The Religion/Spirituality Thread

[Len Cnut]

21 minutes ago, Kasanova King said:

 

 

This gentleman has not understood Crime & Punishment very well.  Why not total naked self interest to the point of the psychopathic tendency, well, because as Crime and Punishment shows it destroys the man.  This idea that you need God because thats the only thing holding the world together from every person avariciously chasing self interest is a false one, people wouldn't do such things for VERY self interested reasons, it destroys people, it destroys relationship, it destroys the structure of a functioning planet, now you don't need a biblical morality to not want that to happen.  The reason you don't do such things is because of the earthly consequences.  The realisation also that self interest and the interest of your species overall are intertwined. 

I do believe however that the human race is wholly irrational and what we call 'civilisation' or being civilised is a very tentative thing held together, mostly, by circumstance.  In some instances that circumstance has something to do with God due to the way some people are but it also has a lot to do with convenience.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Len Cnut

[Ace Nova]

14 minutes ago, Len Cnut said:

This gentleman has not understood Crime & Punishment very well.  Why not total naked self interest to the point of the psychopathic tendency, well, because as Crime and Punishment shows it destroys the man.  This idea that you need God because thats the only thing holding the world together from every person avariciously chasing self interest is a false one, people wouldn't do such things for VERY self interested reasons, it destroys people, it destroys relationship, it destroys the structure of a functioning planet, now you don't need a biblical morality to not want that to happen.  The reason you don't do such things is because of the earthly consequences.  The realisation also that self interest and the interest of your species overall are intertwined. 

I do believe however that the human race is wholly irrational and what we call 'civilisation' or being civilised is a very tentative thing held together, mostly, by circumstance.  In some instances that circumstance has something to do with God due to the way some people are but it also has a lot to do with convenience.

I don't think that's exactly what he's saying.  He's not necessarily promoting religion there....he's showing the faults/problems with atheism.

 

He goes into it more deeply here....

 

 

[Ace Nova]

25 minutes ago, Len Cnut said:

This gentleman has not understood Crime & Punishment very well.  Why not total naked self interest to the point of the psychopathic tendency, well, because as Crime and Punishment shows it destroys the man.  This idea that you need God because thats the only thing holding the world together from every person avariciously chasing self interest is a false one, people wouldn't do such things for VERY self interested reasons, it destroys people, it destroys relationship, it destroys the structure of a functioning planet, now you don't need a biblical morality to not want that to happen.  The reason you don't do such things is because of the earthly consequences.  The realisation also that self interest and the interest of your species overall are intertwined. 

I do believe however that the human race is wholly irrational and what we call 'civilisation' or being civilised is a very tentative thing held together, mostly, by circumstance.  In some instances that circumstance has something to do with God due to the way some people are but it also has a lot to do with convenience.

He also discusses Dostoyevski here....

 

And he basically says that Dostoyevski is one of his favorite authors and recommends everyone reads his books.  So I'm pretty sure he understands Crime & Punishment....

 

 

[Ace Nova]

One of my favorite Jordan Peterson quotes while discussing people who are anti-capitalists/anti-Western Society:

"These people are anti-capitalists on their iPhones...right, you don't get to do that, it's a performative contradiction....they're anti-capitalists while flying....well...actually, no you're not....you're just deeply confused."   

[Len Cnut]

38 minutes ago, Kasanova King said:

One of my favorite Jordan Peterson quotes while discussing people who are anti-capitalists/anti-Western Society:

"These people are anti-capitalists on their iPhones...right, you don't get to do that, it's a performative contradiction....they're anti-capitalists while flying....well...actually, no you're not....you're just deeply confused."   

So what, the only way to be an anti capitalist is to go the Ted Kaczinsky way, are you sure this is a notion you wanna be applauding?   If you believe a current structure is wrong you’re fundamentally hypocritical by living and functioning in it as a citizen?  Well that is a novel idea   

[Ace Nova]

25 minutes ago, Len Cnut said:

So what, the only way to be an anti capitalist is to go the Ted Kaczinsky way, are you sure this is a notion you wanna be applauding?   If you believe a current structure is wrong you’re fundamentally hypocritical by living and functioning in it as a citizen?  Well that is a novel idea   

No, I think that just like Peterson said, they're deeply confused.  I believe the vast majority of these so called "anti-capitalists" actually love capitalism and the benefits they receive from it.  They may not like certain things within capitalism, such as income disparity, etc....but those are things that can be adjusted within the system....and that's what they should focus on.  

Edited May 18, 2018 by Kasanova King

[Len Cnut]

23 minutes ago, Kasanova King said:

No, I think that just like Peterson said, they're deeply confused.  I believe the vast majority of these so called "anti-capitalists" actually love capitalism and the benefits they receive from it.  They may not like certain things within capitalism, such as income disparity, etc....but those are things that can be adjusted within the system....and that's what they should focus on.  

I’ve never really been that...confident to work out what another person or peoples might be thinking inside or feeling subconciously

[Ace Nova]

10 minutes ago, Len Cnut said:

...confident to work out what another person or peoples might be thinking inside or feeling subconciously

Well, Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist, so other than teaching, it's what he does for a living.  

[Len Cnut]

11 minutes ago, Kasanova King said:

Well, Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist, so other than teaching, it's what he does for a living.  

I didn't realise the whole post there was a Jordan Peterson quote.

[Len Cnut]

Quote

And he basically says that Dostoyevski is one of his favorite authors and recommends everyone reads his books.  So I'm pretty sure he understands Crime & Punishment....

Liking something and understanding it are not the same thing.  I was actually being polite by saying he didn't understand it because the other option is slightly more sinister and I wouldn't feel comfortable making such assumptions about someone that I don't know, though he seems to be fine doing that regarding anti-capitalists. 

[Ace Nova]

 

[Len Cnut]

9 hours ago, Kasanova King said:

 

I can’t believe that took explaining, that blokes got an evil tache tho!   My problem with notions of God isn’t to do with the ability of humans to describe superpowers, there’s comics full of that shit, my problem is says who, where’s the proof?  It’s actually gotten to the point though where the discussion just becomes dull.  

Edited May 24, 2018 by Len Cnut

[HOOSIER GUNZ]

is the eye of the sahara actually physical evidence that the legend of the lost city of atlantis actually existed

 

absolutely wild discovery hidden in plain sight, well sorta, from space

[SoulMonster]

41 minutes ago, HOOSIER GUNZ said:

is the eye of the sahara actually physical evidence that the legend of the lost city of atlantis actually existed

No.

[HOOSIER GUNZ]

it sure is eye-ronic

[Whiskey Rose]

5 hours ago, HOOSIER GUNZ said:

is the eye of the sahara actually physical evidence that the legend of the lost city of atlantis actually existed

 

absolutely wild discovery hidden in plain sight, well sorta, from space

huh, very cool..it's in circles, was lush with waterfalls at one point in time, and the middle structure is filled with crystalline and diamond rocks..and a from of quartz crystal is used in computer chips right? So..sounds like an interesting theory to me..

[HOOSIER GUNZ]

 i can't help but find it intriguing to say the least

and eye-ronically the new superhero movie preview portrays atlantis being in the sahara 

[Iron MikeyJ]

Interesting video I found on that topic. 

 

[Dazey]

48 minutes ago, Iron MikeyJ said:

Interesting video I found on that topic. 

 

Even more interesting response. co @OmarBradley

 Quote

Sure! Like the entire genre of "Ancient mysteries" documentaries, this video consists of nothing but cherry-picking, appeals to ignorance, misleading claims and deliberate falsehoods. The fact that the presenter refers positively to Graham Hancock should make it abundantly clear that there is no reason to take him seriously. Hancock is a hack who has spent his entire career spewing out transparently nonsensical theories about early human history that are universally panned by all related academic disciplines. Referring the viewer to Hancock for confirmation of the claims you make in your video is a great way to signal that nothing you want to say has any validity whatsoever.

The main aim of a video like this is to persuade the viewer that they are being presented with a compelling case. It doesn't make you believe its premise by stating facts, but by looking like it does. The video uses some obvious tricks: photos and wikipedia pages with things underlined in red, poorly contextualised source citations, constant appeals to the viewer's own ability to draw the desired conclusion ("doesn't this look just like X?"). Arguments are made persuasive by their presentation: you're being shown 2 pictures and told they look similar, which makes you inclined to focus on the similarities and believe the presenter. Emphasis on the allure of solving the mystery is used to make weak arguments sound strong (such as the "fascinating detail" that a statistically high number of twins are currently born in Nigeria - 12,000 years and thousands of kilometers from the supposed location of Atlantis, and therefore utterly irrelevant).

The cherry-picking itself is extremely obvious with even a casual glance at Plato's actual work (Kritias 113b-121c; the presenter never cites chapter or paragraph, and has no idea how to pronounce "Kritias"). The size of the island and its surrounding moats and ring islands is outlined at 115e-116a. There we find that the city-island's diameter is not, in fact, 127 stades, but only 27. We get the remaining 100 stades mentioned in the video by adding the entire area enclosed within the outer ring wall, mentioned in 117e, which runs through the plain and touches the sea. The presenter obviously chose to use the bigger number because it better fits his measurement of the place that he wants you to believe is Atlantis. In his presentation, he makes it appear like the 3 rings of island and moat alone would be 23.5km across; if we believe Plato, the diameter actually ought to be just 5.5km or so. The central island, according to Plato (116a), was only 1km across. This is much, much smaller than the central feature of the Richat Structure.

The presenter cites Plato on the geographical features surrounding Atlantis, but here he carefully omits the numbers, which are given at 118a. Plato claims that the plain around Atlantis was more than 400km wide and stretched 600km inland from the sea. Atlantis itself, meanwhile, was only 50 stadia (some 10km) from the sea. In other words, the mountain range sheltering the plain north of Atlantis is supposed to have been hundreds of kilometers distant from the city, not directly overlooking the site, as they are at the Richat Structure. The mountains of the range were also, according to Plato, "greater in number and size and beauty than any of the mountains known today". Mauretania's highest mountain is 915m tall - less than a third the size of Mt Olympos.

Now, the point here is not to disprove the theory in the video; that is unnecessary, as Atlantis is not a real place, and any theory about its location is a fantasy by definition. The point is to show that the video arrives at its conclusion by carefully choosing what information to present to you, and what to leave out. It bends and stretches information; it gives you bits that make you believe it is well-researched and thorough, while actually misleading you about what its sources say.

This is apparent, for instance, in its claims about rocks and metals. It mentions the passage where Plato says the city was built out of white and red and black rocks (116a-b), because those are easily suggested by some low-definition pictures that may or may not have been made at the Richat Structure. However, it is careful not to mention Plato's claim that the entire ring wall of Atlantis was plated in bronze and tin and "mountain bronze" (an unknown metal: 116b-c), or that the temple of Poseidon was plated in silver and gold, or that entire precincts in the centre of the island were constructed in gold (116c-d), because there are no traces of any of that stuff left. The inevitable deposits caused by the oxydization of vast quantities of metals when submerged are nowhere to be found. Indeed, it is unthinkable that generations of researchers working on the Richat Structure and establishing the nature of its geology and geological formations (which they started doing in the early 20th century; contrary to the video's claim, the structure was discovered long before it was seen from space) would have missed the vast deposits of an entire ancient civilization, if those deposits were ever there.

This is, of course, where the video gets into some amazing tomfoolery. It asks the viewer to believe that a formation which has been proven geologically to be 100 million years old was in fact given some of its 100-million-year-old features by an unbelievably quick geological process that took place in the course of the last 11,600 years, which is supposedly the actual age of the site. A lot hinges on Atlantis being from the exact period of c. 9,600 BC. Now, I really don't want to debate science with an online video that sets itself the mission to prove scientists wrong by citing the work of Graham Hancock. What I can tell you as an ancient historian is that the number of 11,600 years is completely and utterly meaningless.

The presenter arrives at this number by noting that Solon, the purported source of the story, visited Egypt c.600 BC and heard that the fall of Atlantis happened about 9000 years earlier (Plato, Timaios 23e). In this source, the number 9000 is reached by adding the Greeks' 1000 years since the birth of the first men to the Egyptians' 8000 years of civilization. Apart from the questionable math involved, it is perfectly easy to establish that the Egyptians could have had no sense of their own history prior to the 4th millennium BC, when the Nile Valley was first settled. So where is the knowledge of the remaining 4000+ years coming from?

The fact is that many ancient civilizations claimed to know history down to the time of creation, but they demonstrably actually didn't. The further back you go, the more their stories devolve into listing generations of supernaturally long-lived kings whose reigns all covered neatly round numbers of years. The figure of 8000 years of Egyptian history no doubt reflects or parodies such a tradition. It does not reflect actual knowledge about the past. At best, it is the result of a desire of contemporary Egyptians to claim such antiquity, with no actual way to back it up. So, apart from the fact that we have zero evidence for a civilization ruling most of Western Africa and Europe before the rise of any of the known ancient civilizations, we also know that the date of c. 9600 BC is totally spurious. Even if we believe there is a core of truth in the story, the date given by Plato could be off by thousands of years.

Indeed, even the story Plato tells, that the story of Atlantis was passed down by Solon to the ancestors of Kritias (Kritias113a-b), is wholly unbelievable. Solon's poetry was renowned in Antiquity, and many authors cite lines or whole stanzas, which is how some of his work still survives. Yet at no point can Plato produce even a word of Solonic poetry to substantiate his story. His Kritias presents it as if Solon wrote his record down in a prose history, which was something no Greek had ever done at the time Solon was alive. If this was a genuine tradition relayed by Kritias to Plato, there is no doubt that it would have come with some excellent lines of Solonic verse. Instead, Plato simply connected Solon's name as a travelling sage to the story that supposedly originated "from the Egyptians", known to the Greeks as the oldest and wisest of peoples. This is the most blatant way in which a story could made to sound authoritative to a learned Greek audience, making it all the more likely that it wasn't. Even if the Egyptians actually did tell some kind of story about a lost continent, it is extremely unlikely to have come to Plato through Solon and Kritias, as he claims. It is also extremely unlikely that Herodotos, who went to Egypt and talked to the priests there, wouldn't have said something about it in his long ehtnography of Egypt as the oldest of the world's civilizations. This all points to the obvious reality that the entire story of Atlantis was made up, but it also makes clear that any theory trying to use Plato's words to get at "the truth" is building its cities on quicksand.

In sum, the entire theory is flawed on the macro and micro level; it plays fast and loose with sources and empirical observation; it backs up outrageous and unnecessary claims with pseudoscience and sophistry; it actively misleads the viewer into believing its premise, instead of openly presenting the facts of the case. There is no chance at all that the Richat Structure is Atlantis, even if we assumed for the sake of argument that Atlantis really existed.

[Iron MikeyJ]

For the record, I'm not saying "that is without a doubt Atlantis." But it's the most compelling evidence I've seen. Which I'm not a Egyptologist by any means, but before I returned to Christianity I spent a lot of time studying Egypt and a couple of other anchient civilizations, through New Age and Necromancy (as well as historically) to be honest. Which Atlantis was (probably) the society that the others got their knowledge imo. If it actually existed of course. 

Which after reading the book of Enoch, I would even venture to say that Atlantis was one of (if not THE) main reason behind the flood. Sodom and Gomorah, Babylon, and others came MUCH later. I know Dazey, and others will just think I'm "crazy" but I do think its VERY possible that Atlantis was the main civilization of the nephalim, and one of the main reasons behind the flood. Which as I said in the other thread, it would at earliest place it around 5,000 BC. Which is EASILY 2,000 years before the height of the Egyptians. Which the bible (Exodus) CLEARLY discusses the demise (at least beginning of) the Egyptians which was around 2,000 BC. Which places Moses 2,000 years before Christ, so that explains the rest of the OT. Everything after Christ history already has a good knowledge of. It's the Egyptians and earlier that history really has no clue about. They have guesses, but they are just that, guesses. Anyone that claims otherwise has zero proof, just hypothesis. Even the Sphinx itself, is GREATLY debated among scientists about its actual origin. Many will say "Same as the Pyramids" but that's just theory, no facts support that.  We have to remember that historically speaking scientists and so called "experts" have ALWAYS been routinely wrong, and get proven so. Heck 600 years ago "experts" would have told you "the earth is flat," it took someone with a different point of view to change that. So just because 20 scientist say one thing, doesn't mean its accurate. Sometimes that 1 that says different is actually the correct one.

For the record, the Sphinx has significant water wearing on it, far more than the Pyramids do. Flood...

Edited November 10, 2018 by Iron MikeyJ

[SoulMonster]

No on eis doubting that floods have taken place. They are a common fixture around large rivers, like the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris. And occasionally they would flood even more causing havoc and earning their place in mythologies. But a great flood as described in the bible is obviously nonsense.

[Len Cnut]

I hate to shatter any illusions here but Atlantis is made up.  By Plato.  Its literally fictional, like the Little Mermaid, Sebastian the crab, Flounder, all made up.  There is no lost city of Atlantis. 

EDIT:  shit, McLeod has more or less pointed that out up there, sorry!

Edited November 10, 2018 by Len Cnut

[Len Cnut]

10 minutes ago, Oldest Goat said:

What if you've worked too hard for your illusions just to throw them all away?

Then spend the next 17 years making a shit album.

[Sosso]

https://www.famousscientists.org/famous-muslim-arab-persian-scientists-and-their-inventions/

[Len Cnut]

29 minutes ago, Sosso said:

https://www.famousscientists.org/famous-muslim-arab-persian-scientists-and-their-inventions/

The 4th one down looks a bit like Omar Shariff