Simon Paynton

jakelafort wrote:

Simon how is it a legitimate question when it assumes a fact not in evidence.

Wacky, unconventional or idiosyncratic are not the stuff of sustenance of the masses.

Religion appears to sustain some people, and royally fuck with the heads of others.

“Man cannot live by bread alone”, and it’s true, we need more than just the…[Read more]

I think it’s a valid question.  I just came across this meme:  “Doomer”.  Who hasn’t been like this, or knows someone like this?

We all need things to sustain us.  What sustains me is researching about morality for my book, hoping it will get published, friends, family, getting high on weed and listening to questionable music, etc.  It’s not…[Read more]

Yes, but what sustains you, as an alternative to religion?

Does religion lead people off the track?  It does for some and not others.  Why, and in what ways?

There are huge logical holes in, for example, Christianity.  Jesus died for our sins, which means that all our sins can be forgiven by God, except that God doesn’t forgive all sins.  Oh yeah, it only works if you accept Jesus.  If you don’t, you…[Read more]

There’s that song, Hope cos’ I’ve learned to cope.

Yes, but “God” can be a way of getting there, like the Buddhists’ finger pointing at the moon.

I take Johan seriously in his assertion to have been “born again in God”, for all its florid celestial poetical abundance.  I think it can be summed up in the Trainspotting catch-phrase:  “choose life”.  This can be applicable to all of us.

@johanabrahams, what does it mean to be born again?  How does it affect your life?

Johan wrote:

I know. But I am here to show you the difference between your intellectual understanding of religion that is also a mind game and the Reality of God.

I feel I can understand what Johan is getting at.  There is an outsider’s and an insider’s view of religion.  Richard Dawkins has an outsider’s view, for all his teenage zealotry.  An…[Read more]

Johan wrote:

It took me into Experience and being God myself. But God did this. I got born again from Someone as Jesus Christ. The Son of God.

Here’s something that doesn’t reference the Bible.  What is this experience you are speaking of?

It’s a new theory (hypothesis, model) apparently.  It explains a lot.  The “pressure” supplies the ethical ought-ness of morality.

The pressure to thrive is internal, like some kind of biological engine that aims to keep the organism at optimum fitness – rather than external, like God.

To the degree that those people are moving towards their goals, they are thriving.

No-one knows why whales beach themselves, so I can’t comment on that.  I would have thought it’s a mistake of some kind.

Suicide and depression happen because the pressure to thrive cannot be satisfied to enough of a degree.

Think about Freud’s Pleasure Principle.  He states that for some reason, everyone wants to do what gives them pleasure, above all else.  We get pleasure when we move towards our goals.  One of our primary goals is thriving, almost by definition, since thriving means to move towards any of our goals.  Therefore, we feel pleasure when we thr…[Read more]

Pressure to thrive is i think a construct.

Do you want to thrive?  Who doesn’t?  It’s a goal towards which we feel pressure.

Being high on weed is thriving.

Are you saying that the pressure for a seed to grow to adulthood is not real?  The metaphor is saying that God makes this happen.  Inside the religious frame of reference, this is a truism.

Are you saying that the pressure to thrive, survive and reproduce is not real?  The first is a subset of the second.

What is the currency of love?  Mea…[Read more]

6 I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.

biological pressure to thrive

OK, so they’re not exactly the same thing, but they are closely related.  The first is about the biological pressure for a seed to grow to adulthood.  The second is the biological pressure to thrive, survive and reproduce.  What is the currency of lo…[Read more]