7DSUSYstrings Posted March 30, 2012 Report Share Posted March 30, 2012 I was looking at religion as a behavior, which evolved, common to only humans. Can you provide a link to evidence that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turtle Posted March 31, 2012 Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 we all know perfectly well what we are talking about here when we say religion, i.e. the historical organized supernatural believers on this planet. Actually not everyone knows perfectly well what we are talking about when we use the word 'religion'. This discussion is proof of the ambiguity of the concept. actually, everyone here does know. that's why there is such friction. what skin do you have in the game? or are you just trying to make trouble? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turtle Posted March 31, 2012 Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 :D I think threads like this are either flame bait or for fun. (Not to rile the admins...) either way then, your in it for no good purpose. :naughty: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7DSUSYstrings Posted March 31, 2012 Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 (edited) either way then, your in it for no good purpose. :naughty: No. Actually I'm just checking you guys out. In the process I'm throwing my 2 cents worth in. This appears to have been an extension of an ongoing debate. In the beginning, for me (:)), this was an issue of debate. If you looked at my signature, you'd see I said back then and haven't changed, other than my own website address, since then that I'm pretty busy, so learning the site changes is like getting the latest version of an editor, only the community itself is edited... it will take time and I have a bit I can donate to the cause at the moment... I'm seeing the debate treated from both the religious and the areligious perspective. I'm just offering my perspective, but also saying it's pointless unless anyone can prove their perspective is the correct one. My viewpoint is from neither. I'm going to see if I can find some form of abstract on discussions between Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking. Although I'm using a question the title and launch post generate in me to base my perspective upon and that being "Why would we ask this?" Looking at it from a tribal perspective, the question itself evolves to "Wouldn't this simply be a community mandate?" thus what would drive such a mandate? A community curse? That would ammount to ostracizing every cell of the community so the disease would become an inherrent cancer, so the tribe would die off prior to any flourishment. By that token religion could never allow itself to become any kind of disease. I mean who would willingly participate in anything leading to such a short term demise. That is like dooming the hydrogen atom to 1/4 its half-life... just because you can. :rolleyes: Edited March 31, 2012 by 7DSUSYstrings Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turtle Posted March 31, 2012 Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 I think threads like this are either flame bait or for fun. ...either way then, your in it for no good purpose. No. Actually I'm just checking you guys out. ...I'm going to see if I can find some form of abstract on discussions between Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking...By that token religion could never allow itself to become any kind of disease. I mean who would willingly participate in anything leading to such a short term demise. you see the discord sewn already and yet you intend to perpetuate it here? who would willingly do that but a troublemaker? good grief. stick to the plumbing doc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7DSUSYstrings Posted March 31, 2012 Report Share Posted March 31, 2012 you see the discord sewn already and yet you intend to perpetuate it here? who would willingly do that but a troublemaker? good grief. stick to the plumbing doc. Actually I'm sticking to the magnetics and some alternate energy ideas, still it looks like all of us have recently been shown up by a 14 year old in that area. In spite of that I've been working on a matrix of hue readings from DG Tau B. Also I have a representation of the magnetic and gravitational field of this forming G2 star. I would like to run by you some sequences of the hues to translate them into either individual or average frequencies. Other than that, why would you say discord in a debate that is full of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giganticpull Posted April 1, 2012 Report Share Posted April 1, 2012 No it is not. infection is a invasive procedure that the infected goes along for the ride. Religion despite it's soakability can be rejected on principal and discarded. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HydrogenBond Posted April 1, 2012 Report Share Posted April 1, 2012 (edited) Another consideration, if the goal is understanding and not propaganda, is to look at small children. When children are young, they are closest to natural, since they don't have the mind set needed to be under the meme of social programming, but remain impulsive and free spirits. Little children aren't yet infected by prejudice meme, for example. They react naturally to each other and yet don't know tthe correct way to hate each other, based on social meme infections. These young natural children, love imaginary stories about things like talking animals, Santa Claus or baby Jesus. This human animal attraction is innate within the human mind before one is conditioned to reject or accept based on social meme infections. Santa Claus ends for the child, usually due to external peer pressure when a collective social meme starts to rule. As an experiment, get yourself a 2-3 year old. Next, expose them to different forms of knowledge and see what they innately like. Story time is easiest for them because it is natural. The rest of the knowledge requires will power and programming to help overcome the unnatural. My theory is myth and religion was a human extension of natural instinct. As humans became more willful and unnatural and instinct was defined as relative, natural was reasoned away and replaced by synthetic forms of behavior; social meme. Edited April 1, 2012 by HydrogenBond Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigurdV Posted April 17, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 17, 2012 Religion is certainly memetic, but it could hardly be considered a disease. Would you kindly tell us who you are calling Wops?I miszpelled: "Wops" = "Whoops" An expression meant to convey my dismay of (perhaps) doing what i was critizising others of doing. Meanwhile I was extending the use of "disease" from individuals to groups! Since groups consist of individuals a "social disease" can work on two levels! Making Social Pathology a bewildering subject matter. So: What memes characterize "healthy" groups or societies? ;) Lancewen 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigurdV Posted April 17, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 17, 2012 My second post was a paradox of logic: "I am lying." It's called "The Liar Paradox." It is quite relative to the nature of this as an endless, meaningless discussion. Thus you could not appropriately call me a troublemaker, rather a trouble ender. Theres an important part missing if a paradox was aimed at: Its not stated what sentence or sentences "I am lying." refers to! Also I think the characterisation "this as an endless, meaningless discussion" is unfair and untrue... Perhaps it will have no end but its NOT meaningless! Lancewen 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigurdV Posted April 21, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2012 Another consideration, if the goal is understanding and not propaganda, is to look at small children. When children are young, they are closest to natural, since they don't have the mind set needed to be under the meme of social programming, but remain impulsive and free spirits. Little children aren't yet infected by prejudice meme, for example. They react naturally to each other and yet don't know tthe correct way to hate each other, based on social meme infections. These young natural children, love imaginary stories about things like talking animals, Santa Claus or baby Jesus. This human animal attraction is innate within the human mind before one is conditioned to reject or accept based on social meme infections. Santa Claus ends for the child, usually due to external peer pressure when a collective social meme starts to rule. As an experiment, get yourself a 2-3 year old. Next, expose them to different forms of knowledge and see what they innately like. Story time is easiest for them because it is natural. The rest of the knowledge requires will power and programming to help overcome the unnatural. My theory is myth and religion was a human extension of natural instinct. As humans became more willful and unnatural and instinct was defined as relative, natural was reasoned away and replaced by synthetic forms of behavior; social meme. Hi! So your into memetic bondings as well as molecuular.What should,in your opinion,be used as analogue to hydrogen? Lancewen 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sigurdV Posted April 21, 2012 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2012 No. Actually I'm just checking you guys out. In the process I'm throwing my 2 cents worth in. This appears to have been an extension of an ongoing debate. In the beginning, for me (:)), this was an issue of debate. If you looked at my signature, you'd see I said back then and haven't changed, other than my own website address, since then that I'm pretty busy, so learning the site changes is like getting the latest version of an editor, only the community itself is edited... it will take time and I have a bit I can donate to the cause at the moment... I'm seeing the debate treated from both the religious and the areligious perspective. I'm just offering my perspective, but also saying it's pointless unless anyone can prove their perspective is the correct one. My viewpoint is from neither. I'm going to see if I can find some form of abstract on discussions between Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking. Although I'm using a question the title and launch post generate in me to base my perspective upon and that being "Why would we ask this?" Looking at it from a tribal perspective, the question itself evolves to "Wouldn't this simply be a community mandate?" thus what would drive such a mandate? A community curse? That would ammount to ostracizing every cell of the community so the disease would become an inherrent cancer, so the tribe would die off prior to any flourishment. By that token religion could never allow itself to become any kind of disease. I mean who would willingly participate in anything leading to such a short term demise. That is like dooming the hydrogen atom to 1/4 its half-life... just because you can. :rolleyes: Please wake up DrC: Skinning Hypatia, burning witches, destroying all literature of South America, some christians committing collective suicide? If this is sane/undiseased social group behaviour what then is insane/diseased social group behaviour like? :o Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HydrogenBond Posted April 23, 2012 Report Share Posted April 23, 2012 Here is another angle for addressing this topic. If we use the virus analogy, in a normal virus there is the infection and then the immune response, with a faster immune response meannig better health. We might want to do is compare the immune response of the religious and atheism to day to day social flu viral fads. Conservative means a higher level of immunity to come and go fads or the quickie meme. Whereas liberal tends to get infected easier to any new meme coming down the road; cough, cough. This wouild suggest that religion is not a virus but white blood cell that helps one resist the wide variety of meme virus. For example, alternate lifestyles was a meme decades ago. The atheist were far more at risk for this meme virus with many getting very ill. It was good that atheism attached itself to science, since it lacks immunity on its own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CraigD Posted April 29, 2012 Report Share Posted April 29, 2012 Conservative means a higher level of immunity to come and go fads or the quickie meme. Whereas liberal tends to get infected easier to any new meme coming down the road; cough, cough.I'm curious, HBond, if you have any supporting evidence for this - surveys, for example, correlating self-identification as "conservative" or "liberal" with purchasing products associated with fads, such as fashion cloths, self-help seminars, and diet books - or if you're expressing speculating based on your own informal model of how people think? Speculating is fine, but it's good to be clear when you are doing it, and not confuse it with empirically supported correlations. For example, alternate lifestyles was a meme decades ago. The atheist were far more at risk for this meme virus with many getting very ill. I'm not clear what you mean by "alternate lifestyle". If an example of an alternate lifestyle as you mean it here is "not attending church", then nearly by definition, atheists are highly "at risk" of adopting one. If you mean alternative lifestyle as a euphemism for homosexuality, I'd like to see data showing a correlation between sexual preference and belief in God/god(s), as I'm suspicious that there is none. It was good that atheism attached itself to science, since it lacks immunity on its own.I'm not sure that the metaphor of atheism as a separate entity attaching itself to one called "science" describes the relationship of these two concepts well. I visualize atheism and science as two very different concepts, both stemming from a more fundamental one, skepticism. In its usual modern meaning, science is distinguished from its predecessor disciplines – prescience, for lack of a better term - by the skeptical position of not accepting conclusions without experimental evidence. Pre-scientific thinkers were characterized by a willingness to accept hypotheses about physical reality based on the elegance and beauty of their arguments for them. Scientific thinkers are characterized by their willingness, often reluctant, to discard even the most beautiful argument if it fails to make predictions that agree with observed reality. Atheism, the conclusion that one or more person-like beings who created physical reality and may constantly willfully intervene in it do not exist, is often reached by people because the opposite conclusion isn’t clearly supported by evidence. The opposite of atheism, theism, can be seen as a beautiful theory that failed to be experimentally supported. Both science and atheism, therefore, can be seen as exercise of skepticism. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modest Posted June 14, 2012 Report Share Posted June 14, 2012 :phones:"What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea! Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.":phones: I saw inception recently and couldn't help think of this thread. The interesting thing is that ideas (religion included) usually don't become so widespread in a culture unless they are useful to some extent. Somewhere along the line a prey animal had the idea of running from a predator. Evolution picked up on that and now prey animals almost everywhere instinctively run from predators. The same instinct can be lost. Birds that are categorized as prey animals in the Galapagos don't run. You can approach them and pick them up. They lost that instinct because they ended up in a place where they had no natural predators. Perhaps religion is following this same synopsis. Religion could have been a very useful idea as far as motivating tribes into cultures—uniting and instructing people. But, society eventually became more secular. Divine commandments from Leviticus were trumped by secular laws and rational traditions. As that happened (and continues to happen), just like the birds in the Galapagos lost their instinct to flee, people could be losing their instinct toward religion. coldcreation 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
granpa Posted June 15, 2012 Report Share Posted June 15, 2012 (edited) Is religion a memetic disease? A better question would be "is 'religion' necessarily a form of mysticism" or "is 'religion' belief in the supernatural or is it belief in the Preternatural" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preternatural The preternatural or praeternatural is that which appears outside or beside (Latin præter) the natural. In contrast to the supernatural, preternatural phenomena are presumed to have rational explanations that are unknown Edited June 15, 2012 by granpa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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