| Subject: appreciated |
Author:
Tooly
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Date Posted: 06/17/03 10:19am
In reply to:
Baz
's message, "Meaning" on 06/15/03 4:58pm
Baz I know what you mean.
I think :)
>>Reading some of the articles on the front page I
>>agreed with debunking of the bible, but then I've
>>never really believed it was 'the word of god' anyway.
>>Like I mentioned when I first posted I am quite
>>confused. Part of me beleives in god or 'something'
>>but I have no actual basis for these beleifs and at
>>the same time the scientific world can explain most
>>things away. Evoloution happened and the evidence is
>>pretty conclusive so logically I should have no reason
>>whatsoever to beleive in god especialy considering I
>>don't have any type of religious upbringing. Sometimes
>>when I have 'prayed' I sometimes get the feeling I'm
>>just empowering myself unwittingly. This is were my
>>head is at at the moment.I stumbled on this site after
>>basil posted 'the religious mind' on a forum I
>>frequent and it intersted me so I decided to see if
>>there was more where that came from, and there
>>was.I'll finish up by showing you the post that that
>>led baz to post 'religious mind' last week. It may
>>help to explain my feelings.
>>
>>>Do you think that it's possible to believe in God but
>>not beleive in religion ? I have a problem with
>>organised religion myself, theres too much of the
>>human factor involved. Human nature will always
>>prevail in any given situation and as humans we always
>>strive for more, be it territory, money, power or
>>respect. People will always fight, people will always
>>argue that they are right and you are wrong (not you
>>personaly) so how can an organisation or institution
>>not expect for this corruption to creep into the
>>system. I don't think it can. That's not to say that
>>it's fair to simply dismiss the believers of the
>>religion out of hand. I think to have a set of beliefs
>>is an individuals perogative. It's easier to get
>>things done if you have a purpose or a direction and
>>if you are lost in the wilderness a road sign can be
>>extremely useful. But I personaly believe that if
>>there is 'a god' or 'spirit' that it doesnt live in
>>the clouds behind pearly gates but inside each and
>>every person. Who knows, one day they might find the
>>'god' geneome.
>>Toolyskuff<
>
>Here is an extract of a message I posted to this forum
>some time ago. It puts forward the proposition that
>almost anything can become meaningful and help direct
>our lives if we are indoctrinated (and we are all
>indoctrinated) and this "knowledge" comes to stimulate
>certain areas of the brain.
>
>
>
>Meaning has as much to do with emotion as it has with
>semantics as without an emotive sub-context language
>can be rendered meaningless.
>
>Something can be said to have meaning for an
>individual if there is a neural system in place (
>whether innate or learned ) that can process the
>information it contains or set in train specific
>reactions.
>Dangle a piece of wood of a particular shape ( with a
>bulging under-surface) in a pond and the male
>stickleback will go through its mating behaviour. A
>female stickleback that does not have a swollen
>abdomen will not stimulate the male. A bulging abdomen
>has meaning for the male stickleback. The female, for
>her part, is stimulated by the males colouring, which
>reddens in the breeding season.
>
>We have two distinct types of meaning in this example:
>The swollen abdomen has a rational meaning, in the
>sense that the symbol that elicits the behaviour is
>directly related to the function of the behaviour.
>(Swollen abdomen means eggs to be fertilised) The
>symbol that stimulates the female (redness) is
>arbitrary, and in this sense, irrational.
>
>The problem is that an individual's indoctrinated
>systems of premises,rules, laws, religious taboos, etc
>may be erroneous or irrational, but this does not
>prevent events and ideas that are mediated by these
>systems being meaningful and evoking emotion in that
>particular individual.
>
>When someone tells me that Jesus has saved me, the
>sentence holds little meaning (unless I nearly drowned
>and someone called Jesus pulled me to safety): but to
>the believer the sentence has a very clear semantic
>and strongly emotive meaning.
>
>Meaning does not only depend on the "programmes" in
>your brain, there is also an area called the
>ventromedial cortex where emotion is experienced and
>meaning bestowed on perceptions. This area is
>overstimulated during the manic stage of manic
>depression, and also gives rise to a strange
>phenomenon some of you may have experienced. Some
>individuals wake up in the middle of the night with
>an idea in their heads that is so meaningful that they
>feel it will change the world. By morning they have
>forgotten it. Some have had the presence of mind to
>write it down before they fell back to sleep. In all
>cases the idea has been nonsense, of the order:
>Egyptian tanks run best on boiled cabbage. It seems
>that meaningful episodes, or should I say episodes
>that are perceived as wonderfully coherent and full of
>meaning, occur when, for what ever reason, neural
>traffic is directed through the ventromedial cortex.
>
>So, the appreciation of ideas and events as meaningful
>depends on one's beliefs and knowledge, and whether or
>not one has a healthy flow of neural traffic through
>specific areas of the brain.
>
>This means we are all capable, to varying degrees, at
>various times, of finding meaning in almost anything.
>We only have to mentally attach ourselves to something
>- a movement, a football team - for emotion to be
>evoked when it is mentioned or we take part in its
>activities.
>
>Australian Rules football was a complete mystery to me
>when I first came across it, but having learned a few
>of the rules, the activity on the field became more
>meaningful to me.If I had started to support one team,
>learned all about the individual players and their
>private lives, the whole thing would have become
>particularly important and meaningful - although the
>opera lover, the chess-player, might wonder why.
>
>Baz
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