The appeal of this place

[Jim Necroslaughter]

I'll never understand how people can analyze things this much.

You think that's serious analysis? Come on man, they didn't sit down and write a dissertation, believe it or not for some people expansive, in-depth ideas fly off the tops of their heads. It takes practice.

Let me put it this way, it always mystifies me when people try to "figure out" other people online.  Umbrage says take the forum for what it is, but he should heed his own advice.  I would hate to be so hyper-aware, seeing aspies and assholes everywhere I go.  Trying to figure out whether or not you "like" someone on the forum is a waste of time.

I'm surprised how little real life action the employees that manage the forum or ANUS actually take. I don't really expect the casual poster to do anything because clearly they are just here to masturbate.

But how in the world would you know what anybody on this forum does in their real life?

[I disagree]

I'm surprised how little real life action the employees that manage the forum or ANUS actually take. I don't really expect the casual poster to do anything because clearly they are just here to masturbate.

But how in the world would you know what anybody on this forum does in their real life?

If there were any sort of real life organization and actions reflective of this site, it would inevitably be shared here, wouldn't it? As long as I've been perusing these parts, very little, if any, ANUS promoting non-web related action has been mentioned or called for.

[fallot]

Let me put it this way, it always mystifies me when people try to "figure out" other people online.  Umbrage says take the forum for what it is, but he should heed his own advice.  I would hate to be so hyper-aware, seeing aspies and assholes everywhere I go.  Trying to figure out whether or not you "like" someone on the forum is a waste of time.

While I have to agree with you on some level, overall I think it's a positive quality to see things through in depth (positive i.e. reflecting objective reality or an attempt to). It's what you then choose to do with this realization is where other behaviour steps in. I would cherish such an awareness. I don't think these two separate things should be melded with each other, it is a sort of indictment by association. Isn't your essential message "lighten up" and not "don't overanalyze"?

[Conservationist]

How would you know what people in this forum do in real life?

That's a really good question...

As to why I like this place, it's because you can say anything, if you say it in a logical way.

Also no wimpy social networking bullshit, no band of the week, and no pretending to like crap because your internet friends got demo #124 out of 125.2 and it's kvlt

[~Sidereal]

The goal is not to linger on the ANUS forums and flog a dead horse, repeat mantra and engage in endless obscure debates, although the latter can be interesting, education and stimulating sometimes, like any form of socialising. The goal is to engage in society. I'm doing post-graduate study on contemporary naturalistic explanations of religious belief and the epistemological implications for justified belief in a personal God which arise from 'reducing' the origin of religious belief to evolutionary/psychological factors. This involoves engaging with an academic community, conferences, and study. To me this is a humble example of active nihilism, at least my definition of it. Otherwise i like to play psychedelic prog in band.

[fallot]

I'm doing post-graduate study on contemporary naturalistic explanations of religious belief and the epistemological implications for justified belief in a personal God which arise from 'reducing' the origin of religious belief to evolutionary/psychological factors.

I wonder where such line of inquiry ends. What is the goal? What will you prove? If you find evidence that such beliefs (essentially: the "morality" of the universe, the morality of an objective observer that encompasses the universe, the "real" point of view; religion.) hold up our existence... isn't that just "God" again? It would not be a naturalistic explanation for religion, but one for a God, in my view. At least that is the inference, obviously the process can be nothing but empirical.

http://www.forestpoetry.com/2010/belief-in-god/

[indjaseemun]

The appeal of the place is no avatars image, no socializing, only discussion. That's it, I don't get all the discussion about the forum. It's not that important. I'm frustrated because this is a metal forum and not an ANUS forum announced in the front page of the website.

If it was the official anus forum as in the past, it would be more important to maintain quality as it would be announced in the main website. I think many people don't even know this forum exists, the people who enter anus.com but are not interested in metal.

[~Sidereal]

I'm doing post-graduate study on contemporary naturalistic explanations of religious belief and the epistemological implications for justified belief in a personal God which arise from 'reducing' the origin of religious belief to evolutionary/psychological factors.

I wonder where such line of inquiry ends. What is the goal? What will you prove? If you find evidence that such beliefs (essentially: the "morality" of the universe, the morality of an objective observer that encompasses the universe, the "real" point of view; religion.) hold up our existence... isn't that just "God" again? It would not be a naturalistic explanation for religion, but one for a God, in my view. At least that is the inference, obviously the process can be nothing but empirical.

http://www.forestpoetry.com/2010/belief-in-god/

The goal is to sort perception from reality.

If we discover that human beings have an innate perception of a 'morality of the universe', of a 'real' point of view, for adaptive reasons - maybe it increased group cooperation and thus individual genetic fitness as a result, (is this what you mean??), that would not be a naturalistic explanation for some god! It would be a naturalistic genealogy of the BELIEF in god!

Contemporary naturalistic explanations of religion are much more sophisticated than 'just-so' adaptionist stories, however. According to the most interesting explanations, based on independent research in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology which theorise that the human mind/brain is a 'swiss army knife' kind of device which comes with various pre-programmed cognitive modules which solved adaptive problems in the past, religious belief is an accidental by-product of our cognitive makeup. It rides piggy-back on mundane 'non-religiou's cognitive adaptations.

www.cog.jhu.edu/courses/112/readings/Boyer.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Explained-Pascal-Boyer/dp/0465006965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323220068&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Anyone-Believe-Cognitive-Science-Religion/dp/0759106673/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323220129&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Trust-Evolutionary-Landscape-Evolution/dp/0195178033/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323220109&sr=1-1

As far as your forest poetry goes, to equate people trying to get out of the ghetto of their evolved minds (sorting perception from reality, to find 'truth') as searching for God, is sophistry and frankly bullshit. It's playing with definitions. God means a transcendent BEING for most western people, outside of the physical universe. A transcendent being is not what i'm trying to get closer to when i think of the different between pereception and reality, unless by 'transcendent being' you mean the physical/quantum universe (but then it's not necessarily transcendent, is it).  If you're a deist, then fine. But it's still inviting confusion to equate reality with the lingustic label 'God'.

And screw metaphysics. It's largely language games for autistic people.

[Conservationist]

The same impulse that makes us seek any bigger explanation is what drives the question of religion, namely, what is the relationship between consciousness and reality? Do we create it, does it create us... do we survive it? What and who are we? How did it all start?

We know nothing, and I mean nothing, about the cosmos in which we exist. All of our theories presuppose a matter/energy division already existing before the whole thing starts, even in nascent form. People often turn to religion, including the supernatural/metaphysics, in order to explain this.

To me, there's an additional question: religious people seem happier and more purposeful, and intensely religious societies seem to "thrive upward" more (unless they pick a truly backward religion, or are of lower average IQ, and those two go hand-in-hand). Why not religion? It seems to work. It could be true. It would be nice if it were true. Then the only question is how to discipline religion so it does not engender destructive egoism and thus, liberalism, the killer of societies.

[Jim Necroslaughter]

Let me put it this way, it always mystifies me when people try to "figure out" other people online.  Umbrage says take the forum for what it is, but he should heed his own advice.  I would hate to be so hyper-aware, seeing aspies and assholes everywhere I go.  Trying to figure out whether or not you "like" someone on the forum is a waste of time.

While I have to agree with you on some level, overall I think it's a positive quality to see things through in depth (positive i.e. reflecting objective reality or an attempt to). It's what you then choose to do with this realization is where other behaviour steps in. I would cherish such an awareness. I don't think these two separate things should be melded with each other, it is a sort of indictment by association. Isn't your essential message "lighten up" and not "don't overanalyze"?

True.  The awareness is a good thing.  So what are we going to do with the awareness?  I, for one, have never understood the impulse to constantly expose.  There was a thread a few weeks ago, and someone replied, "it's aspergy threads like these that make people stop coming here."  For the life of me, I could not figure out what he was talking about, and I thought to myself, even if this is an "aspergy thread," it must suck to get pissed off over threads at DLA.  It's people that are constantly trying to expose everyone and everything that actually dampens the mood.  I don't care about making other people feel bad, and I don't care about conflict, but I've also never been impressed by stating the obvious.  Personally, I usually have a lot of fun when I come here, and I like people who treat things like a game or a duel, not like a problem that needs to be "figured out" or exposed once and for all.  A while ago it was suggested that we act like we're at a cocktail party.  Well let's start doing it.  It's always in bad taste to state the obvious at a cocktail party.  If a nerd or aspie came up to me at a cocktail party I would indulge him for a while and shoot the shit, then politely excuse myself.  No skin off my back.

[~Sidereal]

The same impulse that makes us seek any bigger explanation is what drives the question of religion, namely, what is the relationship between consciousness and reality? Do we create it, does it create us... do we survive it? What and who are we? How did it all start?

We know nothing, and I mean nothing, about the cosmos in which we exist. All of our theories presuppose a matter/energy division already existing before the whole thing starts, even in nascent form. People often turn to religion, including the supernatural/metaphysics, in order to explain this.

This sort of speculative explanation for religion has zero scientific currency these days. Because of this fact: Most human religion is NOT concerned with explaining things in the sense of fullfilling some human need for complete knowledge. Philosophical explorations of religion might introduce this aspect in, but this is secondary. Only a tiny amount of the world's religions (from an anthropological perspective) are concerned with what happens after death, how the material world came into being, etc. Think of all the tribal religions around which are simply concerned with dead ancestors or some spirits who walking around the village. They have no metaphysical bent at all. Additionally, religion essentially raises as many questions as it answers. Even in the western tradition the greek, nordic afterlives, for instance, are more mysterious than anxiety alleviating.

And, i'm sorry to say, it has no 'reductive' sway. What cognitive/psychological basis underlies it?

Practically all intuitive human religion does, however, display a concern with supernatural agents. And we have independent empirical evidence for the existence of a collection of sepcies-universal cognitive adaptations which happen to deal with agents! These cognitive 'modules' operate unconsciously and are (a) oversensitive for good adaptive reasons to detecting agency in the environment (god, that spirit did it), (b) automatically make inferences about the mental states of agents (i.e. theory of mind) - (god, that spirit did it, because he is angry, vengefull....), (c) give us intuitive 'rules' of social exchange (the gods did it because my sacrifice < the benefits god is giving the community), (d) pick up on cheating behaviours (Zeus did it because we stole and ate some sheep he likes), and (e) give us an intuitive sense that some things are 'good' and 'bad' objectively (God says x is good, i have an ituitive sense that x is good, unconditionally, so this makes sense - god fills the explanatory gap). All these cognitive modules constitute the selection pressures which favour religious information reaching a wider and longer lasting level of distribution than other information in the competition between different units of informaiton in culture. This is similar to the mimetic theory, but is more rooted to biological evolution in the form of the selection pressures.

[§Transcix]

To me, there's an additional question: religious people seem happier and more purposeful, and intensely religious societies seem to "thrive upward" more (unless they pick a truly backward religion, or are of lower average IQ, and those two go hand-in-hand). Why not religion? It seems to work. It could be true. It would be nice if it were true. Then the only question is how to discipline religion so it does not engender destructive egoism and thus, liberalism, the killer of societies.

I think it would be impossible to appropriate mainstream religion in any form, leave its perverse and insane doctrines aside, and use it to increase happiness. It makes people happy by numbing their mind's questions, placating them with doctrine and false answers. For all its "faith" it offers specific and obviously wrong answers as a major part of its attraction, the faith is then used to make these wrong answers believable (by having faith in them). Also I should add, one of these wrong answers is that "god works in mysterious ways" or that similarly put otherwise we can't know everything and we shouldn't fret about it. Not only does it insist on the answers, it insists on what the questions are. Throughout humanity, what aspect could be more atrocious than that of religion?

[Note that I make a distinction between religion and spirituality, though most modern mainstream spirituality I would identify just as religion in disguise.]

[fallot]

A reply from religion Transcix: What you desire then, is a natural religion (strictly speaking, a "religion" that equals objective reality i.e. "nature"). However, I ask how that is to be actualized, How do you believe in something, have it inherent, and yet approach it solely from reason? The only answer can be gaining complete empirical knowledge. Yet, will you wait for scientific breakthrough for just basic order? Establish the order somehow. Can't just guess and wonder and wait. If pure empiricism is too slow, is unactionable, then it is also unrealistic.

What you wish to do, is resolve reason and human nature. This is the definition of transcendance. It is something only possible with either insane technological breakthrough (Kurzweil, who is pretty silly but at least consistent), or with the gradual change I mentioned. Is this an acceptable compromise? Are you willing to do this? I am not, but I accept that my reasons for it are partially faith based. Yet how is it resolved from your end?

[§Transcix]

A reply from religion Transcix: What you desire then, is a natural religion (strictly speaking, a "religion" that equals objective reality i.e. "nature"). However, I ask how that is to be actualized, How do you believe in something, have it inherent, and yet approach it solely from reason? The only answer can be gaining complete empirical knowledge. Yet, will you wait for scientific breakthrough for just basic order? Establish the order somehow. Can't just guess and wonder and wait. If pure empiricism is too slow, is unactionable, then it is also unrealistic.

What you wish to do, is resolve reason and human nature. This is the definition of transcendance. It is something only possible with either insane technological breakthrough (Kurzweil, who is pretty silly but at least consistent), or with the gradual change I mentioned. Is this an acceptable compromise? Are you willing to do this? I am not, but I accept that my reasons for it are partially faith based. Yet how is it resolved from your end?

That nothing can be known for certain would itself be a certainty, as much as married bachelors cannot exist. A priori knowledge plays an important role. Time must have had a beginning, since causal continuity can only flow in one direction. Either there is a beginning, or there is not, and if there is not that means it must be in constant movement, constant regression backwards, causality moving both forwards and backwards, in which case everything would be total time paradox which is impossible. Therefore if reality is a series of dominoes what toppled the first domino? It must have arisen from nothing because any prior-existing definition must in turn have arisen, so ultimately there was nothing before all arising. I conclude that the original nothing is the Emptiness of many Eastern spiritualities, and it manifested into existence by realizing more fully its own emptiness - nothing was created, it became *more* empty. This coincides with the practical applications and experiences of spirituality regarding cultivation of inner stillness and silence. If I were only to operate from my heart or from what brings me happiness (long-term happiness not instant gratification) such experiential experimentation would also bring me to this conclusion of inner stillness. As for my assurances as to my own identity and subjectivity, much is resolved by examining and untangling inner contradictions; if I harbour various conflicting self-concepts then indeed I do not truly exist. Part of it is not finding absolute answers to the question of if existence is real, it's attaining an awareness whereby you realize the question is false; to promote this view I often deconstruct others' false concepts of self and reality, so that they may more quickly fall down that slippery slope towards existential dilemma, the proverbial abyss, so that without false concepts obstructing their view at least they will be thrust into a time of reckoning where at least they have a chance of realizing true awareness. Saying what I believe in a more constructive way I find very difficult due to numerous pigeonholes, stereotypes and connotations associated with the terms and concepts involved in the marketplace of ideas. A final note, some emptiness types of Eastern spirituality are faith based, neglecting a priori knowledge - I believe it is an OK path but not a complete path.