Divorce--> Depression--> Self Medication--> Death

hanelyp · Post by **hanelyp** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 3:02 am

The pastor at church laid out 4 reasons for divorce he considered valid:
- Abuse.
- Adultery, specifically ongoing.
- Addiction, specifically where the drug is valued more than the marriage.
- Abandonment.
This strikes me as a good list.

Betruger · Post by **Betruger** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 6:40 am

Where's simply not wanting to be married to each other? That fundamental free will clause should top everything else.

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 2:52 pm

Free wiill and religion. That's quite an oxymoron.

Betruger · Post by **Betruger** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 8:28 pm

Unfortunately that's might be true for most pastors. Their efforts would be better aimed at increasing the odds that their flock marry the right mate in the first place. Even so, two people who simply don't belong together shouldn't torture themselves or their close relatives for the sake of the church's approval.

choff · Post by **choff** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 6:50 am

It's my contention that people are under a great deal of social pressure to compel them to marry and also a great deal of social pressure to then get divorced. It feeds the legal industry, the religious industry and the finance and real estate industry.

EricF · Post by **EricF** » Mon Apr 04, 2011 12:48 pm

Betruger wrote:Where's simply not wanting to be married to each other? That fundamental free will clause should top everything else.

I think that was the point of MSimon's original post: If they have any children not old enough to be on their own, then they need to wait until their kids grow up before they separate.

choff · Post by **choff** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:06 am

Giorgio wrote:Free wiill and religion. That's quite an oxymoron.

What if the term "Free will" is an oxymoron?

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 6:57 am

choff wrote:
Giorgio wrote:Free wiill and religion. That's quite an oxymoron.
What if the term "Free will" is an oxymoron?

"Free will" and "Religion" is an oxymoron, "Free Will" alone cannot be an oxymoron, as it does not contain contradictory terms.

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 9:26 am

choff wrote:What if the term "Free will" is an oxymoron?

Modern brain research is starting to show this question has an element of truth.

Using the advanced brain scanners, we can see when the brain function has changed shortly before we are consciously aware of deciding to do something e.g. pick up an object. Further research is showing how much of our thinking is not available to our conscious inspection.

Years ago, and from another perspective, I used to joke about the illusion of free will. The more we learn, the joke is getting less funny .

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 10:51 am

I think that our genetics determine a lot more of our behaviour than what we are willing to admit. This also contradicts the free will.
Of course we are not entirely determined by our genes, but a lot of us is.

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 11:12 am

I consider that to be the "instinct", and I find it hard to place it on the same level of will.

After all we are perfectly able to control our own instinct and determine our choices by will if we want.

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 11:58 am

"perfectly able to control our own instinct" If only that were true.

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 12:15 pm

rjaypeters wrote:"perfectly able to control our own instinct" If only that were true.

Touche. Using the word "perfectly" was excessive.
Nevertheless we should be quite able to control our own instinct.
I do control them quite a lot, and I feel that the important and less important decisions in my life (be them right or wrong) are taken by my will, not by my instinct.

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:13 pm

Giorgio, I didn't mean to point out "perfectly" as excessive*. I'd like to think of myself as an example of intellect and rationality. Honesty and experience show more evidence of the opposite.

My point, and I should back it up with some references**, is humans have these big brains, much of which are devoted to keeping our bodies running without conscious intervention (controlled your heartbeat by thinking about it recently?), supplying our consciousness with sensory information (visual processing, etc.) and we have no clue what is going on for most brain activity.

We like to think we are masters of our own minds. It is disturbing to find evidence we are wrong. No one is saying we don't make conscious decisions, just watch the video.

*Too easy!

**Here's a good one with video showing the test and later discussion: http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/br ... you-decide

Giorgio · Post by **Giorgio** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 5:33 pm

rjaypeters wrote:My point, and I should back it up with some references**, is humans have these big brains, much of which are devoted to keeping our bodies running without conscious intervention (controlled your heartbeat by thinking about it recently?), supplying our consciousness with sensory information (visual processing, etc.) and we have no clue what is going on for most brain activity.

We like to think we are masters of our own minds. It is disturbing to find evidence we are wrong. No one is saying we don't make conscious decisions, just watch the video.

We do agree that most of our brain activity is unconscious and is dedicated to managing our body, and it could not be different. If every single aspect had to be managed by the conscious mind we will undergo an information overdose and could hardly do anything productive.

The unconscious part of our brain has to manage a volume of information which is several orders of magnitude higher than what we manage with the conscious part.
It manages memory, the vegetative functions, the emotions, the imagination, what we call "our habits", and the instinctive actions.

The subconscious part of the brain is after all just the sum of all what we have learned and the keeper of our real self.
The conscious part of our brain is the way we learn, the way we feed the the data to the subconscious part and the mask we use to show our self to the others.

I'll make you an example.
The conscious part is the company president, he takes the main decisions and feeds the rest of the company staff with directives based on experience.
The unconscious part is all the rest of the staff, from the VP up to the warehouse keeper. They receive the directives and store them for later use or when the president will ask for them.

Can you say that the president is not really the master of his own company (mind)?

The experiment in the video is also misleading.
The test subjects had simply to choose a left or right pattern. If I have to choose a pattern I will feed this request to my subconscious part that (based on the total sums of my previous experiences) will present me with a suitable pattern for the task that I need to fulfill.
This does not mean that the decision has been taken by someone/something else seven seconds before, but simply that seven seconds before I fed the request to my subconscious part and I got a solution that I stored and will I use seven seconds later.