People of religion can share many of the ideas that other people share who may be irreligious. People of religion may be interested in sustainable ways and means to live, they may be interested in the concepts of a free market. They may believe in renewable energy and green building. You can not discount people of religion simply because they have a belief in a supreme being of intellect in the universe. Unless you want to dictate to them what to believe and what not to believe and then you enter the realm of censorship and we leave off the world seen in Atlas Shrugged and either into 1984 or A Brave New World and enter the realm of Orwell and Huxley.

Actually there is no necessity to say any of the OP things in some forms of spirituality and religion. For instance Buddhism officially is without any deity and advocates simple deep introspection as to the causes of ones own unnecessary suffering and what keeps it in place. I am not a fan for many reasons as they doctrines have their own imho illogic but it is not so simple as the OP quote.

There are states of mind/consciousness that are not so easy to put into words and that are not at the level of normal reasoning. To say automatically that they do not exist or that all of them are of no worth is a bit dogmatic.

The quote is not very well nuanced to the breadth of the space of human being and experience. It is well put against the complete BS of much of so-called spirituality but that BS aspect is not imho the entire story.

The current "new testament", both the Catholic and the Protestant which it was derived from were written and re-written and re-written over hundreds of years. And then was completely revised with several books being dropped out and those remaining heavily edited under Emperor Constantine who actually, with the help of his wife and certain scholars completely revised it. It is doubtful that any questioning of original content would allow those books left to stand up under historical scrutiny. It is even possible that Jesus didn't even exist but was the invention of those who wanted to use religion to have power of the masses since Rome was no longer the power it had been. It was originally a Jewish sect following the teachings of Yoshua (Joshua) who seemed to be a charismatic rabbi. Jesus is a Greek version of Joshua and was unique enough to keep it distinct from all the other Joshuas which was a fairly common name.

Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are all eye witnesses to Jesus' miracles and Resurrection. Read God's word and try to disprove His authenticity. The Word of God will convict you. Read it slowly, don't speed read it. The Bible makes the foolish wise.

I have looked at the modern health reports. Circumcision has not been shown to be of "huge" benefit to the health of either males or females. The most that modern proponents will say is that they believe the benefits outweigh the risks based on current evidence, but that further study is needed in many areas. See http://pediatrics.aappublications.org... There are, of course, many medical professionals who conclude that there is no benefit to elective circumcision and only detriment; they critique the studies supposedly demonstrating benefits of circumcision for their failure to take into account other potentially influencing factors. See http://www.cirp.org/library/procedure... Further, the circumcision advocated in the Old Testament was a minor ritual procedure compared to what is performed today. (The Egyptians practiced circumcision first, and the Jews adopted it after their time there.) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History... : "... the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision defined in the Bible was a relatively minor circumcision; named milah, this involved cutting off the foreskin that extended beyond the glans." After witnessing an infant circumcision and hearing the baby scream in pain and fear for several long minutes, I consider the practice cruel and barbaric.

There is a new/old spiritual phlosophy expoused by a minister Bill Donahue "Hidden Meanings.com and has You Tube video lessons which I have been learning. Some of it is esosteric but he goes all the way back to the first one world monotheistic religion "Zororasterism". which he shows that the three main religions came from. But he takes it a completely different direction. That the Bible is study of the human mind. With that said I have accepted this new path finding it compatible with Ayn Rands philosophy.

I know what you were referring to, but you didn't exactly answer my questions.

Re: “A system of moral conduct has NOTHING to do whatsoever with availability of ‘stuff’ availability of opportunity, possession of ‘stuff’.”

I think there are several million people in Venezuela that will disagree with you.

Re: “So better using specific metrics is easily determined using universal quantifiable methods. That are repeatable.”

A landfill overflowing with garbage is “better” than an empty one, because it has more “stuff”. This uses a specific metric and is repeatable.

I like that...the single little brain of a reptile...laughing my butt off.
Maybe Jaynes did mention them describing the psychotic behavior once the inner voice was lost...maybe, this linage of a human like species never ever had a voice!.

PS...just preordered a new book on Jaynes written by the pres of the JJsociety Marcel K.

That's what is being said and referred to in the OT, only in a pagan understanding. Sorry...thought everyone was up on this stuff.
But...good news, it'll be explained as plain as possible in the new book and I'll post a few chapter excerpts here to make sure all approve of the degrees of probabilities and objectivity.
Laughing...but I do plan to post as soon as I get the final product ok'd by the quantum folks I'm working with and the Julian Jaynes society (it all starts with Jayne's initial premise that man kind was not always consciously aware of his own awareness) to make sure I get it right.

My interpretation of Islam suggests an acameral (or is it noncameral) state, where no part of the brain is used for rational thought. (Likely a more controversial evaluation than anything Julian Jaynes wrote.)

Auras? Atmospheric charging? Quantum events?
What ARE you talking about? Quantum entanglements? That’s a WTF?!?!?!

You don’t list any source for whatever your novel interpretation of language represents to you. A quantum event is not rare. (Billions occur constantly in every lit fluorescent lamp.) Not remarkable either—unless one wants to wax poetic about how many of the complications of the universe are so nicely apprehended with mathematics, like explaining hydrogen atom states by using Laguerre polynomials.
Quantum entanglements are what you get if your hair grows inside your skull instead of on the outside, and you don’t drink enough of those nice smelling coconut creme conditioners from the shampoo aisle.

How about this idea?! Lose the obfuscation, obnubilation, and ornamentation. Oh: O-O-O!
Explain yourself clearly, simply, succinctly. In plain English. Thanks.

1.)...wasn't brought up religious...didn't even know what that was till after the army while in college.
2). blah blah blah...was designed for specific problems of pre-conscious bicameral state of man at that time...and I have observed that still, many today still occupy this space between their ears.
3). Yes, more encompassing concepts like honesty, responsibility and honor are understood and preferred by those conscious and whom engage their own conscience. I get the rejection of the blah blah...we're grown up now dad!...but news flash...many have yet to be grown...a stunning example comes to mind...can we say islam and I would include Rome as well.
I remember George...miss him.

Your suggested “tools for living” aren’t tools. They’re prohibitions reworded from your childhood religion indoctrinations. Here’s a comparable suggestion, but certainly not a “tool.” Don’t drive a car while you’re falling-down drunk. Usually a good idea, but a tool for living? Given it’s single purpose nature—not even a gadget for living.
Your examples sound like “Don’t run with blue scissors. Don’t run with orange scissors.” “Don’t run with kitchen knives.” “Don’t cut your fingers when using box cutters.”
A single positive rule applies to all of that and more. “Be careful with sharp objects.”
Similarly, “Don’t blah, blah: wives, false witness, blame, murder. All really better as a single positive: “Be honest.” Or maybe “Be worthy of honor.”
Rather than belabor the point, George Carlin made it all very clear, and it’s available right here:
https://philosopherpoet.wordpress.com...

Hi Herb,
I started as a physicist, was later an engineer in several disciplines, a CAD guru, an instructor, a writer, and assorted other things, not counting the pre-college low-skill jobs. In 2008 I even ran as the Libertarian candidate for the US House of Representatives in my district in California. (I got 5% of the vote against the perpetual incumbocrat.
I certainly wasn't suggesting you might be a huffy type. Just some persons get snarkier than I do, and that’s an unacceptable threshold to cross.
I couldn't tell if the physics stuff might be useful to you, or perhaps anyone else who might stumble onto that part of the discussion. In writing it, I produced something I can reuse for others who want a not-too-technical explanation of what some of the science fuss is about.

The reluctance to look at new ideas hits geographically close to home for me. One of my neighbors has developed a stupendously improved variant of the car/truck internal combustion engine: better fuel economy, lower pollution, handles multiple fuel types, lower part count, &c. A Fiat engineer told him he had “solved ALL the problems,” but they didn’t have the budget to get involved. Bobcat wanted it, but the deal got cancelled when the company got bought out. GM said effectively, “It doesn’t matter how great your design is, if we didn’t invent it in house. But we’ll invest if you show us the fully working prototype.” And his response is always, if I had the funds to build the fully working prototype, I wouldn’t need your investment.”
Twenty years ago, I had a little better luck as a customer in changing a software patching process for a large (in the top 5) software company. I was in a corporate group talking with a team sent to meet with us as important clients. I had experimented on my own and given full details of my approach. They said, “We can’t do that because, uh.” “Well that might work. No, we can’t because, umm.” “Hmmmm. Actually, we could do that.” (And so they did, saving probably several hundred thousand users a lot of time and effort.)

The word "god" is a bicameral humanization of these laws...it's ashame we're still using it because those opposed, compartmentalized or unintegrated toward a greater understanding of " the guy in the sky humanization"...might never get it. We've seen in the posts whom is integrated and whom is compartmentalized...I, like you and some others are just willing to look at whats there and perhaps connect the entangled dots for a greater more appreciative understanding of it all. This process cannot happen unless there is an "exchange of energy or particle waves in what is called a quantum event,...once experienced, one realizes it didn't come from our heads...it came to Mind.
Seems to me to be a direct connection of sorts.

Hey, CBJ!
As I was going up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today,
I wish to hell, he'd go away.
You're arguing with the man who wasn't there.
You cannot win arguing about a ghost, nor can you win by arguing with someone who runs his life on tenets attributed to a ghost. He may have a name and a physical presence, but believe me, he isn't there. You'd do just as well talking to a mirror.

Hi there Steven-Wells:
You must be an engineer. Talk about getting huffy.
I never get huffy. Tolerant, perhaps - OK puffy but not huffy.
I know Newton, Thank you very much.
I also have passed quantum physics 101.
So, your lessons, while accurate, were not necessary.
My son is an engineer and quite a good one. Wrote the book on consulting.
When he first got married, which was before pocket calculators, I suggested that he should bring his slide rule on his honeymoon so he could figure out what to do with accuracy.
My point was that there are people, including myself, at times, who have what they think may be the germ of an idea but cannot express it in scientific terms. Even if they are full of frijoles, let them down easy. There have been steps forward in science when an idea that perhaps is 50 or 100 years old, and was scorned for being nonsense in its day, but turned out to be true, and if it had been listened to would have been a great leap forward. It almost happened to Einstein and he even had the correct jargon.

"God does not play dice with the universe." -- Albert Einstein
And yet, he was an atheist.

Re-reading a statement from one of your earlier posts: “Acceptence of everyon's A-Moral right to be the master of their own morals, and dictator of their own morals and ethics, with or without religion is all just as bad.” Wait a minute, did you just make a moral judgment? Was it subjective or objective? What moral code were you using when you made that statement?

By the way, you cannot logically have the word “better” in your vocabulary without also having the words “worse”, “good” and “bad”. “Worse” is the opposite of “better”. “Good” is a defining term for “better”, which means “more good than”. “Bad” is the opposite of “good”. When applied to the realm of human activity, especially human relations, these terms are value judgments, which are in the province of morality or ethics. Of course you can always delete these words from your vocabulary, but I don’t think there would be much left of Objectivism or any other philosophy without them.

I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE EVERYONE STOP POSTING TO THIS TOPIC. I AM BEGINNING TO REGRET HAVING STARTED IT, AND I UNDERSTAND NOW, WHY THE GULCH WAS RELUCTANT TO PUBLISH IT. THE CONFLICTS ARE UNRESOLVABLE. FAITH CANNOT BE ARGUED AGAINST AS IT HAS NO BASIS IN REALITY. SO PLEASE STOP, GO ON TO OTHER TOPICS, OR I WILL BE FORCED TO START MY OWN RELIGION SINCE I AM GOD-LIKE IN DEMEANOR., AND MAY LOSE MY TEMPER AND START SMITING.