The only good Christian is a Gnostic Christian. True or false?

Started by Greatest I am, April 06, 2018, 11:41:28 AM

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trdsf

Quote from: SGOS on April 17, 2018, 06:16:36 PM
I believe it happened, and quite easily at that, but remain unimpressed.  If you explain how, that's when the bullshit meter goes off, because it's an unexplainable event.  The how part is pure conjecture.  The correct answer is, "I don't know."  Telepathy is a possible explanation, but there are more beyond that, so it doesn't represent actual knowledge.  It's an opinion.
The 'how' that I subscribe to is 'damn improbable guess'.  I don't think there was anything psychic or supernatural going on.

Quote from: Greatest I am on April 17, 2018, 05:09:59 PM
Knowing telepathy is real, I have no problem believing you.

Yours was a light touch as compared to what I did to my wife. That is why she calls my mental touch an assault.

This might be showing the cosmic consciousness I found the second and last time I activated my telepathy. I don't know for sure because in that situation which is purely mental, I could not identify where I was.

The part I want you to see is at about the 20 min. mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM6yLngNnDY

I was quite skeptical of ESP in those days while still having an itch about telepathy. I think/hope the cosmic consciousness, whatever it's nature, either knew or wanted my contact but knew that if I only had the one experience with it, I would not have believed and would have called it a mental fart or something. I think that that might be why I had my first experience with my wife. Without her to witness and confirm it, I would not have believed the reality of the second.

I call my wife my souls mate since. Not that I believe in the usual soul.

I hope you are still BFF with your partner.

We drifted apart, but very gently.  Thank you for the thought, though.

The fundamental problem I have with resorting to telepathy as the explanation is that telepathy remains undemonstrated in any sort of repeatable, quantifiable way.  I would be more willing to credit that you believe it's telepathy than that you know it is.  Knowledge is demonstrable; if you want to assert telepathy is the explanation, you need to be able to demonstrate that it is.

As for the video, I have always found 'Through the Wormhole' to be much too willing to leap to the sensational "... but could it be THIS?!" than a science show should be.  Telepathy remains undemonstrated; the responsible thing for the program to have done would be to say whether those experiments have been confirmed or denied by other experimenters.

A video much more to the point is this TED Talk by James Randi, and the reminder that constant vigilance is not just the price of freedom, but also the price of truly living in the real world.  What is true doesn't care what I want to believe is true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcPuRaSEq1I
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

Hydra009

Quick, GreatestIAm, I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 50.  I've even written it down in front of me.  Take a shot at it!

SGOS

Quote from: Hydra009 on April 17, 2018, 10:22:10 PM
Quick, GreatestIAm, I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 50.  I've even written it down in front of me.  Take a shot at it!
I'm getting something.  Wait...wait... I got it!  Is it 114?

Mike Cl

Quote from: SGOS on April 17, 2018, 10:34:33 PM
I'm getting something.  Wait...wait... I got it!  Is it 114?
Holy Shit Batman!!!  That's exactly what I was thinking!!
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Baruch

SGOS - I agree we don't need explanations for this, or for anything else for that matter.  But people being people, we do it anyway.

An advanced natural explanation is sufficient anyway.  We know there is "spooky action at a distance" aka quantum entanglement.   Consilience is the scientific method term for apparent contradiction with known facts ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience

However in psychology, there is the idea of synchronicity, discussed under coincidence ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coincidence

The whole human idea of causality is a pre-scientific notion.  But it works for us as a heuristic to survive Cavebears ;-)
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

SGOS

Quote from: Mike Cl on April 17, 2018, 11:15:22 PM
Holy Shit Batman!!!  That's exactly what I was thinking!!
It's inevitable that we would both know this.  This is all accounted for by Karl Jung in his explanation of the collective unconscious. :)

SGOS

@Greatist I am
Another widely held belief, based on the claim of a person who has first hand "knowledge"  It is not only a widely held belief, but as valid as any other unsupported belief:

Quote
Word of a mystery planet lurking in our solar system, on some wide orbit around the Sun that takes thousands of years to complete...

Images show up from time to time...

It all started with references to a "Planet X", made by a woman named Nancy Lieder, who had been contacted by aliens who she called Zetas. These Zetas spoke through Lieder, via an implant, saying that all the official reports of 1997 encounter with Comet Haleâ€"Bopp were false, and that these reports were spread to cover up the approach of "Planet X", which was to cause widespread upheaval on our planet and destroy human civilization...
Nancy Lieder was a nice lady, who wouldn't make something up.  But until May 27, 2003, when Planet X didn't show up as scheduled, her story made sense to many who don't process information the way many others do, and who's standard for "knowing" does not demand the inconvenience of supportive evidence.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/nibiru-hoax-rears-ugly-head-again-what-you-need-to-know-about-this-persistent-myth/99534

Baruch

Quote from: SGOS on April 18, 2018, 06:16:16 AM
It's inevitable that we would both know this.  This is all accounted for by Karl Jung in his explanation of the collective unconscious. :)

Jordan Peterson is a Jungian ... but he uses the term Archetypes.  As I see it, people think similarly, not because of telepathy, but because they react the same way to similar stimuli, because they just happen to share the same POV.  Basically cultural stereotyping as manifested in individuals.  What Peterson claims is that part of this is evolutionary, not just cultural.  And there are certainly aspects of psychology that are inherited ... the Blank Slate model isn't accurate.  Experts will argue, what parts are inherited and which are social.  The old nurture vs nature argument.

A thorough analysis of our Jungian predicament ...

https://medium.com/@michaelaaron3684/the-jordan-peterson-complex-1da2d4a2e519

A key line from inside the article ...

Note: the collective unconscious has to a vast degree been technologically digitalized as the World-Wide-Web.

Aka our postings are part of the realization of de Chardin's Omega Point.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Unbeliever

Quote from: Hydra009 on April 17, 2018, 10:22:10 PM
Quick, GreatestIAm, I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 50.  I've even written it down in front of me.  Take a shot at it!
37?
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

trdsf

Quote from: Hydra009 on April 17, 2018, 10:22:10 PM
Quick, GreatestIAm, I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 50.  I've even written it down in front of me.  Take a shot at it!
I always go with 42.  Force of habit.  :)
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

SGOS

Quote from: Baruch on April 18, 2018, 01:21:03 PM
Jordan Peterson is a Jungian ... but he uses the term Archetypes.  As I see it, people think similarly, not because of telepathy, but because they react the same way to similar stimuli, because they just happen to share the same POV.
That's probably an improved theory if one doesn't want to outright scrap it.  As I recall, Jung struck me as a mystic.  I called myself a  Christian back then, but even I thought Jung tried too hard and unnecessarily to tie up psychological principles with some kind of woo. It's been a long time since I read him.  I'd have to reread to see if I'm remembering this right, but I remember not being impressed by Jung, and downright bored at the same time.

Blackleaf

Quote from: Baruch on April 18, 2018, 01:21:03 PM
Jordan Peterson is a Jungian ... but he uses the term Archetypes.  As I see it, people think similarly, not because of telepathy, but because they react the same way to similar stimuli, because they just happen to share the same POV.  Basically cultural stereotyping as manifested in individuals.  What Peterson claims is that part of this is evolutionary, not just cultural.  And there are certainly aspects of psychology that are inherited ... the Blank Slate model isn't accurate.  Experts will argue, what parts are inherited and which are social.  The old nurture vs nature argument.

A thorough analysis of our Jungian predicament ...

https://medium.com/@michaelaaron3684/the-jordan-peterson-complex-1da2d4a2e519

A key line from inside the article ...

Note: the collective unconscious has to a vast degree been technologically digitalized as the World-Wide-Web.

It's not so much nature versus nurture any more. More like nature plus nurture. While some human traits are the result of one or the other, it's usually a combination of both that results in the variables of human behavior.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Baruch

Quote from: SGOS on April 18, 2018, 05:16:10 PM
That's probably an improved theory if one doesn't want to outright scrap it.  As I recall, Jung struck me as a mystic.  I called myself a  Christian back then, but even I thought Jung tried too hard and unnecessarily to tie up psychological principles with some kind of woo. It's been a long time since I read him.  I'd have to reread to see if I'm remembering this right, but I remember not being impressed by Jung, and downright bored at the same time.

You couldn't have seen his Red Book back then, it wasn't public yet.  Yes, the inner recesses of the psyche are woo, but it is woo you really are ;-)
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Baruch

Quote from: Blackleaf on April 18, 2018, 08:29:02 PM
It's not so much nature versus nurture any more. More like nature plus nurture. While some human traits are the result of one or the other, it's usually a combination of both that results in the variables of human behavior.

A mystic would agree that all dichotomies are false.  Words are just apes trying to categorize things, and label categories ... badly.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: trdsf on April 18, 2018, 03:35:44 PM
I always go with 42.  Force of habit.  :)

Always the best answer.  And keep your towel handy.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!