Morality

[dusken]

So your assuming where we began we had an explanation of morality..?? boy.. that is a very good explanation of your theory..

You are an idiot. The point is that he has an opinion regarding the origin of morality that differs from mine. You should stop all of your communications with people. It would be better that way.

[Anonymouse]

I just did, phuck. Read it again. Wait, you probably did not read it the first time; you like sitting around and waiting for everyone else to do the talking. Just make sure you do not start shaking your pompoms prematurely.

Well, it is about time there is talk of morality; the forum seemed incomplete without it. And it was instigated by none other than the forumer who can only write about two subjects and two subjects alone. Thank you for your singular and underived, sentimental rant.

"Morality" is a misleading word that means nothing, just like "God" means nothing. You think that civilization cannot exist without God and his alleged morality but you are taking such liberty because most civilization without religion preceded historical record. People are driven by instinct and, at a great scale, certain instincts are more dominant, like not killing and not stealing. Such instincts, born from natural selection and there to guarantee the success of a pack animal, is what you are confusing with morality. Wolves' social operation is much like that of humans and they would sooner eat God than walk behind him.

Where does that leave us? Right where we began because we base our ideas on premises of which we will not let go and will not successfully argue for. I chose to believe in agnosticism because it makes sense and you chose to believe in something illogical which has undergone violently forceful acts of justification after its conception as a "truth." So crawl back in to church and just accept that you believe because you want to.

Nothing here is "instigated" my misguided and perturbed atheist who himself can write nothing more than two subjects, namely what satanism is and movie reviews. Hollowed atheists can do nothing but accuse believers of believing yet they themselves are believing in another thing, that of evolution, of naturalism, of the material world. While the dusken attributes morality to nothing but material impulses and "natural selection" ( a vague and refuted concept ), it matters not what we attribute it to, whether God or evolution, but the fact that morality is universal. I will not bother resorting to atheist mentality here for I would be no better than the dusken, but, even though I know the dusken will not bother reading it and perhaps go into his classic case of saying something like "Carl Jung is an idiot", I will quote Carl Jung from Man and His Symbols who has summarized this better than anyone I know or have read:

It is true, however, that in recent times civilized man has acquired a certain amount of will power, which he can apply where he pleases. He has learned to do his work efficiently without having to recourse to chanting and drumming to hypnotize him into the state of doing. He can even dispense with a daily prayer for divine aid. He can carry out what he proposes to do, and he can apparently translate his ideas into action without a hitch, whereas the primitive seems to be hampered at each step by fears, superstitions, and other unseen obstacles to action. The motto "Where there's a will there's a way" is the superstition of modern man.

Yet in order to sustain his creed, contemporary man pays the price in a remarkable lack of introspection. He is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by "powers" that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food - and above all, a large array of neuroses...

The sad truth is that mans real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.

It was precisely this conflict within man that led early Christians to expect and hope for an early end to this world, or the Buddhists to reject all earthly desires and aspirations. These basic answers would be frankly suicidal if they were not linked up with peculiar mental and moral ideas and practices that constitute the bulk of both religions and that, to a certain extent, modify their radical denial of the world.

I stress this point because, in our time, there are millions of people who have lost faith in any kind of religion. Such people do not understand their religion any longer. While life runs smoothly without religion, the loss remains as good as unnoticed. But when suffering comes, it is another matter. That is when people begin to seek a way out and to reflect about the meaning of life and its bewildering and painful experiences.

The specter of approaching death often gives a powerful incentive to such thoughts. From time immemorial, men have had ideas about a Supreme Being ( one or several ) and about the Land of the Hereafter. Only today do they think they can do without such ideas.

Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with a radiotelescope or establish ( for certain ) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are "not true". I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation.

Modern man may assert that he can dispense with them and he may bolster his opinion by insisting that there is no scientific evidence of their truth. Or he may even regret the loss of his convinctions. But since we are dealing with invisible and unknowable things ( for God is beyond human understanding, and there is no means of proving immortality), why should we bother about evidence? Even if we did not know by reason our need for salt in our food, we should nonetheless profit from its use. We might argue that the use of salt is a mere illusion of taste or a superstition; but it would still contribute to our well-being. Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that would prove helpful in crises and would give meaning to our existence?

And how do we know that such ideas are not true? Many people would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are probably illusions. What they fail to realize is that the denial is as impossible to "prove" as the assertion of religious belief. We are entirely free to choose which point of view we take; it will in any case be an arbitrary decision.

There is however, a strong empirical reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It is that they are known to be useful. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense; he is crushed when, on top of all his misfortunes, he has to admit that is taking part in a "tale told by an idiot".

It is the role of religious symbols to give a meaning to the life of man. The Pueblo Indians believe that they are the sons of Father Sun, and this belief endows their life with a perspective ( and a goal ) that goes far beyond their limited existence. It gives them ample space for the unfolding of personality and permits them a full life as complete persons. Their plight is infinitely more satisfactory than that of a man in our own civilization who knows that he is (and will remain) nothing more than an underdog with no inner meaning to his life.

A sense of wider meaning to ones existence is what raises a man beyond mere getting and spending. If he lacks this sense, he is lost and miserable. Had St. Paul been convinced taht he was nothing more than a wandering weaver of carpets, he certainly would not have been the man he was. His real and meaningful life lay in the inner certainty that he was the messenger of the Lord. One may accuse him of suffering from megalomania, but this opinions pales before the testimony of history and the judgement of subsequent generations. The myth that took possession of him made him something greater than a mere craftsman...

Even a scientist is a human being. So it is natural for him, like others, to hate the things he cannot explain. It is a common illusion to believe that what we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself...

Modern man does not understand how much his "rationalism" (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic "underworld". He has freed himself from "superstition" (or so he believes), but in the process he has loast his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for his break up in the world wide disorientation and dissociation.

Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilization. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organization disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. But we have never really understood what we have lost, for our spiritual leaders unfortunately were more interested in protecting their institutions than in understanding the mystery that symbols present. In my opinion, faith does not exclude thought (which is mans strongest weapon), but unfortunately many believers seem to be so afraid of science ( and incidentally of psychology) that they turn a blind eye to the numinous psychic powers that forever control man's fate. We have stripped all things of their mystery and numinosity; nothing is holy any longer.

Today, for instance, we talk of "matter". We describe its physical properties. We conduct laboratory experiments to demonstrate some of its aspects. But the word "matter" remains a dry, inhuman, and purely intellectual concept without any psychic significance for us. How different was the former image of matter - the Great Mother - that could encompass and express the profound emotional meaning of Mother Earth. In the same way, what was the spirit is not identified with intellect and thsu ceases to be the Father of All. It has degenerated to the limited ego thoughts of man; the immense emotional energy expressed in the image of "our Father" vanishes into the sand of an intellectual desert...

As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional "unconscious identity" with natural phenomena...

There are no longer any gods whom we can invoke to help us. The great religions of the world suffer from increased anemia, because the helpful numina have fled from the woods, rivers, and mountains, and from animals, and the god-men have disappeared underground into the unconscious. There we fool ourselves that they lead an ignominious existence among the relics of our past. Our present lives are dominated by the goddess Reason, who is our greatest and most tragic illusion. By the aid of reason, so we assure ourselves, we have "conquered nature".

But this is a mere slogan, for the so-called conquest of nature overwhelms us with the natural fact of overpopulation and adds to our troubles by our psychological incapacity to make necessary political arrangements. It remains quite natural for men to quarrel and to struggle for superiority over one another. How then have we "conquered nature"?

As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who wil experience it and carry it through. The change must indeed begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look around and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself. But since nobody seems to know what to do, it might be worth while for each of us to ask himself whether by chance his or her unconscious may know something that will help us. Certainly the conscious mind seems unable to do anything useful in this respect. Man today is painfully aware of the fact taht neither his great religions nor his various philosophies seem to provide him with those powerful animating ideas that would give him the security he needs in face of the present condition of the world.

I know what Buddhists would say: Things would go right if people would only follow the "noble eightfol path" of the Dharma (doctrine, law) and had true insight into the Self. The Christian tells us that if only people had faith in God, we should have a better world. The rationalist insists that if people were intelligent and reasonable, all our problems would be manageable. The trouble is that none of them manages to solve these problems himself.

Christians often ask why God does not speak to them, as he is believed to have done in former days. When I hear such questions, it always makes me think o fthe rabbi who was asked how it could be that God often showed himself to people in the olden days while nowadays nobody ever sees him, The rabbie replied: "Nowadays there is no longer anbody who can bow low enough".

This answer hits the nail on the head. We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and vision... But the general undervaluation of the human soul is so great that neither the great religions nor the philosophies nor scientific rationalism have been willing to look at it twice.

[loseyourname]

Stop fighting, dusken and Gevo.

[Anonymouse]

It's about time this thread picked up some steam.

[dusken]

Nothing here is "instigated" my misguided and perturbed atheist who himself can write nothing more than two subjects, namely what satanism is and movie reviews. Hollowed atheists can do nothing but accuse believers of believing yet they themselves are believing in another thing, that of evolution, of naturalism, of the material world. While the dusken attributes morality to nothing but material impulses and "natural selection" ( a vague and refuted concept ), it matters not what we attribute it to, whether God or evolution, but the fact that morality is universal. I will not bother resorting to atheist mentality here for I would be no better than the dusken, but, even though I know the dusken will not bother reading it and perhaps go into his classic case of saying something like "Carl Jung is an idiot", I will quote Carl Jung from Man and His Symbols who has summarized this better than anyone I know or have read:[Carl Jung stuff]

First of all, you call me miguided and perturbed but this last post of yours was in no way a response to my previous post. The only instance that addressed what I had said was "While the dusken attributes morality to nothing but material impulses and "natural selection" ( a vague and refuted concept ), it matters not what we attribute it to, whether God or evolution, but the fact that morality is universal." You cannot make an argument against a response simply by restating your initial opinion. What is vague or refuted about it? You, yourself have accepted it in terms of species-related refinement. Would you like me to draw one of your own quotes having to do with nobody arguing that natural selection has an effect on species? Universal? That is vague. God? That is also vague and refuted, probably more so than my stance. As a matter of fact, I refuted it along with Atheism in another thread. Your view of morality is dependant on your view of creation and that view of creation is illogical. But even so, this is what I was talking about: I believe that natural selection is a part of our world and for that reason it is logical for me to accept morality is being dependant on it. Do not try to convince people that such a view as my ownb is somehow missing something and that it is dependant on your view. That is wrong.

As for the Carl Jung quote, aside from the fact that it has nothing to do with this discussion because morality is scarcely mentioned, it was ridiculous. You will have to excuse the fact that I am at work and was only able to read half of it but I still laughed at its uselessness.

The sad truth is that mans real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites - day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil.

Wrong. That is assuming that someone perceives occurances as either good (as opposed to evil) or evil.

While life runs smoothly without religion, the loss remains as good as unnoticed. But when suffering comes, it is another matter. That is when people begin to seek a way out and to reflect about the meaning of life and its bewildering and painful experiences....Modern man may assert that he can dispense with them and he may bolster his opinion by insisting that there is no scientific evidence of their truth. Or he may even regret the loss of his convinctions. But since we are dealing with invisible and unknowable things ( for God is beyond human understanding, and there is no means of proving immortality), why should we bother about evidence? Even if we did not know by reason our need for salt in our food, we should nonetheless profit from its use. We might argue that the use of salt is a mere illusion of taste or a superstition; but it would still contribute to our well-being. Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that would prove helpful in crises and would give meaning to our existence?

And how do we know that such ideas are not true? Many people would agree with me if I stated flatly that such ideas are probably illusions. What they fail to realize is that the denial is as impossible to "prove" as the assertion of religious belief. We are entirely free to choose which point of view we take; it will in any case be an arbitrary decision.

That section is a party waiting to happen. You did not miss this part did you? "But when suffering comes, it is another matter. That is when people begin to seek a way out and to reflect about the meaning of life and its bewildering and painful experiences....Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that would prove helpful in crises and would give meaning to our existence?" This is where he essentially states that people should believe in God because it makes them happy. I do not disagree with this idea. God gives people hope and answers questions that normally people would be plagued with. A biology professor of mine even mentioned the idea in the following context: there is a primative hunter who is faced with a big cave bear who is about to tear him into peices and he is scared to death the his arrow may miss its target but to keep from shivering he will think of a higher being that is watching out for him. But this is not a logical justification; it is a practical one, and I have heard it before. Just recently someone I know told me that I would not fear death as much as I do if I believed in God and that should be reason enough for me to become religious. Believe me, I wish I believed but I do not because there is no reason for it.

The salt analogy is extremely stupid because people know the salt exists. If his analogy was that of a placebo, it would make more sense.

"...Why should we bother about evidence? ... What they fail to realize is that the denial is as impossible to "prove" as the assertion of religious belief." You do understand logic do you not? This comment by him was very stupid. Or how about, "We are entirely free to choose which point of view we take; it will in any case be an arbitrary decision." All of this is him basically arguing against you for me. Belief in God is a decision made because there is something to gain from it and not because evidence exists. Evidence is unnecessary. I said this is my last post.

There is however, a strong empirical reason why we should cultivate thoughts that can never be proved. It is that they are known to be useful. Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe. He can stand the most incredible hardships when he is convinced that they make sense; he is crushed when, on top of all his misfortunes, he has to admit that is taking part in a "tale told by an idiot".

Even though he makes it seem like he is saying something new here, he is not. Again it comes down to the reason to believe is because it is helpful. Not only, as I previously said, is this not a logical justification which you were attempting to accomplish with your first post, but this fails to account for those who contribute positively and are happy without religious beliefs. Those people who do not mind not having all the answers and enjoy being part of the chase and those who know that death is a problem for the living and therefore ineffective as a cause for fear.

It is the role of religious symbols to give a meaning to the life of man.

That is a bit presumptuous, I think. Let us leave it up to the man to define his own meaning.

I scanned the rest of it. Same stuff. He is busy presuming that it is impossible for a man to feel meaning without God and, because he is repeating himself over and over possibly to meet a self-enforced words quota, I will repeat myself. People without God can feel happy. People without God can have meaning. But, that being said, meaning is not an infallible justification.

In conclusion, Jung was a psychologist and was concerned more with the effects of something on the human mind as opposed to its relationship to the universe beyond humans. Also, since he was religious to begin with, he was dumbed by his beliefs, much like Pascal, but that is nothing new. That is the traditional religious process: believe first then fight to find the reasons afterwards regardless of how much like a clown it makes you seem.

[dusken]

I do not know why I even bothered posting. You will state you initial position and ignore everything I wrote. At least I got paid for it.

[gevo]

Use the PM feature to argue please.

[dusken]

I like to cuss because cussing is beautiful in moderation.

I answered the stupid questions you had before you asked them. You just lack the mental capacity to understand the answers or are uncomfortable with them. Just stop posting and observe, oh innocent one.

[axel]

Belief in God is a decision made because there is something to gain from it

Do not extrapolate from your own experience and do not judge others according to your own baseness. Your not having faith for your not seeing any 'profit' in it doesn't imply that people, who have faith, do so out of 'interest'. There may be some occurrences of the latter but such people clearly don't have any understanding whatsoever of spiritual life in general and of christian (orthodox christian that is) spirituality in particular which is built upon morals of struggle and sacrifice, quite the opposite of self-satisfaction and self-centerdness.

[Anonymouse]

First of all, you call me miguided and perturbed but this last post of yours was in no way a response to my previous post. The only instance that addressed what I had said was "While the dusken attributes morality to nothing but material impulses and "natural selection" ( a vague and refuted concept ), it matters not what we attribute it to, whether God or evolution, but the fact that morality is universal." You cannot make an argument against a response simply by restating your initial opinion. What is vague or refuted about it? You, yourself have accepted it in terms of species-related refinement. Would you like me to draw one of your own quotes having to do with nobody arguing that natural selection has an effect on species? Universal? That is vague. God? That is also vague and refuted, probably more so than my stance. As a matter of fact, I refuted it along with Atheism in another thread. Your view of morality is dependant on your view of creation and that view of creation is illogical. But even so, this is what I was talking about: I believe that natural selection is a part of our world and for that reason it is logical for me to accept morality is being dependant on it. Do not try to convince people that such a view as my ownb is somehow missing something and that it is dependant on your view. That is wrong.

While we acknowledge God can in no way be "proven" since it is an immaterial concept, it is also acknowledged that it cannot be disproven. Apparently only arrogance would assume you can somehow disprove it. We can sit here and claim who refuted what, but that is the easy way out. Evolution is not a immaterial concept it is, simply put, a scientific dogma. Apparently you did not read Jung's statement deep enough for he explained science is to explain facts, not be a truth in and of itself, nor can you disprove God or religous beliefs, since the endpoint of all religion is a belief in God or Gods. Apparently you take this to the heart and it does bother you while below you will go on to claim "nothing is wrong".

Wrong. That is assuming that someone perceives occurances as either good (as opposed to evil) or evil.

It is not assuming anything. Your position now would be assuming something, since man's existence is plagued by duality, and even Manicheism and Zoroastrianism at one point answered this. There is no assumption in what is mans existential paradox. You are, once again, in the spirit of making all things elastic and pliable, as relativists like to do, trying to blur things, when as Jung expressed there are opposites in our world, such as good and evil, day and night, positive and negative, dark and light, big and small, tall and short, smart and stupid, life and death, etc. And this is mans paradox. Jung was on the money since we have a symbolic identity, since we are a creature yet possess a name and a life history. A creator with a mind that speculates about space and infinity and can go into any point in space imaginitively and look at our own planet from outside, yet simultaneously, we are a creature that shyts, and a food for worms. It is the paradox. We are out of nature yet hopelessly in it, the duality, tied to the stars, yet possessing a material flesh which smells, aches, shyts and bleeds.

That section is a party waiting to happen. You did not miss this part did you? "But when suffering comes, it is another matter. That is when people begin to seek a way out and to reflect about the meaning of life and its bewildering and painful experiences....Why, then, should we deprive ourselves of views that would prove helpful in crises and would give meaning to our existence?" This is where he essentially states that people should believe in God because it makes them happy. I do not disagree with this idea. God gives people hope and answers questions that normally people would be plagued with. A biology professor of mine even mentioned the idea in the following context: there is a primative hunter who is faced with a big cave bear who is about to tear him into peices and he is scared to death the his arrow may miss its target but to keep from shivering he will think of a higher being that is watching out for him. But this is not a logical justification; it is a practical one, and I have heard it before. Just recently someone I know told me that I would not fear death as much as I do if I believed in God and that should be reason enough for me to become religious. Believe me, I wish I believed but I do not because there is no reason for it.

That reason is entirely your own. It is stupid to assume which you do that faith comes entirely from reasons of selfishness. However, your reason that morality comes entirely from the fuzzy notion called "survival instinct" ( which ironically atheists use to describe Christianity and God, has problems. Ethical ideals are not made more compelling by the belief that those ideals lack a transcendent basis, that they come not from God but from the genome. And how did the genome get here to begin with? We eventually go back to the question of "how" and "who". The other problem is that this materialist worldview, which I encountered in loser in the soul thread, fails to convince us that every mental process can be explained in material terms. But when for example the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences is noticed one considers how existence might have a dimension beyond mere materialistic existence. For reasons that continues to dwarf humanity, scientists and philosophers, the correspondence of math and experimental data in physics are amazingly close. My guess is that the bulk of atheists have the aggressively secular outlook less as result of "survival instinct" or "genes" than they do to an emotional response to experiences as youth. But that is another case altogether. In Genesis 1:21-27, the Bible states that simple aquatic animals were created, then land animals, mammals, and finally humans. Ironically, this is the same sequence found in the fossil record. As for primitive cavemen, the Talmud's commentary on Genesis, written down 1500 years ago, is filledwith descriptions of hominids having the same shape and intelligence as human beings but lacking the essence of what it means to be human, a soul.

The salt analogy is extremely stupid because people know the salt exists. If his analogy was that of a placebo, it would make more sense.

"...Why should we bother about evidence? ... What they fail to realize is that the denial is as impossible to "prove" as the assertion of religious belief." You do understand logic do you not? This comment by him was very stupid. Or how about, "We are entirely free to choose which point of view we take; it will in any case be an arbitrary decision." All of this is him basically arguing against you for me. Belief in God is a decision made because there is something to gain from it and not because evidence exists. Evidence is unnecessary. I said this is my last post.

Pay attention! He said that it is pointless to try to prove or disprove an immaterial thing like God since we are using earthly material means and while he did say we have a choice, the evidence is in symbols of dreams and visions. In other words if we choose to interpret them as such and give them the numinosity, this from a guy who spent his whole career analyzing dreams and dream symbolism, but apparently the Satanic forces of the Dusken are so wise that they are able to debunk Carl Jung.

Even though he makes it seem like he is saying something new here, he is not. Again it comes down to the reason to believe is because it is helpful. Not only, as I previously said, is this not a logical justification which you were attempting to accomplish with your first post, but this fails to account for those who contribute positively and are happy without religious beliefs. Those people who do not mind not having all the answers and enjoy being part of the chase and those who know that death is a problem for the living and therefore ineffective as a cause for fear.

Logic presupposes reason, and as Jung said reason has been misleading and responsible for the spiritual breakdown of modern man. In other words are we mere material beings or spiritual beings? Albert Pike had the same to say, that faith begins where reason ends, for reason itself is misleading, and while we can sit here and make a logical breakdown of how God is logical since creation needs a creator at some point, I will not, for the case here is individual faith.

In conclusion, Jung was a psychologist and was concerned more with the effects of something on the human mind as opposed to its relationship to the universe beyond humans. Also, since he was religious to begin with, he was dumbed by his beliefs, much like Pascal, but that is nothing new. That is the traditional religious process: believe first then fight to find the reasons afterwards regardless of how much like a clown it makes you seem.

If only you knew how funny atheists appear to me and how dumbed they are by their beliefs, that they constantly try to come off as "nothing is wrong" but in reality they are spiritually deprived of something, even though they will never bring themselves to admit to that.