God is a Metaphor

Re: # 167

How do you edit your posts at CHOWK?
Is there a guide on how to add bb code etc?

I srongly submit that it would, should read :

I strongly submit that it would

@ zeemax,

``My position is that morality springs from ancient scriptures, and not mental growth and cultural evolution``.


People can be moral without learning it from scriptures.

Take stealing, for example:
Basic instinct would have you steal.
REASONING would make you stop, because that would hurt someone else, and continue the cycle.

Or are you saying that if it wasn`t for scriptures, then people would have continued to steal from one another unchecked? How can that state of affairs continue to work? Would`nt the ensuing mayhem automatically force people to stop and reconsider?

I srongly submit that it would. Not all of us need scriptures that need to tell us which way to face, whilst having a shit. (No offense meant. I just think it`s absurd).

---

@ sattar2,

Have you never heard of a 3-some; or a 4-some; or a 5-some?
You only need one female to give you a BJ. The other girls can talk... or recite.

;-)

---

Regarding having sex with a close female relative:
I`ve always found my close female relatives to be UGLY and REPULSIVE!
Yet I have been told that they are VERY nice looking!

This `feeling` seems to apply to most us, if we are given the freedom to choose.
All of us, prefer someone DIFFERENT.
Just because people tell us, that inbreeding is wrong, doesn`t mean that our genes didn`t know this from millions of years ago.

The whole evolutionary process can only proceed if it`s allowed to diversify.


Marrying first cousins:
Marrying first cousins has fuck all to do with preference and it being `acceptable`. Kids are forced into them; Usually to keep the family`s monetary/bodily `assets`. (bahain).

Fine. Deny god all you want ...

There is a downside to being an atheist though.
You have no one to talk to what you are getting a blowjob ...

There, I have said it. This should end the debate for at least half of us …

Re: # 132

Hello Zeemax, First of all thanks for clearing which sentence of article you are talking about and what point you are making.

So my straight answer is they are right about their struggle.

why i am saying so.
Since i believe what dr. Sohail said, and i also give you one example. One more thing, God name has been used for this purpose, but if we see from the Darwin`s Theory point of view we can better look into this how all this happen and it is not because some divine scripture that you do these things,
and if it so What Egypt was doing, actually they were also obeying some divine scripture so how you can defend them.

One more thing, how we can do some test editing while writing, can you help me in this regards

Thanks.

Re: # 163

The `science of religion` is hogwash.

Religion would nt exist if not for the organised brain wash engaged in, by people who have been not only brain washed themselves, but probably stand to gain from such acts as well.

If not for religious brain washing of children were abandoned, religion and god will die within years if not months.

All religions depend on brainwashing youngsters for their survival.

I came across this last week in Thomas Mann`s DR. FAUSTUS, thought it`s kinda relevant:


``I should be sorry, after what I have said, to be taken for an utterly irreligious man. That I am not, for I go with Schleiermacher, another Halle magician, who defined religion as ``feeling and taste for the Infinite`` and called it ``a pertinent fact,`` present in the human being. In other words, the science of religion has to do not with philosophical theses, but with an inward and given psychological fact. And that reminds me of the ontological evidence for the existence of God, which has always been my favorite, and which from the subjective idea of a Highest Being derives His objective existence. But Kant has shown in the most forthright words that such a thesis cannot support itself before the bar of reason. Science, however, cannot get along without reason; and to want to make a science out of a sense of the infinite and the eternal mysteries is to compel two spheres fundamentally foreign to each other to come together in a way that is in my eyes most unhappy and productive only of embarrassment. Surely a religious sense, which I protest is in no way lacking in me, is something other than positive and formally professed religion. Would it not have been better to hand over that ``fact`` of human feeling for the infinite to the sense of piety, the fine arts, free contemplation, yes, even to exact research, which as cosmology, astronomy, theoretical physics, can serve this feeling with religious devotion to the mystery of creation - instead of singling it out as the science of the spirit and developing on it structures of dogma, whose orthodox believers will then shed blood for a copula?``

GT:
Gill was talking about postmodernism (not ``science``) which is a niche-subject considering the grand scheme of things (``Philosophy``) starting from Socrates. The question you should be asking Khurram is whether the philosophical enterprise starting from Socratic dialogues till Russell and Wittgenstein et al. that concerns itself crudely speaking about ``What is Good`` and ``What is Beautiful`` without referring to the dogmatic ``Truths`` is also an exercise in futility?

rephrasing it a bit:
Can there be a way to define Good and Evil without referring to some guy`s Idea of what he thought divinely sanctioned definition of ``Good``? i.e., without bringing ``GOD`` into the equation?

later

PS: [i remember the russell paradox]

Re: # 154

Zeemax , I noticed you ignored my last post as well as Raw_Dust question. Just wondering since you are on the topic of disgust. Does a 54 yr old man marrying and having a sexual relationship with a nine year old while having other ongoing sexual relationship sound pleasing to you. If a 54 yr old devout Muslim proposed to your seven year old niece would it delight you. Would you attend the Nikah and have a Suhaag ki Raat for them. Please answer.

Re: # 159

khurram:

``But there is a whole philosophical enterprise that holds that science can somehow lead to morality and values that are `objective` in the same sense as scientific statements.``

Yes, and I remember Gill saying, in another board, something like - these guys are quacks. I agree with Gill. Many of the ``Reader`s digest`` type scientists have made science into a religion. I, actually, get pretty depressed with the debate on evolution. Many ``armchair`` scientists instead of getting fascinated by the flaws in the theory start getting dogmatic. I mean, come on, there are flaws in the theory so more is to be discovered! Why bother about what others say? I see nothing wrong in teaching Adam and Eve, or whatever in one class, and evolution in another. Children are not stupid. I myself remember challenging teachers in our ``moral science`` class.

Re: GT

Thanks for your comments. We do seem to be in agreement.

``Science does not posit ultimate axioms, just axioms ..``
I meant ultimate in the sense of basic, not in the sense of privileging some axioms over others.

``The problem is not with science per se...``
Agreed

``The are simply interested in putting a man on the moon or creating the dwarf variety of wheat..``
Again, agreed.

But there is a whole philosophical enterprise that holds that science can somehow lead to morality and values that are `objective` in the same sense as scientific statements.

Re: # 152

dear zeemax....so we agree to disagree. for you scriptures are ultimate truth and for me

they are part of folklore because you believe in divine revelation and i do not. you believe

in GOD and i do not. for you it is a reality and for me a metaphor. you are part of majority

80% and i am part of minority 20% (used to be 1% in 1900). i just ask people who believe

in GOD to share with me their encounter with GOD. if you had one I would love to hear

your dialogue with GOD not the dialogue of GOD with people hundreds of years ago. so

you can follow your scriptures and i can follow my conscience....and both of us will be

happy and peaceful. smiles....sohail

Khurram:

You say:

``I speculate that the process of empirical verification itself is derived from some axioms and the ultimate axioms of science are ``ASSUMED to be true`` .

Science does not posit ultimate axioms, just axioms - which are indeed assumed to be true. The example in #107 rules out ultimate axioms. This is widely known and accepted in the scientific community. Godel`s theorem is a statement on this. Thus, your statement will be accepted (without the ``ultimate axiom`` part) in any good science department. The problem is not with science per se, it is with the scientists who lecture in the Discovery Chanell and write in the ``Reader`s digest``.

Furthermore most scientists, as well as mathematicians, are not so much worried about deep issues like the the meaning of x/0. The are simply interested in putting a man on the moon or creating the dwarf variety of wheat. Yet, they do get amused with philosophers pondering on these questions.

Re: # 148 khurram:

Yep, you have it fully correct. Moreover, yes the rules of logic are assumed. More refinements can be made and you have the whole `modal logic` business. You can also deviate to other systems by violating the definition of complementarity etc.

Raw:

It is the ``Russel Paradox``. If you are into computing, you will immediately see that you cannot compute the `proof` of the paradox. Penrose has a book on this, with some 500 odd pages. I do not understand why he needed 500 pages to do so. Plus, the book is quite unreadable.

Others (with apologies to Sohail for the deviation):
You will see a lot of people on chowk gloating about the number 0. They claim that `eastern philosophies` know a lot about this number. Heck, why is it the case that x/y is understood for all y with values near zero but not when y is zero? Listen to the answers, they are usually great. Actually, in general, ask yourselves what does x/y mean when x is positive and y is negative.

Point is, we need beliefs to survive or even to put a man on the moon.

Best.

Re: # 154

zeemax:

;-)

good luck

#150 by malikjahanzeb,

Sir,

How many times do I have to repeat that this German case has nothing to do with kids? They`re fighting for their right to have sex. I`m talking of legal sanction for that right and not offspring or even morality. Just the legal right. You gentlemen are being evasive.

Anyway ... all you folks appear to be very confused. If you don`t have a position, that`s Ok. But if you do, you should be able to defend it.

However, since you consider sex between brother/sister being of the same dimension of a social issue as aversion towards eating rotten food, or smoking, or seafood, and the sort by some as you say, and being at the same disgust level, then I have nothing more to offer. But, and its a big BUT, you must be able to superimpose your position on your own selves and your families. I.e if you want to retain families at all. If you don`t, well .. best of luck.

But that`ll be the third question. Regarding the family system. So, forget it.

The ancient scriptures are right, and they`ll always be. No nitpicking will diminish those.

Regards.

Re: # 137 khurram,

I think you are making simple matters complex. And especially, I have problem understanding your scholarly way of articulating, so I would appreciate if you explain things for me a little bit less formally. I certainly want to know what you beef is which would be useful learning for me but we have to ensure that the communication does not go in vein.

What I get from your post is that you refer to something you call `the unconditional as truth and morality` which you think cannot, at least, in part come from the sources in the world only. The second objection you made was that morality follows strange routes such as absolutism and absolutism because of opposition to absolutism.

I myself am contented with the evolutionary explanation, specifically as a combination of the following stages of evolution:

1) physical life
2) human mind
3) human culture
4) ideas when they become an organism by themselves living in the world of culture

This framework completely and elegantly explains why we are obsessed with `truth` (simply because it is the ultimate currency of this universe; you simply cannot put two coins in a pot and take out 3) and morality (as a set of ideas that works for a human population at one time).

So, I fail to get your beef so far.