Emperor Constantine: the second coming of Christ

Sure, as long as you remember what eternity can feel like.

Let’s go with me being precocious. :wink:

The drugs were screwing with my brain. I started to believe in the Devil.

Well, that’s the catch. Do I really remember all the details of that experience at the rave? Not really. I know how I’ve come to interpret it: Samsara. And I know how I feel about Samsara today: more of a roller-coaster ride than hell. ← What do you think?

Does this mean I don’t get to quote you? :frowning:

Yeah, no quote.

Aw, you’re killing me. :laughing:

I know that not everybody is capable of being an atheist, the world was better off pagan or polytheistic. Semitic morality is slave morality.

I know not everyone is capable of being a pagan. Semitic morality with its focus on a transcendent God was part of the death of intuition. One of the side effects of this death is atheism. Abrahamism started the pre-frontal cortex war on the limbic system. Integration and collaboration are so much better. Fucking scientists couldn’t admit that animals had emotions and intentions until the 80s, and then they claimed they were the ones who demonstrated it, never apologizing to all the people they considered to be irrational and anthropomorphizing before, when the scientists were strutting around, back then, saying animals were mechanisms or impulse machines and we were not. That’s the kind of duh hubris prefrontal-lobes identifiers, who keep their limbic systems in dungeons, are capable of.

Atheism has been around since the time of ancient Greece, it’s an entirely western tradition of philosophical skepticism.

Christianity is a religion much like all semitic beliefs of Abraham that has a moral inversion of manifesting mental or physical slavery and bondage as a higher social virtue. It’s no wonder why some early Christian monks referred to themselves as slaves of Christ or God that they revered as master of all. It’s disgusting to any sensible or rational human being that aspires towards more higher moral standards and beliefs. Christian morality lacks many, many things. It is degenerative.

It arises in many places, but that soup ain’t what you or any atheist online here arose out of. The thinking of modern atheists in the West are stamped by their Abrahamic progenitors. Other atheists are stamped by the developments of their progenitors.

Morality is just one aspect of the paradigm. Via overvaluation of transcendence and the desire for a split brain with the prefrontal cortex as jailer to the limbic system, it created modern minds, you think 1) transcending the mammalian brain makes them smarter and 2) able to not notices how this sleight of mind solves nothing.

You, as an individual, are less infected this than most. I hope one day you’ll weed out the last dregs of it.

As a modern day atheist I find that I have little in common with other atheists, so please don’t lump me with them. A majority of atheists these days have fallen for the transhumanism clap trap, I have not. Less infected? Please explain.

I am curious to what you mean by discussions of limbic expressions and over valuations of transcendence, please elaborate.

I think the world was better off 200,000 years ago–the age when they say man first appeared on the evolutionary scene; I think we carry much the same predispositions, instincts, desires, and needs as man did back then, but we’ve fucked up the world beyond repair in the modern age, and we’re never going back. We have to live in a self-made artificial environment that we are not fit for (ironically at our own hands). We were much better off living in small tribes, living off the land, knowing each and every person we come into contact with 99% of the time. “Society” for us back then was just our local group–the village–which (anthropologists say) was usually only between 200 and 300 strong. Everyone you knew, you knew from birth. It was like family and good friends.

Of course, there was warring with other tribes, and inter-tribal marriages, and there was even pestilence and disease and constant threats from predators, so I’m not saying life was perfect, but when you consider some of the horrors of modern day life–war on a mass scale, tyrannical governments, destruction of the environment, the stress of life in modern day capitalism, the fact that we are raising our children far less directly (i.e. schools, daycare, nannies, etc.)–I’m not sure we’ve made life any better.

If I understand you correctly, Karpel, this antagonism between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system can be translated as: antagonism between rational thought and emotion, instinct, intuition, and other limbic system functions. Is this right? I’m not sure when this split began–what event in history–but if the brain is wired to enter into this state which is so common, not only in the West, but everywhere humans exist and have existed, I’ll bet it’s at least partially written into our genes. However, I think modern day life exacerbates the problem by way of mental “programs” (thoughts, beliefs, values) being downloaded onto people’s brains (via media) that really aren’t good for everyone. These programs start with people, or groups of people, with some degree of power of influence, people in a position to spread their ideas and to sell them as the “right” ideas, thereby making most people feel pressured to buy them. In prehistoric times, I believe, the kinds of ideas and beliefs we passed around and gave to each other were determined/influenced far more by the immediate and imminent issues and problem the group shared in common and understood, issues and problem everyone could agree upon, and the responses to which they could also agree upon. In other words, living amongst a tribe allows for common instincts and intuitions to have a voice–for everyone to feel the same about things (or at least, more likely to feel the same)–and therefore more likely to agree and feel confident in the changes in thought, beliefs, and values that the group, as a whole, hashed out.

Therefore, if there was ever a time in history when this conflict between prefrontal lobe thinking and limbic system thinking (or feeling) multiplied to the dangerous levels we see today, it was probably when the tribal way of life gave way to civilization–a state of living where you don’t always know the people you live amongst and over which tyrannical leaders rule with force.

I see certain meme systems, such as Abrahamic religions, as having radically changed the relationship, the major splits we see not being present in many indigenous and pagan groups. The rise of technocrats has also had a huge effect. I think also certain parties want only their skills validated. What they are weak on, they want dismissed and suppressed.

There were pretty advanced non-tribal cultures that did not have this split. Though I do think there is a kind of war that has tainted all cultures, but some vastly more than others.

Imagine the idiocy of a rabbit that decided the limbic system should suppress and negate the reptile portions of the brain.

I agree with you that our ancient past was far better than our present and in many ways was better in terms of freedom, independence, or community. The problem of course is that we can never truly go back at least in the near future anyways. We’re stuck in a world that we’ve created with all the burdensome consequences it all entails. One of these days the world will come under full assault of those consequences also.

Well, the not having fallen for transhumanism crap is an example of not being infected. Everyone wants to present themselves as rational, as having reached their conclusions via logical, verbal, mental processes. But the truth is we need good intuitions and gut feelings to let us know when there is a problem. At the very least to turn us to investigate things like transhumanism. But the truth is, for me at least, it smelled bad from the get go. People who advocate reason and see themselves as always using deduction and induction and well, do not trust their limbic and reptilian brains to contribute to their reactions - now of course these do anyway, but in a denied form. Me I think all parts of the brain help discriminate. That you get, and I will be you didn’t have to read up a lot first, that transhumanism is a problem, is an example of your having trust for your gut reactions. I am not saying you then didn’t go and investigate and reason to back this up, but I will guess you smelled something bad there and trusted that reaction. The same I would guess is true for some things that would get you classed as a conspiracy theorist. Some things smelled wrong to you. This is not to say you then haven’t researched on top of that. People tend to either/or the various cognitive abilities and brain parts. Use reason or intuition. But we are much stronger with both.

That’s what I meant.

Those religions that value transcendence - the abrahamic religions, some parts of HInduism, Buddhism - though it is a different kind of transcendence, and others - tend to have judgments of the limbic brain. That is, emotions, desires, sex, being emotionally expressive, being passionate and so on.

Faith in technology has become the new spiritual idealism of salvation in social secular form.

I like to call such individuals technological utopic cornucopians. It might surprise people however that I am a big fan of science fiction and anybody that reads such literature understands that malicious human nature still exists in such environments where if anything advanced technology has a way of adding more human malice and hubris double fold. Technology isn’t salvation where instead it seems to create more problems than it actually solves. This is problematic of many segments of technology and innovation.

I am not against technology but I’m not so naive to call it progressive or a solution to all problems either. If anything I am a technological realist.

Too few people are willing to address the social or existential consequences of technology in the negative effects it has on human beings as a whole.

Personally, I feel that technology is just a tool (literally). Whether it is used to improve the conditions of man or deteriorate them is a matter of how man uses it. A knife in the hands of a murderer will be used to kill. That knife in the hands of a surgeon will be used to heal.

Thus, whether technology is beneficial to mankind or harmful depends on the specific culture that uses it–their values, morals, beliefs, customs, etc.–for those determine to a large extent how technology will be used.

Sure technology is a tool however it is also an extension of culture and with any form of technology there is cultural intentions, goals, or motivations through usage no matter how great/trivial on a case by case basis.

I don’t believe in the addage that all technology is neutral, that is very deceptive form of thinking.

Understanding technology as a manifestation of culture it can be said that anything cultural is not neutral specific. Culture is never neutral ever.

Upon reflection ZS, I think I’d have to agree with you. I brought up the analogy of a knife which can be used to kill or to heal. But then you could bring up guns–used to kill or… what? ← That’s pretty much the only purpose guns were invented for.

So when you bring in the fact that technology is a product of human motives and needs, it can speak volumes of what we are driven to do. I think the context in which my point stands is the context of technology already being there. If it’s already there, a person can do whatever he or she wants with it–it depends on their moral inclination, desires, needs, etc. So an actor can buy a gun for the purposes of having a prop in a movie. But as for the inventor of the gun–he designed it with a specific purpose in mind–to kill (people or animals). And so the reason why a specific technology or tool was invented (which expresses certain inclinations and intentions of a culture) might be different from why such technology or tool is used by others in a later time or place.

An actor however with a gun prop nonetheless partakes in a simulative exercise of violence even if it is designed for entertainment only however upon reflection that we entertain ourselves with simulations of violence on stage speaks volumes, does it not? :wink:

Moreover think of something as simple as dining utensils which manifests the proper cultural appearance of eating itself. I could go on and on…

Evangelical Christianity’s embrace of Trump’s presidency reminds me of the pattern through which the Jesus movement became Church Christianity. Like many Evangelicals today, Proto-orthodox Christians understood power as the possession of an Almighty God on high, not of the people below. In Romans 13:1 Paul says “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” Pauline Christians understood the emperor to be God’s deputy on earth, upholding divine justice, not as a tyrant whose position was based on force. Church Christianity willingly accepted imperial patronage because it had a great deal to gain. Christian writers like Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–c. 340) were quick to characterize Constantine as ‘the deputy of Christ’, and eager to insist that the alliance of church and Empire was part of God’s providential plan for the world.

I dunno man. The Dark Ages only lasted 200 years and even then it was limited to the Western part of the Roman Empire. Things were pretty cool in the Eastern Roman Empire.

You want to get all kooky with 1000 years meaning “1000 years” instead of some other metaphor, you’ve got 1000 years (accounting for rounding errors) between the Return-of-Christ-as-Constantine and the fall of Constantinople.

It’d be pretty easy to spin this in all sorts of fun ways.

Hell, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment both had a lot of sympathy for the character of Satan.

In light of the NXVM scandal, I’ve been working with some friends on creating a sex cult. This is a really good spin.

Thank you.