Hello! First off thank you ahead of time for reading this. I’ve always been intrigued by philosophical inquiry, but the last 4 months I’ve had a switch flip and I feel a need like never in my life to learn everything about anything because it is all literally fascinating. I’ve found the sharpening of my critical thinking and logic has lead to a more calm and collected state of mind. I’ve always been plagued by clinical depression, but now I just accept it as just an attribute to self and when I do have a down or stressor it’s much easier to get my mind back thinking logically and not based on my serotonin levels.
I also apologize if my title suggests if you are opposed to how I wish to understand the reality i percieve, you personally are not a threat to me personally. The ideas and, I’d say lack thereof, ethics behind the organization is not only dated but systematically retards culture in many parts of the world. Ex., in the African tribal culture, Zulu I think, when a very young, vulnerable girl menstrates for the first time she cannot walk on Earth and is isolated for days. How does effect her on a individual level? Would that not enforce the belief her biological predisposition of being female is somehow inferior or should be not understood? No doubt an experience like this would happen to you it would have lasting psychological trauma just as I do when it comes to any significant event, especially a new biological function involving horrible pain and blood. And in others, I’m sorry I can’t be more specific but if need be I will look up exactly the location and beliefs, they lock these girls away for YEARS.
Now, not every religion commits these specific atrocities. But the issue of women’s right is evident throughout the 3 major religions that make up a vastly huge amount of the population. I want to desperately to be to communicate and articulate through my determination to be objective and find my conclusions through logic and reason. To understand why I absolutely find what many people hold dear and personal before I even dare to try and represent understanding itself.
So right now I’m doing some fun reading with Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins. Also truly researching how exactly to form a sound argument and remember shorthand sayings that summarize the 6 paragraphs in my head as to why I disagree. I want to know about all forms of thinking and due to my own position, I search for this information through informal education. So any guidance to authors, preferably someone more modern than let’s say Thomas Aquinas unless it’s a lecture(I love those) would be more so beneficial until I feel confident in history to read and absorb what great thinkers like that are really getting at in the meat of their thought.
Thank you!
Who’s the friends? Who are the enemies?
Lol sorry I didn’t really explain that too well. I would consider people who think every human should be free of pointless suffering regardless of faith, belief, pigment, sex, nationality and every person deserves to come to their own conclusions without societal pressures to tell them what is true without question. Closet atheists for example that still go to church every Sunday to avoid being shunned by their family, friends or community and may think that the doubt alone somehow is a test of their faith. Or they’re indoctrinated from a young age that questioning their beliefs is not moral because it is putting doubt on their God (s) and is blasphemy. People have lost their lives for simply saying that they don’t believe in whatever deity for lack of evidence, not even flat out denial of existence. A friend wants you to better yourself, not hold you in place because of their own beliefs.
Enemies are to me the exact opposite. Any notion against their faith is wrong. Or anything not yet explained through evidence, or not much evidence, is undoubtedly evidence of the existence of their deity. Or because of what young children are being force fed, not only present day but throughout history, they’re raised with contempt for different ways to think instead of embracing it. That these ideologies very obviously exploit people’s natural fear of death, or rather the unknown, and claim to know for a fact what happens and how you should behave, dress, eat and think. That God will know if you have thoughts of doubt and you find retribution. At its core, I see it as thought police and systematic oppression over humans as a whole by putting up as many psychological walls a person of faith has to overcome just to be able to come to their own conclusions of nature and reality.
My personal idea is that if the concept of a divine law somehow having ultimate control or influence over what is observable, testable and can be proven or disproven never came to be and civilization was built on freedom of expression and an open exchange of ideas. The truth that we are very intelligent primates isn’t negative. That humans aren’t snow ascended animal to God like status. That our ability to not only observe something, but be able to ask why, how and when is what put us where we are on the food chain, not by how lucky we are that a deity with the entire cosmos to manage looked at us and really took his time to make sure that we’re behaving how they say we should and thinking how they want you to.
Under the Philosphy subject, there is a relatively recent thread titled “Why be ethical”. In this thread is a link to an interview with Dan Finke. If you don’t want to spend 1 1/2 hrs listening to that podcast, I would recommend forwarding to the 19 minute mark and listening for about 30 minutes.
Okay, cool! Looked at the thread, but I’m at work and would like to listen to the conversation. I think it’s really remarkable that many people, outside this forum obviously lol, never thought to question if morality is no doubt invaluable in nature by the idea of coming to be by a Creator’s will for it to be so or by an evolutionary advantage through behavior that promotes not only survival/genetic continuation but the survival/genetic continuation of humans.
Which, and this is no claim just a thought I have, is observable in which secular thinking has become more accepted and science itself is incredibly more popular among all classes over the last 15-1600 years, with religion playing a positive role by stating a priest should educate their followers in Europe for example. Islam promoting great exchange of ideas and advancement in mathematics through discovery of algebra from I’m positive people from many philosophical points. But how strange that when people learn to read, learn math and see they can build their hut better than before through more accurate measurements or about new animals, cultures, other religions with the same underlying theme but a new screenwriter: then control of knowledge is literally a survival mechanism of faith trying to stop the inevitability of defeat by evidence.
But unlike in the past, the world was more mapped out. There were now different ways of thinking, expression through art, preservation and exchanging of knowledge not just locally but continent to continent. We heard of the suffering from other parts of the world, wholly the same experienced by yourself, and through continuous exposure to empathy on a global scale deepened or maybe actualized something as natural to why you need molars to chew plants and canines to rip flesh.
It’s only advantageous to want the wellbeing of others and they want the same for you. Of course there is still going to be wolves among sheep, that can also be explained by the science of human behavior. They find people diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder have frontal lobe anomalies in brain scans compared to average, undiagnosed brains. This isn’t to say that automatically makes them primed to make life hell for a lot of people, it suggests that where the anomalies are affects, what I think, morality as a whole.
Still an idea that they understand on an intellectual level, but to actually feel it, what comes so innate to us. I believe we would agree to a degree that most people alive today don’t go out of their way, with no ulterior motive, to cause harm or control the actions of others because you don’t want that done to you. The golden rule just makes sense to everybody because it’s an elegant phrasing of natural behavior found in us as humans and us as a part of the natural world that needs a way to prevent life halting the survival of life itself.
The golden rule just makes sense to everybody because it's an elegant phrasing of natural behavior found in us as humans and us as a part of the natural world that needs a way to prevent life halting the survival of life itself.There's all kinds of ugly natural behavior too. Real ugly. It's not gonna go away.
The golden rule just makes sense to everybody because it's an elegant phrasing of natural behavior found in us as humans and us as a part of the natural world that needs a way to prevent life halting the survival of life itself.There's all kinds of ugly natural behavior too. Real ugly. It's not gonna go away. Our potential for natural behaviors (ugly and beautiful) will not go away. But it is, also, within our naturally inherited capacity to establish and follow rules, such as the one referred to above, that diminishes the ugly and promotes the beautiful.
Our potential for natural behaviors (ugly and beautiful) will not go away. But it is, also, within our naturally inherited capacity to establish and follow rules, such as the one referred to above, that diminishes the ugly and promotes the beautiful.There goes your authoritarianism bit.... We definitely have a natural capacity to follow rules though. What's stronger? The desire to be led or the desire to delineate between good or bad? Who you asking? The folks at Starbucks or The Stumble Inn. Or the folks of Hanoi, Tokyo, or Aleppo?
Our potential for natural behaviors (ugly and beautiful) will not go away. But it is, also, within our naturally inherited capacity to establish and follow rules, such as the one referred to above, that diminishes the ugly and promotes the beautiful.
There goes your authoritarianism bit.....Not sure what you are getting at.
We definitely have a natural capacity to follow rules though. What's stronger? The desire to be led or the desire to delineate between good or bad?I don't know. Do you? I do know that some guys had the capacity, a little over 200 years ago, to create a document that has promoted the development of a relatively functional thriving society. And a little over 150 years ago, a hard won rule was established, in that society, that people could not own other people. And within my lifetime, in that society, there are no longer public water fountains that say "Whites Only", and Gay couples can be legally married. You know. Little things like that.
Who you asking? The folks at Starbucks or The Stumble Inn. Or the folks of Hanoi, Tokyo, or Aleppo?I am not asking anyone. I am simply stating the facts. (Welcome back, BTW. I missed you during your brief absence.)
The golden rule just makes sense to everybody because it's an elegant phrasing of natural behavior found in us as humans and us as a part of the natural world that needs a way to prevent life halting the survival of life itself.There's all kinds of ugly natural behavior too. Real ugly. It's not gonna go away. I didn't try to say that all behavior in nature is good, bad, passive, beautiful, ugly or plain. Though you have a good point, but as primates who have the intelligence to turn raw materials like copper and iron into steel also be able to turn ugly INTO beauty? To see error in behavior based on the data and effect on society, reach a logical and rational concensus on the most effective way to correct the behavior. Eduucate on the reason why the corrected behavior was there. Present not only the new data, but contrast how it is a better way to behave and how it will benefit the individual, community, city, etc., until you reach why it benefits humanity. As biological, living things on this planet Earth, our physical body, mind and surroundings continue to evolve. So to our critical thinking of morality in which we ignore the question outwright with oversimplification by use of 'good thing' or 'bad thing' . Attacking a neighboring tribe for resources is of course bad in appearance, but the fed children through these resources cant possibly be bad in the sense that saying so is saying it is bad that child is fed. The way in which the child was fed was a constructed decision by a thinking being that could have also thought that using our evolved ability for language and natural affinity for problem solving to consider asking for assistance and exchanging future services or goods they themselves might lack. And if for some reason that outcome wasnt plausible due to past strife due to no cooperation perhaps that could trigger an idea that the personal survival instinct is as strong in oneself as any other living thing, therefore through that observation an understanding that prior neglect of other living things to continue living was momentarily beneficial but has produced longterm negative affects. I don't think it unlikely that refusal of cooperation from the previously affected persons or retaliation from the victim of the disregard to life by the counterproductive response of no longer taking into regard the life of the perpetrator. Now bringing both groups to circle logic that has no outcome other than the same repeated results, bringing more evidence that the root isn't the last wrong committed but how the continued behavior that promotes not cooperating is conflicting directly with our basic need to find a better, easier and low stress environment to which to thrive and survive. An analytical human mind didn't have copper, look at the innovation of steel and then refuse the notion because copper works just fine even though it is frail and becomes blunt at the point.
I didn't try to say that all behavior in nature is good, bad, passive, beautiful, ugly or plain. Though you have a good point, but as primates who have the intelligence to turn raw materials like copper and iron into steel also be able to turn ugly INTO beauty? To see error in behavior based on the data and effect on society, reach a logical and rational concensus on the most effective way to correct the behavior. Eduucate on the reason why the corrected behavior was there. Present not only the new data, but contrast how it is a better way to behave and how it will benefit the individual, community, city, etc., until you reach why it benefits humanity.Can you give some examples of this please?