Sunday, April 30, 2017

Developing our own Philosophy.

A post about life. "I do not know what I think until I say it." That is a quote in concept from some author, but I do not recall who, it is just the way it seams when I am required to answer some question.

I am trying for coach certification in archery, through the NCCP. One of the questions is what is my coaching philosophy? Well, to put words to that is a bit of examination:

I am a realist. Gods are all in the heads of others. I ignore this important issue in the archery club, however I often state it, when asked to coach on long weekends.  I am an atheists, so it is not like the day means anything special to me.

I emphasis the process, not the outcome. As recreational modern traditional archer, the scoring is not important, just the process of shooting. It is as the stoics say about shooting a arrow, once the hand is relaxed and the arrow off, all is beyond our control. Competency and comprehension are required, I like to teach the comprehension first.

Student enthusiasm and enjoyment are necessary for enduring participation in the sport, along with suitable equipment. Some outside muscular work, aka exercises, will be required, along with adequate proteins and fats for muscular development. 

I like instructing the adults, beyond the middle teens, that want to learn archery. If they are there for social reasons, are the chatty type, I stop making the effort to correct obvious bad methods or to do individual teaching. They are just spaces in the class. My method is to go through each step of the process in detail, and show the typical poor methods and better methods. For some bad form is the only way they can shoot, and bad form is better than not shooting. After safety is followed, the only wrong way to do archery is to not do it.

Yesterday, we coached a Muslim group, who needed to stop halfway through to pray.  I need a bit of tea anyway. I wanted to say it is all in your heads, but I figured that that would be just rude, but true. I think it is rude of them even to ask to take time off archery.  False information in their heads is their problem. Me, pointing it out would not help them nor me, it is just not my problem. It is like all those who suggest fat people should just go on a diet. Stay to the archery subject at hand, archery in this case.  There are many many issues in archery classes; inappropriate attire, those who will not put down purse, or electronics, those who do not want to be there, and those who do not have the mental capacity to pay attention. I mind my own business, and I make no effort to help those who are not helping themselves. 

enough




 






Friday, April 21, 2017

Releasing the God hypothesis

Be aware: Free association....

The old stories contain many historical hypothesis. I call these historical because I do not like William James's name as dead hypothesis. They may be dead, but dead has the implication that is brutal toward those that believe those hypothesis. We still need to live with those believers until we can convince they of reality or one of us die off. So call me an apologist if you like, first I need to know what I believe, and until I communicate beliefs, I just am not sure. Even then, I may change my beliefs, or may not express them exactly. Impermanence of beliefs is something that I have.

I was told to believe, and tried but it was bullshit; became agnostic and tried to believe to get the benefits of living in a delusion. Life is tough and living in a delusion, if you can, has the benefit of not needing to stare into the abyss of reality. My parents were able to live like that; and I tell you there are advantages to being able to put reality out of your mind. Many things do not bother those who can live in their delusions. I both pity them and admire them. Conflicted. What?

I know there is no physical evidence of a god, and there are many hypothesis that suggest there is one. Purpose is often sighted, and is the how did it become this way if not designed and or constructed. These are human questions and the real answer is we do not know, or that we have reluctance to admit that we do not know. It is the creative sort of human that creates a story, a hypothesis that describes or prescribes the how of the artifacts existence, as if to answer a child's question with a story. This may be in fact, how the hypothesis came to be. "Because god did it, now go away and let me work in peace" was a refrain I recall hearing many times.

It is just easier to acknowledge the existence of a historical hypothesis, and move on rather than calling in a myth; the half truth is dependent on our point of view, and correct without being as offensive. Hypothesis can be replaced by better hypothesis rather than proven or not dis-proven. This can go back to Laplace and his no need of the god hypothesis in explaining the path of planets in retrograde or was it the Saturn wobble. And is that the same Laplace of Laplace transforms in mathematics? You bet. And if you did cover Laplace transforms, as in engineering school and do not still remember what they are, they are like nests in software, but without counters. In short, apply the transform, solve the equations, take the transform out and reduce to a simpler, cleaner and useful form. It make my head ache just thinking about them that I have not touched since University, and am now retired from active working. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway. 

The thing about hypothesis are we can modify and make the old one a historical, and thereby ratchet toward reality and understanding. We new atheists are beyond the early adopters stage, on the cusp of rapid growth to the cash cow if it were a new product. It is all about turning reality into a money generating industry. This new atheistism is the next evolution of man, man's thinking moving toward rational thought, and away from the historical hypothesis that got us to this stage. The major dieoff required is coming. Will it be nuclear war, rise of carbon dioxide, methane, climate change, asteroid, supervolcano, superbug, ... any body's guess and when? It does not matter. In the end we all just die anyway.  
     

Monday, April 17, 2017

More Comparsion of Buddhism, Stoicism and Epicureanism

The original purpose of belief systems (aka religions) can generally be defined as a system of thoughts, beliefs, values, principles that end personnel mental suffering or uncertainty through providing a life plan, knowledge list, behavior directions, priories, clarifications or how to live and treat others. Ethics, morality, decision making methods are often included. A system to end mental suffering is how Buddha defined his purpose. He went on to define the cause of suffering: expectations, delusions, attachment, aversions and provide a list of eight areas to examine and correct in our lives. Stoicism provided the correct way of thinking, a complete operating system to upgrade to. Epicureanism went further and suggested areas to eliminate that often create issues.  

So the question is "how much of each system should the modern human adopt" to make life run better?

Some portion of relief of suffering is confidence that we are right. Doubt goes away. We can achieve this confidence by being part of a group that believes "x, y, z" or we can come to know that we are right through science, examination, testing, and/or association with like minded individuals. We can go against the flow of others as individualists only if we have the knowledge and confidence we are truly right.

All these three named thought systems place knowledge in their priorities. But the thoughts are not the same, but similar. With all the translation to get to English, along with the inexactness of language, how can we say that the original concept is not the same, but with the order and emphasis just different?

Much of Epicureanism just falls away as our science today is 2000 year ahead of what Epicurus knew and surmised. Yet stay out of things that will call us unneeded stress and worry is still good advice. Keep your oars where they belongs. Do not overreach. Do not overextend yourself too much, over
extension will cause stress. And minimization of our needs and intakes is sound finical advice. If we can do it is a totally different issue. Stay out of slippery places if we have fear of slipping. Stay sober, even when we drink.

Secular Buddhism cleans out the unreal items of reincarnation, and leaves karma as what it really is, reputation. Reputation is critical in long term relationships, especially is business. Yet we change over time, and some of us do not retain relationships well. Impermanence, the flipside of constant change is without a doubt just a derivative of change, aka the rate of change and whether we are able to see the change.

Danial Dennett has described the modern 'no self' reality, where consciousness is the mind observing the input/output flow but not yet understanding how the processing is done. Competence without comprehension. It is all knowledge we each can pick up if we put the effort, concentration and mindfulness in and just do it in our speech, actions and livelihood. Our intentions and attitudes provides the motivations.

One cannot separate the consciousness state from the objects of that state, as said Husserl, it is all in our heads anyway. Truth is the fundamental issue, and the non existence of a physical god is an essential and foundation fact. Until we can accept that, the truth is kind of nebulous, like ownership of a feral cat. Yet we can, in the mind of the believer have a god, the object of the mind, and live withing that god conscious state, not in full truth, but in full delusion. Many people will do all they can to keep living in that pink delusion where there is a god. It is the job of ever atheist to prick there mental balloon, or at least the balloons of the young. In the end we all just die off anyway, so if we can keep the young living in reality, we will do good.  
 

    

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

No God Husserl

Edmund Husserl 1851-1938  One cannot separate the consciousness state from the objects of that state.

WTF. So if you think there are ghosts, then, for you, there are ghosts... If you think there are gods, then, for you, there are gods. So gods are all in the mind of the believer, ok but Husserl never said that, he never spoke of gods, but he lived in pre-war Germany.

Religion and god is all in the mind of the believer. End of story. So why do so many people have difficulty in seeing this? Well we were taught wrong, and we do not like to look at our beliefs, likely because of fear of finding that our beliefs are wrong.

We humans are born a blank slate, and everything is learned, some is created along the way. We learn on the genetic substrata, some parts are learned easily, other parts we need to struggle with. Nobody teaches that we should review what we believe, what we were taught to believe, and own our own beliefs. Buddha and Confucius were more right than Christians. Buddhist, other than reincarnation and extreme emphasis on mediation is about right. One should know how to mediate some, but education is more important. Education that starts at `First Principles` and builds from there is critical for thinking, for separating opinion from first principals.

Opinion can be right or wrong, and there is nothing that can separate quicker than an opinion that violates a first principal. A sound fist principal is there is nothing supernatural, for if it is, it is not supernatural. Miracles as long on the odds of happening occurrences.  If they need to violate nature to occur, then it is more likely it is bullshit than real.

Enough already.    

Monday, April 10, 2017

Really... not so much

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/159418166356/trusting-your-government-in-a-time-of-war#_=_

So you are forgetting that government does what is best for that government, not for the people. Every sucking company does the same. Look at any bank, phone, utility company, any level of government, all do what is best for them, customers, damn customers just suffer. We just had the United Airlines beating a 68 year old passenger to force him off a seat he had paid for, to get where he was going on time, because the airline had overbooked, and needed to move one of it's crews.

So what is there to trust. Trust government to abuse the people. They will abuse some.

There are too many people in this world now. The world is overpopulated. Those who are not able to haul their weight will be abused. There are many who just are not able to hold a job, not enough energy, not enough skills, not enough personality, too much honesty, not able to concentrate.

Without thieves, the insurance industry would not be able to sell thief insurance.  Oh well. Jails are to abuse the people who cannot function in our society. Rehabilitation is a concept, and like gods, it does not exist except in the mind of those who find it useful to believe.

Government can be trusted... to tax, burden and abuse the citizens. That is the role of government, and to cause the cast to flow into the pockets of the rich. The rich always get a taste.

If the US wanted to send a message and end the war, they would target Assad. Oh Golly, we hit the head civilian, so sorry, it was not intentional.

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Conrad, Conrad, you are not listening to the science

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/conrad-black-i-put-this-as-simply-as-possible-many-atheists-are-excellent-but-atheism-itself-is-hurting-the-west

How do we teach those who will not here? Conrad, the science is ahead of the curve by quite a bit. We do not have all the details yet, but we know that we have a lot of physical evidence, and we just do not yet know how it all got there yet. The thing about physical evidence is it is real, but we have not yet figured out how it got there. We have not yet figured out the modern hypothesis that explains the evidence, but we have figured out that your historical/cultural hypothesis and not the answer, and it is time to move on, based on what we know, and the modern hypothesis that explain part of the evidence. We know the last big bang happened ~13.8 X 109 years ago.

We know that evolution happened, but not yet if life started here or was seeded from elsewhere. We do know that simple non-carbon life can be started under certain conditions, but those conditions need to be maintained for those life forms to carry on. We just have not yet found the carbon based starting conditions, but then nobody is willing to pay for the study in a big and sustained way. Without the money, and the commitment over time to a adequate supply of money, we are not likely to find a new form of carbon life, and then there is the risk of a new form of virus...

So we do not need to know how before we can say the old historical/cultural hypothesis is just wrong. As soon as we start to think hypothesis, and scientific method, we begin to see illogical thought of any religion. Soon we realize we can just abandon all religions. They are just historical hypothesis.

Now we need to realize the religion is largely about control of people, by making them believe some foolishness at an early age, and also teaching them to not question. This is immoral way of trapping people into a thought system, immoral imprisonment. Of course this has been handed down, generation to generation, but some see through the system and break free. Then the unthinking try to use emotions to drive us back into the stye we escaped from, where the malignant overloads would try to pen us for eternity. We have our own powers, and can deny them control of us. So Conrad, I do not care what you think, for you believe in a sky god and are trying to control people which is immoral. You are no better than a slave owner, or slave renter.

No one has the right to force us to believe anything. Islam cannot force us, even through threat to follow there rules, or there sky god. So draw Mohamed  (.^.) ⟲ or 😆  as often as you wish.  😆Mohamed😆  They may be offended because we will not follow there laws, but that is there problem. We can respect the person but not their beliefs. Some ideologies need to be stamped out and others can be allowed to just die off. Muslims may be fine people, but there ideology is dangerous. Somewhere between 10 and 30 percent have the potential to become terrorists, or so the research shows. One out of ten, or one out of three... young men ... can become weaponized, all because they are not rational but fall prey to emotional based bullshit, rather than understanding the physical evidence. 

It is science that must lead us forward from here into a sustainable way of life.   


  

Friday, April 7, 2017

Fighting an ideology

How does one battle an ideology? It is ideology that drives humans, doing what we believe to be right, so what if the ideology is just wrong?

 http://freethinker.co.uk/2017/04/07/spanish-police-arrest-muslim-couple-for-abuse-of-daughter/

It is wrong to indoctrinate people, youths, without allowing them to evaluate the concept fully. Muslims, Islams, Christians, Jews, are all wrong. So how does one fight ideology?

David Silverman has some ideas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95lQlsxE9K4
It will be to get in there face, and tell them they are wrong loud enough that they are willing to start to hear.

Religions are systems of hypothesis that has been superseded by reason, data, civilization, education, and knowledge. We know what is right, in the here and now, but we are still struggling to get all this information into a organized manual, for simple reference. There is just so much knowledge, and so much wrong in the ideology of the flat earth religions that we are trying to replace. It must be organized into some kind of system and documented into a logos for the lack of a better word.

Yet, once we understand the concepts, so much becomes self evident. Why has no one seen this before? Oh wait, they have, well at least parts. But no single individual has put it all together, in this time. Buddha plus the Stoics, minus a few pits, plus a bit here and there of this and that.       

Sunday, April 2, 2017

The WTF call

There are large groups of people who are being dis-advantaged by the wrong teaching by their parent.
How should we feel about this and what should be done?
Some are producing a high burden on the state. (natives)
Some are misleading others on science. (new age creationists)
Some are misleading others on environmental issues. (trump and his ilk)
Some on dealing with reality. (religion)
Some are a danger to society, and are misleading the young or reality. (Islams)

There are those who are opposed to the scientific method. There is no evidence for gods, nothing survives death, and religions are all pushed without reason. The only place left for god to hide is in the mind of the believer, and as a result religion is all just chain letter memes. Reality sucks but living in a dream state is also no way to live. It is the old " if it bothers you, just do not look." at deliberate misleading of people.  

Now does anyone have anything constructive to say about these problems we face?

So we are being mislead about food and chemicals in the foods issues. Glyphosate and the government will not even accept there is a problem. Ester 2-4-d and overeating destroying leptin receptors.

So should we get radical? or violent? or just loud?