Should Governments regulate fraudulent religions?

[Zero_Sum]

Thank you as well for not knowing what you priorities are.

Regards
DL

It's clear you don't know how to use an internet forum properly.

[Greatest I am]

Ditto.

Regards
DL

[Karpel Tunnel]

If only logic and reasoned ruled us, there would not be fraudulent religions.

If the word fact is giving you a problem, I recommend the dictionary. I am not re-defining well defined terms.

Regards
DL

1) you said that law was fact based and CONTRASTED the law, because of this, with processes bases on logic and reason. But the law also uses logic and reason. You presented something in a binary way, I disagreed. Do you agree that the law/courts use logic and reason and are not only fact based or do you disagree? I find with your posts that because you often do not integrate what I write in response, your responses only seem to respond to mine. 2) The word fact is certainly complicated, but that is not the main problem I am trying to understand what it would mean if a process (the law or courts in this case) was only fact based. I cannot see that working. YOu have to have logic and reason to connect the facts if you want to draw any conclusions. You have to have logic and reason to draw conclusions about probabilities, relevance and application of those facts in the context of determining responsibility, guilt, innocence, etc. A court without logic and reaon: The judge and lawyers state facts. No arguments, no connecting facts. No mounting arguments, no trying to demonstrate that the other lawyer's argument is weak or does not make sense. No logical or reasoning in the way witnesses are interviewed and their suggestions are critiques for their logic and reason. No logical advice to the jury about how to work with testimony, physical evidence. No interviewing professional witnesses about how they drew conclusions. No preparations for court using logic and reason. The jury does not use reason and logic or even try to. They sit at the table and state facts to each other. Etc.

So, again, I don't see your sense that law is fact based RATHER THAN logic and reason based as making sense. Now I realize to never stated that courts were like this, however you did present a dichotomy. Courts being fact based, rather than reason and logic based. I think that makes no sense.

[Greatest I am]

If only logic and reasoned ruled us, there would not be fraudulent religions.

If the word fact is giving you a problem, I recommend the dictionary. I am not re-defining well defined terms.

Regards
DL

1) you said that law was fact based and CONTRASTED the law, because of this, with processes bases on logic and reason. But the law also uses logic and reason. You presented something in a binary way, I disagreed. Do you agree that the law/courts use logic and reason and are not only fact based or do you disagree? I find with your posts that because you often do not integrate what I write in response, your responses only seem to respond to mine. 2) The word fact is certainly complicated, but that is not the main problem I am trying to understand what it would mean if a process (the law or courts in this case) was only fact based. I cannot see that working. YOu have to have logic and reason to connect the facts if you want to draw any conclusions. You have to have logic and reason to draw conclusions about probabilities, relevance and application of those facts in the context of determining responsibility, guilt, innocence, etc. A court without logic and reaon: The judge and lawyers state facts. No arguments, no connecting facts. No mounting arguments, no trying to demonstrate that the other lawyer's argument is weak or does not make sense. No logical or reasoning in the way witnesses are interviewed and their suggestions are critiques for their logic and reason. No logical advice to the jury about how to work with testimony, physical evidence. No interviewing professional witnesses about how they drew conclusions. No preparations for court using logic and reason. The jury does not use reason and logic or even try to. They sit at the table and state facts to each other. Etc.

So, again, I don't see your sense that law is fact based RATHER THAN logic and reason based as making sense. Now I realize to never stated that courts were like this, however you did present a dichotomy. Courts being fact based, rather than reason and logic based. I think that makes no sense.

It seems you have muddled what I put. That or I presented the issues poorly.

Logic and reason work with facts. Faith does not. Judges use facts as evidence and ignore faith without facts.

I trust the courts more than any religion for that reason.

Only a pride-less nation allows flagrant and open fraud of it's dimwitted and gullible citizens.

Regards
DL

[Serendipper]

The knowledge of God through faith.

Faith is non-conceptual knowledge, agnosia. An agnostic was originally someone who had non-conceptual, apophatic knowledge of God (dark knowledge).

(I just wanted to put this Alan Watts transcription somewhere, so this is as good as any other.)

The Christian Church therefore emphasized "mystis" or "faith" as against "gnosis" or "knowledge" because they said you can never know God; God could never become an object of knowledge, and in this funny roundabout way, the Christian theologians were saying exactly the same thing as the Hindus, only the Hindus who do call this knowledge of God through faith, they call it "jnana" which is the same as the Greek word "gnosis", but just to give you a little sidelight on how words get mixed up in their meanings: we now have a class of person called an agnostic and an agnostic generally means a person who doesn't commit himself to any beliefs about the ultimate nature of things; he just says he doesn't know.

But the original word "agnosia" in greek meant a special kind of knowledge, it was called "the dark knowledge of God"; the knowledge of God in the "Cloud of Unknowing" to use the title of a mystical treatise written by an anonymous 14th century English monk. This monk derived his ideas from a very mysterious figure who wrote under the name of Dionysus the Areopagite. Dionysus was a fifth or sixth century Syrian monk who had learned his mysticism from Porphyry (sp?) who got it from Plutinos who was a neo-platonist and who probably got a great deal of stimulation from the intellectual world of Alexandria, and Alexandria in the early years of the Christian era was a tremendous exchange place between east and west.

Buddhist monks visited Alexandria because it was one of the great centers of trade between Rome and India and as you may know, all Rome's gold eventually went to India for the purchase of pepper, and as a result of this the Roman economy collapsed; they bought too much luxury from India and India in exchange got Roman architecture; you'll see a lot of Roman architecture in Indian temples. But Alexandria was the great center for the gnostics and for Christian theology and some of the greatest theologians: Clement, Origen, Athanasius, Saint Cyril, all worked out of Alexandria.

And now going back to this strange monk Dionysus, it was he who first put around the idea in Christian circles that there was such a thing of the knowledge as the knowledge of God by faith, by agnosia, really by unknowing, and he, in a book which he wrote called "The Theologian Mystica", he wrote a treatise on the higher knowledge of God which might be quoted directly from the Upanishads, in certain parts of it, the last section of it reads like the Mandukya Upanishad because it's a series of negations. It says what God is not and he goes very far because he says that God is not "one" because our idea of unity falls far short of what God is; so does our idea of Trinity; so does our idea of spirit; our idea of mind; of justice; of love; all these things are not really God and he says in another place "that if anybody, having seen God, understood what he had seen, what he would have seen would not have been God, but some creature of God less than God; some sort of angel or something like that."

It's perfectly amazing to consider the influence that this man had for writing under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. He became identified you see with St Paul's first convert in Athens and legend has it that he was the first bishop of Athens and was martyred in Gaul now where he's known as St Denis, but St Thomas Aquinas looked upon the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite as having the highest authority, and you could, if all the text of Dionysus his work had been lost, you could restore most of it from quotations of St Thomas.

He wrote really two very important books: one was the one I said "The Theologian Mystica" the other was called "The Divine Names" and these two books presented the two phases of his theology. The book called "The Divine Names" was a discussion on the nature of God in terms of what God is like, by analogy, and this kind of knowledge of God he called "cataphatic" from the Greek "phanai", "to speak" and "kata" meaning "to say according to that" which is to say "to speak by analogy" where he used, though entirely negative language about God, this sort of discourse was called "apopahtic" and the word "apo" meaning "away from" to "talk away from" just as a sculptor, when he makes an image, reveals the image by removing stone, and so Dionysus explained that one attains the knowledge of God by discarding concepts, which is exactly what the Hindus mean when they say of God: one can only say "neti neti": not this, not this, not any conception. Thus in Hindu philosophy, the highest state of consciousness in Samadhi is called Nirvikalpa Samadhi which means literally "non-conceptual". "Vikalpa" means "a concept", "Nir" is a negation, so the "non-conceptual knowledge".

Now, people have greatly misunderstood this; they have imagined that "unknowing", the state of the highest contemplation, was the acquisition of a blank mind from which you first discarded thought, then you went on to discard perception, then he went on to discard any kind of sensory content in awareness until you were, so far as anyone could say, aware of nothing and they supposed that this kind of
catatonic state was mystical consciousness. This is often believed in India. If you go to the Vedanta Society and ask "what do you mean by Nirvikalpa Samadhi?" they will tell you that the one in that state has no consciousness whatsoever of the sensory world; that he is completely absorbed as you sometimes see Hindu holy men sitting in a state where they are blind and deaf to everything going on around them.

The founder of Chinese Zen known as Hui-neng, described people like that as no better than pieces of rock and lumps of wood and said is a very serious mistake indeed to confuse Sunyata, the sanskrit word for "the great void", which is both the ultimate reality and the consciousness thereof, it is a great mistake to confuse it with nothingness. It is rather to be thought of as space, or like space, because space is not empty, it contains the whole universe and so in the same way the state of mind of a person who is truly enlightened is not empty; it contains everything, but like space it is not stained by what it contains and it's often said in Zen imagery: you can't hammer a nail into space; you can't spit on the sky and soil it; if you try, the spit will just return and hit your own face.

So they go on to say the consciousness in all of us, your basic mind, is like space. It is completely pure, but of course by purity they don't mean unsexual, which is of course what purity generally means in the Western world: blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. A person who's pure in heart is generally understood as one who never has any naughty thoughts. You know what "naughty" means? It means "vain", "negative", "empty". A naughty person therefore is one who doesn't amount to anything; he's just nothing; that's the real meaning, but this misunderstanding of the nature of contemplation existed not only in India, from which it was transmitted to China, but also in the West.

You read many treatises on Western mysticism and there's still the feeling that getting into a deep deep trance, sometimes called "rapture", again the word "rapture" has undergone some transformations: we talk about rapture as people being beside themselves with pleasure, but to be rapt means "to be taken away from the body". So also "ecstasy" we now interpret as meaning in a state of high pleasure, but it means "to be outside yourself, to stand outside yourself, your soul has left you it is with God." As Arabs say of all crazy: people be kind to them, they're not here; their soul is with God, but actually if it can be true, as Buddhists say, that Nirvana and Samsara are one, and if it can be true, as Christians say, that the spirit can be made flesh, the word can be made flesh, then obviously the highest form of man is not sitting in a trance like a lump on a log with a perfectly blank mind because, if that were the highest state of consciousness, it would be an exclusive state of mind; a state of mind that shuts out life and, in that sense, it could not qualify for being what the Hindus call non-dualistic.

They always speak of the highest reality as being not "one" because "one" excludes "many"; not "nothing" because "nothing" excludes "something"; not "being" because "being" excludes "non-being" and vice-versa, so they use this word "non-dual" to mean that which doesn't exclude anything, which as it were has no outside: as we say space has no outside. You can only have outsides inside space; you can't have any outsides outside space; there is no outside space even though space may be curved and finite.

http://www.yousubtitles.com/Alan-Watts- ... id-1623818

[Gloominary]

As an atheist, I'm not worried about religion in Canada.
A quarter of Canadians are irreligious, and irreligion is growing, it'd be growing even faster if it weren't for immigrants, which's the real problem, too many immigrants.
While religion is by definition fraudulent, in that it makes claims it can't substantiate, I believe in freedom of speech and thought, including the right to be delusional, even if you pass your delusion onto your kids, so long as you're not dangerously crazy, only then should your kids be taken away.
There will always be delusion in society, and so long as they're not too fanatical, I think it's relatively benign, perhaps even beneficial in some respects, as moderately religious people tend to be happier and healthier than irreligious, and religion can serve many functions besides propagating superstition, it can bring communities together, and instill good values.
Rather than force people to be irreligious, I believe in combating religious fanaticism with education.

I don't think many people take religion very seriously these days anyway, they sin morning, noon and night, Monday-Saturday, and ask for forgiveness on Sunday, repeat.

[Greatest I am]

[

http://www.yousubtitles.com/Alan-Watts- ... id-1623818

A good find.

Have you heard this one of his?
I use it often in my Gnostic Christian presentation.
I enjoyed your link as it reminded me of and more or less follows what I did in pushing my apotheosis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbes ... r_embedded

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

As an atheist, I'm not worried about religion in Canada.
A quarter of Canadians are irreligious, and irreligion is growing, it'd be growing even faster if it weren't for immigrants, which's the real problem, too many immigrants.
While religion is by definition fraudulent, in that it makes claims it can't substantiate, I believe in freedom of speech and thought, including the right to be delusional, even if you pass your delusion onto your kids, so long as you're not dangerously crazy, only then should your kids be taken away.
There will always be delusion in society, and so long as they're not too fanatical, I think it's relatively benign, perhaps even beneficial in some respects, as moderately religious people tend to be happier and healthier than irreligious, and religion can serve many functions besides propagating superstition, it can bring communities together, and instill good values.
Rather than force people to be irreligious, I believe in combating religious fanaticism with education.

I don't think many people take religion very seriously these days anyway, they sin morning, noon and night, Monday-Saturday, and ask for forgiveness on Sunday, repeat.

I mostly agree with what you put, although I see a lot more harm coming out of religion than you do.

The delusion and lies are one thing. Their homophobic and misogynous preaching though creates way too many victims and that must be made to stop as it is holding us all back in our journey to a better civilization.

If religions did not do that, I would likely ignore them.

For any society to allow the flagrant profiteering from religious con men shows that we have a long way to go before really living by the Golden Rule.

Even in your presentation, I have to wonder about allowing children to be brain washed into belief in superstition and the notion that, in Christianity's case, a genocidal son murdering God can actually be good.

Regards
DL

[Serendipper]

[

http://www.yousubtitles.com/Alan-Watts- ... id-1623818

A good find.

Have you heard this one of his?
I use it often in my Gnostic Christian presentation.
I enjoyed your link as it reminded me of and more or less follows what I did in pushing my apotheosis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbes ... r_embedded

Regards
DL

Yes that's part of this lecture:



Alan's genius never ceases to amaze me and the fact that other people cannot recognize it also never ceases to amaze me. It's like a giant pile of treasure that seemingly nobody can see.

St John 10:36 says in the Greek: ..... because I said, "son of god I am". The church indeed pedestalized Jesus. http://biblehub.com/text/john/10-36.htm

Oh, btw, any youtube video that has the "cc" at the right-bottom of the video means there is a transcription available. Click the dots ... under the video to revel a context menu and click "open transcript". It's a bit of work to organize it and place punctuation and replace misspelled words, but it's a helpful start to transcribing videos. It probably took me 2 hours to complete the one above, but I wanted to be able to reference it in future discussions so I had to invest the time.

[Serendipper]

If religions did not do that, I would likely ignore them.

I hope I have made it clear that I am perfectly happy for people to have these toys and to play with them at home and hug them and share with other people who come around to play with the toys, so that's absolutely fine; they are not to make ME play with these toys. I will not play with the toys. Don't bring the toys to my house. Don't say my children must play with these toys.

I made a lot of decisions in life on the basis of religious indoctrination from a child, but I console myself with suspecting that if not for that, I'd find something else to complain about But I honestly believe that had I not been indoctrinated, my life would now be better from a worldly perspective. I was too... idealistic in thinking that whatever happened was God's plan. Whoever was in my life was God's doing and whatever happened was God's will. I was not as critical as I should have been and from a certain point of view I can see religious indoctrination as a form of child abuse, though not with bad intent; just ignorance. On the other hand, my extrapolation may be in error and perhaps I'm better off now than my idealized speculations of alternative upbringings. Anyway, I shouldn't cry over spilled milk.

[MagsJ]

Lol.

Western oligarchy and its NGO's wouldn't be able to function without their international front charitable organizations because if either was to disappear overnight they might actually have to contribute to society in paying taxes like everybody else.

Indeed they would...

[MagsJ]

Should Governments regulate fraudulent religions?

...along with fraudulent charities. Sure.. some of the money gets to the intended people, but millions are siphoned off as bonuses to those running these charities. How compassionate they really are!

I hear you and hate that you and I have to pay the tax shortfall created by thieves who know how to play the system.

The crooks ain't just confined to religions. Here are a few more crooks:
Rank Charity name... Total raised by solicitors ...Paid to solicitors ... % spent on direct cash aid
1 Kids Wish Network 137.9million 115.9 million 2.5%
2 Cancer Fund of America 86.8million 75.4 million 1.0%
3 Children's Wish Foundation International 92.7million 61.2 million 10.6%
4 Firefighters Charitable Foundation 62.8million 53.8 million 7.4%
5 International Union of Police Associations, AFL-CIO 66.6million 50.4 million 0.5%
6 Breast Cancer Relief Foundation 63.9million 44.8 million 2.2%
7 American Association of State Troopers 48.1million 38.6 million 8.9%
8 National Veterans Service Fund 70.2million 36.9 million 7.8%
9 Children's Cancer Fund of America 43.7million 34.4 million 4.6%
10 Children's Cancer Recovery Foundation 38.5million 28.9 million 0.7%
11 Project Cure (Bradenton, FL) 53.8million 25.5 million 0.0%
12 Committee For Missing Children 26.6million 23.5 million 0.8%
13 Youth Development Fund 27.5million 22.6 million 1.0%
14 Association for Firefighters and Paramedics 24.0million 21.4 million 3.1%
15 Woman To Woman Breast Cancer Foundation 19.4million 18.2 million 0.3%
16 United States Deputy Sheriffs' Association 25.6million 17.9 million 0.8%
17 National Caregiving Foundation 21.0million 17.4 million 3.2%
18 Vietnow National Headquarters 19.1million 16.7 million 2.8%
19 National Cancer Coalition 42.1million 16.4 million 1.3%
20 Operation Lookout National Center for Missing Youth 18.2million 14.7 million 0.0%
21 American Foundation For Disabled Children 15.8million 13.4 million 0.6%
22 Heart Support of America 31.4million 12.9 million 3.1%
23 Police Protective Fund 37.7million 12.2 million 0.7%
24 Veterans Assistance Foundation 12.4million 11.1 million 10.4%
25 Children's Charity Fund 14.0million 10.3 million 2.4%
26 The Veterans Fund 12.6million 10.2 million 2.5%
27 Wishing Well Foundation USA 12.6million 10.1 million 4.3%
28 Disabled Police Officers of America Inc. 11.4million 9.5 million 2.3%
29 Disabled Police and Sheriffs Foundation 10.4million 8.9 million 1.0%
30 National Police Defense Foundation 10.6million 8.4 million 5.1%
31 Defeat Diabetes Foundation 12.7million 7.8 million 0.0%
32 American Association of the Deaf & Blind 10.3million 7.8 million 0.1%
33 Optimal Medical Foundation 7.8million 7.6 million 1.0%
34 Circle of Friends For American Veterans 9.3million 7.2 million 4.4%
35 United Breast Cancer Foundation 12.7million 7.2 million 6.3%
36 Reserve Police Officers Association 7.8million 6.9 million 1.2%
37 Children's Leukemia Research Association 9.8million 6.8 million 11.1%
38 Disabled Police Officers Counseling Center 7.6million 6.4 million 0.1%
39 Shiloh International Ministries 7.7million 6.0 million 1.1%
40 Find the Children 7.4million 4.8 million 4.6%
41 Survivors and Victims Empowered 7.7million 4.8 million 0.0%
42 Firefighters Assistance Fund 5.7million 4.7 million 3.1%
43 Caring for Our Children Foundation 5.1million 4.4 million 1.6%
44 National Narcotic Officers Associations Coalition 5.0million 4.2 million 0.0%
45 Our American Veterans 2.6million 2.3 million 2.3%
46 Roger Wyburn-Mason & Jack M Blount Foundation For Eradication of Rheumatoid Disease 9.0million 1.9 million 0.0%
47 Hope Cancer Fund 2.1million 1.7 million 0.5%
48 Firefighters Burn Fund 2.0million 1.7 million 1.5%

Crooks all, and there ain't nothing illegal about it.

Regards
DL

My isnt that a long list..

[Greatest I am]

If religions did not do that, I would likely ignore them.

I hope I have made it clear that I am perfectly happy for people to have these toys and to play with them at home and hug them and share with other people who come around to play with the toys, so that's absolutely fine; they are not to make ME play with these toys. I will not play with the toys. Don't bring the toys to my house. Don't say my children must play with these toys.

I made a lot of decisions in life on the basis of religious indoctrination from a child, but I console myself with suspecting that if not for that, I'd find something else to complain about But I honestly believe that had I not been indoctrinated, my life would now be better from a worldly perspective. I was too... idealistic in thinking that whatever happened was God's plan. Whoever was in my life was God's doing and whatever happened was God's will. I was not as critical as I should have been and from a certain point of view I can see religious indoctrination as a form of child abuse, though not with bad intent; just ignorance. On the other hand, my extrapolation may be in error and perhaps I'm better off now than my idealized speculations of alternative upbringings. Anyway, I shouldn't cry over spilled milk.

Indeed. Let the dead bury the dead.

Thanks for both replies.

Regards
DL

[Greatest I am]

My isnt that a long list..

For sure, and it is our extra tax contribution that allows that open fraud to continue.

Shame on us.

Regards
DL