Greta wrote:
You know what the Great Beast is? Each major colony of humans is effectively a "great beast" (certainly a large one). It has its own energy flows and rhythms, inputs and outputs - and yes, that "beast" tries to control you as one of its "cells". Why wouldn't it? Any emergent colonial quasi-organism will control its cells. This element of control emerges even in small groups. It makes sense since a beast cannot survive if its constituent parts are not operating in harmony, in a state of anarchy. Internal anarchy is sickness and death for the "beast" of society, and most of its denizens.
While sciences, as collectivist undertakings, are effectively "great beasts", so too are religions, which impose their own controls. You can't avoid being part of, or interacting with, "great beasts" without becoming a hermit. Most people learn the art of flying under the radar, taking the liberties they need in order to be happy, but discreetly enough to avoid the "beast's" attention or care.
You describe the Great Beast well and it does consist of groupings of lesser types of beasts. However is it possible a collective group of human beings can develop with a quality of consciousness as opposed to indoctrination distinguishing them from the Great Beast?
Thomas Merton wrote of Simone Weil:
It is unclear whether Weil knew of Merton, but Merton records being asked to review a biography of Weil (Simone Weil: A Fellowship in Love, Jacques Chabaud, 1964) and was challenged and inspired by her writing. “Her non-conformism and mysticism are essential elements in our time and without her contribution we remain not human.
It is possible that a small minority could be dedicated to outgrowing the dominance of the Beast and establish a metaxu, an environment which supports conscious growth connecting above and below? It would be the beginning of a super civilization. As you can see it is a long way off and the Beast will use all its resources to prevent it since allowing it means its death.
As far as the question if egoistic stupidity is a legitimate observation: Einstein is quoted in Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source.”
The source is obviously egoistic stupidity. I remember over in [another forum] when I began a thread on blind belief and blind denial. I remember all the silliness and insult it provoked. Yet it is egoistic stupidity that keeps people in psychological slavery by supporting all sorts of imagination. If this is insulting, it is a necessary insult for anyone concerned with the reality of the human condition and how to awaken from it.
-- Updated Sat Apr 08, 2017 8:56 am to add the following --
Belindi wrote:Nick_A wrote:
Simone Weil describes the essence of religion:
Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation
Profession of Faith
There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.
Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.
Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world.
Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good………………….
I wish!
And wish that this "sole foundation of good" would reveal itself unambiguously to men. And do it now before any more suffering happens. But it won't, will it Nick? So supposing that Simone is right and there is this "sole foundation of good" excactly as she describes, how can it affect what decisions we make?
Man in the universe is too far from the Source to be told anything. This is why we need the Son as an intermediary. Help is there already. People just deny it and are closed to it so everything remains the same.
“Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.” Simone Weil
So the question becomes how to consciously open to receive the help of grace in regards to the human condition you refer to.
-- Updated Sat Apr 08, 2017 9:15 am to add the following --
Iapetus
What belief is held in common by atheists which enables you to criticise them?
First of all there are two types of atheists. From wiki:
Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that asserts that no deities exist; negative atheism, also called weak atheism and soft atheism, is any other type of atheism, i.e. where a person does not believe in the existence of any deities but does not explicitly assert that there are none.[1][2][3]
The terms "negative atheism" and "positive atheism" were used by Antony Flew in 1976[1] and have appeared in Michael Martin's writings since 1990.[4]
Negative atheists still have an open mind. They bring legitimate and important questions. I criticize positive atheists as did Einstein for their intolerance. I’ll repeat what I quoted to Greta. This attitude of dominant intolerance is just egoistic stupidity as far as I’m concerned
As far as the question if egoistic stupidity is a legitimate observation: Einstein is quoted in Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source.”
-- Updated Sat Apr 08, 2017 10:15 am to add the following --
F4
This is ambiguous enough to be spun in different ways. There is, according to Einstein, no transcendent source of being. Nature is the source for our being. There is nothing outside of nature that is the source for it, nothing outside the natural world at all.
This is not so clear. Here is a very good article on Einstein’s beliefs. It concludes with
http://www.bethinking.org/god/did-einst ... eve-in-god
To sum up: Einstein was – like Newton before him – deeply religious and a firm believer in a transcendent God. However Einstein rejected anthropomorphic and personal understandings of the word ‘God’. His beliefs may be seen as a form of Deism: "the belief in the existence of a Supreme Being as the source of finite existence, with rejection of revelation and the supernatural doctrines of Christianity" (The Oxford English Dictionary). If any intellectual high treason has been committed, it has been committed by Dawkins himself, who has failed to deal carefully with what Einstein actually said, thereby confusing two very different understandings of God. He should have paid more attention to Max Jammer’s book, and to the conclusions Jammer reached after studying all the evidence. There is another conclusion to be drawn from this: Dawkins has pointed out the attempt in America to rebrand atheists as ‘brights’, implying atheists are clever and theists stupid. If Einstein was clearly a theist, like Newton, this is arrant nonsense. This should help to stop the bullying of Christian children, who are told they are stupid to believe in God. One girl personally known to the author was bullied so much for being a Christian that she had to move schools. So, after all of Dawkins’ rhetorical bluster and verbal swagger, we are left with fallacious reasoning and factual errors – a case of ‘argument weak, shout louder’
You have just shown why it was incorrect for you to say that Einstein experienced the essence of religion as understood by you and Weil. He denied Weil’s reality outside the world, outside space and time.
Einstein didn't directly speculate on the domain of the Source as far as I know. He understood the essence of religion which is the recognition of an intelligence responsible for universal laws and the world in which we exist. That recognition is the essence of religion.
The source of the good according to Einstein is man. Good is a human value, determined and practiced by man.
The article and the sources quoted do not support this. Genesis 1 says:
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
Good as used here is not the pronouncement of a secular expert initiating universal creation. Man made conceptions of good and the objective good are not the same
So you have said, except what he understood as the essence of religion is not what you or Weil claims it is. It is a fundamental error not to determine the way in which terms are used by authors.
From the article:
On Spinoza, Einstein said, "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."[31] Some – like Dawkins – think Spinoza equated God with the material universe (pantheism), but Spinoza himself made clear this is mistaken. Spinoza wrote, "The view of certain people that I identify God with nature is quite mistaken."[32] The French philosopher Martial Guéroult suggested the term panentheism, rather than pantheism, to describe Spinoza’s view of the relation between God and the universe. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘panentheism’ as the theory or belief that God encompasses and interpenetrates the universe, but at the same time is greater than, and independent of it. So panentheism is similar to pantheism, but crucially in addition believes that God exists as a mind or a spirit. The idea that God is both transcendent and immanent is also a major tenet of both Christianity and Judaism.
Einstein clearly appreciated a quality of spirit (conscious mind) which is the Source yet is within the universe. If true, this quality of conscious mind can provide the materiality through grace serving as spiritual nourishment which would enable Man to outgrow indoctrinated morality and open to the experience of objective conscience which deals would serve to balance emotional and intellectual intelligence.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace