Thread: Rastafarianism?

So a dictator from the early to mid twentieth century was the messiah? Really?

Is this the kind of world upon which a "messiah" has left his mark?

Could somebody explain this to me?

It's no more crazy than the older religions, just more modern. Like Mormonism.

Stop asking questions and smoke more weed.

Ah yes. That's the attitude. You'll go far in your quests.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

Ah yes. That's the attitude. You'll go far in your quests.

Maybe your screen name is fooling people about who they're talking to. "Rosetta Stoned" is when someone is so high they think they can understand foreign languages. "Philosopher Stoned" sounds to me, and probably to most people, like someone who equates being high with deep insight. Maybe it also sounds like someone who has a persecution complex, as in put to death by stoning, but that would be a distant second.

I knew a really smart guy who styled himself as a lover of wisdom and teacher of radical transformation, along the lines of jnana yoga. He felt he was a solitary light in a world of philistines. But he didn't learn or change discernibly in the 20 years I knew him, and he wouldn't engage with anyone who was capable of challenging him spiritually or intellectually.

You indicated you don't like stupidity, so I went to look at your last dozen posts to see what you're contributing that I can learn from. I found a few complaints, flippant comments, and a thread you started about your dick. If you're for real, and you really know something of value, why not share it? Better yet, share a few of your own unsolved problems, then we can all learn something.

Maybe that's a problem with only checking the last twelve instead of a random sample (which is what a would expect a thinking person to do).

Second, this is an unsolved problem of mine as was the Hindu thread (on which you have still neglected to address the topic of the Untouchables, which is one of the reasons I haven't responded to you). Neither of them are solved.


Oh wait, yes they are. I'm just being rhetorical.

Humans are the result of natural selection. Hence they are shaped exclusively in terms of their ability to ensure that genes which they carry are reproduced. Their ability to do this is also constrained by natural selections property of only finding local maxima among presented possibilities.

Specifically, they are within the clade simianasomethingorother and are hence considered "monkeys". We are a highly social monkey. We are excellent at social manipulation. That's are specialization. We share the traits of love and compassion with pretty much every other mammal, and though we choose to lift these traits in our selves into near divinity while ignoring them at every opportunity in other species, in reality our sole unique traits are a statistacally slight increase in capacity for rational thought (which exagerrated by a few members of our species that have rational capacity in spades); and the fact that ideas of our peers and ancestors become part of our environment.

So humans are essentially shaped by locally determined conditions. Following your "feelings" and "going with the flow" is essentially doing the bidding of the cruelest creationary god yet devised in human mythology.

If being a rastafarian or a hindu puts you in a condition to get laid (or "be cool" and then consequently get laid), then of course an uninstructed mind will leap at that opportunity like a starving man at a grocery cart. It's what that mind has been designed to do and of course it and every step up to it will feel good in some manner or another.

But I've said all that plenty of times.

Always go with a random sample rather than some dumb scheme you happened to have cooked up.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

Maybe that's a problem with only checking the last twelve instead of a random sample (which is what a would expect a thinking person to do).

Second, this is an unsolved problem of mine as was the Hindu thread (on which you have still neglected to address the topic of the Untouchables, which is one of the reasons I haven't responded to you). Neither of them are solved.


Oh wait, yes they are. I'm just being rhetorical.

Humans are the result of natural selection. Hence they are shaped exclusively in terms of their ability to ensure that genes which they carry are reproduced. Their ability to do this is also constrained by natural selections property of only finding local maxima among presented possibilities.

Specifically, they are within the clade simianasomethingorother and are hence considered "monkeys". We are a highly social monkey. We are excellent at social manipulation. That's are specialization. We share the traits of love and compassion with pretty much every other mammal, and though we choose to lift these traits in our selves into near divinity while ignoring them at every opportunity in other species, in reality our sole unique traits are a statistacally slight increase in capacity for rational thought (which exagerrated by a few members of our species that have rational capacity in spades); and the fact that ideas of our peers and ancestors become part of our environment.

So humans are essentially shaped by locally determined conditions. Following your "feelings" and "going with the flow" is essentially doing the bidding of the cruelest creationary god yet devised in human mythology.

If being a rastafarian or a hindu puts you in a condition to get laid (or "be cool" and then consequently get laid), then of course an uninstructed mind will leap at that opportunity like a starving man at a grocery cart. It's what that mind has been designed to do and of course it and every step up to it will feel good in some manner or another.

But I've said all that plenty of times.

Always go with a random sample rather than some dumb scheme you happened to have cooked up.

Natural history, as shaped by natural selection, is an underdetermined system. Its an important constraint that has to be satisfied, but doesn't force everything.

I did answer your 'question' about untouchables, and you even indicated that you liked the response. Since its already clear that we both agree about Hinduism, saying that I've 'neglected' to say more is weak at best.

Your characterization of my 'sample' of your recent posts was weak too. Say all you want about monkeys and mindfulness meditation, if you let the monkey run your side of the argument, then its all just talk.

Despite that you did answer my challenge to post an actual argument. But if you look at a sufficiently large random sample of my previous posts, or just check one relevant thread such as the one Original Poster started called Astrology Revisited, you'll see that I've been over that ground quite a bit more thoroughly than what you you've said here. So there's still not too much here to comment on or think about.

Yeah I know I picked a fight on purpose. Sometimes I wish people would stop with all the wise man posturing and actually try to make some headway with it. If you don't feel like continuing, just let it go.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Natural history, as shaped by natural selection, is an underdetermined system. Its an important constraint that has to be satisfied, but doesn't force everything.

No it doesn't force everything. I didn't say that it does. This in no way contradicts my point. In fact if it did determine everything, then there would be no point in fighting it.

I did answer your 'question' about untouchables, and you even indicated that you liked the response. Since its already clear that we both agree about Hinduism, saying that I've 'neglected' to say more is weak at best.

I just re-read that thread. You didn't address the issue of untouchables that I noticed, nor did I indicate an appreciation of it. Perhaps you could quote it?

Your characterization of my 'sample' of your recent posts was weak too. Say all you want about monkeys and mindfulness meditation, if you let the monkey run your side of the argument, then its all just talk.

There's little monkey here. Oh. Except the part where you attempt to brush my argument under the rug with an ad-hominin argument. Please make a point.

Despite that you did answer my challenge to post an actual argument. But if you look at a sufficiently large random sample of my previous posts, or just check one relevant thread such as the one Original Poster started called Astrology Revisited, you'll see that I've been over that ground quite a bit more thoroughly than what you you've said here. So there's still not too much here to comment on or think about.

Care to elaborate. Neither astrology nor OP are an interest of mine so I didn't read that thread.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

No it doesn't force everything. I didn't say that it does.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

Humans are the result of natural selection. Hence they are shaped exclusively in terms of their ability to ensure that genes which they carry are reproduced.

Italics yours. My point was that they're shaped largely by that, but not exclusively.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

This in no way contradicts my point. In fact if it did determine everything, then there would be no point in fighting it.

OK, maybe we agree then, and it was a semantic issue.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

I just re-read that thread. You didn't address the issue of untouchables that I noticed, nor did I indicate an appreciation of it. Perhaps you could quote it?

You asked why hippies and New Agers like Hinduism when its a primitive savage religion where people are born as untouchables. My answer is that people like the idea of moral license, of being free to treat other people how they want to. I could elaborate on that more, critiquing common ideas of karma for instance. However, the question, and the related questions of what people understand, have read, and how they can be convinced otherwise seemed to be rhetorical.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

I'm just being rhetorical.

So I spoke as directly as I could to the heart of the matter, as I see it. I'll try to say it again differently. You can not convince them, they don't care. What they care about is what their thought of Hinduism means in their own lives, the feelings it creates, the behavior it justifies. What Hinduism is historically, or what it has wrought, is a concern that seems pedantic and far away to them. If you want to address the real issue, you have to go after what motivates them. Maybe that's futile also, but anything else is just fencing with shadows. Trotting out the most ridiculous religious beliefs that we can find, one after another, seems to me to be a vain undertaking, unless the goal is to parade our own moral superiority and knowledge. There are billions of people in the world, most of whom believe illogical and immoral things, and very few of whom care what we think. If the goal is to convince somebody of something, then I think it would make sense to speak to the people who are interested in learning something. And for the most part those are not the followers of Hinduism, or Rastafarianism, or any other religion. And its not us either, if we aren't ourselves willing to learn something. If we aren't open to learn, then we're not going to be able to communicate very much to other people either, because we're not going to be able to see where other people are really coming from. If we're not seeking to learn, then we just keep attacking the same straw men, over and over. If you are not on some kind of intellectual superiority trip, motivated by your acute awareness of your human condition, then great. Let's have a real conversation about something. To me, condencending about Rastafarianism skirts the subject of our own issues, which for the most part is the only place to make real headway with anything. You said that your "unsolved problems" were rhetorical only. That was my point, that resolving the issue of hippie stupidity requires asking real questions about real unsolved problems that we have, not rhetorical questions about things you think you already have solutions to. That's a significant part of my opinion about why people think and do stupid things. I didn't want this to come off as a personal attack, I wanted to communicate the idea. But in the circumstances I don't see any other way it could have come across, just like there was no polite way for you to say what you think about Hinduism.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

There's little monkey here. Oh. Except the part where you attempt to brush my argument under the rug with an ad-hominin argument. Please make a point.

According to Wikipedia, an ad-hominem argument is "an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or unrelated belief of the person supporting it." Since I agree with your claim about Hinduism, this can't be what I was attempting to do. And whether you understand it or not, what I said was directly related to my point, not unrelated. If you're making an argument that appears to possibly be motivated by something other than what's on the surface, speaking to that is not an ad-hominem argument, even if the conjecture about motivation is mistaken. The topic at hand, religious belief, is highly personal. Its not avoiding the subject to suggest that the personal has to enter into any headway that can be made in discussion about it. I did try to avoid it though, I picked other examples first.

Originally Posted by PhilosopherStoned

Care to elaborate. Neither astrology nor OP are an interest of mine so I didn't read that thread.

If you're truly interested I can elaborate. I've put quite a bit of time into it already in other threads, and don't want to rehash if you're not really interested. My main point on the Astrology thread is that evolution does not produce moral progress, that something else is required. Perhaps you already agree. But if you are interested in more of my thought about evolution, some of it is there. I think there's quite a bit of other related discussion in the Tips For Manifestation thread also.

DrunkenArse, your new name fits you well.