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brentan

Man, 69, Dublin, Ireland

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How do agnostics determine their position?

hankster comments on May 16, 2018:

By embracing a lack of the presumptions in faith or science.

brentan replies on May 16, 2018:

@hankster I think this is where people like Jordon Peterson and Rupert Sheldrake come in.

JORDAN PETERSON: Christianity Stealing Credit for Human Nature, Bionic Dance [youtube.com]

skado comments on May 12, 2018:

I don’t think Peterson is trying to give credit to god for human nature, I think he’s saying that god is just another word for human nature, or all of nature.

brentan replies on May 14, 2018:

@Renickulous I think that gets to the heart of the matter with Peterson. I would call him quasi-Christian because of it. He believes that we act out the notion that man has a spark of the divine in his nature. This comes from our Judeo-Christian culture. But he also fully believes in evolution. And he believes that if you throw out the Judeo-Christian culture, you lose that notion of man’s divinity and all hell breaks loose in the form of tyranny and genocide. History seems to indicate that he is right there. But there seems to be no proof at all that we actually have sparks of a divine nature. So perhaps we need a middle-ground where we treat each other as if it were true, find a secular term that’s equivalent to the concept, and move on.

The Seattle 7

Marine comments on May 13, 2018:

3.9% unemployment and my grandson with an honors degree in business is still without a job after 150 resumes

brentan replies on May 13, 2018:

Maybe management are scared he'll take their job?

JORDAN PETERSON: Christianity Stealing Credit for Human Nature, Bionic Dance [youtube.com]

skado comments on May 12, 2018:

I don’t think Peterson is trying to give credit to god for human nature, I think he’s saying that god is just another word for human nature, or all of nature.

brentan replies on May 13, 2018:

@Renickulous The way I saw the Peterson/Dillahunty debate was Peterson trying to draw Dillahunty into the middle-ground. JBP’s tortuous questioning of Matt Dillahunty was an attempt to drag him into the middle-ground between religious faith and atheism. That middle-ground seems to be where mythology, and psychology meet to explain, between the three of them, the serious issues of our existence. One of those subjects brought up was where we got the idea of what was good for us. Dillahunty did not want to go there, happy with the notion that he got that from his ancestors. Peterson suspects that the idea is encapsulated in the Logos, that divine spark said to place meaning into our existence. I hope he continues trying to rationalise the idea but backs off if it proves to be elusive. It may be that goodness is a kind of phenotype of human genes. Richard Dawkins seems to believe our do-gooding comes basically from the imperatives of the genes for group survival. Peterson himself says human hierarchy is a feature of the physiology of lobsters. I’m sure he would agree that the social order in lobsters comes from their genes and not from the Logos.

Does anyone else find it a bit condescending that some people can have no interest in you because ...

AtheistDan comments on May 13, 2018:

In my life I've found most of the people I've met with a college education aren't as knowledgeable as one might think. I always thought people that went to college were just smart due to the "extra" education they received. Those people are often proving that theory wrong.

brentan replies on May 13, 2018:

"Listen to me - I know Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs".

Does anyone else find it a bit condescending that some people can have no interest in you because ...

Surfpirate comments on May 13, 2018:

I'm an intellectual snob myself but I never base my snobbery upon degrees - degrees have little to do with intelligence in my experience. I'm reminded of one professor's take on degrees. BS = Bull Shit MS = More Shit PHD = Piled Higher and Deeper The Learning Process is not a process that has ...

brentan replies on May 13, 2018:

They say that second-level education teaches you things while third-level education teaches you how to think. That's probably not so true nowadays what with education being big business and ideologies being so integral to the 'education'. When I was in college, I found that they didn't directly teach you how to think, but you learned very quickly to teach yourself to find what you need to know. So you get the confidence to dig deep and get good at it over time. I didn't succeed in life by going to college because I'm an idiot generally but I'm very grateful for the education that gave me the confidence to pursue the things I love in life.

Does anyone else find it a bit condescending that some people can have no interest in you because ...

SallyInStitches comments on May 13, 2018:

Life & relationships are like math...you are the constant, events/people are the variable & you have your outcome. If the variables change outcome is always shit, the problem isn't with the variables.

brentan replies on May 13, 2018:

Sounds like another way of saying 'If one person calls you an ass, ignore them. If five people call you an ass, buy an saddle'. It sounds clever but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

JORDAN PETERSON: Christianity Stealing Credit for Human Nature, Bionic Dance [youtube.com]

skado comments on May 12, 2018:

I don’t think Peterson is trying to give credit to god for human nature, I think he’s saying that god is just another word for human nature, or all of nature.

brentan replies on May 13, 2018:

@Rossy92 I don't think he is trying to deceitfully expound the idea that the Christian religion is truth, just that there is truth to be found in the Christian religion. He sees truth in the idea of Christ exemplifying the heroic, self-sacrificing man but I doubt he would ever think that Christ came to earth to undo the sin of Adam.

JORDAN PETERSON: Christianity Stealing Credit for Human Nature, Bionic Dance [youtube.com]

skado comments on May 12, 2018:

I don’t think Peterson is trying to give credit to god for human nature, I think he’s saying that god is just another word for human nature, or all of nature.

brentan replies on May 12, 2018:

@ skado I agree. Peterson is not a Christian. His notion of God is the highest aspirations of man expressed through the notion of Logos. That 'spark of divinity' he talks about is a recognition of the highest ideal of mankind. We got that notion through religion. But now we can understand it as psychology.

Lack of open minded religious people

accheng comments on May 10, 2018:

opened minded and religious don't go hand in hand. Don't expect the other side to think the same or empathize the same. If they had that capability, they would be non-religious.

brentan replies on May 10, 2018:

Nonetheless, I think some of us atheists can be very dogmatic too. When I was religious, I used to find it very easy to remember being in their shoes. Maybe, as you say, I was destined to end up non-religious. Nowadays, I find it easy to remeber being in the Christian's shoes.

Was anyone else required to kneel and say a prayer before bedtime?

myownsyn comments on May 9, 2018:

Yes, but I had to recite the lord's prayer from the age of 5 till 15. After that The vile woman who made me finally died.

brentan replies on May 9, 2018:

I'm always initially shocked by a comment like yours even though my mother was a ballbreaker. I refused to go to her funeral. I recently read about Sinead O'Connor saying something like 'the best thing my mother did for me was die'. Anyway, glad you survived her.

What are you listening to?

atheist comments on May 7, 2018:

Listening to early Gordon Lightfoot in the truck! :)

brentan replies on May 7, 2018:

I'm in awe of Canadian Railroad Trilogy. What a lyric! Canada at a time 'when the green, dark forest was too silent to be real'.

I know we are supposed to be non-religious but can we discuss how epic a certain scene was, with a ...

LeighShelton comments on May 6, 2018:

I often watch films with religious undertones as its part of life and can be very interesting. it's all fiction after all.

brentan replies on May 6, 2018:

I like listening to Jonathan Pageau on YouTube. He is big into symbolism and makes videos explaining the meanings of modern movies about superheroes.

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Agnostic, Atheist, Humanist, Secularist, Freethinker, Spiritual

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