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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer


Your 'Transcendance' is just 'transcendance', with a small 't', for me.  (Sorry, but I always go on guard when I sense that a term has been injected with some added value by means of rhetorical devices like capitalising or, for example, using pseudo-biblical lingo such as 'We should liken ourselves unto children' instead of plain, 'we should be more like kids'. )  Transcendance is just another idea, to be slotted amongst all the other competing ideas, and tested for internal coherence and practicability.  For me, it's an idea that I'd treat with a bucket full of caution, for the aforementioned reasons, amongst many others. 

 

In earlier years, I, in the arrogance of youth and my Missouri "prove it to me" mentality, would certainly would have agreed with your skepticism regarding the capitalizing of Transcendence, especially in a world where, as you say, there is such an abundance of competing ideas. But I used the cap precisely. Transcendence w/o the cap would indicate growth between relative objects, conditions etc., such as the transcendence of poetic appreciation from nursery rhymes to Shakespeare, or the kind of transcendence in lifestyle one might experience if one became suddenly wealthy. But Transcendence with a capital T was not rhetorical, but intended to indicate a specific state of consciousness, which is, scientifically verifiable.

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Whatever Armstrong's expertise is, it clearly isn't in those matters of politics and current affairs.  She needs to learn about those worlds and engage with the people who live in them.  Most of all she needs firstly, to address the concerns of those people who, despite all its failings and well-documented disasters, still consider reason to be the best thing that humans have ever invented; secondly, to answer those who flag up the dangers of taking any one of the many paths of anti-reason that have been spawned, or revamped, in recent times. 

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
how often is science wrong?

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
And yet the atheist movement hasnt increased by leaps and bounds.

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
And I dont believe its a "vast majority" as you say. I, for one, stated what I believed and what I didnt believe... and quite plainly. Seems I dont fall into your category. I know many who would not fall into your categories.

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The American Religious Identification Survey gave Non-Religious groups the largest gain in terms of absolute numbers - 14,300,000 (8.4% of the population) to 29,400,000 (14.1% of the population) for the period 1990 to 2001 in the USA.

I don't know, I think we're doing ok.

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Irreligion is an absence of, indifference towards or hostility towards religion.[1] Depending on the context, it may be understood as referring to atheism, nontheism, agnosticism, ignosticism, antireligion, skepticism, freethought, antitheism, apatheism, non-believer or secular humanism. Sometimes deism is also included in this group.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

No point - I just found it amusing .
After 20 something pages of serious disputation, I felt it might be time for a smile.
[:D] [:D]


Edited to add extra giggles and exotic herbs

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ORIGINAL: Kirata
People interact with non-physical "others" all the time, from the imaginary friends of childhood right up to falling in love with imaginary nubile beauties (of various genders) and imaginary handsome studs (of various genders) in online chat rooms. Human beings can interact with virtually any "other" they can imagine. The nature of our reflective consciousness is such that we even interact on a daily basis with various aspects of ourselves, none of which are separate, or physical, entities.

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ORIGINAL: eihwaz

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ORIGINAL: anthrosub
The problem of questioning intelligence...I may need others who have followed our exchange to chime in. It seems to me when I talk about the whole thing on a broad level, you take it as if I'm talking about you and are offended. If you do, then please realize everyone is not at the same intellectual level. That's not a derogatory statement...it's an accurate observation of humanity.

This and some of your other postings indicate that you regard intelligence as monodimensional (or even monotonic[;)] ) and that you have a rather specific notion of what constitutes intelligence -- such as the ability to reason scientifically, logically, or deductively. Yet the realm of human intelligence (and intellect) is much more richly varied and multidimensional than that.

While I assume you don't intend it, your narrow -- not to say parochial -- view, by conveys a certain arrogance and superior attitude, exemplified by the quoted excerpt and your repeated statements variously lamenting or decrying the alleged ignorance or lesser intelligence of religious adherents (a standard,, not to say stereotypical, which is to say often unexamined, position of a certain breed of atheist).  You may not be aware of the disrespect you evince with such statements but certainly you can understand that others would find it a bit trying.

If you're proposing that religion, religious belief, and spirituality are the province of some posited intellectually unwashed, feeble minded mass of humanity (akin to the Marx's religion is the opiate et cetera), then why not do so forthrightly and with supporting arguments, and without presupposing that you already know the answer?

There are some very smart, intellectually accomplished people who are also believers, religious adherents, or otherwise engage with spirituality.  Some might even be participating in this thread!

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ORIGINAL: anthrosub
Scientific method is the epitomy of logic.

Actually logic is the epitome of logic.  Science uses logic, but also fundamentally relies on empirical observation and modeling.

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

No point - I just found it amusing .
After 20 something pages of serious disputation, I felt it might be time for a smile.
[:D] [:D]


Edited to add extra giggles and exotic herbs

cool! cus i was laughing, just wasnt sure if i should have been... lol