The above is a useful feedback for further improvement, especially on knowledge re Problem-Solving techniques in this case. It is yours and others’ discretion to accept or not.
I often get such feedback and in most cases I make it a point to detect where I have weaknesses and strive to improve on it.
The DNA [no damage] is the generic basic architectural and machinery/operational blueprint for all human beings.
It is the DNA that programmed all humans to be mortals, self-aware and all the basic mental programs like instincts, emotions [including fears-anxiety] etc.
Note,
‘angst’ = a feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general.
Then isn’t it literal ‘existential angst’ involve anxiety?
I wrote earlier, I have given evidence and links connecting religions with anxieties.
Note there are non-theistic religions like Buddhism, Jainism and others. Note >90% of humans are religious [theistic and non-theistic].
Where theistic religions assuage anxiety, it is based critically on a belief, God exists.
For those who do not buy the idea God exists, theistic religions do not work on them to assuage anxiety. Instead they rely on other means to relieve the existential angst, e.g. like non-theistic religions, secular self-improvements, and to the other extremes of drugs, opioids, and other negative extremes.
The mechanisms that drive the existential crisis, i.e. anxiety and others that led to religions as a solution is basically a psychological problem of say a certain degree but not serious enough to warrant psychiatric treatment.
However when this same psychological mechanism is serious enough it leads to serious anxiety disorders which are mental illnesses.
The fear of mortality is heavily suppressed within an existential angst, but when this fear of death impulses leak to consciousness, it is Thanatophobia which is a serious psychiatric problem.
So there is a continuum of anxiety re the existential crisis ranging from very mild [say 10%] to very extreme [thanatophobia] [90%].
The death anxiety that compel people to religions would range from 10% to say 75%.
At least you acknowledge you don’t know enough. In such a state of ignorance in view of the seriousness of the threats from Islamists, your should at least educate yourself thoroughly on Islam to understand it fully.
Note this Lord Pearson -UK who [possibly the only Lord] is very responsible to take the trouble to understand Islam more deeply in its truths that Islam is inherent evil.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bjks3fmajM[/youtube]
I told you earlier, this thread is not the most critical point but merely a hypothesis based on the promises of the Human Connectome Project.
humanconnectomeproject.org/
Science fiction?? This is why I am aware your knowledge in these areas are so lacking. It is good for you to take this critique positively to increase your knowledge.
Note I have taken the trouble to build up a relevant knowledge database that is very strong, deep and wide. This is why I am able to deal with whatever questions you can throw at me at whatever depth you can dig into and width you can stretch. Just try…
Note currently humans has been progressing in modulating their anxieties and other emotions albeit using the black-box approach and there are success stories. The Buddhists had been doing that for thousands of years without resorting to theism.
The Human Connectome Project [in future] will enable humanity to go in deep into the ‘black box’ to expedite the process and ensuring it is fool proof.
Aristotle [thousands of years ago] was aware of modulating emotions [anxieties included];
The Stoics also discussed about modulating one’s emotions for the better.
Right.
In order for it to be defeated by default, it would have be necessarily wrong. What do you think default means?
Default - a selection made usually automatically or without active consideration due to lack of a viable alternative. Remained the club’s president by default. The default candidate. merriam-webster.com/dictionary/default
So by using the word “default”, you’re saying there is no viable alternative to defeat, which necessarily means that anything based on faith is necessarily wrong.
Perfect is absolutely perfect because if it were not, it would have to eat shit from greater perfects.
God must be perfect or he’d have to eat shit from lesser/greater gods is the same thing. If God were not perfect, then the lesser gods would now be greater. If God is perfect, then the greater gods are now lesser. The fact remains that lesser gods do not exist (your premise requires perfection for a god to exist lest it eat shit from other gods; therefore no lesser gods can exist since, for some reason, gods cannot eat shit like dogs).
So, lesser gods = nonexistent gods and by substitution:
If God were not perfect, then the nonexistent gods would now be greater; therefore, God must be perfect so as to not eat shit from nonexistent gods or unicorns or fairies or anything that doesn’t exist will work just fine to substantiate the claim.
Again:
God must be ABSOLUTELY perfect or he’d [a lesser god] have to eat shit from unicorns, fairies, flying pink elephants.
“Peers” are the Argumentum ad populum you were on about:
You are trying to push through is a fallacy, i.e. Argumentum ad populum, the consensus fallacy where you are trying to appeal the majority.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
So the populum at ILP are not peers, but the populum of academia are peers 
The ILP populum has no credibility an therefore no authority, but the populum of academia has credibility and therefore we can appeal to that consensus for an authoritative pronouncement.
Pris,
I think you missed my point. Finding anxiety cells in mice, does not IMV provide grounds for speculation about the connection between religion and anxiety, and the different ways that religion affects anxiety. If there are no human studies in which this relationship can be studied and analysed, it is clearly a huge leap. What evidence suggests a “high probability” perhaps you could provide a link to it?
I thought that my initial response was sufficient? The logic of your argument constitutes the substance. The logic you attempted to apply in your argument has been refuted. Therefore the substance is flawed.
I disagree. As I stated, forums like these act as a form of peer review (whether you perceive us as your peers or not) you submitted your philosophical argument here, on a philosophy forum and most of your “peers” refuted and thus rejected your argument. Therefore the consensus is that your argument is invalid/wrong. It is not an appeal to the majority, it is stating a fact. You don’t have to agree that the consensus is right, but there’s no fallacy in referring to the consensus in this case.
Note, I’m not claiming the proposition that you’re wrong is true because many or most people believe it is so, my claim is that the refutations of your argument by the consensus are valid. Hence the consensus is right.
You’ve rejected all of the many refutations which highlight the flaws in your argument. There’s no point in taking up this with you again. Note, you believe that your argument is “perfect”.
You have weaknesses? Well I guess that even Superman has kryptonite… 
You are insisting here and I’m not going to take your word for it. Where is the evidence that existential angst is “DNA ordained”?
Based on the answer that you’ve given, it seems that you didn’t understand my question? I asked/stated:
“Where is the evidence that human beings have anxiety cells and that they are existential related? Where is the evidence that anxiety cells led to the creation of religions? You can’t expect this to convince anyone. As an argument it has insufficient grounding IMV.”
So you’re claiming that religion only assuages existential angst in theists? Wouldn’t that mean that the efficacy of religion in alleviating angst is psychological and therefrom effects the physiology of the brain? I can accept that may be the case, but I’d have to read detailed research supporting that claim before I concluded that religion assuaging existential angst is a certainty/fact, is there any such research? Also, I don’t think it follows that everyone finds an extrinsic means of dealing with existential angst?
I’m not going to argue against your opinion in this case, but I think that you’re wrong here on many counts that I’ve covered previously (in the Online Philosophy Club). Needless to say that I don’t think that religion is a type of mental illness, rather it is a world view, and If God exists, religious thinking could be a correct world view.
We’ll see if scientists identify anxiety cells in human-beings, and therefrom are able to modulate them, causing the anxiety driving a person to be religious to be reduced and/or eliminated, resulting no more religiousness, which will lead to religions being weaned of and/or disappearing in the future. We can wait in adjacent coffins.
Even if that is true, it doesn’t mean that you are impervious to being wrong about things in areas where you feel that you’re knowledgeable; or that you’re able to answer all and any questions correctly that may be posed to you in areas where you feel that you’re knowledgeable. I think it is apparent from your statements, that you overestimate your intellectual ability, and underestimate the intellectual ability of others.
Pris,
Quite frankly, this is awful. With these considerations, why bother to post your arguments on philosophy forums? Surely, the content of what the interlocutors say is more important than their background? I’ve never heard anyone say something like this and it says more about you than I think you understand. If you were empathetic (as you claim), you would understand that.
I don’t think “anxiety cells” would distinguish a religiously caused feel good from one caused by eating a piece of chocolate. I don’t think a scientist could make that distinction either.
Maybe not. Sometimes I wonder if it would piss him off because religion is ultimately full of conceit.
“Nothing can be more egotistical than true repentance.” - twitter.com/A_Watts_Quotes/stat … 2510606337
Serendipper,
Apologies, I should have been clearer in what I was saying. When I said “religious thinking” I actually meant unaffiliated modes of thinking about God, but because God is attached to religions, I said “religious thinking”. Personally, I don’t believe that any theistic religion has the correct world view, but I don’t know that all of them are incorrect. I think there’s a possibility that one of them could be right, although I don’t have a belief in any, if that makes any sense?
Oh it’s cool. Sometimes I wonder though if I assume there is a god and want to “play it safe” by trying to do right, then what is the right thing to do? How do I impress god or is the act of trying to impress god just going to make him mad?
I think, maybe, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil isn’t named quite right because the implication that eating of the tree bestows knowledge couldn’t be as sinful as claiming one can tell good from evil. So it’s the tree of conceit wherein eating of the tree, much like alcohol, causes the bravado to presume there is a good and evil or that one can know what it is.
Obviously, we can’t stop sinning, whatever that is, so redemption couldn’t be about anything we can consciously do because how is the one who needs fixing going to be able to pull himself up by his own bootstraps in order to fix himself? I think it was St Thomas who argued that the law wasn’t given with the expectation that we would follow it, but merely to show us that we can’t. So the law is humbling and not meant to be cause of persecution of righteous crusades.
This could be the narrow gate that few find and the wisdom of the babes who have an ear to hear because kids innocently just want to play and generally don’t get self-righteous until they’re older. Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism have that theme in common, though none of them typically practice it.
Why would God want or need to be impressed by you?
You don’t know what is good and what is evil?
People have no control over themselves or their own actions?
That sounds ridiculous.
I have no idea.
According to my analysis, the only evil is presuming to know what evil is because as soon as we know what it is, we’ll go on a crusade against it (which is evil) and as soon as we realize what is good, we’ll become self-righteous and judgmental (which is evil). Even identifying the identification of evil is evil lest we be self-righteous about that too and go on crusades against it.
It’s debatable, but it doesn’t matter.
Paul said to the Romans, “To will is present with me, but how to do good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not; and the evil that I would not, that I do!”
And to the Ephesians he said, " For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast."
Boasting is key.
Even if you could be in control of yourself, and even if a broken person could fix himself (which he can’t, regardless of freewill), you could do no work to save yourself lest you boast, so freewill doesn’t matter. If there is salvation, it can only be a free gift because there is certainly nothing one can do to earn it.
Why is that?
I think he was arguing with Dionysius the Areopagite, who took the opposite position.
Serendipper,
I think it depends on what you mean by “sin” and how destructive the behaviours are. With the application of self-control, we can cease destructive behaviours, pick ourselves up and wipe the proverbial dust off. Christianity would claim that seeking redemption is the conscious choice to be saved and that we don’t actually save ourselves. Once we make the choice to redeem ourselves, Jesus takes the reigns and redeems us through our faith via the holy spirit. I think that people can make the choice to change things for the better, usually when we hit rock bottom, but possibly before then. In my experience, religion becomes a viable solution after everything else has been exhausted and failed, people turn to God as their last hope.
I often here Evangelists preach that the law was given to increase sin, because it sets too high a standard for people to adhere to. I don’t really agree with that view, but Jesus’ advent apparently invalidated the law and made grace available to us in the form of the New Covenant, so the law is no longer relevant, as according to the modern doctrine. The modern maxim is that “right believing, causes right living.” so when we believe in Jesus we lose the taste for sin. When I was a theist, my rule of thumb was the four cardinal virtues, I still had my guilty pleasures, and made some bad moral choices, but I believed in the principle of grace, I believed I was saved regardless of my sins. I thought that my ticket to heaven was a banker.
Good stuff!
I suppose a sin is a transgression of a law and I suspect that it doesn’t matter what list of laws is applicable because it’s assumed that “everyone has sinned and come short of the glory of God”. And as Paul said, once we’ve broken the law, we’re a lawbreaker and that’s that. So it would seem there isn’t much point to trying to keep a law once we’ve been labeled a breaker of the law; therefore whatever the law is is completely inconsequential for salvation.
Yes I suppose we can set goals and achieve them, but what about spiritual progress or what they call enlightenment in the East? How is a person who is in the dark able to lead himself without falling in the ditch? How is someone who needs improving going to be the one who decides how to improve?
If we decide that we are sinners and need some kind of improvement, then isn’t that like having a mistrust of ourselves? And if we can’t trust ourselves, can we trust our mistrust of ourselves? So if we can’t trust ourselves, we can’t trust anything and if we can’t trust anything, then how are we going to feel confident that we’ve chosen the right method to improve ourselves? How do we even know what improving ourselves means? After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Yes, that’s what they say, but is faith also a work? If a street preacher asks me if I’m saved and I reply “no”, he will say “Well here’s all you have to do __________”. What’s in the blank doesn’t matter; what’s relevant is the word “do”. I have to do something, so it’s not a gift. Furthermore, if I did decide to believe (as if I could decide to believe something), I could say “na na a boo boo I made the right choice and you didn’t” so I’m still in a position of bragging and feeling self-righteous. So there is nothing I can do and I must be careful lest I try to “do nothing” as a mean of doing something.
Alan Watts made an interesting point that all religion is clinging to something and that is not faith, but faith is the absence of clinging. It’s the trust of oneself to the total unknown. In other words, one wouldn’t give it a thought if he had faith.
Yup, people pull God from their pocket. He’s their rainyday friend.
I’m not sure I follow that logic either.
Yes he came to fulfill the law and on the cross he said “it is finished.”
Yes that’s the “faith without works is dead” passage. Faith causes the right works; not works causing the faith. We know a tree by the fruit it bears and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Same here.
That is why I have stated your knowledge database is too shallow and narrow.
The point is when I post my views it is not easy for me to post everything I know of thus I do take short cuts.
But if you are well read, you would have understood and know some of the missing links [obviojus] I did not posts.
Note:
-
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872): by Darwin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expre … nd_Animals -
Anxiety-Related Behaviors in Mice
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK5221/
From 1 and 2 we can link anxiety [a secondary emotion] between mice (2) and humans (1).
There has been loads of research on emotions in man and animals since 1872 to the present.
-
I have given links between anxiety and religion
-
Scientists has traced anxiety cells in mice.
-
Therefore they can eventually trace anxiety cells in humans note the Human Connectome Project [HCP].
-
Therefore in future with advances in the HCP, humans will be able to link anxiety cells to religions [3]
I stated it is not a big leap because the Eastern religions [since thousands of years ago] are already linking religions with anxiety albeit not on the level of the specific anxiety cells but in trial and error [black box] methods involving the brain/mind.
Buddhist Psychological Practices That Can Help Relieve Anxiety
huffingtonpost.com/josh-kor … 08520.html
Working Mindfully with Anxiety
psychologytoday.com/blog/th … ly-anxiety
The above and many others actuality with the HCP and other advances in knowledge give me an optimism of high probability.
As you can see, what is missing on part is the extra knowledge and practices necessary to answer the questions you posed.
There are still loads of missing [quite necessary] knowledge I have not posted due to time constraints. Note I don’t want to waste too much time digging unless necessary.
Nah, what I meant is your counter argument lack substance.
As above, there are additional knowledge which you are lacking, thus effecting the substance of your counter argument or rejection.
Note there is a fact, there is consensus, but in this case it does not mean the fact of a consensus = truth [justified or reasonable].
As I mentioned I don’t consideration to the consensus you have with others, what matter is whether the arguments you produced are of substance [justified] or not.
Rejected my opinions??
I have intellectual integrity and I strive to counter arguments as accurate as possible.
So far there you have not produced any justified refutations.
Note in the above case re anxiety, mice, religions, you are ignorant of so many other necessary knowledge to link them as a whole.
I have never said my arguments are ‘perfect’ NEVER! - the default is I am waiting for sound arguments of substance to counter my views.
Humans are not infallible - fact!
Can’t you see the answers in the last statement above.
Emotions are intrinsic and inherent is ALL humans and animals.
Where did this come from if not from the DNA [nature]?
Otherwise you think it is from Nurture?
I believe the above is new knowledge to you? [any thanks from you? ] It must be else you would not have queried me with the above question.
Re 1 - all emotions [anxiety is one] are driven by neurons. Thus there must be anxiety neurons [brain cells]. The anxiety emotions are to facilitate survival, thus existential, and procreation - also existential.
Re 2. I have already given links and reference. If not sure, just google.
I did not claim that.
Religions assuage existential angst in theists and non-theists [e.g. Buddhism is a non-theistic religion].
I have already given links above re Religion [Buddhism] and anxiety.
Existential angst is one kind of anxiety which is primal.
Note the link between religion and the relieving of existential angst and existential crisis.
https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/JPAN/article/view/11836
Existential Psychology & Buddha Philosophy: It’s Relevance in Nurturing a Healthy Mind
The references I have provided are quickie reference as I don’t want to waste time extracting a proper list.
I stated and qualified, religions as driven by the existential crisis is a form of ‘mental illness’ in the broadest sense.
This is why in its extreme case, the consequences are the following evils and violence;
plus a whole range of evils and violence around the world.
You cannot be that selfish.
Note what is critical re Philosophy is anticipating what are possible opportunities and threats in the future and planning how to deal with them in the future. Besides it would be better to die optimistic [support by justifiable speculationss] than being pessimistic and helpless.
Whatever said is not critical.
What is most critical is I am still waiting for counter arguments of substance.
The term ‘peer’ is subjective and depending on how one defines it. It no point getting too serious about it.
As I had stated what counts is the substance of the counter arguments from the other side.
When I post in philosophy forums I am expecting the following;
- Sound and credible counter arguments of substance,
- Even if the arguments are not of substance, I will still discuss some it [in this case and others] that enable a refresher of knowledge I have learned. Note I don’t participate in all areas and questions raised in this forum.
- Learning something new [it does happen at times].
Even at present scientists are able to link religious variables to certain parts of the brain using fMRI imagings. But this is still at a very crude stage.
Note the Human Connectome Project.
The objective of the HCP is to map all the neuron pathways in the brain and relate them to their functions.
Once it was thought mapping the Human Genome was impossible, but scientists had already done that - which give optimism for the possibility of the HCP.
HCP is definitely tough but not impossible, even if we can achieve a 75% completeness it would something significant and will enable scientists to differentiate anxiety cells and their pathways between being religious and eating a piece of chocolate.