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Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

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Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

joecct said:
I have it as an ebook. Figures you would like a book with a commie mayor! :)
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I haven't read the sequels, have you?

Does your ebook have the original illustrations? They're wonderful.

I grew up on that book. It's one of my favorites.

Intellectual Catholic upbringing has its perks. :)
 
Kepler said:
I haven't read the sequels, have you?

Does your ebook have the original illustrations? They're wonderful.

I grew up on that book. It's one of my favorites.

Intellectual Catholic upbringing has its perks. :)
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I think project Guttenberg has them. Which means text only.

You know there's a movie?
 
Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

joecct said:
I think project Guttenberg has them. Which means text only.

You know there's a movie?
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I saw that when I was looking for the picture. No thanks. I want my childhood images of the characters to remain pristine. Particularly my Christ. (a.k.a., Robin Wright #notmybuttercup)
 
Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

joecct said:
George Weigel has a good sense of the pulse of Catholic Church in the USA.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/02/the-end-of-the-bernardin-era
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Interesting piece about Catholic internal politics. Kind of goes back to what I was saying yesterday - in a pre-V2 world, this so-called "faithful dissent" was a foreign concept. The Church is not a democracy, and you shouldn't get to pick and choose what you like, while ignoring the rest (even though many Catholics do exactly that). Similarly, priests and bishops shouldn't get to pick and choose enforcement of Church teachings. The Catechism exists for a reason.

That's fine. Just don't expect it to be a sustainable business model in parts of the world that are less tribal, and have become educated enough to see beyond primitive definitions of good vs. evil.
 
Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
Interesting piece about Catholic internal politics. Kind of goes back to what I was saying yesterday - in a pre-V2 world, this so-called "faithful dissent" was a foreign concept. The Church is not a democracy, and you shouldn't get to pick and choose what you like, while ignoring the rest (even though many Catholics do exactly that). Similarly, priests and bishops shouldn't get to pick and choose enforcement of Church teachings. The Catechism exists for a reason.

That's fine. Just don't expect it to be a sustainable business model in parts of the world that are less tribal, and have become educated enough to see beyond primitive definitions of good vs. evil.
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Pretty sure that people have been picking and choosing throughout the entire history of the Church. It isn't (and wasn't meant to be IMHO) a static entity. If we went back to what people wanted when they formulated the first Catechisms all sorts of things would be very different and intolerable. In the end it is humans trying to guess what God wants through the filter of what they want God to want.
 
Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

leswp1 said:
In the end it is humans trying to guess what God wants through the filter of what they want God to want.
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This is the most accurate definition of theology ever written.
 
So, the perpetual whining about the War on Christmas has begun. And it's mostly done by old Fundies that are stuck in 1955.

Meanwhile, my younger friends? They're the ones who are out there feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and those in prison, clothing the naked, taking in the homeless and strays. You know, actually keeping Christ in Christmas.
 
Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Christ hasn't been in Christianity for a long time. Maybe back when I was back in Sunday school, so maybe the early 90s.

Most people will probably day a lot longer, but I feel like evangelical movement has removed more Christ from Christianity than anything else in my lifetime.
 
Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Interesting findings; I heard about them awhile ago but just got around to researching it now.

We've known for awhile that many people unconsciously carry around inside themselves a set of self-perceptions that influences how they interact with other people and the world around them. I'm not posting a link for this because it seems to have been so thoroughly researched. We also know that people can adjust these unconscious self-perceptions by repeating a different message daily, either by posting it on their mirror or other prominent place, or by repeating it to themselves over and over. Among other things, this method seems to be fundamental in the successful treatment of addictions.

One might also interpret this information to say that there is a scientific basis for prayer, no? In the sense that the prayer itself is a way of changing a person's unconscious self-perception, not necessarily as a method of inducing divine intervention.


Also, for Catholics, it turns out that saying the Rosary is not all that different than some other forms of meditation.



According to a study published in the British Medical Journal (2001;323:1446-1449), researcher Dr. Luciano Bernardi, associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Pavia in Italy and his team tested whether rhythmic chanting, in this case reciting the rosary or using Yoga mantras, could have a favorable effect on the heart’s rhythms. What the team knew at the beginning of the study was that slow regular breathing was beneficial in preventing heart disease by synchronizing inherent cardiovascular rhythms.....It ends up that despite the cultural differences between the two spiritual practices, rosary chants and yoga mantras, Dr. Bernardi suggests that the two may have similar origins and both evolved as a simple way to slow respiration, improve concentration, and induce calm. The rosary while known to be related to the Catholic religion, was initially introduced by the Crusaders “who learnt a similar technique from the Arabs who in turn learned it from the Indian and Tibetan masters of yoga”, Dr. Bernardi states.
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Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

FreshFish said:
Interesting findings; I heard about them awhile ago but just got around to researching it now.

We've known for awhile that many people unconsciously carry around inside themselves a set of self-perceptions that influences how they interact with other people and the world around them. I'm not posting a link for this because it seems to have been so thoroughly researched. We also know that people can adjust these unconscious self-perceptions by repeating a different message daily, either by posting it on their mirror or other prominent place, or by repeating it to themselves over and over. Among other things, this method seems to be fundamental in the successful treatment of addictions.

One might also interpret this information to say that there is a scientific basis for prayer, no?
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No.

There are placebo effects throughout psychology and while this could be one of them there actually is no consensus on whether the self-hypnosis you are describing actually has real world measurable effect. It is essentially "neuro-linguistic programming," also known as "mesmerism for MBAs."

About the most one can say for your thesis is what Crash Davis did.
 
Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Kepler said:
there actually is no consensus on whether the self-hypnosis you are describing actually has real world measurable effect.
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"consensus" is not the same as "evidence."

According to Psychology Today, for example,


Some proponents of affirmations claim that, when practiced deliberately and regularly, they reinforce a chemical pathway in the brain, making the connection between two neurons stronger, and therefore more likely to conduct the same message again.

What does recent research say?

Published in PLOS ONE, new research from Carnegie Mellon University provides the first evidence that self-affirmation can protect against the damaging effects of stress on problem-solving performance. [emphasis added] Understanding that self-affirmation -- the process of identifying and focusing on one's most important values -- boosts stressed individuals' problem-solving abilities will help guide future research and the development of educational interventions.

"An emerging set of published studies suggest that a brief self-affirmation activity at the beginning of a school term can boost academic grade-point averages in underperforming kids at the end of the semester. This new work suggests a mechanism for these studies, showing self-affirmation effects on actual problem-solving performance under pressure," said J. David Creswell, assistant professor of psychology in CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
....
New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explores the neurophysiological reactions that could explain how self-affirmation helps us deal with threats to our self-integrity....

According to Legault, "Practitioners who are interested in using self-affirmation as an intervention tactic in academic and social programming might be interested to know that the strategy produces measurable neurophysiological effects." [emphasis added]
....
So what can we learn from all this? Two things--first, just engaging in positive affirmations by themselves, can do harm to people with low self-esteem, and provide only little benefit for those with high-esteem, if those affirmations are not part of a comprehensive program of self-growth.[emphases added]
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Are you seriously going to argue that prayer is not part of a "comprehensive program of self-growth"?

or perhaps you merely replied glibly to your superficial first impression, without absorbing what I actually did say?
 
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Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

FreshFish said:
the usual
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The very article you are quoting says there is no consensus on the effect you're trying to insinuate. For that matter, you could make an identical argument about voodoo dolls, rally caps, or wearing women's underwear while pitching.

But you're right, I was being glib because you were doing your usual little dance of loading superficial goo with the possible weight of profundity (hey, you're only asking the question...), so I'll be serious and maybe you will follow suit for the first time.

Mental processes are natural phenomena subsiding in the physical substrate of the nervous system, the brain, the sense organs just like "impressions" (or whichever the second one in Locke's pairing is -- I think it goes sense --> impression, but anyway, the "shadow" you pass internally after translation from an initial physical sense). My Thought -- more strongly, My Will -- is to my body what light is to an incandescent bulb. And it is precisely because there is nothing that is not material that there is no "ghost in the machine," whether you want to call that soul or Cartesian mind or The Great Spirit or some Jungian bullsh-t.

So the question is can you induce physiological changes from "mental" changes by running the experiment "backwards." Let's posit a simple analogy: thought :: magnetic field; body :: physical apparatus; electrical current :: sensory data. Well if the analogy holds, yes you should be able to induce in either direction (which is why this analogy was chosen).

As to whether it can be done in the controlled, replicable manner that results in Farraday's laws, I think that's a very interesting direction of experimental research and I recommend it to the youngins among us. It might indeed explain the hallucinations that typically accompany mysticism. Set up a closed system where repeating a nonsense phrase creates a physiological effect that triggers a hallucination. Believe in the invisible man long enough and you could feel your stigmata.

So my less glib response is... sure, why not?
 
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Re: Religion Thread: That's Me In the Corner...

Kepler said:
The very article you are quoting says there is no consensus on the effect you're trying to insinuate. For that matter, you could make an identical argument about voodoo dolls, rally caps, or wearing women's underwear while pitching.
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So you're saying that never helped? :(

Now someone feels like a fool who'd been duped yet again.
 
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