God

Doc Dutch said:
That life is meaningless?

"I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.. . . . For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political."
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^ What a bleak, materialist, post-modernist world view.
 
Cypress said:
I've read the Daodejing, the Analects of Confucius, the Baghavad gita, and they basically are the opposite of that. Huxley sounds to bleak to read, I'll skip it..
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Brave New World was groundbreaking in 1932. Like Orwell, it painted a dark possible future like a warning sign.

It seems his world view was rather dark too.
 
Cypress said:
^ What a bleak, materialist, post-modernist world view.
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While I am unfamiliar with what Huxley is getting at here it actually is kind of a liberation to realize that there is not inherent "meaning" to life, at least in my humble opinion.

I have long been of the opinion that the "meaning" of life is whatever I bring to it. There is no necessary reason for things to be as they are.

There's a great song by the Cure called "Where the Birds Always Sing" (sorry to invoke a goth rock group here but it's a great set of lyrics):

The world is neither fair nor unfair
The idea is just a way for us to understand
But the world is neither fair nor unfair
So one survives
The others die
And you always want a reason why

But the world is neither just nor unjust
It's just us trying to feel that there's some sense in it
No, the world is neither just nor unjust
And though going young
So much undone
Is a tragedy for everyone

It doesn't speak a plan or any secret thing
No unseen sign or untold truth in anything...
But living on in others, in memories and dreams
Is not enough
You want everything
Another world where the sun always shines
And the birds always sing
Always sing...

 
Doc Dutch said:
Brave New World was groundbreaking in 1932. Like Orwell, it painted a dark possible future like a warning sign.

It seems his world view was rather dark too.
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Different Huxley. That's Aldous Huxley. The Huxley that coined Agnosticism was Thomas Huxley as I recall. (I believe they were related if I am not mistaken)
 
Quincunx said:
Why do you find that lol-worthy? Almost all of my friends are believers, and they live good lives. They don't bear false witness, they do unto others as they would have done to them, they don't live by the sword, they are good people and they gain a lot from their faith.

Maybe if you were to try being a real Christian you could be accepting of others as well. You might even learn what Jesus said.
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" Only God is truly good".
You can't gain salvation by good works.
 
Cypress said:
I don't claim the bible is a scientific document. Just that the intuition about a moment of creation seems to have been borne out by scientific observation.

I think there is a lot of truth in the Gospel of Matthew and the Daodejing. It's just doesn't happen to be truth of a scientific nature.
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Matthew 26:52 " Live by the Sword die by the Sword"R (7).jpg
Joshua 5:13-15
 
Doc Dutch said:
Brave New World was groundbreaking in 1932. Like Orwell, it painted a dark possible future like a warning sign.

It seems his world view was rather dark too.
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It seems pretty revealing that the first thing that came to his mind concerning his philosophy of meaninglessness was "sexual and political liberation".

The ancient sages of Asia, Greece, and the Levant seemed to think cultivating virtue, character, and knowledge were the most meaningful and spiritually liberating things one could do with their lives
 
Tinkerpeach said:
That simply means we are not interpreting them correctly not that the Bible is wrong.

While the Bible is a record of historical facts those facts are arranged into stories they are not a detailed list of exactly what happened.

God did this on purpose for two reasons.

First He doesn’t want us focusing on the details but rather to get the point of the story. The actual facts of what happened are irrelevant to God’s point.

Secondly, if everything in the Bible could be scientifically proven then there would be no doubt that God is real and there would be no need for faith.
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Cypress tries as hard as he can to not believe the Bible so he nitpicks!
 
Quincunx said:
Different Huxley. That's Aldous Huxley. The Huxley that coined Agnosticism was Thomas Huxley as I recall. (I believe they were related if I am not mistaken)
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Grandson. I read a lot more science fiction from age 9 to early 30s than I did philosophy.

I did briefly consider a philosophy major when switching from a community college to a university, but the very first class I took was so fucking dry and boring in comparison to the classes I'd had a ACC that I switched to psychology. I completed a Psych AA degree before switching colleges. There was no Philosophy AA degree.

Correction: Thomas died at age 70 a year after Aldous was born.
 
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Doc Dutch said:
Brothers. I read a lot more science fiction from age 9 to early 30s than I did philosophy.

I did briefly consider a philosophy major when switching from a community college to a university, but the very first class I took was so fucking dry and boring in comparison to the classes I'd had a ACC that I switched to psychology. I completed a Psych AA degree before switching colleges. There was no Philosophy AA degree.
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I lucked out and had a VERY entertaining philosophy 101 teacher. And my closest friend in college was a philosophy major so I got to hear a lot of philosophy stuff. I know that there's no way I could have done philosophy (I'm not that quick of a thinker). But it was fun to listen to the discussions.
 
Cypress said:
It seems pretty revealing that the first thing that came to his mind concerning his philosophy of meaninglessness was "sexual and political liberation".

The ancient sages of Asia, Greece, and the Levant seemed to think cultivating virtue, character, and knowledge were the most meaningful and spiritually liberating things one could do with their lives
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Since they were living at the end of the British Victorian age, I can see how all that sexual repression was depressing and dark.

A psychological theory on Jack the Ripper blames, in part, repressive Victorian ideas on sex. Like the preacher's kid is often thought to be one of the wildest of any group, there might be something to backlash of repressive ideas.
 
Cypress said:
I don't see how you missed there are two different and contradictory creation stories in Genesis, right on the first page of the Old Testament, if you were reading it at a middle school level of reading comprehension.
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You repeated that over and over and over trying to claim your spin makes the Bible false.
 
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