Topic: Health and Religion - page 67. (Read 210900 times)

We are all going to die and end up in the same place no matter how much you want to believe we are special, I know it's hard to admit but it's the reality, there is nothing beyond death.

The big difference is that if the person is a Christian, his happiness goes on into eternity, while the atheist's happiness ends at death if not sooner.

People are cheerful comfortable conditions of life and lack of health problems, and not faith in God. Many atheists are much happier than religious people. It seems to me that sometimes religious people are unable to enjoy life because of the stupid prohibitions of their religion.

People are cheerful comfortable conditions of life and lack of health problems, and not faith in God. Many atheists are much happier than religious people. It seems to me that sometimes religious people are unable to enjoy life because of the stupid prohibitions of their religion.

What makes people cheerful? God makes them cheerful at the cheerful times. When they doubt God, then they become cheerless. If they trust God, they can be cheerful in many troubles. God makes them cheerful.

It's probably true that religion makes people happy because it gives you an alternative for death however, it's an illusion, you will eventually die and there will be no heaven, no after life, no purpose, no meaning just emptiness, that's life, nothing special, we really are just something that happened and there is no purpose. Knowing this reality is not going to do any good for anyone's happiness but regardless of feelings is still the truth.

Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security.

The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."

What is needed is a metamorphosis of thinking - a qualitative change in the form of thinking.

(Because modern thinking is intrinsically incoherent, pathological and anti-Christian: we really must change it. Modern Man has tried and tried to believe in Christianity while thinking like a nihilist - it doesn't work. The dead materialism of the thinking weakens, erodes, subverts the belief.)

But specifically why must we change thinking? Aside from its fundamentally anti-Christian structure and assumptions and implications; what are the reasons?

1. We have the urge and the need to change it

Positively, we want more and better than life can have with the way we currently think; negatively we are experiencing alienation and all the consequent nihilism (lack of meaning, purpose and relation).

I say 'we' have this urge and need... well I do - and that inner drive is sufficient for me; but not everybody does. Indeed, probably only few people have the urge and need, so...

2. Consequences

It is our divine destiny to move beyond our current way of thinking; this is the path of theosis by which we become more-god-like, more fully gods. We need to think the way God thinks - qualitatively.

And if we do not, then our fate will be one of corruption, decline away from the divine; and ultimately of deliberate, purposive, self-chosen degradation, god-rejection hence damnation.

(We may, or may not, experience greater suffering - but it is possible that our souls may become ruined, our spirits poisoned; even while our minds, bodies and feelings are pampered and indulged.)

3. Freedom

We want to be free - we want, that is, to be awake, conscious, self-aware and active in thought; and not to be unconscious, constrained and compelled, asleep, distracted, and passive in our thinking. The new mode of thinking is for those who really want real freedom - as a priority.  

4. We want to grow-up

At present our culture is wilfully stuck in adolescence, clinging to perpetual youth; or else we turn back from this horror and attempt (only ever with partial success, because it is doomed to fail) to return to the mode of being of childhood. But we may wish instead to grow-up, to become more-and-more intensely and frequently as-God-is in thinking: the spiritually adult way of thinking and being.

5. Living in thinking

We may wish to live in our thinking; in our newly active state of knowing; and not, as is currently usual, to live in our feelings or in our minds. We may wish to know directly and inwardly, rather than at secondhand via communications and media. We may wish to live personally, familially, uniquely and specifically; rather than generally, generically, abstractly, institutionally. And by judgement; rather than by committees, votes, procedures, consensus, coercion, laws, rules, principles, protocols...


What - exactly - should we do?

Do one thing - and that thing is Primary Thinking; or by another name, Final Participation (Owen Barfield); or by another name Pure Thinking, or the Imaginative Soul (Rudolf Steiner).

But what does this entail? How would thinking actually change? In short it is thinking of the real/ deep/ divine self - and it is thinking that we recognise as valid and unbounded (it is heady stuff this thinking!).

Many, many things would result - here collected under eight headings...

1. Metaphysics - a new set of fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of reality. This is the basis for taking primary thinking seriously - as valid; and it is also the consequence of primary thinking, seriously pursued.(A virtuous cycle.)

2. Healing - therapy for the chronic sickness of our soul, the split between self and environment - between experience and theory; which has afflicted Man ever since the commencement of modernity with its self-consciousness.

(The problem always was there, but as a child and in earlier eras were were not aware of it; we simply took experience for granted.)

Thinking has (so far) been our plague; but primary thinking can become the cure of its own disease.  

3. Meaning, purpose and relationship built-into our way of thinking (instead of being excluded by it).

4. A transformation, a beginning of evolution - the experience (and expectation of) a moving-towards the goal of metamorphosis, of a changed and better way of thinking and being.

5. Motivation. At present Western, modern Man is profoundly demotivated - he does not want to do anything very much, very far ahead or to make sacrifices for something better...

Primary thinking will be - by contrast - a joy, an enthusiasm, an excitement and an expectation; a recovery of deep and lasting motivation.

(So freedom and motivation both... that is good.)

6. Positivity, optimism. These are products of faith in the goodness of God as loving parent; and the trust that our actual lives are, therefore, adequate to fulfilling his deepest wishes for our eternal well-being. This we can know directly - unmediated - by primary thinking. With Christ's gift of repentance, we are then immune to everything life may throw at us; anything can be turned to good...

7. Agency and Freedom. Do we truly want to be free - free in our deepest thought? Live from our-selves, not coerced or passive but generative, creative? Pursuit of freedom, agency, creativity all become possible, indeed inevitable - in the deepest sense. In primary thinking, freedom is directly experienced - we can observe our freedom in-action.

8. Autonomy. Because our (true) self is divine, because God is within us, because we have direct knowledge of God; then we have a solid and certain basis for everything.

We are not dependent on the chances of institutions, society, books, preserved traditions or uncorrupted authorities... even when these are all lacking, we can survive and thrive - by trial/ error/ repentance we can develop, and move towards The Good.

We need not go it alone - we can and should accept genuine help when available and needed; but we are not dependent on the external.

A new survey of U.S. Jews offers a breakdown of the Jewish vote in favor of President Donald Trump and suggests those divisions — among the major streams of Judaism — remain fairly constant nine months later.

Though the majority of Jews did not vote for Trump, exit polls showed, those who identify as Orthodox were the most supportive of Trump on Election Day and continue to give him high marks.

Fifty-four percent of Orthodox Jews say they voted for Trump, according a new survey by the American Jewish Committee, or AJC. That was well above 24 percent of Conservative Jews, 10 percent of Reform Jews, 8 percent of Reconstructionist Jews, and 14 percent of respondents who identify themselves as “just Jewish.”

Conversely, Hillary Clinton garnered 13 percent of the Orthodox vote, 60 percent of Conservative Jewish vote, 78 percent of the Reform vote, and 89 percent of Reconstructionist vote.

The survey also shows that when it comes to politics, American Jews don’t differ much from the rest of the American public: Those who voted for Trump still support him

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That suggests a wide and growing polarization between Orthodox Jews who comprise a minority of the U.S. Jewish population and tend to skew conservative, and the far larger Reform and Conservative movements that comprise the majority of U.S. Jews and skew liberal.

Some 71% of those who identify as Orthodox approve of Trump, compared with 25% of Conservatives, 11% of Reform, 8% of Reconstructionists and 14% of those identifying as “just Jewish.”

The pervasive nihilism of modernity serves to block any move away from the prevalent insanity and despair; because our problems are at the level of basic (metaphysical) assumptions, yet any attempt to discover, examine and revise these assumptions is shipwrecked instantly by nihilism.

Nihilism therefore functions as the conservatism of radical inversion - it serves to conserve the metaphysical assumptions that underpin secular leftism.

Nihilism, by this meaning, is disbelief in reality; it is the feeling (rather than the conviction) that nothing is really-real, that everything is uncertain - that anything may be wrong.

The modern world view is based on the objectivity of perceptions (eg. in science) - yet we also know that perceptions are often wrong (seeing is not believing). Modern morality is based on the primacy of feelings - modern ethics are all versions of utilitarianism, that is of good being happiness and evil being suffering - yet we know that feelings are temporary, reversible, influenced by psychology, illness, drugs and propaganda.

In sum, in a world built on perceptions and feelings - we know that neither are reliable, nor solid, nor even known for sure. Hence the nihilism.

Modern nihilism is indeed a feeling, rather than a thought - because (pretty obviously) one cannot have a conviction that 'nihilism is true', because that is self-refuting; rather the strength and intractability of nihilism comes from its being a feeling we can't shake-off, rather than a proposition that we are logically-compelled to acknowledge.

Consequently, modern people are stuck in a situation in which their nihilism ruins their lives, but in which they do not take their nihilism seriously - because if they did they would behave very differently. They would not argue-in-favour of nihilism, they would not use nihilism as any kind of argument - they would not even attempt to communicate, they would not plan, they would not do anything which interfered with their current selfish gratification... and so on.

What happens is that people have a feeling of nihilism, which is unpleasant and usually takes the form of fear. So they address the situation at the level of feelings by some combination of displacing nihilism with other feelings and obliterating the feeling of nihilism.

For example by distracting with the mass media, by distracting with the pursuit of sex or status; or obliteration by intoxication with drugs or sleep or immersive media - and all the other characteristically modern evasions.

That modern nihilism is a matter of feeling rather than thinking is in fact a potential solution to the problem. If we take nihilism seriously, and seriously think about it - and keep thinking about it, we will be forced to make a decision between:

1. Accepting the truth of nihilism, and behaving accordingly.

2. Discovering that nihilism is not the bottom line of our conviction.

Of course, this is a dangerous tactic, since accepting the truth of nihilism may lead to suicide or a short-fast-track to death by short-term-self-indulgence (including harming or killing others, when doing so happens to gratify an individual).

But - given the rarity of consistent nihilism, it is likely that most people would recognise that their deepest and most pervasive feeling is not nihilism, but something opposed to nihilism.

In sum, individuals may discover their own bedrock convictions - their personal certainties, stronger than nihilism, upon which they can begin to build meaning purpose and genuine relationships.

Dangerous though it is; taking nihilism seriously, and rigorously thinking-it-though for ourselves, is probably the only way out from its trap.

It was for me.

I’ll argue that the error of your morality and ethics argument is that morality and ethics are always driven by economics and game theory, not vice versa. Religion works because it encodes game theory and economics, not because of some cardinal virtue of (non-relativistic) absolute truth.
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There is no such thing as absolute truth or absolutely true ethics, because our Universe is necessarily and definitionally unbounded entropic relativistic
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A particular orthodoxy works at a particular epoch because of the game theory and economics of that epoch.
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More bluntly, humans defect or cooperate according to the Nash equilibrium of the system in play.
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The economically relevant players have a risk due to unfair play. Think about in terms of a Nash equilibrium or Prisoner’s dilemma. When players know the possible outcomes and strategies, the equilibrium is more performant.
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Problem with the “don’t drink goats milk on Thursdays” and “universe loves you if you love the universe” sort of religious mind control, is it just doesn’t work well any more, because humans have access to information and so they can’t be fooled so easily
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Meta physics will always exist because I’ve explained elsewhere that our existence must necessarily be composed on unbounded unknowns (i.e. uncertainty aka entropy) else we do not exist other than as some preordained static game where all the outcomes were known at the birth of the universe. The static universe is impossible because it would necessitate that something exists (mathematically) “outside” the bound, but then by definition that is unbounded.
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Commensurately there’s no absolute truth of philosophical arguments such as this one, as they’re relativistic like everything else. There isn’t a winner. Contention in philosophy is part of our existence. It’s disingenuous however to not cite the opposing argument.

Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned. Each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. The prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to convict the pair on the principal charge.

They hope to get both sentenced to a year in prison on a lesser charge. Simultaneously, the prosecutors offer each prisoner a bargain. Each prisoner is given the opportunity either to: betray the other by testifying that the other committed the crime, or to cooperate with the other by remaining silent.

The offer is:
If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison

If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa)

If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge)

It is implied that the prisoners will have no opportunity to reward or punish their partner other than the prison sentences they get

In economics and game theory, a participant is considered to have superrationality (or renormalized rationality) if they have perfect rationality (and thus maximize their own utility) but assume that all other players are superrational too and that a superrational individual will always come up with the same strategy as any other superrational thinker when facing the same symmetrical problem. Applying this definition, a superrational player playing against a superrational opponent in a prisoner's dilemma will cooperate while a rationally self-interested player would defect.
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Superrationality is a form of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative.
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Superrationality is an alternative method of reasoning. First, it is assumed that the answer to a symmetric problem will be the same for all the superrational players. Thus the sameness is taken into account before knowing what the strategy will be.
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(In the prisoners dilemma) two superrational players will both cooperate, since this answer maximizes their payoff.
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Note that a superrational player playing against a game-theoretic rational player will defect, since the strategy only assumes that superrational players will agree.

The existence of God is a necessary prerequisite for the existence of the universe. The existence of the universe is sufficient proof of the existence of God.
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God is a unity. He is a single, whole, complete indivisible entity. He cannot be divided into parts or described by attributes. Any attempt to ascribe attributes to God is merely man's imperfect attempt to understand the infinite.
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God transcends time. He has no beginning and no end.

I do not see any connection between religion and health. Believers are as sick as atheists.
But sometimes atheists begin to pray to recover from a serious illness. They are helped by the belief that God loves them. It's just self-hypnosis

. They are helped by the belief that God loves them. It's just self-hypnosis

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But sometimes without exception atheists begin to pray see a doctor to recover from a serious illness. They are helped by the belief fact that God loves modern science and medicine will help them. It's just self-hypnosis being rational.

One would think that fairly solid evidence of a massive and population wide toxic exposure would spark a public outcry in a robust and viable society.

Sperm Counts Have Plummeted Among Western Men, Scientists Confirm

https://www.google.com/amp/gizmodo.com/sperm-counts-are-declining-among-western-men-scientist-1797231662/amp