you silly atheists
Offline "In 1943 Abraham Maslow introduced his famous 'hierarchy of needs.' Based on several years of observing the most successful and intelligent members of society, Maslow concluded that all people have certain basic needs, which can be illustrated by a layers pyramid. At the base are human necessities like food, clothing, and shelter. Next in importance, Maslow claimed, was the need to be loved and to belong. In his original study, Maslow went on to argue that the highest need of humanity is self-actualization. "What a man can be, he must be," wrote Maslow, claiming that the crowning human desire was 'be all you can be'. Interesting but incorrect. In the 1971 book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow acknowledged that his subjects were not satisfied in their own accomplishments and experiences but were looking for meaning beyond themselves, forcing him to amend his previous conclusions. "Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos." Its hard to find a college professor today who relates that Maslow reluctantly retracted his widely distributed conclusion that personal experience was ultimate and fulfilling. Yet so much of our thinking is based upon Maslow's errors and fails to account for his own admission that human longing could be fulfilled only in something outside the individual. Maslow realized in the end that the need for transcendence was much more pervasive than the need for self-actualization. Even among those who had not reached Maslow's standards for self-actualization, the recognition of longing for the transcendent was common."
"Maybe, like me, you have a vague recognition of the name Blaise Pascal without an awareness of who he was. Brilliant and incredibly educated, Pascal lived from 1623-1662, just thirty-nine years. But in that short time he invented and influenced much that we take for granted today: from calculating machines to the first public transportation system, probability and decision theory, as well as the mathematics of risk management. He proved the existence of the vacuum, which set the stage for quantum physics. His statistical-probabilities analysis envisioned the insurance industry, management science, racing forms, lotteries, and Las Vegas. Pascal invented the Vacuum Pump and detailed our understanding of outer space. His thoughts stand behind the jet engine, internal-combustion motors, the atomic bomb, and mass media. All of this and much more came from the mind of Blaise Pascal. In many darkened hearts, God is viewed as the invention of the weak minds. Pascal was private about his faith, but after he died, one of his aides found a crumpled piece of paper pinned to the inside of his coat, where Pascal had written:
The year of grace 1654
Monday, 23 November....From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight.
FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob-Not the God of the philosophers and of the learned. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace. God of Jesus Christ.
My God and your God.
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.
He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospel. Grandeur of the human soul. Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
Let me not be separate from him forever. May I never forget his words. Amen.
One of the greatest and most creative minds in human history could not be satisfied in itself and science. Pascal wrote prolifically of his insights and discoveries but echoed Solomon and the human search for eternity. "All men seek to be happy. This is without exception, whatever different means they use."
In the end Pascal concluded:
" Since the present age never satisfies us, experience tricks us and leads us from misfortune to misfortune until death. What then does this craving and inability cry to us if not that there was once a true happiness in man of which there now remains only the mark and empty trace? We try mainly to fill it with everything around us, seeking from things absent, the help that we do not receive from things present, but they are all inadequate because only an infinite and immutable object that is God himself can fill this infinite abyss.""
excerpt from Vertical Church by James MacDonald
cites: Pascal's wager: The Man Who Played Dice with God-James A. Connor pgs 2, 148
Pensees-Blaise Pascal, trans. Roger Ariew pg 45
"A Theory of Human Motivation", Psychological Review-Abraham Maslow pg 50
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature-Abraham Maslow pgs 279-280
Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
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Maslow also spoke of pathologies of learning, in these he identified atheistic characteristics.
.... did you have a point?
His point is that a godless commie like me and a godless captitalist like you cant understand empathy and compassion because we don't buy into his invisible friend. My motivation to rob you is because I don't believe in god, and your motivation to gord yourself on excess is also because you don't believe.
However, when a godly person like him helps the poor it is because they believe in god. Or if they are successful businessmen it is because they believe in god.
If you or i suffer drug addiction it is becuase we don't believe in god. If a believer suffers drug addiction it is because satan tricked them or sin.
His point is unless you or I buy his magic baby story we will BURN IN HELL, and lucky for us he is the one person who can save us from our own vices and "self deception".
So we better change our ways because only god beleivers know what the poor go through and only god believers can be successful and only god believers can help those with addictions.
So what do you say Beyond, see you on church on Sunday, but as per our economic view differences, you'll have to make my donation for me. Sound like a plan? Come on, our friend here is only trying to help us.
Beyond, I am always willing to burry the economic hatchet with you to tag team absurdities like this.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
This is at root an assertion unsupported by coherent explanation. I'd like a definition of transcendent that makes sense. Don't just tell me it means 'removed from the material universe' because I'll accuse you of assertion with appeal to complexity.
This argument is an assertion based on labels that have no definitions, as well as a fallacious appeal to consequence. My father had a favourite appeal to consequence in his sermons and would often boom from the pulpit, that "if there were no god, man was just lost in the cosmos with no recourse but to pull himself up by his own bootstraps!" a state of affairs that has always appealed to me. In hindsight his argument was irrational.
No matter how smart Pascal was, he suffered from a serious case of spring-loaded christianity at a time of global non comprehension. His maunderings about the pain of not understanding and disappointment with himself are not proof of a supernatural god existing outside space time, nor do human emotions like longing prove there is a 'god shaped hole' in the human 'spirit' that can only be assauged when the undefined finally lays its 'eyes' on the undefinable.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
It's really hard to achieve that state when you have Christians telling you how horrible you are and how you deserve to burn forever in a fiery pit...
The definition reads so vague, subjective and dipped in buddhism as to not even be relevant to a Christian paradigm.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
I knew sooner or later TWD is going with that gut intuition. And it leads to The Brides of Beelzebub Witch ! Like when your heart is beating too fast in your chest !! I thought of this Image::
To all Christians out there who agree with their God that I deserve hell: may you be cursed with depression for a day, as I am cursed for life!
Blacklight - and don't worry. There's a point at which the misery gives way to self righteous indignation - a far more powerful weapon, as the godly will attest.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Thanks, I've been having some troubles lately, but I think I'll be ok. I'm not feeling to great at the moment though...
Well - take it easy, mate, I hope you feel better soon. Your posts always make welcome reading here.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
never forget what the threat of hell actually is... Rather than representing punishment for alleged failings, it represents a failed argument.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adbacula.html
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Where did you think you came to when you signed up here? A grade school? No,But none of us have heard of Pascal. That is why we NEVER argue about haw dead and debunked is "wager" was.
"Brilliant" How? In the ability to spin a yarn with a huge lexicon? Harry Potter was written by a brilliant well educated woman. So? His biggest "gem" in the "wager" was not only flawed but did the damage of poisoning future generations with his bad logic.
In laymens terms his "wager" was simply placing bets like a horse race. His problem was that to truely "cover your bases" to be safe, was that would mean you would have to bet on all the horses equally, and in reality no one ever does that.
But this also goes beyond simply bad logic. It is morally repugnant as well. It is subjecting yourself to fear, and submission "just to be safe".
Does that really work for you in your daily life? When you go to work do you think you should fear your boss if you decide to quit? Would he have the right to hunt you down and shoot you for leaving?
Fear is not a good reason to accept or reject a claim and bets are a stupid way to make decisions.
If he was successful at anything, it was hindering humanity's progress with his wordy vacuuous fluff. Rigorious testing and independent verification are HOW answers are found, not casino gambling thinking and especially not when someone tries to BLACKMAIL you into entering the casino in the first place.
And let me add, for whatever science Pascal got right did not mean he was right about everything. Many Muslims like to argue that ancient Arabs contributed to math and Algebra, and I am quite sure those people were as brilliant as Pascal with his inventions. But you are not a Muslim because of their contributions.
Newton got lots right on physics but scrapped the idea of Alchemy which was for a long time his pet.
People today, believers today, most who have never heard of Pascal use "better to be safe than sorry".
Now see if you can spot the pattern?
"Allah is the one true god, better to be safe than sorry"
"Yahweh is the one true god, better to be safe than sorry"
"Vishnu is the one true god, better to be safe than sorry".
Now there ARE people of all these major religions who have all sorts of degrees in science and math. But the honest ones seperate their personal predilections from the lab and the classroom. Pascal didn't do that so as a result, like the ancient Arabs falsely claimed "Look what I did, my god must exist".
The same mistake has even been done by Star Trec fans who have claimed that Gene Rodenberry invented the modern cell phone because of his dipiction of the tri corder on the show.
NO, scientists prior to the existence of that show had already been working on how they could make microwave technology smaller and were already thinking "Will it be possible to make this hand held". Rodenberry simply had been well read on this and merely popularized the idea, but neither he or the scientists at the time could have known, back then, that a cell phone was possible. It simply happened that the real scientists, not the si fi writer, happened to get it right and it turned out it was possible.
Throughout history this mistake has been made. A ceiling gets hit and the "scientist" stops and says "this is it, anything above it must be a god".
I have the same issue with scientists today calling the "Higgs Bolson" partical the "god partical". No, if we scientificaly prove this existence, the ethical scientist wont stop, they will say, can we find something even smaller? I also hate it because I know they mean "god" only in a metaphorical sense, in that it has the potential to unlock massive amounts of technological possibilities from understanding space, to partical behavior to communications and medical technology.
So Pascal did much more damage to the layperson which is most of humanity by making that horrible naked assertion of his "wager" which caused any lagit science and inventions he made to be slow to be advanced on and improved on because the layperson was focused on his pretty tripe which had no value in the labs he used.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Fail.
The ego is the root of all human suffering. Get rid of your ego.
If it wasn't Pascal it would have been a different iconic figure and I put 50% of the blame on the individual for not questioning what they are told.
Not so fast, while we should promote skepticism and questioning, even the smartest people get conned. I do not think all of Madoffs victims had downs syndrome. If it always worked that way then Maddoff could have used the defense "I didn't force them to give me the money". Even without crime legal and moral are still two differnet things.
And even Jefferson got burned by bad bank deals.
So if I blind person is walking towards you and you put your fist out and they walk into it iut is their fault? While "buyer beware" is important, getting taken advantage of still involves ambush or deception.
There are people who can and do take advantage of people when they know it is immoral and there are people who do the best they can to make the right decision and still get taken advantage of.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Inside the most active two thread(s) JesusLovesYou and TWD were in together has arisen a sub-theme touching upon arrogance vs. humility
[ the original OP ]
Some of the language choices almost might be coming from a actual inferiority complex on the OPs part. I am strongly reminded of who submitted all of this. The following might explain why I look at it differently. You'll note, What had taken place in the summer of 2006. Where the OP (e.g. - JLY) apparently had been swimming in near a suburb of Honolulu, he shares: "I jumped off a small cliff, and landed in the water. I could not fight the current. Not easily, i made my way back over to the cliff wall . . ', he continued "I had been slammed into the rocks and knocked unconscious. Miraculously there had apparently been rescue swimmers training in the water somewhere, and they got to me fast. Through this event I found out that I have agensis of the corpus callosum. Basically the hemispheres of my brain are, for the lack of better words, isolated. I have issues with attention to detail, concentrating, public speech, conversation in general '" JLY / he is part of a Recruit Division Commander (Navy Drill Instructor) for approx. for the past 18 mo., even after the most unfortunate accident of his. I think it explains a lot. And I think it explains a lot in terms of subject-matter, especially if you remember anything from his older previous surfacing.
Now Salem did demon banishing up right! What choice but to flee, seeing many did not survive the questioning and plea phases? Now we are left with the 'rite' almost if you were to play endlessly Taylor Swift's (artist) song : LOVE STORY unending for a full two days. I'm afraid, Even after which time the demon(s) would reply, "I've heard worse, I'm not going anywhere" .
Silly theist. Pascals wager is a lie. Until you include every god, your math is wrong.
Fact: the vast majority of gods will be really pissed at you for worshipping the wrong one, making the worship of any god equivalent to a billion to one against odds of seeing heaven.
Fact: the vast majority of gods don't care all that much about non believers, and most give said non believers a chance to repent before eternal condemnation or whatever their punishment might be.
In other words, you're fucked if there's a god, because the chances are you picked the wrong one.
We might be fucked, but probably not.
If there's no god, you wasted your whole life on a lie.
Whether or not there's a god, we didn't.
No matter how you cut it, we atheists win. And unless you're an extremely lucky theist, you lose.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Some cons like "The Sting" are very advanced and it would take a very good person to see through the game.
Maddoff preyed on the greed of people. The people he conned were complacent.
I got conned recently because I didn't listen to my little voice. I was at an art show and my daughter wanted lemonade. They were charging $6 for a plastic cup of it, like 16 oz. At first I said no, but my daughter really wanted it. So OK I'll spend it.
I got a giant cup of ice with a little water and a little lemon and barely enough sugar. I was pissed but they guy had taken my money already and their were people behind us.
When I remembered his technique for making the lemonade I realized he had a scam going. When people walked up he had these small plastic cups with some water and ice in them. He threw a lemon at the bottom of the plastic cup, added a lot of ice. then poured the ice/water over the top of the larger cup.
What you ended up with was a slightly watered down lemonade with the lemon wedge of a lemon which had already been squeezed and used to make the lemonade.
I was pissed. $6 for this. One sip and it was gone.
I'm missing something...
I completely agree. The question of "Which god" ruins Pascal's Wager.
The other item is that are you really wasting your time if you are a happy person who believes in god but doesn't force your own views on others? Some people will say, but you support the lie by living it, but that person doesn't see it as a lie. Yes, I know. It's a lie which they refuse to question and challenge, but some people just don't know any better. They prefer to be connected to the matrix and left alone.
Quite a lot of them are cursed with it for life. Blaise Pascal himself had a depression. In other words, "God" can't "fill the infinite abyss"". So much for the OP. "Silly" indeed.
As for people threatening you with hell, the fact that they're relying on never-ending torture to get their way, should tell you how desperate, pathetic, and how very, very wrong they are.
More to do with the submitter,. Less to do with the subject, more to do with the form the submission took. I thought it would help to mention this from his resent personal history. Conjecture (or more speculation) on my part, about the reasons behind the OP's submission. All who have been on the board have a 'past' that follows them. Bad sign I felt I needed to mention this though, being concerned at times with the movement value of statements. The submission may be as an attempt at departure from 'all' the other previous submissions alone. Wrong to have failed to mention this, in any event.
__
Unrelated -- The 'Salem' remark was a joke #18, if I have to explain the joke I have failed.
Agree with everything but must restate the worst part of the wager. It demands you give up your own autonomy to a dictator out of a loyalty litmus test. You have no right to leave this god if you chose. In real life we can chose where we work and quit when we want and we can leave or friends and spouses if we chose.
If we pretend that such a god were real, he is nothing more than abusive spouse with the childish and insecure tactic of emotional blackmail of threats and bribes. It has been the worst fictional concept ever sold in human history as fact. It teaches you to be owned by others.
It is exactly what dictators and mafia bosses do.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
A long time ago in a life far, far away I was volunteered for the Program Management Course at the Defense Systems Management College at Ft. Belvoir, Va. It was there I received the innermost secret of giving an improptu speech -- as in agreeing the night before three sheets to the wind and not remembering. Whatever the subject use Maslow's hierarchy to discuss it. In fact the exposition of the secret knowledge used the hierarchy.
Unlike most secrets of the universe this one does not require your immediate death.
However it does highlight the fact that it is such a self-evident concept that it has been used in one form or another since Homer that if you think you have something new talking about it you are very young and easily impressed.
"Yes, we can feed our families but we strive for higher ideals."
"Your vote matters."
"if you are having trouble putting food on the table or your house is at risk of foreclosure or ... (pick something lower than the top of the pyramid), vote for me."
"Take control of your destiny in eternity. Vote Jesus!"
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Oh, that's awfully sad...
Of course, when your belief system teaches that you are evil and wicked, hating yourself isn't surprising...
PIFF! Call that an emoticon :
? That's no emoticon. This, now, this is an alleviating emoticon. Check it out ?
See :: Image