Simon Paynton

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]

Davis wrote:
quoting the bible doesn’t prove anything…any more than quoting the little mermaid.

It’s true metaphorically.  They could have stated it in its factual form, but when it was written, there was no theory of evolution.  Also, nobody would understand “biological pressure to thrive”, apparently.

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

7 So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.

That right there sounds like the biological pressure to thrive.

How can it be dangerous?

Stephen Hawking said that a theory is a good one when it generates more knowledge.

Unseen wrote:
When people start doing what they’re supposed to do, let me know.

There are no mistakes in mindfulness, in the sense that one’s behaviour is not judged as wrong.  There are only unskilful actions or paths, that lead to less than optimal outcomes.

That voice telling you to feel guilty, is your thinking ego mind.  It monitors you…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Am I being mindful enough?

In mindfulness, you’re not supposed to keep on thinking of reasons to feel guilty.  You’re supposed to anchor yourself to the present moment, without ranging over the past or future.  Any amount of that is good enough, in the present moment.

All wrong ideas are dangerous, but not all dangerous ideas are wrong: they may something else, such as lacking in common sense, or they may appear to contravene something sacred.  They may be as welcome as a skunk at a dinner party.

I can agree with you to some extent.

Peter Singer says,

I use the term “person” to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future.

In other words, someone without mental capacity is not a person.  This is the part that cheapens human life.

I think that one “dangerous idea” is that of Peter Singer: that terminally ill children, in a lot of pain, should be euthenised on utilitarian grounds of reducing overall suffering.  This sounds fine on paper, perhaps, or in the head of someone without normal human feelings.  But I think it’s dangerous because it cheapens human life overall.  Di…[Read more]

According to Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, the capacity to reason abstractly has increased at least over the 20th century.  This means to detach one’s mind from the parochial concerns of one’s personal reality, and think about hypothetical things, and morally, could increase our capacity to take the perspectives of others and…[Read more]