A question on Armageddon

I don't know why you are stuck on that one simplistic definition of subjectivism. That is not how I am using the term subjectivism. I never said all views are valid, nor did I ever say there is no objective truth. Nor did I ever say we should adopt a view based on how we feel about it. Those are all your constructs based on your assumptions of what I am saying. The arrogance of Cartesian objectivism has nothing to do with objective truth or facts, though I guess I should say here that the arrogance of cartesian objectivism does have something to do with picking a view based on how we feel, because it is very self-centered. But hold that thought---I will come back to it.

So I guess we just ignore the same opinion of my catholic friends? And there I was only referring to these Vietnamese friends I am still friends with, and the chick I was with for a year. As I said there were others too. Maybe catholic, maybe Buddhist, I don't know. But maybe you are not really reading my posts before responding, just scanning them, I don't know. I do read yours carefully.

But you want proof, because apparently you think that all I know about the Vietnam war I got from talking to my Vietnamese friends. Well, that's not true. I referenced the book, The Pentagon Papers, and even quoted from it. Obviously I can't quote Dr. Spock on Vietnam, even though everything he says in there is cited from reputable sources, all of which is well documented, and overall it is a good example of presenting objective facts, but you clearly think he was some opinionated 1960's anti-war freak who overstepped his professional boundaries by not writing about babies. So no Dr. Spock.

So maybe we can use your example of compelling proof as a guide----let's see what you presented, there is a quote copy-pasted from wikipedia (is that where you looked up Dr. Spock too?). And then you posted a bunch of titles--implying that everything you said came from those books. I could do that too, but, somehow it feels inauthentic. I could even make up titles and no one would look them up. But I don't do that kind of thing.

Did I mention that I have a huge library? Yes I did. It takes up a good portion of my basement. And as a matter of fact, I do have a book, by a noted historian, that will back up the same claims I have made. I just spent half an hour looking for it and did not see it, so I will have to look for it first. But I will quote it directly with page numbers and even include the ISBN if you want it. Now does he call Vietnam a religious war? I don't think he does---but he does provide the same objective facts I gave you and that back up what my friends explained to me: Namely that Madame Nhu and her husband were shaping Vietnam into an ideal Catholic State and were openly repressing the Buddhists, and that the VC were predominantly Buddhist, and that this actiuon of the Nhu's created a lot of tension and anger against the Diem Regime. That is the Objective facts of what I have been saying. Now you have to be smart enough to understand what the objective facts mean to understand that the Vietnam War was also a religious war.

In fact, I am pretty sure I have other sources as well. Being that I grew up during the Vietnam war, and knew that I had a strong chance of facing the existential crisis of whether or not I would serve in Vietnam, or leave for Canada, this war was very important to me. I am being very sincere when I say that I could not, in good conscience serve in Vietnam. It took a fair amount of research on my part to be able to authentically say, that. If I was asked to go to war to defend Israel, I would not be able to do it either. On the other hand, I do walk around with a kheffiya as a scarf in the Colorado cold, usually a black and white one, other times a red and white one. I have done that for years, such as during Trump's Muslim ban and so forth. After those three boys recently got shot for wearing a kheffiya, I do it everyday. If I see anti-semitism, I will speak out against that too. I happen to be a strong supporter of the Colorado Palestine Coalition and Jewish Voices for Peace, but I digress...

I will give you some compelling evidence, but just as you don't take the time to actually give footnoted quotes for every point you make, I too will not be doing that, at least no more than you do for the future points of this discussion, this thing on Vietnam will be the exception.

AND until I locate that book and any other sources on this, here is an excerpt of the autobiography of Ngo Dinh Nhu, the brother of Diem, and the husband of Madame Nhu, from The Pentagon Papers, page 635 in the section titled, Biographies of Key Figures in the Vietnam Study.

"Headed secret apparatus of Ngo Dinh Diem Government. ...Born about 1911... into distinguished Roman Catholic family. Nhu... developed philosophy of 'personalism'--a blend of religion and autocracy--that was said to be pervasive influence on Diem's rule... Nhu became known as an 'Oriental Richelieu'... ...controlled the secret police... ...he and wife were said to be strong anti-Buddhist influence on Diem. ...Nhu's became prime target for discontent that led to overthrow of the Diem Regime."​

Are you familiar with Cardinal Richelieu? He was the lead villain in Dumas's, Three Musketeers, but in real life he helped centralize French government and gave more power to the church and religious leaders.

Wait a minute---let's not tweak my comments to something I'm not saying to suit your argument. I did not say that religion was the cause, or the main cause of the Vietnam War. I said that it was 'a cause,' I also said that there was fighting over religious differences. Even in my quote from The Pentagon Papers, we can see that religion was a significant part of the Diem government, and that it had an anti-Buddhist stance, and Nhu was even known as the Oriental Richelieu. We both agree that war is complex, and clearly it was a war over religious differences, among other things, and you defined a religious war as a war over religious differences.

Likewise if we take any religious war, we will undoubtedly find other factors and things in addition to religion that the opposing parties fought over.

My whole point of asking what you considered the Vietnam War, is because religion can play a significant role in a lot of wars that we may not think are religious. It may be popular to minimize the religious aspect of a war, especially for political reasons. But if religious differences are at play, it is, or is also, a religious war.

No, that is not arrogant. There is nothing wrong with that.

Perhaps dealing with these idiots is why you misunderstand me and assume that my philosophical stance on subjectivism is akin to this Anti-Science conspiracy theorist crap. That is why I feel that you either are not reading my posts but just scanning through them and then responding, or you are reading them trapped in your own biases or cognitive dissonance. The problem is not objective truth.

There are several types of arrogance of Cartesian Objectivism that I write about and how it plays out in the Modern World. And they all can be categorized by fallacies of logic. We could say they are generally assumptions made outside of the limits of objective truth.

So one version of this arrogance is something I have mentioned before in this thread-------the accepted beliefs on how indigenous people came to know what plants to use for healing. What would be the true and authentic thing to say, would be something like this---'Native healers claim that they learn about what plants heal and how to use them from sources such as the plants themselves, spirits, or communication via dreams, Science as of yet has no objective idea idea, or any theories that can be demonstrated, as to how they gained this knowledge.'

That would be authentic and objectively true.

But instead, the idea of spirits and communicating plants is so alien to them and their materialist world views that they literally make something up instead, and it becomes the accepted scientific narrative.

Where is the objective proof that people experimented with plants? There is none. But try working the scenario of how this would work. We can keep it simple---lets say that you are a member of a small band of hunter-gatherers. And someone gets sick, so someone thinks, there must be a plant that will heal them, and then this person starts experimenting. A lot of plants will have no effect, but somewhere one will kill that sick person. So now the person with the idea knows, that plant is bad. Now its possible that this plant would actually heal at the lower dosage, but all he knows is that it is bad. So he experiments on someone else. and he would find other plants that are bad, maybe they killed the person, or the person survived but heavily handicapped from the toxin. It wouldn't take long for him to kill off the whole band, and most likely himself too. So how would this knowledge even be passed on, and it would predominantly be knowledge of what not to do. And there are plenty of tribes that after the first person dies, they claim the healer to be using bad medicine and kill him. How can any of this ridiculous idea make sense?

Another type of arrogance of Cartesian Objectivism relates to the fact that our whole objective view of the world is subjective, by the mere fact that we are subjective subjects. Inevitably this means that we project our own subjective feelings and views as objective reality. We objectify others, dehumanizing them and denying them, from our perspective, of their own subjective realities. My stepson is very good (meaning that he is very bad) at this. If he is feeling good and having no pain, then obviously, everyone else is feeling good and has no pain. If someone is actually in pain, he will tell you that they can't be in pain, they are just lazy (Which actually he is projecting his own laziness, but that is a different kind of projection and another topic).

My grandson too, is really big on this motivational stuff. Now the point here is not how objective all the motivational stuff is, there is objective evidence on how some of it works psychologically and other points are gimmicks and scams, but that is not the point. The point is how he objectifies everyone around him with this subjective belief that anyone can become successful through this motivational stuff. He minimizes and denies the personal experiences and situations of anyone struggling by objectifying them and judging them as not simply working hard enough, or trying hard enough or whatever the motivational story is.

Now the objectivist view in an objectivist context is that these are all cases of subjectivism. I disagree. these are the products of objectivism. The subjective aspects of this are thrust into an objectivist context.

I'm tired. good night.

 

Yes, the last thing Marx wanted was a religion. The problem was that he was a Hegellian, and Hegel created the climax in German Idealism by arguing in essence that there was no nonphysical and that God and mind (the Ideal) was a physical thing. (Sexual pun intended---I'll have to remember that one...)

I went to school in the post-Sputnik years so Russian was the third language taught in Junior High and High School after French and Spanish. Everyone took French and Spanish so I didn't want to do that. (I was torn though--I never knew a French teacher I didn't like. They were always girls and always hot and young. My first several months of 7th grade Russian was taught by the French teacher so that made it easy unfortunately she quit and the class was taught by some guy, who was cool, but, you know... Actually we don't know what really happened to the French teacher, she had a French name and a very classic beautiful look, very continental, and if I was going to put a beautiful French/Russian spy in a movie---she would certainly be the type. There were rumors floating around school about her as a spy after she left----I started them as a joke, but, uh, that's beside the point...)

I sincerely wanted to speak a foreign language so I worked hard at Russian, even making my own flash cards. When I took German as another elective in High School, the teacher said to me, "Your German accent is so strange--its actually a Russian accent." Anyway, there was a lot of cultural things taught in the classroom. One time we had a field trip to see Nicholas and Alexander, and beforehand we each had to pick a historical topic or figure that would appear in the movie and give a presentation to the class on it. I did Rasputin. To learn more about the Soviet Union I subscribed to the youth magazine, Soviet Life. I was privileged to have the CIA keep a dossier on me---or maybe that was because I hung out at the RIP Bookstore (Radical Information Project Bookstore Collective). I don't know for sure, but a friend of my dad insisted that it is very very likely that Washington is keeping tabs on me. Especially after I went to a Soviet Fishing trawler that was arrested for fishing in Canadian waters and was docked at a dock in Victoria, in order to trade blue jeans for whatever I could get, and practice my Russian. (I still have all of it, including a Russian Navy Belt). Those experiences and classes really helped me identify propaganda and understand authoritarianism at a young age, etc.

I was struck at how similar the Soviet communists were to christian missionaries. I one time joked at church about reading my church newsletter, and then pulling out a Pravda newspaper. But, in truth, I thought there was a similarity. Pravda meant truth, though it was anything but truth.

But it dawned on me that, in the absence of religion, or something bigger to hold onto for comfort or meaning, or an opiate if you will, the people were trying to use Marxism to meet that need. Open any piece of Marxist literature published in the Soviet Union or China and you will have a reverent picture placed at the beginning of the book of Marx or Lenin or Mao. My copy of the Communist Manifesto, which I purchased as a teenager at the RIP Bookstore, was published in China and the picture of Marx clearly and ridiculously has Chinese features to it--not blatant, but enough that you can tell.

There was certainly a cult of personality around communist leaders. Take for example, Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, which I also bought at the RIP. It is terribly mundane and dry, but whatever problem or setback one faced, there was supposed to be a quotation there to give you guidance and meaning to persevere. As a Post-Modern theorist would say, Marxism was the Unifying Myth of Marxist societies. So it makes sense that Marxism would replace religion in these societies. If you look at the horrible things that Pol Pot, for example, did in Cambodia, it is not very different from Jonestown and other deadly religious cults. I remember a description, I think it was in Newsweek, of kids that had turned in their friends for being traitors. The traitors were tied to a wooden contraption with a giant wheel, and the kids would all take a spot around the wheel and walk in a circle turning it. They would sing a song, and crank the wheel which would cause spikes to come down and pierce through the heads of the traitors tied in the center. Kids turned in their parents, adults turned in their neighbors...

I would not call Marxism a religion for the reasons you mentioned, but I do believe it can become a pseudo-religion. I would say the same for Fascism. the leaders of such States become the God that replaces the God of religion. Or in the case of fascism, the representative of God on earth. This is intentional on the part of the leaders. Marx certainly did not intend this in his philosophy. But I think it is the logical end-conclusion of Hegel's political theories, just as I believe that materialism is the logical end conclusion of Western religion.

 

No. It is not about placing subjective perspectives over objective truths.

If this discussion is any predictor, I am afraid that my argument on subjectivism would be like Nietzsche's ubermensch. The Apollonian Storm Troopers were the complete opposite of Nietzsche's Dionysian ubermensch. His philosophy was an argument for individuation. The Nazi's misunderstood this and twisted it into something it wasn't. I wrote a piece arguing that the hippies were the true ubermensch of Nietzsche. And I developed it into an outline and parts planned for a future book I hope to be able to write. I am sure that I posted that here on HF----in fact, I lovingly talked about Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's version of Ball and Chain in the piece and someone here debated me on how good that song was.

Nietzsche is very tough to read, because he is so-----German. But I discovered that if you read him as a hippie 70 years ahead of his time, it makes a lot more sense.

 

I had a Mountain Wolf-sized reply written out to your whole post and lost it. So I'll be dishing this out in small doses. If you wait until I finish before replying, we might avoid going off on unnecessary tangents.

Were you ever in scouting? You might remeber the Scout Oath to serve God and country, and the Scout code to be "reverent" They aren't an autonomous religion, and don't purport to be. But they are an inter-relgious societal sub-group that serves as a conduit to all established religions. The founder, Robert Baden Powell,thought that belief in a Higher Power was indispensable for the scout's moral and spiritual development. He described religion as "a fundamental factor underlying Scouting and Guiding." [rec.scouting.issues] Commonly asked questions (FAQ 2)Section - What was Baden-Powell's position on God and Religion in

Yes indeed, applying the 4 Cs requires exercise of minimal judgment. Sports is an area that's sometimes likened to religion, especially because of the fanaticism of some fans. But although some may get carried away, most don't give it anything like the place of their churches, mosques and synagogues in their lives. It's light on doctrine and code, unless we consider the rules of the game to be that, which would be stretching it. Many formal groups have a minimal amount of ritual to open meetings (reading of the minutes) and may follow parliamentary procedure (code), but as a matter of degree are not comparable to religions. Compare that to Marxism-Leninism (We're talking about that, not just the original ideas of Marx).

What a bland, innocuous description! Of course communism is much more than that. Marxism-Leninism is the guiding dogma of totalitarian systems we call communist. And it's hardly just a "philosophy". It's an ideology--i.e, body of doctrine accepted as official by a group or society--dialectical materialism purporting to provide a definitive guide to history, with an apocalyptic, Armageddon-style ending in which the proletariat will ultimately triumph through revolution and there will be an inevitable transition from socialism to pure communism. Acceptance of the creed is mandatory. Persecution of "deviationists" is a notorious feature of the system, reminiscent of the Inquisition. There is a definite code: "I will go where the party sends me", elaborated by the party line thru a process of "democratic centralism". Communist community is a totalitarian system in which the Party and ideology penetrate every aspect of life. And devotion to the dear leader, whether Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or Kim Jong-un, seems to be another quasi-religious feature of the system. So that's why I think Communism is a secular religion (aka non-theistic or quasi-religion.

Did you write this with a straight face? Marxism is atheistic and anti-theistic. Theistic religions have been discouraged and persecuted in communist countries, unless it serves the regime's purpose not to. Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union - Wikipedia
Antireligious campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party - Wikipedia
North Korea Severely Punishes Religious Freedom

Maybe so. It wasn't a religion yet in his day. He never lived long enough to see how his ideas were put into practice. I think Jesus would be shocked to hear someone call his ideas a religion of "Christianity". He might be reaching for the nearest stone.

 

Secular is a common English word for distinguishing worldly matters from those that are spiritual, supernatural, sacred, or theistic; and it is widely used by historians and sociologists and other social scientists in scholarly analysis. No chickanery involve. I might have used Durkheim's older term "profane", but I'm sure that would have gotten an even stronger reaction from you. In the circles in which I travel, "secular" has positive connotations, especially in discussions of separation of church and state. The French, for example, are generally proud to call their society secular. Secular humanism is the accepted term for a positive, ethical, non-theistic orientation.What Is Secular Humanism?

Speaking of chicanery, do you actually believe this or is it a diversionary tactic to prevent dispassionate discussion? I'm certainly not the first person to use the term secular religion. Secular religion - Wikipedia
You do a disservice to the numerous other scholars by accusing them of nefarious purposes for developing a concept base on observed tendencies in political movements.

"A secular religion is a communal belief system that often rejects or neglects the metaphysical aspects of the supernatural, commonly associated with traditional religion, instead placing typical religious qualities in earthly, or material entities." Political observers of the role of religion in society noticed how it was important in rallying and mobilizing people to action, and promoting social solidarity. Rousseau wrote about this in the Social Contract, saw its secular uses, and the French Revolutionaries took him seriously. Many of its leaders, who were themselves atheists, experimented with the possibility of developing godless religions to promote the political agenda of the revolution. An atheist Cult of Reason was founded by the radical journalist Jacques Hebert In 1793, and established by the state until it was superseded by Robespierre's Deist Cult of the Supreme Being. It took over Catholic churches and transformed them into Temples of Reason. Reason and Liberty took the place of deity, and rites and festivals were developed to promote the ideals of the Revolution.

Later, historians of mass movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries described similar tendencies. Communism was characterized as a godless, political or secular religion by a variety of writers, as were Fascism and Nazism:
McFarland, S. (1998). Communism as religion. The international journal for the psychology of religion, 8(1), 33-48.
Karl Marx as Religious Eschatologist | Murray N. Rothbard
Hans Maier (2004). Totalitarianism and Political Religions.
Adolph Keller (1936).Church and State on the European Continent. p. 68;
Klaus Riegel (June, 1995) Marxism‐Leninism as a political religion". Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. 6 (1): 97–126;
Communism as a religion | TheArticle
Gentile, Emilio: Politics as Religion (2006) Princeton University Press, p.22
Roger Eatwell, "Reflections on Fascism and Religion", Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, vol 3 (3):145-66.https://doi.org/10.1080/14690760412331329991

We might add the U.S.A. to the list. Certainly, we're not godless, but religion and religious-like rituals are often put to secular, nationalistic political purposes by the State. Nothing as blatant as the totalitarians, but the flag salute and singing the national anthem, especially when followed by God Bless America, have those overtones. Recall that in the leading flag burning case, Texas v. Johnson, Mr. Johnson had been arrested and prosecuted for "desecrating a sacred object"--i.e., the U.S. flag. Blasphemy! Those Texans were a bunch of secular idolators. I recently attended a service at the local Baptist church and was shocked to see the flag displayed next to the pulpit, and the pastor leading the congregation in a salute to it!

I find these perspectives useful, and your adamant objections to them puzzling.

Whew! I'm done. Have at it!

 

I hate when that happens!

 

Human consciousness is one aspect of mind in philosophy. Any good dictionary will define it as nonphysical, and will define physical to exclude mind. Is it energy or is it something we have yet to identify. That is a big question.

In Archephenomenalism, I put up a very strong argument that energy is also nonphysical, only matter is physical. Of course all the materialists and those of a scientific bent, feeling threatened, immediately respond with, 'That can't be, we are able to measure energy!' But I say, no, we are not measuring the energy as energy, we are measuring it as particles. Take a wave meter that measures radio waves. It has some sort of antenna, and like any other antenna, we think that the radio waves are hitting it, and going down the antenna. That is not the case. What is really happening is that on the surface of the antenna, radio waves are collapsing into photons, which are absorbed into the atoms of the antenna generating an electron. Thus we are measuring the photons, the physical particle that have collapsed from a nonphysical wave (and it gets really crazy when you realize that the atoms of the antenna and the electrons that are generated, and everything else is also a wave collapsing into physical particles---a nonphysical reality collapsing into material existence--but that is the implication of quantum mechanics).

Now we can argue that regardless of whether mind is energy or not, it can alter energy and change it. Energy, like mind is nonphysical as I said in the previous paragraph. Energy also determines where mass will manifest, because mass is simply the physical side of energy (m = E/c2). Science refers to the actual aspect of the wave that determines where that particle will manifest as quantum information. This is not a material thing, but it is necessary to the collapse of a particle--in other words it is a nonphysical thing. The attributes of quantum information are the exact same as those of a sentient consciousness---it has a memory, it can learn, etc. To borrow from the Philosopher, Brentano, who said that every thought is a thought of a thing, and that we cannot have a thought of no-thing, and so every thought has an intentional object, we can say that quantum information has an intentional object---that object being the particle it collapses into.

Now neuroscientists argue that it is the electrochemical activities of specific neural pathways that create thoughts. An electron crossing synapses. But every particle within those synapses, and the very electrons themselves, according to quantum mechanics, manifest for only a moment at a time, collapsing from energy (the wave). Their positions and the structure they create is determined by quantum information. So the question is, can thought alter the quantum information (or is it the quantum information) that creates the position of these particles. This would mean that it is actually the physical structure of the brain that reflects thought, rather than the other way around. If thought can shape physicality, then this would suggest that thought (a nonphysical thing) can affect a non-local reality---as the mind would be a reality of the wave, while physicality would be limited to only the physical dimensions.

But this opens up the question, can mind affect non-local reality outside of the mind? If we could show that, it would validate the idea that the mind shapes the physical brain!

Well, enter the MIT research of William Tiller, Ph.D, Walter Dibble, Ph.D, and Michael Kohane, Ph.D, which demonstrated human intention to alter non-local reality with results so strong they had to seperate or isolate the control experiment because the results bled over interfering with the control results. They published the book, Conscious Acts of Creation, The Emergence of a New Physics, which details their experiments in a way that anyone with access to a laboratory would be able to duplicate their results. I've described the various experiments elsewhere on Hip Forums so I won't get into it here.

But the mind is nonphysical, and can be demonstrated to alter non-local reality. The body, on the other hand, is limited to physicality, and can only impact other physical things in a local manner. Either through physical force or mechanical means (i.e. indirectly through a mechanical object).

Another thing about qualia is that it cannot be taught to AI--not authentically. Why does red evoke the feelings it does? The red of a rose evokes one kind of feeling, while the red of a puddle of blood on the ground evokes a different feeling, and yet, the red of lipstick on a woman's lips something else still. These are not things that can be programmed. Or the experience of listening to music, for example. These things are authentic to living consciousness.

In my library I have probably 20 or 30 books specifically about consciousness, including Dennet's book. I could not even guess how many philosophy books I have that touch on consciousness, or psychology books even. The materialist arguments all break down when you put them against the implications of quantum mechanics.

I am not a quantum physicist, though I have studied the subject considerably, down to even the math. I write philosophy. But I do have a good friend that is a quantum physicist and he checks my work for mistakes and misconceptions.

I'll continue tomorrow.

 

We're talking here about a usage of the word "religion" by a scholarly community because they find it useful in calling attention to functional similarities among movements which share obvious similarities to the traditional ones--some of which are enjoying First Amendment protection. To call it a tactic to deceive people or score debating points sounds like something our conspiracy site fans would say. You obviously have a major hang up that religions must be about gods--cuz they must! Definitions aren't right or wrong, only more or less useful.

It is different in degree, great enough to be a difference in kind. The U.S., like other modern nations, makes rudimentary use of symbols, ceremonies and messages pioneered by traditional religions to support patriotism and nationalsim. They play upon similar emotions to the ones that support churches, and channel these into support of the nation and stir sentiments of nationalism. Does that make American patriotism a religion? Not quite, but getting there. Thank God for the First Amendment, but the courts are free to change their minds about what it means.

 

Yes and we do use them in a symbolic manner to represent those values we hold dear (or used to hold dear) as a nation.

But we don't fetishize and idolize them as you would see in a communist society. We don't quote their words as if they were prophets that came to save humanity if only you'd convert to the cause.

If only we had a modern example of someone that would be like Lenin or Marx or Mao... In our modern American world, it would make sense if it was a businessman--he doesn't have to be successful, he just has to make everyone think he is. Considering how dumb so much of America has become, he would probably have to be a clown of some sort and probably put on make up or a dye of some sort. He would need to appeal to the most manipulable segment of the population so he would probably be very racist and represent himself as someone that is one of the religiously fundamental and overly-zealous groups of the Nation. He would probably revive old racist nationalist tropes and rhetoric, and slogans like, America First, Make America Great Again, and so forth. Surely someone like that would be worshiped like a God while he exploits his position and takes advantage of America freely... I just can't think of anyone that would fit this...

But I agree with you that Marxism is not a religion, and even the cult of personality around Trump is not a religion, because, to go back to my definition, a religion is evolved from and contains at its core, a spirituality. A spirituality is that connection to the nonphysical reality of the universe. Without such a connection they are simply secular institutions. But I call them pseudo-religions, because they still manipulate and control just as a religion would do. And on the side of the follower or believer, in the absence of a religion, it is what they turn to in order to fill that void, and provide the meaning and guidance they would otherwise get from their religion.

Which raises the question about Trump: are his evangelical followers so alienated from the spiritual connection to the universe within their faith that they turn to him to fill a similar void in their lives? It would make a lot of sense. Anything supernatural or magic is of the devil to them. Their incessant need to make everything about god, praising god, thanking god, etc. and to convert everyone else to their faith, is so symptomatic of ego-denial and the subsequent projection of their own subconscious doubts in God. They idolize their Bible, a physical thing created by the hands of man between some 2,000 to 4,000 years ago.

 

It would behove the ruling class to undertake a leveling in the disparities of the economic situation / imbalance here in the US. Probably too late now, though. Acquiescence has never been in the language of those who rule except by force of vote. Seeming helplessness / out of balance assumptions is the currency of the 74 million trump lovers. They are most likely correct in their assumptions along with a portion of stupidity ,considering the results of a future trump win.

 

To functionalists it is, if the similarities are great enough. The 4 Cs approach I use adds structural features: code, creed, cultus and community.

It wouldn't be, if that were all that was said. When you add that people who do that are using "a tactic that seems to be used in an attempt to prove an illogical point or argument." and previously accused them of "chicanery", it sounds like it.

If you put it that way, I have no problem. But the way the framework is generally used in the study of comparative religion is not one of those tactics, nor do I think those scholars don't understand what those words mean and how to use them". They've dedicated their professional careers to using them just the way they do--because they find it analytically useful to do so.

The last sentence is a non-sequitor. The government has generally been friendly to God and religion--atheism and anti-theism, not so much. Politicians know which side their bread is buttered on, and often try to make their pro-God sentiments known. But atheists and anti-theists have a guaranteed place under the First Amendment--at least as it's currently interpreted.

The Constitution is officially neutral , in stating in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion". Of course, like all provisions of that written document, it requires interpretation. It took awhile (1962) for the Court to decide that that prohibited prayer in schools. There is still a division between the accommodationists, who think that "the government may support or endorse religious establishments as long as it treats all religions equally and does not show preferential treatment." Developing Core Literacy Proficiencies. John Wiley & Sons
(September 15, 2016) p. 118.

The United States stands out among western industrial countries in having a majority of its population that is religious. That has been changing recently (possibly in response to disenchantment with the way the religious right has gotten into bed with the Retrumplican Party. Still, Christians make up around two-thirds of the adult population, and non-Christian believers add another 5%or more. 1. How U.S. religious composition has changed in recent decades In answer to your question, the United States is not "based on some type of religion", but is more like the Boy Scouts: friendly to all religions. As Gibbon said of the ancient Romans, "to the people, all religions were equally true; to the philosophers, all of them were equally false; and to the politicians, all were equally useful. Atheists and agnostics, of course, are also protected under the Constitution. But most politicians tend not to acknowledge them--at least not in a good way. This, of course, varies with the Administration. George W. claimed that his foreign policy decisions were guided by God.
https://carnegieendowment.org/files/PB37.judis.FINAL.pdf
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15570274.2011.630206
Bush says God chose him to lead his nation

If you read what I said closely, I didn't say the U.S. is a secular religion. I said that it resembles (though to a much lesser extent) countries with secular religions in using practices pioneered by religion to legitimize institutions control, excite and mobilize the population: "sacred" symbols (flag), rituals (flag salute; national anthem); myths ( "land of the free, home of the brave; George Washington and the cherry tree; "honest Abe", etc. Specifically, I said: "religion and religious-like rituals are often put to secular, nationalistic political purposes by the State." And I later said: The U.S., like other modern nations, makes rudimentary use of symbols, ceremonies and messages pioneered by traditional religions to support patriotism and nationalism. They play upon similar emotions to the ones that support churches, and channel these into support of the nation and stir sentiments of nationalism." Do you doubt that?

 

What I say in reference to my philosophy of Archephenomenalism might be better understood as long as you read Post #49 first.

I think there is a lot we can understand, explain, and even discover, before actually answering what consciousness or mind truly is, whether energy, or something else. I refer to it as a 'Noematic Field.' This leaves open the possibility that it is separate but connected to energy

Part of the beauty of the universe is that, to the best of our understanding, there is this symmetry, including a mathematical symmetry, that pervades everything. E=mc2 describes space-time, among other things, and from a physical context, is just a deeper version of the older f=mv, and then there is Planck's Constant E=hf, which defines the quantum nature of energy. Can you see the symmetry in these fundamental equations?

Physicality is the result of inertia, mass is, in fact, inertia (m=f/v) a thing science also cannot pin down, but we experience the phenomena of it. Without inertia, nothing would exist. I describe the collapse of the nonphysical into physicality and then back into the nonphysical as: m=E/c2 then E=mc2. In physical terms there is no space-time continuum, this would break my 2nd Principle that the entirety of Physicality lies only in the present Now (the Quantum Now), so physically there is only a Space-Present or Space-Now. Space-Time would be a nonphysical thing, or something outside of the physical dimensions. After all, Einstein used what scientists call imaginary numbers to work out space-time. Space-Now represents mass, while Space-Time represents energy, but Space-Time also represents information--the past being the information of previous actuality (the history of the physical) and the future represents the information of potentiality. The Space-Now represents the Intentional Object of Space-Time, which is literally the physical universe at the moment of Now.

Science gives us the laws of conservation of mass and energy. Mass cannot be created nor destroyed, and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, yet mass can convert to energy, and energy to mass. Inertia is what ties the two together. Quantum Mechanics has given us the similar law that information cannot be created nor destroyed. In Archephenomenalism I argue that consciousness or mind cannot be created nor destroyed. It could be energy, and is what ties information to energy and mass, or it could be something different that is not yet labelled. Either way the implications are the same.

This is a problem of whether essence is the key to our Being, or existence represents our Being (I capitalize Being as Heidegger did, in order to represent it as the primary dynamic of reality as opposed to other uses or interpretations of the word. I am a being, you are a being, but we are talking about Being). It does not make sense to me that there would be a nonphysical reality, implying that there is an essence underlying the universe, and yet the human mind would not represent essence, but simply a product of our physical brains. Likewise, there is the issue that it has been demonstrated that the human mind can impact non-local reality in the experiments I referred to earlier. An epiphenomenal mind, or any mind that is purely physical in source and nature, obviously could not have any effect on non-local reality.

Hegel would agree that it is unlikely that there would be a nonphysical mind at a universal level, but only a physical mind at the local and individual level, but he simply tried to clump it all into physicality and do away with the nonphysical, which I also believe is wrong. It denies, Kant's Thing-in-Itself---the reality of the Noema, or that which we cannot see or empirically perceive.

St. Thomas of Aquinas, would have agreed with you a few centuries before Kant and Hegel. He argued that existence preceded essence for all things other than God, and that Being is the act of existing, (actus essendi). His argument is that if essence were to apply to me as a human, that I would be immortal and never die. His opponent in this argument was Duns Scotus, who argued that there is no distinction between essence and existence, in the same way that Einstein demonstrated that there is no distinction between mass and energy, one is just the flip side of the coin to the other. Scotus said that essence and existence is that with which the "...mind lays hold of the existing thing." (Which is a fascinating early hint of Kant's philosophy.) It was here that Philosophy began to split into these two sides of materialism versus idealism. But to take the position of St. Thomas today would be to ignore all the arguments subsequent to him.

One could argue that it is our essence of who we are individually that is dependent on our physical brain. So that would mean that the consciousness of Being is a deeper level of essence that changes upon death, like wood turning to ash and soot when burned. So our true essence, in your argument, would simply be the basic consciousness of the universe that would return to the universe, and our individual being would die along with our mortal body.

But what of the information of our consciousness and that which makes us individual beings? The thing that creates the structure of our neural pathways out of the quantum waves that collapse into physical particles when we think. Clearly this information (which cannot be created nor destroyed) is like a local individual field of Being, much like Heidegger's Dassein. This information contains the essence of our individual personality, our memory, dreams, and so forth. This information is the nonphysical reality of who we are. And it is mind as we experience it existentially, i.e., as human beings experiencing life.

My third principle states that our minds transcend physicality. This has to be true if physicality in its entirety is limited to the single moment of Now in which it appears (which is my 2nd Principle). Let me explain, each moment of Now (each Quantum Now) Quantum Waves collapse into a manifestation of the physical. And within that single moment, all that is physical for that moment exists only within that moment. For that moment, there is no tomorrow, there is no yesterday, even the next moment or the previous last moment do not exist, there is only Now--the current moment. But we do not experience reality in this manner of single moments---like individual frames of a movie film. We experience a continual progression of time, one moment flowing into the next, and physicality seems like a fluid and ever-present reality. This could only be possible if we transcend physicality---if we exist beyond the individual moment.

The implication of this transcendence of physicality, is that the information that is contained within our individual essence, is different than the information of a physical object. The particles of that physical object, only exist for a moment at a time, and the information that is maintained in the quantum information of that object, becomes something of the past. The information is not destroyed, but once the moment is gone it has become of the past--the past side of the nonphysical space-time continuum. (The information of that physical moment is superpositioned so it has infinite positions in space-time in the future and the past, but having become an actuality, it is no longer a potentiality, so it no longer resides in the future as potentiality, but rather is only historical, even as it is superpositioned and resides in the past and the future. Thus the information is neither created nor destroyed, but it is no longer relevant to the future as a future potentiality.

Mind on the other hand, is not limited to the singularity of physicality---the single moment of Now. The information that is mind, is not trapped by physical time (i.e. it exists beyond the single moment) so it must have Being different from the information that is the intentional object of physical particles. (Another way to describe the limitation of physical objects is that as they are composed of individual quanta, these quanta go from potentiality to actuality (physical manifestation in the present) to historical information.) This includes our mortal body. But the collection of information which is our own individual mind, not being limited to the single point of Now, can certainly continue past the death of the physical body just as it continues past the manifestation of all physical objects. After all, quantum mechanics actually does validate that essence (mind) precedes existence (physicality)

To borrow from an argument I wrote out in favor of the immortal soul: "Thus we have a reality where the conservation of mass is subject to the conservation of energy—mass manifesting through inertia. The conservation of energy is subject to the conservation of information. Information provides content. And finally, the conservation of information is dependent on the conservation of thought [Consciousness]. Thought provides intention."

 

Functionalists look at how things function in societies, as well.. And No, the U.S. government doesn't have the same function as a religion. Since the French revolution, some mostly totalitarian governments have adopted features of religion, exploiting the similar sentiments, emotions, rituals, infallible doctrines, codes, etc., to control, mobilize and rally their citizenry. North Korea would be an example today. The U.S. has rudimentary traces of this.

That's why I love the United States, although it doesn't always live up to its billing. Those are the official ideals. But really, Meagain, you seem to be desperately fishing for things to pick at. I never said that the U. S. was or had a secular religion--only that there are rudimentary, quasi-religious features suggesting efforts to promote religious-style devotion to the nation-state. "Some features" is all I'm saying.

That's a culture-bound concept relevant to modern world religions. Before "gods", there were spirits and ancestors, and still are among hunter-gatherers today. And until the Axial Age, the main focus was transactional, not salvation of souls.

No, I never thought that, but your earlier comments referring to scholars in comparative religion seemed to. You can qualify it now to isolated individuals who got the same idea. But you still seem to think it' somehow nefarious--"chicanery", I think, was your term. I think that after studying the phenomenon of religion, they decided it would be useful to use the 4 Cs to compare them.

I guess I was speaking too broadly when I said "western industrial nations". I should have said western European industrial nations: France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc. Most of the ones on your list (Saudi Arabia, India, etc., are not "western" in the usual sense of the word. Israel? It's in the Middle East, although admittedly westernized in culture. Others are eastern European, or not very industrial (Spain, Portugal).

A matter of degree so great as to be a difference in kind. , According to Lenin, (The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion): "Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class." I'd call that hostility., which became persecution, off and on, to suit the interests of the Party.

Of course. So is fire. I happen to think that certain forms of religion are probably the most serious threats to democracy facing the world today. (Quakers, Methodists, Episcopalians, etc., not so much). Getting rid of it is not so easy, and might come back to bite us. I'd argue that totalitarian secular religions arose partly to fill an anomic vacuum in the wake of the decline of old time religions. Besides, for people like me, it's the most important thing in their lives, so you could expect some resistance. If some of the principles and values preached by religions like Christianity were actually taken to heart by their professed followers, as well as opponents, we might experience a return to Paradise. I'm talking about peace, love, understanding, social justice, etc.

A complicating factor has always been that religion is multi-functional. For individuals, it provides cognitive mapping, relief from existential anxieties, and a vehicle for organized altruism. For societies, it is a means of social control, solidarity, and social mobilization. For governments and ruling classes, it offers legitimacy. And for grifters and politicians, it can be a ticket to personal wealth, power, and fame. We need to be aware of all of these in relating to it.