Muslims calling for the Death of all Athiests.

[djolds1]

Note: the Buddhists managed to come up with a moral system without reference to God(s).

And what did it accomplish? Technology was Stagnant under Buddhism.

Most societies have been. I'm essentially agnostic on the sci/tech-promotion abilities of a religion; that isn't what its intended for.

[Stubby]

The scientific progress we have seen happened despite religious influence not because of it.
If people like Da Vinci and Galilieo didn't have to fight the church every time they discovered something contrary to church doctrine...

[MSimon]

Then you are no different from the control-freak liberals you rail against.

Not exactly. I aim to make changes by offering better solutions and helping them catch on.

My current campaigns:

1. Make endocannabinoid a household word.
2. Make the Forth computer language dominant.

I'm against forcing anything. Besides I lack the power and am not interested in acquiring it.

=======

Yes. Taoism and Buddhism were Lucas' sources. But you have to bring people along. "the Force" seemed like a good way. And yes faiths are generally organic. But we are in a bit of a rush. Christianity is dying and there is nothing on the scene to take its place.

The Christian church has gone sclerotic. The Catholics (and a significant fraction of the Protestants) are a case in point.

We are learning more about the value of the endocannabinoid system every day. The results and potential results are breathtaking.

http://rockford-for-safe-access.blogspot.com/

And yet those Christian factions are adamant that the only plant that produces cannabinoids and might be of so much help to people suffering is off limits to those Christians. Now I can understand the Protestants - they are an ignorant lot. But the Catholics have a very competent medical staff (as they do in so many areas). They KNOW. To deny the benefits of cannabinoids to keep some people from getting high is pure evil. And you can bet that once society has a better understanding of endocannabinoids they will look at what the church has done in that area and become even more revolted. The Church has a death wish.

And I might add so does the Republican Party on the matter. I can't tell you how many times I bring up endocannabinoids in right and Republican venues and the typical response I get (you can see it around here even) is "you just want to get high".

It is a wonder. But the Force works in mysterious ways. With a little help from its friends.

[MSimon]

And D, if the Church is such a force for the advancement of science why are they so against treating the endocannabinoid system? The science is rather solid and getting more extensive every day. Why the war on God's own plant?

Prejudice. The plant got associated with the left and anti-religionists. It would be wise to break that association. Starting with your own mind. For the benefit of all you hold dear. The science will beat you. Just as it is beating religion generally.

[djolds1]

The scientific progress we have seen happened despite religious influence not because of it.
If people like Da Vinci and Galilieo didn't have to fight the church every time they discovered something contrary to church doctrine...

A quaint myth, and an inspiring one for the evangelism of the High Church Atheists, but nothing more.

Without the consistent, lawful universe of the God of Christendom, Western science would never have emerged. As compared to the Allah of Islam, who is pure will and who controls every minute aspect of creation constantly. When the "laws" of the universe can change at the deity's whim, there are no laws to investigate and chronicle. Such was not the case in Christendom, thanks to Augustine of Hippo. Add to that the early West's geometrical-mathematical obsession with the infinite, its elevation of individualism and the ability to challenge authority thanks to the Walk to Canossa (i.e. thanks to Pope Gregory VII), and the ground was prepared.

Augustine paved the way for science in the West, whereas al-Ghazali foreclosed on it in Islam.

And D, if the Church is such a force for the advancement of science why are they so against treating the endocannabinoid system? The science is rather solid and getting more extensive every day. Why the war on God's own plant?

Not all religions are. Why is Christianity opposed? Christendom is the result of a very specific fusion between Paleo-Christian dogma and Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy and logic. Pot interferes with the ability to apply reason (Logos - both reason and the Word of God, in the beliefs of Christendom) properly in accord with God's design.

[MSimon]

Without the consistent, lawful universe of the God of Christendom, Western science would never have emerged.

True. That was the foundation. But the church did not support its own foundation when it found the results inconvenient.

[kcdodd]

I see religion itself as a drug and an addiction, because it is ultimately defined only by emotion. How it makes you feel. And withdrawal can be painful. My realization of that started with AA. How do you treat alcohol addiction? According to AA it's through religion. It is not as difficult to replace one addiction with another as it is to stop your addictive personality altogether. Want to stop smoking crack? Start smoking meth. The only argument is that religion has better side effects than alcohol. But, it's all about degrees. Recreational religion is not as bad as the hard core stuff. Different flavors and mixes of the religious high give different results. People can even start doing involuntary action according to their own words. Speaking in tongues, possession, passing out, etc. Watch videos of some hard core services and people literally look like they are on drugs. It's all chemistry they are driving in their own brain. Even the new-age crap stuff. What do they go on about than altering your state of mind? That is the whole point!

[MSimon]

Pot interferes with the ability to apply reason (Logos - both reason and the Word of God, in the beliefs of Christendom) properly in accord with God's design.

That is dogma not fact. We find a number of high reasoners singing the praise of pot. Carl Sagan is one. Hell, LSD is touted as a useful tool for reason:

Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.

http://www.mayanmajix.com/art1699.html

There are many other articles on the subject. That is just the first I came across.

And of course Kary Mullis and LSD.

===============

And if interfering with reason is the criteria how about alcohol?

===============

In any case endocannabinoids will be dealing a serious blow to the Church and the Right. No amount of spurious reasoning can destroy the evidence.

===============

And look at how silly your argument is:

Pot destroys reason so curing cancer with it is a very bad idea.

Or more generally (because the endocannabinoid system is involved in so many diseases):

Pot destroys reason so curing xxx with it is a very bad idea.

You think that will sell? Or be another nail in the coffin of the church and the right?

=========

Religion is out of touch. It will likely not recover in its present form.

[MSimon]

I see religion itself as a drug and an addiction, because it is ultimately defined only by emotion. How it makes you feel. And withdrawal can be painful. My realization of that started with AA. How do you treat alcohol addiction? According to AA it's through religion. It is not as difficult to replace one addiction with another as it is to stop your addictive personality altogether. Want to stop smoking crack? Start smoking meth. The only argument is that religion has better side effects than alcohol. But, it's all about degrees. Recreational religion is not as bad as the hard core stuff. Different flavors and mixes of the religious high give different results. People can even start doing involuntary action according to their own words. Speaking in tongues, possession, passing out, etc. Watch videos of some hard core services and people literally look like they are on drugs. It's all chemistry they are driving in their own brain. Even the new-age crap stuff. What do they go on about than altering your state of mind? That is the whole point!

Emotion is essential to reason. We are neural networks not digital computers. But the network must be trained.

Also you might want to revise your whole conventional outlook. I don't believe there is such a thing as addiction. People in chronic pain will chronically do things that relieve it.

Our understanding of the human brain is just beginning. Endocannabinoids are a massive key.

But you do have a point. Religion which makes chemicals denigrates people who short circuit their process and just ingest them. Why join a sect, follow the rituals and hope for results when you can just take a pill? Results being much more probable with less effort with the pill.

[Stubby]

djolds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhM2Jm0SbVs

Does this explains your position somewhat?
I must say reading up on Omega Point is interesting.

[MSimon]

djolds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhM2Jm0SbVs
Does this explains your position somewhat?
I must say reading up on Omega Point is interesting.

I'm watching the video and the guy is very weak on science. He takes science as some kind of faith based endeavor. Corresponding to his bias. But science is a faith based on evidence. The faith/belief/paradigm changes with new evidence.

And he has galaxies made of electrons.

And time push? Time pull? How about shite happens? Which is the current view in science.

[djolds1]

djolds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhM2Jm0SbVs

Does this explains your position somewhat?
I must say reading up on Omega Point is interesting.

The generic progressions as presented apply. Certainly I think that attractors apply - basin states that best explain the repeated evolution of some structures such as the eye, and the limitations on the types of structures (phi derivatives most notably - the Fibonacci sequence, the logarithmic spiral, the golden ratio, etc.). Inayat also takes it to a New Agey "interconnected" level I don't indulge in.

I'm more de Chardin than Tipler. I don't like Tipler's over-reliance on a big crunch to bring about the final semi-deified state.

And to say "the divine reality is behind the physical universe" doesn't fit me at all. I often call myself a Teleological Materialist - purpose evolving inevitably and naturally out of the physical stuff of reality. Of course, one of the ironies is that there must be many nested levels of attractors coded into matter - each progressively more complex level of structure (atoms into molecules into ores into proto-cells into monocellular organisms into multicellular organism into proto-animals into animals into...) orbits its own structure-directing and limiting attractors, attractors which were present but unexpressed at lower levels of structure. Which makes the implication of an original divine designer harder and harder to avoid. I also entirely reject Stephen Jay Gould's "random walk of evolution" hypothesis - how structure can evolve is strongly constrained, so rerunning the experiment would create at most a planet of trilobites, not something radically unimaginable.

And time push? Time pull? How about shite happens? Which is the current view in science.

Crudely stated, but a serviceable explanation of the attractors of chaos/systems theory.

[MSimon]

djolds,

Your point about attractors is interesting. I think it has a lot to commend it. And your point about attractors and a random walk (trilobites) has merit.

[kcdodd]

Emotion is essential to reason. We are neural networks not digital computers. But the network must be trained.

Also you might want to revise your whole conventional outlook. I don't believe there is such a thing as addiction. People in chronic pain will chronically do things that relieve it.

Our understanding of the human brain is just beginning. Endocannabinoids are a massive key.

But you do have a point. Religion which makes chemicals denigrates people who short circuit their process and just ingest them. Why join a sect, follow the rituals and hope for results when you can just take a pill? Results being much more probable with less effort with the pill.

What do you call it if the chronic pain is caused by not getting the drug you are supposedly using to relieve the chronic pain? If you never started in the first place, you wouldn't have that pain at all. Of course there multiple causes of pain for which a drug could be taken to relieve, but when the primary pain becomes not getting it, then what else do you call it but addiction?

[MSimon]

Emotion is essential to reason. We are neural networks not digital computers. But the network must be trained.

Also you might want to revise your whole conventional outlook. I don't believe there is such a thing as addiction. People in chronic pain will chronically do things that relieve it.

Our understanding of the human brain is just beginning. Endocannabinoids are a massive key.

But you do have a point. Religion which makes chemicals denigrates people who short circuit their process and just ingest them. Why join a sect, follow the rituals and hope for results when you can just take a pill? Results being much more probable with less effort with the pill.

What do you call it if the chronic pain is caused by not getting the drug you are supposedly using to relieve the chronic pain? If you never started in the first place, you wouldn't have that pain at all. Of course there multiple causes of pain for which a drug could be taken to relieve, but when the primary pain becomes not getting it, then what else do you call it but addiction?

Well, you are confused. You have not studied the subject. Needing a drug because your body becomes habituated to it is not addiction. That need can be cured by detox.

Addiction is when the desire continues after detox. i.e. the pain remains.

You might want to look into the workings of the amygdala with reference to painful memories. Some people (it is genetic) have difficulty forgetting painful experiences. They typically self medicate for the problem since medical science is not yet real comfortable with medicating such conditions. And of course that is in great part because we have laws....

It always amazes me that there are a great number of experts on this subject who know nothing at all about it. You wouldn't do that with the fine details of nuclear physics. But you have no problem being ignorant of medicine and how the body actually works. And then spouting off as if you were learned. And it is not just you. (So don't take it too personal). You have a very lot of company.

I have tackled this subject the way I do every other subject in my life. I assumed I was ignorant and started reading. Went deep into the literature. Went to the source material. Avoided the popular press and its distortions. Learned the nomenclature.

Do some study along the lines I have suggested. If you need clarification ask me questions. Just like you would if you were a little short on Polywell understanding. I AM an amateur expert on the subject. Just as I AM on Polywell.