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Started by EmpJohnIV, November 23, 2019, 11:29:48 PM

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EmpJohnIV

I used to be part of the old IIDB forums a very long time ago, 15 maybe 16 years ago, when I was a wee high schooler. Recently a conversation with a friend about the internet and the friends one makes on it got me feeling all nostalgic for that distant era. The exact forms, and the others I haunted back when, are now gone, but looking for them I found this forum, which seems to be an heir to that. It was a heady era, and while my views have changed ever so much in the time that has passed I recall gratefully the way that debates back then shaped me and how I think and argue.

Well, I have been looking at some threads here, and I don't think I recognize a direct continuation of what I once remembered, but I seen some interesting discussions, and figured I might be keen to chime in on a few of them. I hope everybody here is having a good one, and hope to get into some interesting conversations in the time to come.

These days I am a market gardener in a small Colorado town, with an education in Philosophy, and some years of experience switching back and forth between being a hillbilly, a hippie, and a sophisticate as the situation requires. I ain't as atheistic as I was when I was first coming of age, but I still don't hold most main line theologies in any particular esteem. Rejecting the omni-all theologies in all but their most abstract and therefore empty of forms. Sure, if you reduce the concept of God to an empty enough of an abstraction I might find some resonance with it, like for example some of the more secular branches of Taoist thinking, or maybe (if I am in an open-minded mood) Deism. I am more likely to take seriously the existence of nature spirits or the ilk, but even in that case I understand them more through the lens of evolution and ecology. Nietzsche, Bateson, and the ancient Stoics are all major inspirations for me.

Well that's enough grist for an introduction, I shouldn't throw too many cats among the pidgins while introducing myself perhaps. Hopefully we can have some interesting chats.

Hydra009

IIDB.  Now that is a name I have not heard in a long time.  A long time.

Quotesome years of experience switching back and forth between being a hillbilly, a hippie
So...Bud Light and smelly and conservative to kombucha and weed-smelly and liberal?

QuoteRejecting the omni-all theologies in all but their most abstract and therefore empty of forms. Sure, if you reduce the concept of God to an empty enough of an abstraction I might find some resonance with it, like for example some of the more secular branches of Taoist thinking, or maybe (if I am in an open-minded mood) Deism.
That just sounds like atheism with extra steps.

In what way is your thinking distinct from garden-variety atheism&secularism, if any?

Mr.Obvious

Welcome to our little band of heathens.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Baruch

Welcome also.  You seem particularly well spoken for a "weed" farmer ;-)  Perhaps channeling your college self?  A lot of the regulars here are Boomer retirees, but some as young as their 20s (the wee skamps).
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.

Mike Cl

Welcome, and I look forward to some interesting chats as well.
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?

EmpJohnIV

@ Hydra

The difference from garden variety atheism, I think it would basically boil down to daily prayer actively worshiping several non-omni deities. There's some gray area because the bulk of atheist head space is a reversal of Christian theology, and none of the gods I pray to would be God by the definitions of that theology. But, I am quite convinced in the existence of non-materialist entities that are intelligent (capable of learning and intentional response) but not embodied in a particular life form like we are; also reckoning that many of these beings are possessed of intelligence, wisdom, and experience incomparably vast in relation to the peaks of human capacity. So kinda like your classic nature spirituality. Going further I suppose that these gods can interact with humans to that humans benefit or detriment, and that through prayer and devotion one can cultivate a more symbiotic relationship with these amazing and extremely different creatures.

If I want to feel like an atheist for a tick I can convince myself that the gods are personifications of self-correcting feed-back systems in the natural world, which are of course personified because my monkey brain has a big chunk of gray matter with is specialized to process information on the social dynamics of my fellows, and by way of personification I can use that processing power to help make sense of things that the more recently evolved rational hardware don't happen to be specialized to sort out. I do not tend to do this often, because the same logic (with mostly trivial tweaks) can be used to de-personify regular garden variety persons of the human persuasion, and it has been my experience that human type persons do not interact with me in the way I most cherish so much when I don't really go all out treating them as persons, who really exist with their own intentions and dreams and wisdoms I can only dimly guess at. Similarly treating my gods like they are actually gods, and praying and doing religious type things, seems to work better in practice than maintaining some kind of cognitive distance and veil of rationalism, particularly as I don't (at this point in life) have much emotional investment in rationalism of materialism.

The Deism, the Taoism, all that noise, it is how I relate to anything 'beyond' the little nature gods I pray to, sure there is much bigger things in reality, but beyond a certain scale there isn't anything I can relate to personally, which I would also call religiously.

Anyway, nah I never cared for booze or reefer too much. Just grew up in the sticks working cattle and fences. Family lost the big ranch when I was wasting my years in college studying dead nerds; so I moved back to my side of the mountains after traveling with some back to the land crunchy types for a few years, didn't have enough land to return to for ranching, so I switched to growing produce for the farmers market, which I can scrape by on a pretty little chunk of land. Still though I am very country counter culture and environmentalist of the "Al Gore can go chew on a shot gun, but Imma changing my life" sort of attitude. Kinda a prepper too, figuring that the gravy train I grew up in seems to be running out of track, and lots of good kids I know are living in their cars and stuff, what with society not leaving a place for them that is affordable.

Ironically I was really liberal growing up on the ranch, and really lost any patience for liberalism of todays era while becoming all hippie and counter culture. Like to me, the liberals I hang with today, and I love these friends, they can be kinda bootlicking yuppie pokenoses. But that's just the ones I know, I know full well there's all types in every camp.

@Obvious

Neat Heathens! I thought those were the viking kiddos with the little thor hammer necklaces, I got some blacksmith friends like that. I guess its just an old old word for rural folk if I recollect.

@Baruch

Yo, it seems like you do about 2/3 the post around here, at least the forums I've snooped into. Well spoken? I just like code switching, but the only education I ever finished was a GED. I learned to talk like Data from Star Trek as a baby, and ever since have been mixing in more dialects into my wordstuff. It's funny, but makes sense that boomers would still haunt this obsolete forum technology. Its a good way, better than the fancy new social media.

I don't know what state y'all are from, but can you hurry up and decriminalize weed? Get some of the hempsters to move out of my turf? They ain't that bad, but we've been dealing with a whole county worth of them in just a few states, too dense.

Gawdzilla Sama

New guys buy a round at the bar.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Blackleaf

Oh, hey! Some new blood. I was thinking we could use some of that around here. I like these guys, but we need some new people to liven things up. Welcome to the forums!
"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--

Sal1981


Draconic Aiur

Here is your complimentary video to a COLORADO "market gardener":


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

Baruch

@EmpJohnIV

Yeah, I am a bit of a motor-mouth.  Don't mind me.  Just put me on "ignore" as most do.  Poor things.

So you are self-taught?  That is the best kind of learning.  Formal education doesn't cut much mustard here.

So you went to Star Fleet Academy with Data?  I went with Spock.  Very interesting.  But are you half human?
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

Now that you're here, the fun can begin!
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

EmpJohnIV

Quote from: Draconic Aiur on November 24, 2019, 04:38:51 PM
Here is your complimentary video to a COLORADO "market gardener":


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

Yeah, keep teasing Colorado, we keep looking down on the 49 lower States.

@Baruch

I did five years in academia, and even though I got to teach some intro classes, I never actually finished a particular degree. I am a great learner if I want to learn it, but if it don't strike my fancy I am as dumb as a post. Some of the required courses to graduate were not interesting, so I didn't go. Would have been better off taking care of the ranch and arguing online from a fiscal perspective.

I am all too human. So probably at least half. Still Data was my homeboy as a kiddo. To this day my ethics are influenced by the question 'What would Picard do?"... though I would probably break with him on many details in practice.

aitm

Welcome to our humble house of relative normal albeit onewordfromfullfuckcrazyatantyime peeps, whom mostly are semi lucid other than Baruch who has a delightful habit of infusing Kensington economics along with Sartre and quotes from Bugs Bunny into an conversation that’s has nothing to do with any of the aforementioned individuals all the while making little to no sense other than to himself.

I consider myself an atheist since my favorite school and church going crush upon finding out her new born nephew was “Mongolian” cried, “ but why us God, we do everything you asked, we didn’t do anything wrong” kinda opened my eyes to the relative indifference of the gods to their loving followers.

Since then I have read enough to convince me that for the most part the wonderful study of philosophy is not much more than a mastabatory clic convinced that the human animal is something special whereas the reality is it is apparent as we are simply successful animals that require exactly what the lower life forms need to survive.

Should there be any “afterlife” we will be joined as well by squirrels, cockroach’s, oak trees and every other living thing that doesn’t think arrogantly of themselves.......maybe they don’t?

So, we think we are grand, make great efforts to convince ourselves of that but turn an eye to the fact we eat, shit, and rot just like every other “lower” life form.


Whew!
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

EmpJohnIV

Quote from: aitm on November 25, 2019, 06:13:00 PM
I consider myself an atheist since my favorite school and church going crush upon finding out her new born nephew was “Mongolian” cried, “ but why us God, we do everything you asked, we didn’t do anything wrong” kinda opened my eyes to the relative indifference of the gods to their loving followers.

Since then I have read enough to convince me that for the most part the wonderful study of philosophy is not much more than a mastabatory clic convinced that the human animal is something special whereas the reality is it is apparent as we are simply successful animals that require exactly what the lower life forms need to survive.

Should there be any “afterlife” we will be joined as well by squirrels, cockroach’s, oak trees and every other living thing that doesn’t think arrogantly of themselves.......maybe they don’t?

So, we think we are grand, make great efforts to convince ourselves of that but turn an eye to the fact we eat, shit, and rot just like every other “lower” life form.


Whew!
Sometimes I figure Conan the Barbarian as being an especially astute theologian.
“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care.
Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content.
Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

As for philosophy, I think of it as the art of beta testing new thoughts. Most the thoughts we each entertain through out our lives are long worn hand me downs, original thoughts are extremely rare and tend to be very glitchy. Philosophy is riddled with errors, and philosophers are the most error prone of thinkers, but it is the distillation of experimental thoughts, so this is to be expected. The merits of a philosophy takes maybe a dozen generations or more to be well sussed. There is little of enduring wisdom in it, like opals in a vast desert. But some have a fever to go prospecting, to search for what has been unearthed by each disturbance. The errors of a good philosopher should at least be as interesting as the triumphs.