IDEAS

choosing mate is not ....

...a random search caused it's based on a conscious choice. It is known that since the dawn of intelligence "evolution" has been hijacked by technology etc.

Some people believe in "god of gaps"! They invoke the god whenever they can not find an explanation. That is a refuted approach in history of human knowledge. That is a wrong approach.

I said abortion is a complex issue. I don't have an easy solution for it. I think however the solution whatever may be has to come out of reason and experience of humanity rather that some old book written thousands of years ago. I personally judge it case by case instead of a blank statement.

Simple concepts create complex results...

Dear Anon1,

Thank you for responding, my point is that; it is that
simple! Every decision that we make is
based on a series of Yes and No answers…

Please tell us what your take is on the “Abortion
Issue”? Don’t you think that it is
wrong?

I mean if it is life threatening or caused by rape or some
other event that would cause a “worse consequence” then maybe it is ok? However, if it is contemplated because of
carelessness or laziness then would it be ok to consider it as an option?

Like I said before, we are always reaching to expand our
knowledge and in this eternal quest we reach a point and then we can not continue
any further! We reach that limit every
day. What happens beyond our limits of
knowledge is not knowledge it is unknown.
This unknown could be summed up as God, the Supernatural being, the
Creator, etc…I do agree that natural section has no foresight; however I don’t
think that it is just a random search!
Do you really think that choosing a mate is a “random search”?

Not so simple!

To BeeTaarof

Knowing what's good and bad is not always that simple. What do you think the "Abortion" right fight has been for last god knows how many years?

Big Bang is not a substitute for god. Natural selection has no foresight. It's a random search!

How do you choose a mate?

Are we are not always choosing a mate based on a series of
“Natural Selection” criteria? I mean,
except for completely pre-arranged marriages, there are some factors that make
us pick this person in lieu of that person as a partner in procreation of this Greater
Family. Even in prearranged cases it is usually
the family that makes a decision based on some social, economical &
biological factors.

What are the factors?
My guess is that from the point of view of the female side, Economic
status or wealth is a major factor, how well the nest is built, how big is it
and can it be maintained in tough times?

From a man’s point of view, the concern would be can she
produce a healthy child and can she raise the child? Hence men equate a desirable woman with the
size of the hips and breasts! Beauty is
truly in the eyes of the beholder.

However, that is all about evolution and the original
article is about religion. My
understanding is that as Humanity evolved and we became self conscious of our
existence then we questioned our origins and concluded that we need a Creator,
a Being that is beyond our understanding and reason. That is the basic idea! The rest is semantics! God, Allah, Big Bang, Singularity…as they say
it has many names.

My preference is to accept this idea as a Mystery that we
can only glance at through well developed methods of meditation and
contemplation such as Yoga and Vipassanā.

Bottom line is that we don’t need religion to know what is
right and what is wrong! Deep down,
everyone knows when they are doing the wrong act, don’t you?

Thanks Mehdi

Did you mean these ones:
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_Trial

Docs

My refernece is this booK which I do not have access to right now:

//www.amazon.com/Psychiatrists-Men-Behind-Hit...

Hope it helps.

Memes

I see nothing wrong with memes that preserve a people`s identity and historical understanding of itself. I have already explained what `chosen people` actually means in Judaism, and there is nothing racist about it. Messiah in Judaism is also a limited side concept, he is an earthly king who brings back the golden age of king David, it is embellished with nice thoughts during the years, but there are not violent. Quite the contrary, in Judaism the messiah is equated with peace and a ceasing of war. You find that a harmful meme? The promised land is a people`s nationalism, a love that has sustained its identity. Jews have been subject to worst kinds of violence because they were stubborn to hold to their identity and ideals, but you can`t blame the ideals for it. rather the ignorance and bias, he hatred and envy of those who hated these ideals and felt challenged and insecure by them.

Mehdi, my dear, basically you are trying to say you didn`t understand what I said. You could have just asked, instead of giving us a lecture on facts and theories. Your lecture was unfortunately also not so correct: You see, facts are just the beginning of any investigation for the truth behind them, not a replacement for it... and what you keep insisting on are not facts, but your fixed ideas about the way the world should have been. In the search for truth behind the facts, there is nothing but theories. Some do makes sense, are constantly criticized, challenged and improved. The sum total of such theories, and the constant critical questioning of them is called science. Then there are others which might seem like they make sense, but are superficial and will fail in closer scrutiny. They are not consistent with other fields and well-thought-of theories of the first kind, but make some people feel good, so they keep insisting on them as facts. These are usually called dogmas. You can keep insisting on what you like to say, and keep repeating it while bumping your foot on the ground. It seems to make you all warm and cosy, and secure in your place. Good for you. Fortunately there is no Inquisition any more, and you are not one of its Cardinals. :-) So you can keep feeling nice and warm, and secure in having all the facts, while the rest of us will dive deeper in what actually is going on out there.
I know about eugenics, but that is only a cover for older biases. I asked you to give us the names of those many scientists you specifically mentioned were acquitted in Nuremberg and were hired in the West afterwards, not about evidences of eugenics. Would you mind substantiating your alleged facts?

Zion jaan

First of all, you are telling us THEORIES. I am not saying that tthese are not theories. I am saying these are not scientific facts.

Secondly, why do you feel the need to use meaningless words that don't have a meaning and act like a mullah using Arabic words to make it look like he knows something others don't? Can you even yourself understand what you are saying? I am very familiar with the THEORY that the way we perceive is that the light for example hits the eye and signal is sent to the brain and then there is a screen or something that recognizes something was seen. Then you ask, well, wait a minute, it gets to the brain then how do I see it? They say, well, oh yeah, there is another screen in front of the first screen that interprest. OK, but who is looking at the second screen? Well, there is a third one... I guess your "recursive algorithm" is a fancy phrase to mean that the individual eventually gives up asking the question :) You can have billions of "formal logic" and all kinds of gadgets calculating and crunching numbers, etc but at the very end when the piece of paper prints out, someone looks at it and goes, "ah!" The awareness unit is not a physical object. You cannot locate it in the physical universe. So the search for the "cognitive" portion of the brain will go nowhere. They are wasting time.

You may be imagining that you as the "I" or "our" exist, but I am very certain that I exist and I am not imagining that. My body's neurons can have as many loops as they want but I am not my neurons. I am always standing outside and perceiving them!

For the evidence you are looking for do a bit of Googling. You'll find it. Do a bit of Googling on eugenics and where it came from and its history up to now. You'll be a bit surprised how alive it still is.

To Mehdi

      My friend,

   What you are trying to defend is what's call Dualism. Two separate entity, body and soul. Ofocurse abrahamic religions advocate that so was Descarte. But science can not support that thesis.

What you are defending is called "folk psychology". It seem intutive but it may be dead wrong. I don't claim to have all the answers but so should you. For centuries people believed Sun goes around the Earth because it seemd so natural. The separation of soul and body may seem to be natural too but that does not mean it's correct.

We have to get used to this. If you don't know the answer to a problem you can not take solace in a wrong answer.

As for the issue of morality check the article by Steven Pinker in NYTIMES. I have it posted prior to this on my blogs!

Best... 

Zion is.....

obviously an intelligent, educated person.
I wonder what he has to say about
"coming of Messiah", "chosen people" and "god given land" that has caused lots of misery for so long for so many including Jews themselves!

Do you believe that these are also "memes"
That are harmful!

Analogy

The analogy you have established between religions and dinosaurs is not a very good one. Memes are analogous to genes, dinosaurs are organism, and are themselves niches and environments for genes. A better analogy is between religions and viruses. It also clarifies many issues you mentioned. Meteorites do not destroy viruses. More importantly, not all viruses are harmful, and they definitely do not create an impasse. Quite the contrary, just as the cell, and thus life itself, developed from viruses, so too cultures did indeed develop out of religions and religious thoughts. In many respects the cultural mutations that opened up new routes had a religious core to them. The problem with religions is not that they are impasses or prevent growth, it is that they can, and do, mutate into harmful deadly varieties that cause disease and can ultimately be fatal. The solution, therefore, is not to destroy all viruses, but only the harmful types.

Mehdi, Mehdi, Mehdi...:-). It is perfectly possible for a system like the brain, or a general neural network, to develop an imperfect simplified embodiment, and thus understanding, of itself as part of itself. Anyone with knowledge of recursive algorithms can easily understand this. There are also formal logic statements that can refer to themselves. It of course has to be an imperfect one, and it is. We do not know ourselves fully and we have subconscious. Terms like `I` or `our` are just the output of complex self-referring neural loops. It is not really correct to say there is no soul, but it is not correct to say there is a need for an independent entity like the soul either. The soul is an emergent phenomenon from a complex substructure of neural activities.

It is nonsense to blame Darwin or any scientific idea for the Holocaust. Holocaust can be traced back to religious and superstitious bias from antiquity. It did use scientific-looking jargon, like eugenics, to present itself as something modern, but its roots were, just like today`s islamic anti-semitism, religious in nature. Now instead of such rants, why don`t you provide the names of those `scientists` you claimed were freed in Nuremberg trials, and who were hired in the West? The evidence?

Religion ?

I absolutely agree with you disenchanted I believe the institution of religion is a meme that has mutated into a monster. This monster is used by thousands to spill blood, meanwhile impending basic advances in technology and medicine such as stem cell research. Great work really enjoyed it.

Where do I begin?

Your article is filled with so much falsehood that I don't know where to start! So, I mention the worst. Neuroscience possibly proving that there is no soul is really funny, more than anything. Some chap named Wilhelm Wundt, a professor in Leipzig, Germany claimed sometime in late 1800 that he had conclusively proved that humans have no soul. He is recognized today as the father of psychology. Well, he simply lied. He never proved this false theory. But the governments at the times loved the idea. A mixture of that falsehood with miss-interpretations of Darwin's work, along with other factors, gave birth or power to Materialism and eventually espoused the idea of racial purity (eugenics) and caused the Holocaust and other sad events in history. The idea that humans are just blocks of brick and morality is meaningless (wink, wink, whoever kills more and takes over the poower is the winner) is just absurd. Concentration camps were in fact run by psychiatrists and a lot of exterminations were conducted as "science." Interestingly, almost all these criminals were freed by the Nuremberg court with the excuse that they were doctors doing their jobs. Most of them moved to the US and brought their dangerous ideas with them.

Mr. Wundt the idiot probably changed the course of psychology completely and even mankind's thinking. A lot of damaging "philosophies" were developed based on that idea. His falsehood has been deeply implanted into today's society. It is responsible for a lot of murders, school shootings, etc. That is what happens when you convince people that they are nothing - just molecules - so why be moral?

Not all parts of religions are bad. Just like science or anything else for that matter. Anything could be perverted and abused - and we can definitely see that with Wundt's work, which is glorified even today! The idea that we don't exist - only our brain exist. What does that even mean? If we don't exist, how can we say "our" brain? Aren't we looking at our brain from outside of it and then saying we are that? So stupid. But apparently all these "scientists" have missed that simple point!

very intersting concept!

Dear Disenchanted, the asteroid with religions name on it is the extreme ,fanatic IRI regime!!!But this time this asteroid will only momentarily stop the relation between masses and religion and after the big explosion, we will have moderate weather and lush and green pastures.

It is unfortunate that people blame religion for the act of Fanatics(in any religion),but this time " fanaticism" will leave us for good.

Regards,

Tahirih