Internet truth and lies

The internet is not hard. If I agree with it, it's the truth: if I don't it's a lie.

We have to think for ourselves and not blindly accept authority. That said, if it comes from a University source and is about scientific studies that are fully described, then I tend to accept their conclusions, even though I probably don't understand much of it. In other words, accepting authority is what we have to do, just be sure the authority is credible.

One good test is whether or not they make claims to truth. If so, they are lying (maybe not consciously because they believe it, but still there is no such thing as truth). There are just close approximations to truth, or, put another way, the truth as far as we can, in good conscience, determine, based on the evidence.

As far as right and wrong go, this has to be deduced, not taken from authority (although one doesn't go far wrong following Kant). I think conscience is often wrong. It amazes me how much it is that people go through life hurting others, being stingy, voting their personal interest, violating traffic laws and so on, without giving the ethical aspect a second thought. It is that conscience is culturally set, and therefore only mostly right. We have to consider the benefits and harms, the compassion or its lack, the freedom we allow others, and so on, in a rational balance without taking absolutist positions.

The reality of qualia

When I say neuronal activity I may be less than exactly correct. There are probably other brain things involved beyond just neurons. That this sort of activity can be said to be real is on the same order as the movement of a flock of birds or a wave on the water can be said to be real. It is process, and process is a sort of reality.

What is "out there" in the world is not what we think, but it correlates with what we think. We learn of it through our senses, and our senses are processed in our brain in all sorts of ways to help us handle the influx of data. Sometimes it even lies, as attested by optical illusions.

Consider, for example, the color something is. You look at a banana tree (as I'm doing right now outside my window) and you see mostly green. Is that tree green? Actually quite the opposite -- what you see are the colors (wavelengths) the leaf rejects. Those it absorbs are the other wavelengths, so it doesn't look white.

The real mystery (often by neurologists and others referred to as the "deep problem") is how these things the brain produces become our experiences. They use the word "qualia" to describe the specific different experiences we experience. Note the word "experience." The word should convey something more than just things that are there, but things that we incorporate. 

Maybe this will help: there are two closely related meaning to the word "color." One is the experience or qualia of the color, the other is the electromagnetic photons with the specific energy of the color. One is psychological, the other physical.

Truthfulness

Well, yes, of course, truth is the best policy (and it doesn't require quite as good a memory).  When caught lying for some selfish or otherwise unethical reason, trust is lost.  I have no problem with that, and did not say or imply that people are never truthful.  All I said is that truth is not a fundamental principle of my ethical system.

When it comes to lying by advocates of religions and ideologies, it is rampant.  These systems are at foundation irrational, so to hold them the advocates have to lie, both to themselves, to deal with cognitive dissonance, and hence to others to be consistent and not make the dissonance worse.

Take a look at Christianity.  The idea is that Jesus died on the cross "for our sins." How did that work?  How does his death have anything to do with our sins?  It is a magical death sacrifice to take away a curse.  Put that way, its absurdity and primitive nature should be obvious, but people refuse to see it with real rationality.  They are indoctrinated, probably as children, and hence "believe" rather than hold it as an opinion.  We have instincts of group cohesion that can be linked with this tenacity of belief in spite of good sense.

Why we lie

People lie all the time, and only sometimes is it to conceal misbehavior.  I lie when telling the truth will do no good and may harm or hurt someone, and I lie when it is to my benefit to lie in situations where the asker has no right to the truth but my refusing to answer will be taken badly.

People also lie to "one-up" someone -- the bigger fish business.  On message boards it is often just to get attention.

Indeed, your "not wanting to tell your experience" strikes me as of that species.

There is also a huge phenomenon not much recognized of pious fraud.  This is where convincing another of what you believe is more important than honesty.

I practice a tripartite ethics -- mindful compassion, helpfulness, and not using people as a means to an end.  This is different from our cultural ethics we call conscience, which says all lies are wrong.  What I say is we have to balance compassion with being helpful with never using someone for our own ends.  Sometimes the balance is difficult to see, and sometimes we make mistakes, but that applies to all ethical systems.  We have to be rational about it.

Founding Fathers were Deists

You and most Americans have an abysmal ignorance of history. The Founding Fathers were Deists, almost to a man, and some of them hated Christianity (Adams and Paine immediately come to mind). You probably don't even know what Deism was and why it died out.

Washington did go regularly to church, probably for political reasons, but never took communion. Most of the rest used "God" in their vocabulary now and then, but this refers to the "Nature's God" of Deism -- something people read in those documents utterly without noticing or understanding.

This is because the Founding Fathers were an educated elite, and most of the educated elite back then were Deists. The rest of the population were of an assortment of religious views, ranging to the tolerant Quakers (whom Franklin admired and contributed to but never joined) to the intolerant Puritans and Catholics.

The unfortunate thing is the Founding Fathers were influenced by the Roman Republic, and designed their system a lot like it, with checks and balances and general elections and so on. As a result, after the founding generation passed, the religious types took over, and the US has not had a really great president since (except of course Lincoln, who seems to have been an atheist, but kept his mouth shut).

Praying for sex

Sharing miracles with non-believers is indeed a waste of time.  There are good reasons for this.  You could be lying, delusional, or, more likely, making too much of coincidence.    People recover all the time from diseases, prayer or not.  I remember once praying for sex and I got it: the experience worried me so I never did that again.

The problem with all testimonial evidence (which is all a lot of churches seem to rely on, considering the testimonials you constantly get -- which seems to be mostly lost sheep finding joy when they come back because of some sign they got) is that it useless.  Anything to be evidential has to be repeatable by skeptical people.

Using personal experiences as a basis for personal faith is to constantly lie to oneself and delude oneself.

Reality of dreams

You experience dreams, and they are something different from waking experience. They are, you think, entirely in your head, which they are. What you don't realize is that waking experience is entirely in your head too.

The difference may be (this is my opinion) that dreams happen because of neuronal activity while you are asleep that the part of your brain that turns things that happen around you into conscious experience tries to do the same with your sleeping neuronal activity.

Either way, conscious experience comes from neuronal activity, and in both cases the neuronal activity is real.

Dejavu and rebirth (reincarnation)

I have to comment about pre-existence.  I don't claim to have any memories, so that's said.  What I'm going to recount shows why I do not accept the Mormon idea of celestial pre-existence and instead am far more inclined to the Asian idea of a rebirth cycle.

I moved to Vietnam when I was about 55, soon after my retirement (I was always careful with my money and had a well paying job and so was able to do so comfortably, and I always had an attraction to Vietnam, a sort of curiosity, although I did not serve in the war).

The attraction fulfilled itself and I fell in love with the place.  As you know it is a dictatorship, and although they want foreigner's money they don't want foreigner's making friends and therefore contaminating the population with Western ideas.  But I digress.

One day I went with a bunch of Vietnamese friends to visit DaLat.  The experience was unbelievable.  Talk about deja vu!!!  I knew the place and could predict what was around the corner and so on.  Of course much was new and not in my "memory," but much was -- the older buildings.  I was at the time quite certain and still am pretty convinced that I had once lived and died there.

Now this is just a personal experience and I don't expect anyone else to think it as evidence of rebirth or anything similar.  Now when I revisit the place the original experience doesn't recur -- I think it can only happen once and then more recent memories replace it.

Is homosexual behavior in animals just dominance?

This "dominance" issue is irrelevant. We may not like to admit it but dominance/submission is a large part of human sex.

This begins to look like all those other facts out there that religionists just simply deny in spite of evidence. Homosexual behavior is widespread in the animal world, and so is homosexuality. I remember a neighbor farmer who referred all the time (with great amusement) to his "queer duck." He saw and understood, but if he had been taught homosexuality was "unnatural" he would have said "submissive" or something -- or probably just ignored what his eyes told him.

It is true homosexuals are rare, the purely homosexual population is probably about one percent of the population. It is a spectrum, and more than likely the purely heterosexual population is not much larger. Still it is not a Bell curve, but largely slanted toward the heterosexual side.

One final comment -- all this does not imply better or worse. The human intelligence scale has a shape not much different from the human sexuality scale -- and being a genius is, at least usually, a benefit to humanity.

What is worship?

People often take words for granted (I think because they only know one language) and don't realize the word has no or at least not much meaning. Right now I have the word "worship" in mind. What is "worship?" 

People go to Buddhist temple and there sits a huge statue of the Buddha in all his glory, and people get on their knees and bow to it. You ask these people what they are doing and you get an answer that is easy to translate "worship." But it isn't worship. Of course a Westerner translates it with that word, and thereby instantly doesn't understand what the Buddhist is do one iota.

The Buddha is in Nirvana. That means he is "at peace" or "in bliss" or in a kind of heaven where everyone meditates all the time, or dead (extinct)-- it largely depends on the Buddhist sect you ask -- but most Buddhists don't give it much thought (they leave such questions to monks) and perceive it as a blend of these states. As such the Buddha has no knowledge or even interest in the people honoring him in the Temple. "Honor" is probably the best translation.

Does the Christian god demand worship? There are certainly enough Biblical passages that refer to giving him glory. That, I suppose, is worship. Why? Our glory that we give him is not going to add even the tiniest bit to his infinite glory. You cannot add anything to infinity. These concepts are less than unsophisticated -- they are downright stupid and primitive.

OK, we "worship" God by loving him and doing his will and serving him here on the Earth. God commands us to do these things, not for his benefit but for ours. Think about that. Wouldn't it be better if we did these things on our own accord and not out of some indirect and less-than-honest left-handed motive? How about we love God because we love him? How about we do his will because his will is what is good and we do what is good on our own volition? As far as the last one goes, "serving God," this is not just absurd (what can we do compared to his infinite power?) but pretentious and arrogant on our part, for the same reason.'

When someone says "I'm doing God's work," I immediately recognize the person as arrogant and self-righteous and puffed up with themselves. I think this is one of the reasons people often mock Christians -- it is a statement worthy of mockery.

Corporations are bad

I think maybe that is just sometimes true.  Corporations everywhere are much the same, and, the way they are structured, to get to the top and deal with competitors, you have to have a certain set of ethical lacks.  Hence making money prevails over employees, customers, and nature.  Some are worse about that than others.

Corporations, though, serve a necessary function, even in socialist states.  You need to organize a business along autocratic lines (benevolent but still autocratic if you want to hold employees and still get things done).

The good thing about capitalism is that risky ventures can be undertaken by private interests, rather than the government, in return for most of any profits.  The most efficient way for private interests to do this on large ventures is the limited liability corporation.

The bad thing is that they will do whatever is necessary to maximize profit, including gouging the public, putting out unhealthy products, destroying competitors, exploiting resources and employees, false and misleading propagandistic advertising, bribing government officials (such as corporate donations to political campaigns) and so on.  Government and law is needed to curb this, in hopes of getting the good from corporate organization and mitigating the bad.

God given rights

I don't think there is such a thing as a "God given" right, nor a natural right as the Founding Fathers saw it. 

We have rights, to be sure, but they are never absolute. I have the right to smoke, but not if my smoke disturbs others. I have the right to publish my opinions, but not to commit slander or copyright infringement or instructions on making atomic bombs. I have every right in the world to flap my arms and fly about, but somehow nature prevents it.

Our main rights are safety, health care, justice, freedom, comfort, housing, material possessons, entertainment, education, family, friendships, happiness, and of course life itself. All of them are provisional, temporary, and limited.

Religions indoctrinate through churches and governments and broadcasts and books, but mainly through parents.

Parents are the worst.

To indoctrinate a child is one of the most vile forms of child abuse.  It limits that child from having as full a life as might be.
 
Religions, of course, aren't the only things that work to indoctrinate us.  I would add businesses, both as sales organizations to sell something and as employers, and of course political parties and the adherents of no end of quasi-religions ideas and ideological movements.
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Propaganda is I think the main tool of indoctrination. Stir up the person's emotions -- people love children and puppies, so put pictures of little children on your soup can or a puppy on the cover of your book. People hate, so put pictures of atrocities, both real and invented, in your film. People are patriotic, so wear a flag pin and have flags in the background and patriotic music accompanying your commercial. People want to be accepted, so imply that those who think otherwise are outsiders.
 
Finally, we all want to live forever, so teach a wonderful afterlife. This also can be used for people's desire for revenge.
 
Logic and reasoning can also be propaganda when it is in the form of false evidence or pious fraud or cherry picking the evidence.

Finding truth

There is no "truth" accessible to finite minds. We can only try to get as close to it as possible, and the only way we can learn (approach truth) is through our fallible senses. We learn as we live, and of course in the modern world a lot of that comes through organized education.

Religion is generally anti-truth. You no doubt see this in Islam, but are blind to it in Christianity, but it is the same thing. People don't learn religion, they are indoctrinated with it -- it becomes belief or ideology based on emotions and propaganda and , not opinion based on evidence.

I have taken classes or similar studies in Catholicism, Islam, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses. None of them use rationality except pious frauds (the idea that saving a soul is more important than being honest) and half-truths (telling the part they like and leaving out the rest). Prayer and community and promises of happiness and afterlife (none of us want to die) and tradition and authority and beautiful buildings and music, and, of course, police power where it is still permitted, and on and on. This is all, when used to persuade, invalid propaganda.

That is how science (opinion) and religion (belief) differ. Religions make a virtue of faith, and a vice of doubt, while science sees faith as a sin and rejoices over doubt, which is what stimulates the progress of science.

A little more on American education

I tried to say too much earlier. My point is that American schools lack discipline (mainly because of lawyers and the teacher's union) and as a result most Americans wandering through life are basically without knowledge, either to get on well or to fully experience life. They just watch professional wrestling or mindless sitcoms (where the humor is people making fools of themselves) and eat junk.

However, this has its other side -- the few who are really smart get a good, if not superior, education, as they are taught to think independently and creatively. They still get a lot of misinformation in high school that they have to unlearn either in college or in life, but at least they are equipped.

The problem with no discipline for this elite is that they lack memorization skill, something that is squired only with a lot of doing. It amazed me how little Shakespeare or Dickens or even Mark Twain any American can recite -- and believe me this is a joy later in life. Of course the ability to memorize is also a huge leg up in any work requiring any responsibility, and here America is on the decline. That most of the population is still subject to superstitions and religions and crazy conspiracy schemes and the forming of opinions of politicians based on appearance or on what someone else says, and so on, also reads badly for the future of American government, and we all know those days are already on us.

Delusion and religion

Any "belief" is a form of delusion. Scientists and similar un-deluded (at least about science) folk don't entertain belief but only opinions based on the best possible evidence, which can change on a dime if new evidence calls for it.

Almost everything we take as religion is really indoctrinated belief, and hence delusion. I would say all religion is that, except I leave it open that there might be some un-deluded religion out there I don't know about.

Summarizing morality

We don't need religion to tell us right from wrong. We just need to be mindful and think about what we are doing and whether is it compassionate, helpful, and not a means to an end.