Health and Religion

[CoinCube]

Freedom and God

Freedom is neither license nor anarchy: It does not mean chaos or the use of tooth and nail. Freedom does not give any man or group the right to steal, to use fraud or aggressive force or threats of same to get what one wants.

Freedom is the right of the individual to choose how he controls himself, so long as he respects the equal rights of every other individual to control and plan his own life. Freedom is thus not the ability to do whatever you want. It is self-control, and self-government, no more, no less.

Thus "freedom is self-control" leads to the conclusion that as acting individuals, we must respect the rights and boundaries of others. In other words, every individual should control his or her actions such that they do not aggress or invade against other individuals or their rightfully owned properties. "Freedom" as "self-control" points up the dual nature of human existence: of the Self (mind, soul, and spirit) housed in a physical body. Human beings require both spiritual freedom and physical liberty

The evolution of the social contract is a progressive climb to systems with increased overall freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increased the overall cooperative activity and freedom the system permitted.

The ultimate driver behind this process is Ethical Monotheism for this is the underappreciated foundation that freedom rests upon. The Ten Commandments are often misunderstood as restrictions. In reality they are the road map to freedom. To better understand this I highly recommend the following 5 minute video clip from Prager University.

God Wants Us To Be Free

Freedom out-competes slavery. This is why the Odin worshiping vikings were replaced by Christian vikings. It is the ultimate reason why Arab polytheism was replaced by Islam and why the Jews who who's traditions demand an individual understanding and observance of scripture have so excelled.

A person is responsible for every action he takes and for every action he refuses to take. Thus, he is responsible for commissions and omissions, and whether these are good or bad. The individual is the responsible unit. Responsibility cannot be collectively delegated. Each person is responsible in exactly the same way and to the same degree that every other person is.

At the level of the individual we again return to choice. Do we truly care about freedom or do we care about our cravings and wants? If we choose freedom we must embrace that which makes freedom possible. If we choose whims and desires we should admit to ourselves that we do not prioritize freedom and are most concerned with our ability to sate our appetites.

See: The Beginning of Wisdom for more.

[qwik2learn]

What about the freedom to take out a car loan? One who trades nothing ( "a signature") for something is a thief.
 Shall I choose my wants or shall I refuse the "false gifts"?
And what about the freedom to travel freely in that car?? There is no such freedom in the usa, travel must be approved by patrol agents who use "emergency powers" and authority status to convince the public that travel must be tracked and regulated. Almost nobody can truly assert a right to travel, due to indoctrination and acceptance of this norm. A similar example is when the nation's high court ruled that the right to remain silent does not amount to freedom from having to provide response or answer to a question, and that only someone who is very clever can practically choose a beneficial course of action in this situation. Here we have replaced "one nation under god" with a perpetual state of fraud and darkness. Police claim to enforce a "moral law" under their own authority and coded rules of deception. The commercial enforcement and bail/fining process is not about control of your car but rather control over your signature and freedom of motion. God and freedom are a long way away, the situation is looking more like "1984" where freedom merely denotes the relative size of one's cage.

[CoinCube]

What about the freedom to take out a car loan? One who trades nothing ( "a signature") for something is a thief.
 Shall I choose my wants or shall I refuse the "false gifts"?
And what about the freedom to travel freely in that car?? There is no such freedom in the usa, travel must be approved by patrol agents who use "emergency powers" and authority status to convince the public that travel must be tracked and regulated. Almost nobody can truly assert a right to travel, due to indoctrination and acceptance of this norm. A similar example is when the nation's high court ruled that the right to remain silent does not amount to freedom from having to provide response or answer to a question, and that only someone who is very clever can practically choose a beneficial course of action in this situation. Here we have replaced "one nation under god" with a perpetual state of fraud and darkness. Police claim to enforce a "moral law" under their own authority and coded rules of deception. The commercial enforcement and bail/fining process is not about control of your car but rather control over your signature and freedom of motion. God and freedom are a long way away, the situation is looking more like "1984" where freedom merely denotes the relative size of one's cage.

Freedom does not mean not being bound by our word or the inability to enter contracts. Freedom is self-control, and self-government. Provided the choice is made without coercion if we willingly choose to limit our autonomy and freedom via an obligation to another there is nothing wrong with this. With two caveats:

1) In our current system whenever we take out a debt we are simultaneously stealing from everyone else thus debt under in a fractional reserve fiat system amounts to a form of legalized theft. Though we may be forced to participate in such theft in order to function we should at a minimum do what we can to promote reform and oppose the status quo. See Finance: Part 1, 2, 3 for details on how the current monetary order works.

2) Usury in general is probably a very bad idea which we should all strive to move away from. This is a lesson society has yet to learn.

Your other examples simply highlight that we have a very long way to go to truly be a free people. Freedom is not an all or none affair. We are not a free society, yet we live in a society that is far more free than societies of the past. We are not far enough along the road of self-improvement to even consider abolishing police forces or allowing unrestricted travel across all national borders. Freedom comes from moral self-control and we lack the required moral fiber.

You say the situation is looking more like 1984 and I do not entirely disagree if we limit our view to the west. However, perhaps I am an optimist when I argue that if one expands one's view to the entire human race freedom continues to move forward.

[BADecker]

What about the freedom to take out a car loan? One who trades nothing ( "a signature") for something is a thief.
 Shall I choose my wants or shall I refuse the "false gifts"?
And what about the freedom to travel freely in that car?? There is no such freedom in the usa, travel must be approved by patrol agents who use "emergency powers" and authority status to convince the public that travel must be tracked and regulated. Almost nobody can truly assert a right to travel, due to indoctrination and acceptance of this norm. A similar example is when the nation's high court ruled that the right to remain silent does not amount to freedom from having to provide response or answer to a question, and that only someone who is very clever can practically choose a beneficial course of action in this situation. Here we have replaced "one nation under god" with a perpetual state of fraud and darkness. Police claim to enforce a "moral law" under their own authority and coded rules of deception. The commercial enforcement and bail/fining process is not about control of your car but rather control over your signature and freedom of motion. God and freedom are a long way away, the situation is looking more like "1984" where freedom merely denotes the relative size of one's cage.

Freedom does not mean not being bound by our word or the inability to enter contracts. Freedom is self-control, and self-government. Provided the choice is made without coercion if we willingly choose to limit our autonomy and freedom via an obligation to another there is nothing wrong with this. With two caveats:

1) In our current system whenever we take out a debt we are simultaneously stealing from everyone else thus debt under in a fractional reserve fiat system amounts to a form of legalized theft. Though we may be forced to participate in such theft in order to function we should at a minimum do what we can to promote reform and oppose the status quo. See Finance: Part 1, 2, 3 for details on how the current monetary order works.

2) Usury is general is probably a very bad idea which we should all strive to move away from. This is a lesson society has yet to learn.

Your other examples simply highlight that we have a very long way to go to truly be a free people. Freedom is not an all or none affair. We are not a free society, yet we live in a society that is far more free than societies of the past. We are not far enough along the road of self-improvement to even consider abolishing police forces or allowing unrestricted travel across all national borders. Freedom comes from moral self-control and we lack the required moral fiber.

You say the situation is looking more like 1984 and I do not entirely disagree if we limits our view to the west. However, perhaps I am an optimist when I argue that if one expands one's view to the entire human race freedom continues to move forward.

Just a note. In our current system, even though the language says a debt is a debt, all borrowed money is really a creation of new money, based on the signature of the borrower. This means there is no debt, even though the paperwork says that there is. This has been proven out by looking at entries in bank financial journals.

Google "Tom Schauf", "Modern Money Mechanics", and "Two Faces of Debt." It will take a little study, but you can see that this info is available all over the place.

The part that is wrong is thinking that there is a debt to pay back. This is why the banks are rich... because they are receiving payment and giving nothing in return. If there was zero interest, they would still be raking it in on the simple so-called loan repayment.

[qwik2learn]

I think that something like moral self control is a problem akin to elimination of bias. In economics, the individual will often act irrationally therefore the individual can only eliminate bias a little bit. An organization can successfully work to eliminate bias and moral decay but it takes a lot of individual hard work. What are some good organizations to enlighten the world to the truth? I do not want to bias myself against any creative solutions.

[CoinCube]

I think that something like moral self control is a problem akin to elimination of bias. In economics, the individual will often act irrationally therefore the individual can only eliminate bias a little bit. An organization can successfully work to eliminate bias and moral decay but it takes a lot of individual hard work. What are some good organizations to enlighten the world to the truth? I do not want to bias myself against any creative solutions.

The only model I am aware of that seems to work is the religious one. The quote from Christian pastor A.W. Tozer below meshes well with your conceptualization of moral improvement as the elimination of bias.

Whatever tribal hardwiring humans have it is designed for small groups where all members are known watched and observed. Maintaining a group larger then a tribe requires either the oppression of a police state or in the case of a free society a moral populace. This was well stated by Henning Web Prentis, Jr who described how the loss of morality would take a people from freedom to bondage.

Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security.

The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."

It is moral degradation that leads to bondage for it is moral strengthening that allows free societies to be built in the first place. Loss of ethnic or racial homogeneity is unimportant except to the degree such diversity contributes to moral strengthening or decline.

This is why ethical monotheism is so important and the reason why so much that is good in the world came from the west. It is ethical monotheism that teaches us not to sin even when dealing with strangers.

Whatever other factors may be present in an act of wrongdoing, folly is one that is never absent. To do a wrong act a man must for the moment think wrong; he must exercise bad judgment.

Sin, I repeat, in addition to anything else it may be, is always an act of wrong judgment. To commit a sin a man must for the moment believe that things are different from what they really are; he must confound values; he must see the moral universe out of focus; he must accept a lie as truth and see truth as a lie; he must ignore the signs on the highway and drive with his eyes shut; he must act as if he had no soul and was not accountable for his moral choices.

Sin is never a thing to be proud of. No act is wise that ignores remote consequences, and sin always does. Sin sees only today, or at most tomorrow; never the day after tomorrow, next month or next year. Death and judgment are pushed aside as if they did not exist...

Sin is basically an act of moral folly, and the greater the folly the greater the fool.

 

[qwik2learn]

A Living Example of conquering disease and becoming a superhuman using the power of human will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaMjhwFE1Zw

[BADecker]

A Living Example of conquering disease and becoming a superhuman using the power of human will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaMjhwFE1Zw

However, the human will is not strong enough to completely avoid death.

[qwik2learn]

A Living Example of conquering disease and becoming a superhuman using the power of human will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaMjhwFE1Zw

However, the human will is not strong enough to completely avoid death.

If you have the same will as Father, then you can say that "I and my Father are one". Death is necessary for life and life is necessary for death; all of nature is cyclical so to avoid death is an illusion. Why not read Pleiades Connection to hear a salient explanation of the cycles of life and death? I am opposed to your teaching which I summarize as "the dispensation of grace given to Paul"; I think that Paul is a traitor to true Christian teaching; Jesus actually said "I am not your master", and all you are trying to do is to have me bow down to your teaching that "Jesus died for your sins". You should have another careful read of Matthew 23, BADecker:

Referring to Pharisees (like Paul):
Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels.
Referring to the "Teacher of Teachers", and "the path of goodness", not "myself, Jesus":
'And ye -- ye may not be called Rabbi, for one is your director -- the Christ, and all ye are brethren;

Are you sure that you are able to teach us that we can avoid death? You are certain that PAUL has taught us how to avoid death? How so, BADecker? Wim Hof has has taught some people to avoid death, even though the cancer patient now requires oxygen. What have you taught to bitcoiners, BADecker?

For him that is taught in the word to give respect to him that teaches, is commendable; but for him that teaches, to demand it, to be puffed up with it, is sinful. How much is all this against the spirit of Christianity! The consistent disciple of Christ is pained by being put into chief places. But who that looks around on the visible church, would think this was the spirit required? It is plain that some measure of this antichristian spirit prevails in every religious society, and in every one of our hearts.
http://biblehub.com/matthew/23-8.htm

[CoinCube]

You argued above that nihilism allows one to form a positive doctrine for re-evaluate of ones values and that the end of tradition that produces the possibility of new things to come. However, there is no reason to think the goals of progress and improving our value system and cannot be achieved from a framework of theism. With this in mind why choose a philosophical belief that is potentially unhealthy and detrimental to the progress we have made so far?

Metaphysics is ontology and epistemology, not morality. Biology has nothing to do with truth, sequoias live for hundreds of years and learn nothing. Anthropological arguments are the only pertinent, but I'd say we're already overpopulated given our capability for wealth distribution.

I think they will be achieved from a framework of theism, but in a slow way, that will leave behind piece by piece the spiritualism from theism, until it is reduced to the pure belief of transcendent perfection without content. That kind of theism would be compatible with nihilism and the two could coexists as mutually agnostic. The problem is that traditional theism brings spiritualism, and that spiritualism is just a more primitive type of thought, and that its bad when applied to knowledge, or morality. For example its hard to understand and artificially reconstruct the mind, if people think its an eternal substance completely separate from matter. Basically, I don't really care what anyone believes, as long as it doesn't determine knowledge, but because spiritualism practically always does, I'm against it.

Nihilnegativum I have had time to consider your argument in greater depth. My response to you is that nihilism is incompatible with your goal of advancing knowledge. The arguments to show this are extensive and complex and I do not want to post them all here so I will link to them.

The Foundations of Contentionism:
Cycles of Contention
The Rise of Knowledge
Entropy is Information
The Math of Optimal Fitness
The Limits of Science
Religion and Progress
The Nature of Freedom
Morality and Sin
Knowledge, Entropy and Freedom


This is a complex topic and I do not necessarily expect you to read all of that but I think you would find the logic interesting. In the 9 links above I (and others) describe the relationship between knowledge, freedom, entropy, and progress. Once this relationship is understood it follows that nihilism undermines the fundamental drivers of knowledge creation. Thus nihilism does not advance knowledge it destroys it.

A very brief and incomplete summary of the argument for those without the time to read the links follows: (Going from top to bottom of the above links)

The argument starts from the premise that empiric knowledge exists or at least appears to exist. It goes on to define information in the context of entropy and knowledge in the context of information. It further argues that information (degrees-of-freedom) cannot be infinite or it would not converge to become knowledge. The nature of empiric knowledge as necessarily incomplete is reviewed as is the requirement for apriori. The apriori assumption of theism is explored and its functional role as the primary driver of knowledge growth. The nature of freedom is explored and its role as the functional intermediary between theism and knowledge growth. Consequences of the rejection of theism are reviewed. Sin is discussed in the context of wrong judgment or noise. The argument concludes with observation that ethical monotheism appears to be a the minimum constraint needed to ensure convergence of information to empiric knowledge. Thus the apriori rejection of theism (nihilism) is incompatible with the growth of empiric knowledge over time.

[CoinCube]

...
This information suggest to me these cultures (more than 400 distinct Australian Aboriginal peoples) came a god damn long way on their own, without the interference of the Christian West.

But now, we see this, also from wiki (under Aboriginal Australians) :

Aboriginal Australians have disproportionately high rates of severe physical disability, as much as three times that of non-Aboriginal Australians, possibly due to higher rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes and kidney disease.
...
Aboriginal Australians suffer from high rates of heart disease

Due to the complex nature of the alcohol and domestic violence issue in the Northern Territory, proposed solutions are contentious
...
It seems to me the Christian West did a tremendous job in fucking up these intracately formed, finely balanced, NATURAL cultures.

The Christian West has been and continues to be very far from ideal. If one reads even a little about the treatment of Native Americans by the Europeans especially the treatment of Native Americans by Spain it is pretty grim stuff. I am less knowledgeable about the treatment of the Australian Aboriginal people but I am sure there are parallels.  

We cannot change the past so how do we help these people now? ... Here are some thoughts.

Race/Ethnicity, Religious Involvement, and Domestic Violence
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077801207308259

The authors explored the relationship between religious involvement and intimate partner violence... They found that: (a) religious involvement is correlated with reduced levels of domestic violence... this protective effect is stronger for African American men and women and for Hispanic men, groups that, for a variety of reasons, experience elevated risk for this type of violence.

Alcoholism Risk Moderation by a Socio-Religious Dimension
http://www.jsad.com/doi/abs/10.15288/jsad.2007.68.912

Results: Findings indicated that (1) parental alcohol history robustly predicted increased offspring alcohol-dependence symptoms, (2) religious rearing appeared protective (offspring exhibited fewer alcohol-dependence symptoms), (3) religious differentiation accounted for most of the protective effect, (4) other religious variables did not account for the differentiation effect, and (5) black religious adolescents were more frequently raised with differentiating affiliations and exhibited greater protective effects.

[iamnotback]

CoinCube is positing that Ethical Monotheism is the absolute truth that maximizes freedom and knowledge formation consistent with driving humanity to higher entropy levels. As I understand it, the essence of Ethical Monotheism is that morality must be absolute, thus it requires a supranatural (i.e. external to the bounds of our existence) basis, i.e. a God.

Unfortunately I can't (yet) find any rational support for this thesis.

The key is morality. For example, the argument is made that we would not value humanity if we did not have an absolute God telling us to. I find this to be ludicrous and I don't understand how any smart person could come such a conclusion. Even if entirely self-interested, we value humanity because our existence would be irrelevant and unsuccessful without humanity. Man is nothing without a society. The maximum division-of-labor dictates that our production and achievements can only increase (and be meaningful existing outside of our own perception) by being a member of a society.

The righteous points in the Bible are simply what smart men would realize are necessarily to have well functioning society. It doesn't require any God. The "judgments" against our sins are simply natural outcomes of not understanding the principles of a well functioning society.

The God part is necessary to get the people to follow who would otherwise defect from the principles of a well functioning society. But dumb people following blindly is top-down mind control and thus is not maximizing freedom and knowledge formation. I am leaning towards Ethical Monotheism is counter-productive.

However, there is a theory that women are naturally prone to hypergamy and would naturally choose a False Life Plan (<-- click the link) if they were not mind controlled:

R&L: What are the differences between the genders as articulated in your book Men and Marriage and what impact does this have on the social order?

Gilder: The key difference is that the woman holds in her very body a link to the long term future of the race. Her sexuality determines her long term goals. As a very physiological consciousness, she knows she can bear and nurture children. She has a central role in the very perpetuation of the species. The man is estranged from this process; his sexuality arises merely as a compulsive drive to pleasure. It’s short term by nature. It’s predatory and quickly gratified. The Women’s Movement tragically reduces female sexuality to the terms of male sexuality. When this happens, she reduces herself to the male level of recreational sex. Paradoxically, when that happens the woman loses all her power over men and the reverence and respect toward the procreative potential of woman is lost. And that really destroys the family. But if the power of “choice” is given up, the woman actually ascends to a higher level of sexuality and her body attains an almost mystical power over men.

Note a man should realize that he has a role in a well functioning society and also can't just view sex as for pleasure. By well functioning society, I obviously don't mean the leftist insanity.

There is also the issue of an undersupplied public good, in that every person may perceive it is in their self-interest to defect from the principles of a well functioning society because they assume others won't. A little cheating here and there won't hurt, except everyone is doing it. The fear of a God may be necessary to defeat this Tragedy of the Commons. Yet this seems to be part of diversity of nature than an absolute truth, for even the R selection strategy is necessary to advance the entropy of the human race.

It means that suttee, the now rare but once widespread Hindu practice of burning widows with their husband's body, is wrong. It means the killing of a daughter or sister who lost her virginity prior to marriage, practiced to this day in parts of the Arab world, is immoral.

And their societies are languishing in extreme suffering because of their inability to comprehend how disrespecting their fellow humans is destroying themselves. They reaped what they sowed. We don't need a God to tell us that.

First, nature is finite and God is infinite.

Incorrect. Nature is unbounded.

Nothing can be infinite, by definition. Fairy-tales may help though to keep the pagans locked in an unfalsifiable fear/superstition?

It further argues that information (degrees-of-freedom) cannot be infinite or it would not converge to become knowledge.

The conflation of infinite and unbounded is a fundamental error.

Knowledge and Power by George Gilder

...Smith himself spoke of property rights, free trade, sound currency, and modest taxation as crucial elements of an environment for prosperity. Smith was right: An arena of disorder, disequilibrium, chaos, and noise would drown the feats of creation that engender growth. The ultimate physical entropy envisaged as the heat death of the universe, in its total disorder, affords no room for invention or surprise. But entrepreneurial disorder is not chaos or mere noise. Entrepreneurial disorder is some combination of order and upheaval that might be termed “informative disorder.”...

...Freedom must be subject to the constraint of convergence. Some top-down order must be maintained to prevent destructive chaos aka noise that would otherwise destroy rather than create knowledge.

The amount of top-down control needed increases in the presence of increased noise...

Information is distinguished from noise by the mutual information (what I had sometimes informally referred to as "resonance"). If every outcome is independent (i.e. maximum entropy/disorder/equiprobable randomness), then there is no mutual information. Thus, information requires some order. Entropy is unbounded, but it can't be infinite else existence would not be perceived because every outcome would be entirely independent sharing no mutual information with each other.



I looked into the genius Freeman Dyson's view on religion and he seems to be approaching from the position of wanting to feel he is connected to whole of society:

Freeman Dyson thinks science and religion aren’t at odds: “I think it’s only a small fraction of people who think that. Perhaps they have louder voices than the others . . . I think Richard Dawkins is doing a lot of damage. I disagree very strongly with the way he’s going about it. I don’t deny his right to be an atheist, but I think he does a great deal of harm when he publicly says that in order to be a scientist, you have to be an atheist. That simply turns young people away from science. He’s convinced a lot of young people not to be scientists . . . they don’t want to be atheists. I’m strongly against him on that question. It’s simply not true what he’s saying, and it’s not only not true but also harmful. The fact is that many of my friends are much more religious than I am and are first-rate scientists. There’s absolutely nothing that stops you from being both . . . Dawkins has the arrogance to say that anyone who does not share his views is infected with a virus. No wonder he cannot coexist peacefully with them”.

“For me, “ Dyson says, (much as Santayana had observed before him), “religion is much more about a community of people than about belief. It’s fine literature and music. As far as I can tell, people who belong to my church don’t necessarily believe anything. Certainly we don’t talk about that much. I suppose I’m a better Jew than I am a Christian. Jewish religion is much more a matter of community than it is of belief, and I think that’s true of us Christians to a great extent, too . . . they  [my parents] were practicing Christians, but not believing Christians . . . a practicing Christian is somebody who lives a Christian life and likes to worship in common with a lot of other people and considers the church as a community to which to belong, but you don’t inquire closely as to what the others believe. Of course, some people take belief very seriously, and others don’t.  My conception of God is not weakened by my not knowing whether the physical universe is open or closed, finite or infinite, simple or multiple. God for me is a mystery, and will remain a mystery after we know the answers to these questions . . . I cannot imagine that he is greatly impressed by our juvenile efforts to read his mind . . . I don’t remember the context out of which this remark arose. Maybe I was thinking of the fight between Galileo and the Aristotelian philosophers of his day. The Aristoteleans wanted to keep the heavens separate from the earth so there would be room for God in the sky. Galileo said the moon was a world like the earth with mountains and seas. Translated into modern language, Galileo was saying that the size and shape of the universe are not telling us anything about God.”

Cosmology and the Divinity Blankie

“It [biology, physics and quantum mechanics]  impacts upon our understanding of theology,” Dyson has said, “ What I was pointing out is that human theology is based on our own value system – above all our knowledge of good and evil as we experience it. Take an autistic child. I took the case of Jessica Park, who is a friend of mine who happens to be autistic. If she had a theology, it would be quite different because she cannot understand other people suffering. She has no conception of other people’s existence in the way we have. It’s a radically different world that she lives in. You can tell by the fact that she can’t understand the difference between ‘I’ and ‘you’. She uses the words indiscriminately. So the idea of a suffering savior would have no meaning for her at all. If she had a theology, it wouldn’t involve sin. One thing that is characteristic of autistic people is that they cannot tell a lie. Jessica never tells a lie because to tell a deliberate lie, you have to have the idea of deceiving somebody. That’s something she couldn’t imagine. Since there is no sin, there can be no fall from grace and no redemption. The example of Jessica shows us how our own view of the world might be equally skewed. There may be many essential features of the world to which we are blind, just as she is blind to other people’s thoughts and feelings. So our theology also reflects our possibly skewed view of the world.”

I think I am disagreeing with Dyson on the following point, because the discussion I've been having with CoinCube is employing the science of entropy (which I think is fundamental) to theorize about human nature and society (and its relationship to knowledge formation and the Second Law of Thermodynamics):

What Dyson has said is that it’s impossible to observe both the scientific and the religious aspects of human nature at the same time. “For me,” he says, “science is just a box of tricks, and I enjoy playing with them. It’s a form of exercise. It has nothing to do with philosophy, certainly even less to do with religion. It’s essentially just a skill that I happen to have learned. Some people think about science much more solemnly. For me, science has nothing much to do with deep thoughts.”

I found this quote of Dyson which based on my writings and the work I aiming to do with crypto-currency appears to be incorrect:

*Technological progress does more harm than good unless accompanied by ethical progress. The free market by itself will not produce technologies access-friendly to the poor.

[bitcoinboy12]

CoinCube is positing that Ethical Monotheism is the absolute truth that maximizes freedom and knowledge formation consistent with driving humanity to higher entropy levels. As I understand it, the essence of Ethical Monotheism is that morality must be absolute, thus it requires a supranatural (i.e. external to the bounds of our existence) basis, i.e. a God.

Unfortunately I can't (yet) find any rational support for this thesis.

The key is morality. For example, the argument is made that we would not value humanity if we did not have an absolute God telling us to. I find this to be ludicrous and I don't understand how any smart person could come such a conclusion. Even if entirely self-interested, we value humanity because our existence would be irrelevant and unsuccessful without humanity. Man is nothing without a society. The maximum division-of-labor dictates that our production and achievements can only increase (and be meaningful existing outside of our own perception) by being a member of a society.

The righteous points in the Bible are simply what smart men would realize are necessarily to have well functioning society. It doesn't require any God. The "judgments" against our sins are simply natural outcomes of not understanding the principles of a well functioning society.

The God part is necessary to get the people to follow who would otherwise defect from the principles of a well functioning society. But dumb people following blindly is top-down mind control and thus is not maximizing freedom and knowledge formation. I am leaning towards Ethical Monotheism is counter-productive.

However, there is a theory that women are naturally prone to hypergamy and would naturally choose a False Life Plan (<-- click the link) if they were not mind controlled:

R&L: What are the differences between the genders as articulated in your book Men and Marriage and what impact does this have on the social order?

Gilder: The key difference is that the woman holds in her very body a link to the long term future of the race. Her sexuality determines her long term goals. As a very physiological consciousness, she knows she can bear and nurture children. She has a central role in the very perpetuation of the species. The man is estranged from this process; his sexuality arises merely as a compulsive drive to pleasure. It’s short term by nature. It’s predatory and quickly gratified. The Women’s Movement tragically reduces female sexuality to the terms of male sexuality. When this happens, she reduces herself to the male level of recreational sex. Paradoxically, when that happens the woman loses all her power over men and the reverence and respect toward the procreative potential of woman is lost. And that really destroys the family. But if the power of “choice” is given up, the woman actually ascends to a higher level of sexuality and her body attains an almost mystical power over men.

Note a man should realize that he has a role in a well functioning society and also can't just view sex as for pleasure. By well functioning society, I obviously don't mean the leftist insanity.

There is also the issue of an undersupplied public good, in that every person may perceive it is in their self-interest to defect from the principles of a well functioning society because they assume others won't. A little cheating here and there won't hurt, except everyone is doing it. The fear of a God may be necessary to defeat this Tragedy of the Commons. Yet this seems to be part of diversity of nature than an absolute truth, for even the R selection strategy is necessary to advance the entropy of the human race.

It means that suttee, the now rare but once widespread Hindu practice of burning widows with their husband's body, is wrong. It means the killing of a daughter or sister who lost her virginity prior to marriage, practiced to this day in parts of the Arab world, is immoral.

And their societies are languishing in extreme suffering because of their inability to comprehend how disrespecting their fellow humans is destroying themselves. They reaped what they sowed. We don't need a God to tell us that.

First, nature is finite and God is infinite.

Incorrect. Nature is unbounded.

Nothing can be infinite, by definition. Fairy-tales may help though to keep the pagans locked in an unfalsifiable fear/superstition?

It further argues that information (degrees-of-freedom) cannot be infinite or it would not converge to become knowledge.

The conflation of infinite and unbounded is a fundamental error.

Knowledge and Power by George Gilder

...Smith himself spoke of property rights, free trade, sound currency, and modest taxation as crucial elements of an environment for prosperity. Smith was right: An arena of disorder, disequilibrium, chaos, and noise would drown the feats of creation that engender growth. The ultimate physical entropy envisaged as the heat death of the universe, in its total disorder, affords no room for invention or surprise. But entrepreneurial disorder is not chaos or mere noise. Entrepreneurial disorder is some combination of order and upheaval that might be termed “informative disorder.”...

...Freedom must be subject to the constraint of convergence. Some top-down order must be maintained to prevent destructive chaos aka noise that would otherwise destroy rather than create knowledge.

The amount of top-down control needed increases in the presence of increased noise...

Information is distinguished from noise by the mutual information (what I had sometimes informally referred to as "resonance"). If every outcome is independent (i.e. maximum entropy/disorder/equiprobable randomness), then there is no mutual information. Thus, information requires some order. Entropy is unbounded, but it can't be infinite else existence would not be perceived because every outcome would be entirely independent sharing no mutual information with each other.



I looked into the genius Freeman Dyson's view on religion and he seems to be approaching from the position of wanting to feel he is connected to whole of society:

Freeman Dyson thinks science and religion aren’t at odds: “I think it’s only a small fraction of people who think that. Perhaps they have louder voices than the others . . . I think Richard Dawkins is doing a lot of damage. I disagree very strongly with the way he’s going about it. I don’t deny his right to be an atheist, but I think he does a great deal of harm when he publicly says that in order to be a scientist, you have to be an atheist. That simply turns young people away from science. He’s convinced a lot of young people not to be scientists . . . they don’t want to be atheists. I’m strongly against him on that question. It’s simply not true what he’s saying, and it’s not only not true but also harmful. The fact is that many of my friends are much more religious than I am and are first-rate scientists. There’s absolutely nothing that stops you from being both . . . Dawkins has the arrogance to say that anyone who does not share his views is infected with a virus. No wonder he cannot coexist peacefully with them”.

“For me, “ Dyson says, (much as Santayana had observed before him), “religion is much more about a community of people than about belief. It’s fine literature and music. As far as I can tell, people who belong to my church don’t necessarily believe anything. Certainly we don’t talk about that much. I suppose I’m a better Jew than I am a Christian. Jewish religion is much more a matter of community than it is of belief, and I think that’s true of us Christians to a great extent, too . . . they  [my parents] were practicing Christians, but not believing Christians . . . a practicing Christian is somebody who lives a Christian life and likes to worship in common with a lot of other people and considers the church as a community to which to belong, but you don’t inquire closely as to what the others believe. Of course, some people take belief very seriously, and others don’t.  My conception of God is not weakened by my not knowing whether the physical universe is open or closed, finite or infinite, simple or multiple. God for me is a mystery, and will remain a mystery after we know the answers to these questions . . . I cannot imagine that he is greatly impressed by our juvenile efforts to read his mind . . . I don’t remember the context out of which this remark arose. Maybe I was thinking of the fight between Galileo and the Aristotelian philosophers of his day. The Aristoteleans wanted to keep the heavens separate from the earth so there would be room for God in the sky. Galileo said the moon was a world like the earth with mountains and seas. Translated into modern language, Galileo was saying that the size and shape of the universe are not telling us anything about God.”

Cosmology and the Divinity Blankie

“It [biology, physics and quantum mechanics]  impacts upon our understanding of theology,” Dyson has said, “ What I was pointing out is that human theology is based on our own value system – above all our knowledge of good and evil as we experience it. Take an autistic child. I took the case of Jessica Park, who is a friend of mine who happens to be autistic. If she had a theology, it would be quite different because she cannot understand other people suffering. She has no conception of other people’s existence in the way we have. It’s a radically different world that she lives in. You can tell by the fact that she can’t understand the difference between ‘I’ and ‘you’. She uses the words indiscriminately. So the idea of a suffering savior would have no meaning for her at all. If she had a theology, it wouldn’t involve sin. One thing that is characteristic of autistic people is that they cannot tell a lie. Jessica never tells a lie because to tell a deliberate lie, you have to have the idea of deceiving somebody. That’s something she couldn’t imagine. Since there is no sin, there can be no fall from grace and no redemption. The example of Jessica shows us how our own view of the world might be equally skewed. There may be many essential features of the world to which we are blind, just as she is blind to other people’s thoughts and feelings. So our theology also reflects our possibly skewed view of the world.”

I think I am disagreeing with Dyson on the following point, because the discussion I've been having with CoinCube is employing the science of entropy (which I think is fundamental) to theorize about human nature and society (and its relationship to knowledge formation and the Second Law of Thermodynamics):

What Dyson has said is that it’s impossible to observe both the scientific and the religious aspects of human nature at the same time. “For me,” he says, “science is just a box of tricks, and I enjoy playing with them. It’s a form of exercise. It has nothing to do with philosophy, certainly even less to do with religion. It’s essentially just a skill that I happen to have learned. Some people think about science much more solemnly. For me, science has nothing much to do with deep thoughts.”

I found this quote of Dyson which based on my writings and the work I aiming to do with crypto-currency appears to be incorrect:

*Technological progress does more harm than good unless accompanied by ethical progress. The free market by itself will not produce technologies access-friendly to the poor.

That is a very good note. This is actually the first time i heard of this "Tragedy of Commons". But if you think about it, there is actually truth behind the thought. Only by holding onto something special, something great, is how you can only try and live life to the fullest.

[qwik2learn]

As I understand it, the essence of Ethical Monotheism is that morality must be absolute, thus it requires a supranatural (i.e. external to the bounds of our existence) basis, i.e. a God.

Unfortunately I can't (yet) find any rational support for this thesis.

Respecting the origin of the Universe three verbally intelligible suppositions may be made. We may assert that it is self-existent; or that it is self-created; or that it is created by an external agency. The deeper question, into which this finally merges, is, whether any one of them is even conceivable in the true sense of the word.

Whoever agrees that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the theistic hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible idea.

It is not a question of probability, or credibility, but of conceivability. Experiment proves that the elements of these hypotheses cannot even be put together in consciousness.

Differing so widely as they seem to do, the atheistic, the pantheistic, and the theistic hypotheses contain the same ultimate element. It is impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence somewhere; and whether that assumption be made nakedly or under complicated disguises, it is equally vicious, equally unthinkable.
http://www.constitution.org/hs/first_prin.htm

[miscreanity]

The key is morality. For example, the argument is made that we would not value humanity if we did not have an absolute God telling us to. I find this to be ludicrous and I don't understand how any smart person could come such a conclusion. Even if entirely self-interested, we value humanity because our existence would be irrelevant and unsuccessful without humanity. Man is nothing without a society. The maximum division-of-labor dictates that our production and achievements can only increase (and be meaningful existing outside of our own perception) by being a member of a society.

The righteous points in the Bible are simply what smart men would realize are necessarily to have well functioning society. It doesn't require any God. The "judgments" against our sins are simply natural outcomes of not understanding the principles of a well functioning society.

The God part is necessary to get the people to follow who would otherwise defect from the principles of a well functioning society. But dumb people following blindly is top-down mind control and thus is not maximizing freedom and knowledge formation. I am leaning towards Ethical Monotheism is counter-productive.

I have not fully been following the thread, so forgive if my statements rehash previous posts.

Agreed entirely that even the most narcissistic individual can perceive the value of humanity. The differentiating factor I see is stratification suggesting that one person's value in an economic sense is the sole measure of that person's importance.

Without a direct relationship and understanding of a person's history it can be very easy to dismiss or inflate a given individual's importance relative to oneself. Meanwhile, the importance of that individual relative to his family and friends is likely to be vastly different. To know is to love.

Reputation and relationships are relative, but the foundations of them are universal. At the same time, our natural tendency toward the self generally precludes consideration of anyone not in our immediate sphere. If the assumption is that this existence is everything, a reasonable conclusion might be a goal of maximal self-gratification over acknowledgment of others. This also gives us a weakness in terms of manipulability when our own desires lead us into situations that are not actually to our benefit.

Finally, looking at humanity as an organism illuminates periods of change and growth. I cannot assume the perspectives of those living thousands of years ago to be the same as we have today. Their desires were the same, to be sure, but accumulated knowledge has changed the overall view. It may well be that the typical daily life of people thousands of years ago was more selfish and immature.

For my entire adult life I've asked myself this:

What if everything I know is a lie?

What is your answer?

[BADecker]

As I understand it, the essence of Ethical Monotheism is that morality must be absolute, thus it requires a supranatural (i.e. external to the bounds of our existence) basis, i.e. a God.

Unfortunately I can't (yet) find any rational support for this thesis.

Respecting the origin of the Universe three verbally intelligible suppositions may be made. We may assert that it is self-existent; or that it is self-created; or that it is created by an external agency. The deeper question, into which this finally merges, is, whether any one of them is even conceivable in the true sense of the word.

Whoever agrees that the atheistic hypothesis is untenable because it involves the impossible idea of self-existence, must perforce admit that the theistic hypothesis is untenable if it contains the same impossible idea.

It is not a question of probability, or credibility, but of conceivability. Experiment proves that the elements of these hypotheses cannot even be put together in consciousness.

Differing so widely as they seem to do, the atheistic, the pantheistic, and the theistic hypotheses contain the same ultimate element. It is impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence somewhere; and whether that assumption be made nakedly or under complicated disguises, it is equally vicious, equally unthinkable.
http://www.constitution.org/hs/first_prin.htm

If it's all a lie, then the lie is a lie, and the truth is the same as always >>> reality.

[CoinCube]

...
Even if entirely self-interested, we value humanity because our existence would be irrelevant and unsuccessful without humanity. Man is nothing without a society. The maximum division-of-labor dictates that our production and achievements can only increase (and be meaningful existing outside of our own perception) by being a member of a society.
...

It means that suttee, the now rare but once widespread Hindu practice of burning widows with their husband's body, is wrong. It means the killing of a daughter or sister who lost her virginity prior to marriage, practiced to this day in parts of the Arab world, is immoral.

And their societies are languishing in extreme suffering because of their inability to comprehend how disrespecting their fellow humans is destroying themselves. They reaped what they sowed. We don't need a God to tell us that.

For the discrete and separate self the rest of the world is fundamentally other. Individuals with such a worldview are rationally concerned not with maximum division-of-labor but instead on how much he or she can personally commandeer.  

Our society is languishing in extreme suffering because of our inability to comprehend how harming our fellow humans is ultimately harming ourselves.  

http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/

The discrete and separate self, surveying a universe that is fundamentally Other, naturally treats the natural and human world as a pile of instrumental, accidental stuff. The rest of the world is fundamentally not-self. Why should we care about it, beyond our own foreseeable utility?
...
In nature, headlong growth and all-out competition are features of immature ecosystems, followed by complex interdependency, symbiosis, cooperation, and the cycling of resources. The next stage of human economy will parallel what we are beginning to understand about nature. It will call forth the gifts of each of us; it will emphasize cooperation over competition.
...
Within every institution of our civilization, no matter how ugly or corrupt, there is the gem of something beautiful: the same note at a higher octave.

Cycles of Contention

		Cycle #1	Cycle #2	Cycle #3	Cycle #4	Cycle #5	Cycle #6
	Mechanism of Control	Knowledge of Evil	Warlordism	Holy War	Usury	Universal Surveillance	Hedonism
	Rulers	The Strong	Despots	God Kings/Monarchs	Capitalists	Oligarchs (NWO)	Decentralized Government
	Life of the Ruled	"Nasty, Brutish, Short"	Slaves	Surfs	Debtors	Basic Income Recipients	Knowledge Workers
	Facilitated Advance	Knowledge of Good	Commerce	Rule of Law	Growth	Transparency	Ascesis

Ethical Monotheism that teaches us to treat others as ourselves even when dealing with strangers.

Matthew 7:12
"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."

Hillel the Elder
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn."

Abdullah ibn Amr Al-Ass
"Whoever wishes to be delivered from the fire and enter the garden should die with faith in Allah and the Last Day and should treat the people as he wishes to be treated by them"

We are slow learners.

[CoinCube]

Music that illuminates the human condition:

Baba Yetu (The Lord's Prayer in Swahili) - Christopher Tin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6qi393Z7L8

Жypaвли́ (The Cranes in Russian) - Mark Bernes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THeGsS_Skew

The Gospel (The Gospel in English) - Ryan Stevenson
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NTdFEZhjiko

荒城の月 (Moon Over Ruined Castle in Japaneese) - Jackie Evancho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xCu-KB0vmI

Shalom Aleichem (Peace Be Upon You in Hebrew) - Susana Allen & Hector David
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xAgLtjMrW4

Wana Baraka (Kenyan folk song) - The Good News Gospel Choir
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qwLlFKaX-ms

Improvisation in Paris (Piano) - Gerard Pla Daro and Nassim Zaouche
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I_NYya-WWg

Over the Rainbow on a Train - The Liberators International
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xctzp0dp9uc&t=20s

Hallelujah (Violin) - Lindsey Stirling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VzprYCxPBQ

In the Dark Night - (Ukrainian)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2h5YBrcbEHY

See: Highlights for more.

[stats]

Music that illuminates the human condition:

荒城の月 (Moon Over Ruined Castle in Japaneese) - Jackie Evancho
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awbOI8uQxls

Hallelujah (Hallelujah in English) - Leonard Cohen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttEMYvpoR-k

Жypaвли́ (The Cranes in Russian) - Mark Bernes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bacOJETuCZg

Shalom Aleichem (Peace Be Upon You in Hebrew) - Susana Allen & Hector David
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xAgLtjMrW4

Baba Yetu (The Lord's Prayer in Swahili) - Christopher Tin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5rJe-rAjW4

Actually, I prefer this....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZeWPScnolo

[CoinCube]

Actually, I prefer this....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZeWPScnolo

That's because you are deaf
Here are a few pieces of quality music completely religion free just for you stats. 

Dave Thomas - La Noyee solo (Yann Tiersen cover)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI76sKLMkMU

Russian Folk Music - Russian Winter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4iDAqTglzQ

Ukulele weeps by Jake Shimabukuro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k