the same goes for overeating. It is trained in, or physical driven, chemical or natural, or mental. It is not our fault. All we can do is resist as best we can.

But what do I know?

Friday, April 1, 2016

And the Master says:

And the master says: it is story that makes the emotional connection strong.

And the master says: some delusions are useful to make the story more appealing, and to make the emotional connection.

And the master says: there will be no atheist handbook, for it has been written already.

for what do I know: