Showing posts with label extended face group. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extended face group. Show all posts

Monday, August 16, 2010

Tell Me of the God You Don't Believe In.

When You Say "God"... - Beliefnet:

"In the general sense, anything that is greater than, and superior to, an individual that an individual can commune with is not useful for me. I do not say it doesn't exist for a believer but I suspect it is an emergent property of a human mind after years of conditioning or, as the religious say, indoctrination.

I have yet to encounter an emergent God that I would wish to commune with, although there are many that I can learn from. I learn from the myths, stories, beliefs, rituals, and the related liturgy relating to them. Usually what not to do, and what is immoral that the gods try to justify: Genocide, misogyny, sexual sin, even misanthropy for at least one common God."

The concept of sexual sin is probably the most prevalent immorality in many religions. There is always something, usually nearly everything, that one can do with sexual parts that is sinful. These activities are all natural reward mechanisms for creating and preserving the pair bond. Shamans observe that pair bonding interferes with God bonding. So anything that improves the pair bond must be sinful. A properly pair bonded couple turns inward to the relationship first, and to the family and extended face group that they can effect and which effects them. Generally this extended face group will exclude God as they can never hope to be face to face with God.

Friday, July 16, 2010

A Secular Society Example

moral training....stealing-right or wrong? - Beliefnet :

"An example of a non-religious society might be a modern high level research university. Certainly there will be a few religious people in that society, in fact there may even be a religious studies department as part of the university. But the ideals and the mores are defined by academic standards, not by some religious authority even in the Religious Studies Department.

When I mention an extended face group, the extension is to all that might in some way become part of ones face group. A physics freshman's university face group might be herm dorm mates and class mates that hesh studies with. But it is a real possibility, if not a probability that hesh might eventually be a post doc in the lab of one of the Nobel Laureates. So that Nobel Laureate is part of the extended face group. But in order to get there hesh must comply with extensive written and unwritten rules and mores that if violated will forever exclude him from the extended face group. As a simple illustration all papers must be based on research by the person writing the paper and must contain the original thinking of the author and no other.

A university culture is in many ways much more rigidly structured than a typical church culture. There is no GOOHF card for mistakes, even inadvertent ones. And selection for the face group is an arduous and demanding process. One can't say I love the Bears or the Wolverines and get in. One must demonstrate skills in a variety of disciplines to even have a chance.