Politics in our schools

[Sethomas]

Actually, if you'd read On the Origins of Species, you'd know that there are several. It's just that they all sucked, so Darwin's is the only one taken seriously anymore.

[Big Papa Goat]

Also, please don't call evolution a liberal political idea, that's just stupid. There are plenty of conservative political scholars that just love talking about evolution and how great it is at explaining stuff.

oh and ya, of course there's ridiculous shit like Lamark, but no ones cared about that for basically a hundred years

[Sethomas]

Yeah, like Hillary isn't burying "dinosaur" "bones" right now in a plot to take away our guns. Keep telling yourself that.

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by kahljorn

retarded.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

That's not what it's saying at all, it's saying that from amillion different observations there's pieces of evidence that suggest there's a function like evolution.

There's an infinte number of reasons for anything. If we had a search function, I'd link you everything Geggy's ever said here.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

One of them is the fact that wh ile we're in the womb, for a time, we develop Gills(like a fish) then a tail, then a bunch of other shit that could be said to be our prior evolutions.

Evolution from a common origin.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

There's also more obvious things. Like finding fossils of our 'ancestors' who looked completely different than us. Where did they go? Why is it only us now? Where did we come from?

Evolution from a common origin.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Another is the fact that evolution has occured within our lifetimes. Ever hear of "Cultivation" of plants? Originally plants were wild, and tiny. The original variety of corn(they are usually called "Heirloom" varieties) was the size of baby corn. Ever seen those? That small.

Evolution within a species.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Over the course of time they were developed into the size they are today. Another example is soybeans.

Evolution within a species.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Those weren't even edible originally. So what we say is plants changing drastically, not only through cultivation but also mutation.

Gibberish.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Ever hear of nectarines? Mutation. Hairless peach, right? Domesticated dogs?

Evolution within several species.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

WHERE DID THEY COME FROM DID GOD MAGICALLY MAKE THEM 35 YEARS AGO OR WHENEVER THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN CREATED?

That was just unnecessary weirdness.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Again, those are examples not proof(it's hard to provide proof for things that happened millions of years ago I hope you can see why).

Examples, good and bad, of two different things. It's important you note that.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

The fact that things today can grow and change into other things...

I only disagree with this part. Things can grow and eventually change into different things, specializing themselves into things better prepared to manage life. An apple does not evolve into an orange. A human does not evolve from a lump of snot. To insist so is to sound as idiotic and unbelievable as those that preach that because the Bible says God formed Man from clay it must be so.

The main reason I hate this debate is that evolutionists generally refuse to admit that this is a debate of opinions and ultimately one of sociology rather than science. That makes it pretty frustrating.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

...doesn't necessarily mean that the same thing happened millions of years ago to bring us to where we are today, but it's a good indication of what happened isn't it?

I only ever object to those that wag their opinons on the matter around without understanding the distinction between the two very different definitions of the word "evolution."

I do not believe that the natural process of evolution within a species is in any way proof of any kind that evolution has ever resulted in one species of animal evolving into another sort of animal.

That being siad, I always get the terminology confused... When I say " species," I'm talking about a group of things like humans and
bovines or algae and insects. I think my confusion comes from the title of Darwin's book, and that it might be best if you read my comments replacing my usage of "species" with "genus," or some such whatnot...

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Refute those examples, please. If you really need to I'll post some links with pictures and whatever else.

I'm not trying to refute anything here. If you start picking on me, I will almost surely simply quote that which I just said. It will be very annoying.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

"So a koala bear or whatever went through a set of changes due to enviromental changes?"

That's Scru pointing out the difference in terms...

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Enviromental, diet, mutation, causation of natural genetic variance. Take your pick, there's tons of possibilities. Naturally, there shouldn't be just one trigger for evolution and change since evolution is probably alot like a survival mechanism, and just a natural law.

Yes. That's the natural law of evolution within a species that I support.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

"Can it be determined which one of the millions of variables caused the Koala to look like it does today?"

That's Scru veering into the difference between science and theology, which lies at the very heart of the debate.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Why would we be able to? That doesn't make any sense.

That's you completely missing the point.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

We can make estimations but we weren't there when they magically changed. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, and it isn't really a good argument.

Neither is that which hopes to prove that just because some things are similar that all things are the same.

Originally Posted by kahljorn

All we know is once there was no koalas, more than likely just something similar, and now there are koalas and not whatever was similar.

Yep. Explain to me exactly why koalas suddenly appeared while giant predator dinosaurs had managed to die out? How about we chase down the specific reasons nature simply had to have koalas because pottos and sloths were no longer satisfying it's needs while we use this same illustration of logical prowess to describe how the survival of the fittest explains the continued existence of so many more sub-species of life than ever when each sub-species evolved from the most dominant versions of themselves.




...Sorry... Got tired of responding.

I just remembered very vividly why I try so hard not to respond to your posts.

[ScruU2wice]

I'm not sure what you're getting at with this. EVERYTHING in science is a deduction. What you're saying doesn't make any sense to me, and I'm not sure if I'm just missing the point or what.

My overarching message was that everything requires degrees of faith. Whether its quantum mechanics and string theory or whatever Sciences of all sorts have fundamental axioms that require you to just have faith. So you can't just pull the blanket on religion as completely illogical and wrong.

Well, so what? A sixth grader is taking it on faith that 2 + 2 = 4, too.

I'm kinda digressing from my point, but math in all of its' forms is based off of the perceptions of humans and human reasoning. It has its' unproven fundamentals and philosophies. For example you can't prove that a+b=b+a so it's just taking on faith. I do a crappy job of explaining it but if you talk to someone who's way more well versed in pure math and philosophy they can give you a run down on the implications of 2+2 not equalling 4.

How's that, exactly?

You're suppose to memorize the different evolutionary phases of man just like you would prophets in the bible. There is no real explanation to it Teachers just say "well this is what they were, it's in the book"

This is the part I'm really interested in: Logical holes like what? I have a sneaking suspicion you're drawing a lot of your material from Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box," and if that's true, there's MORE than enough criticism of that crock of shit on the internet to convince you, I think. And if you're not taking any ideas from it, then I'm sorry for assuming, but I'd like to know what these "logical holes" are.

Well I got it from some article I had from a Econ professor who was trying to dissociate Social Darwinism as a model for economic theory, and I kinda extrapolated that to a criticism of Darwinism. Basically my horrible run down of what the guy sais is that evolution says is that a species evolves, but it can't really narrow down what makes it evolve and how it makes it evolve. In this sense it's not really providing any evidence to the theory besides a certain species exists.

I wish I could explain it better but what I got from it was that a species could have grown wings because it wished really hard for all we know. since evolution is the result of some change, it results in a change in the species. but if we change one variable in an environment it causes immeasurable change so any determining power of an darwinian model won't provide any predicitve power, which is why it's bad economic model. But the point he was making was that the darwian model says that that species exists in it's current form because it was the only form evolution would let it take. So it kinda is just self fulfilling evidence.

I've already mixed and shredded whatever tattered remains of a message I wanted to get across. I really wish I could explain what I was trying to talk about better but I'm just not intellegent enough. So I think I'll just try laps back in to life requiring degrees of faith..

[Big Papa Goat]

Seriously though, I think it's a bit lame to be sidetracking this thread into a debate about evolution that we've already had.

Teaching evolution in science classrooms shouldn't be a poltiical issue at all, the very fact that there are religious conervatives trying to politicize the science curriculum is what is ridiculous. There is definitely no liberal political agenda to teach evolution, the people that defend the teaching of evolution in science classrooms are, guess what, scientists that think it should be taught because they think it's a sound theory. It's not a bunch of sinister liberal ideologues trying to teach evolution because it supports their pernicious relativistic anti-religious political philosophy.

I mean, it's not like they're teaching bio-political theory related to evolution in high schools, and frankly, if they were, it'd pretty much definitely be the conservatives doing it. Seriously preechr, point out a liberal political theorist that talks about evolution or biology. I can think of a few that could be called conservatives, but truly no liberals off hand.

All I'm saying is that evolution is not a political issue for anyone that isn't stupid.

[kahljorn]

"An apple does not evolve into an orange."

If you trace all trees back you find they have a "Common origin". Oranges and apples are alot alike when you trace them back far enough, and I'm sure that, just like with a family tree, you could find connecting ancestors. Like I said, I didn't say that proved anything. If it proved anything, it wouldn't be called a theory.

"There's an infinte number of reasons for anything. If we had a search function, I'd link you everything Geggy's ever said here. "

www.google.com search site specifically. I don't know if that wins me any points in this argument.

"Examples, good and bad, of two different things."

The reason I posted the other one is because it's, "Obvious" like I had mentioned when I was talking. Something anybody can see for themselves with recent photographs and everything. Unlike a picture of a half human half chimp. Obviously it was for correlation purposes.
I realize it doesn't "Prove" anything because if it did it wouldn't be a theory anymore. However, it does represent it, and even within the short extremity of "Within a species" shows that it is possible for life to change. Coupled with the idea of common origin it's pretty simple for a person to understand it. I'm pretty sure I just described the basics of evolution. Imagine that my paragraph would expound on both concepts of it, common origin and evolution within a species!

"The fact that things today can grow and change into other things doesn't necessarily mean that the same thing happened millions of years ago to bring us to where we are today"

Why do you always pick on comments that I already said weren't necessarily apt, but are obviously still a part of it. Obviously if there is evolution within one category than the evolution within the lesser category would be a necessary part of it, more than likely leading up to evolution outside of the first category. That's the entire idea of categories(like genus, family and species), to show how they are connected.

That's why some of the pursual of proving evolution has been to find lots of fossils and connect them species to species to try and show how they changed from one to another. Again, hence why evolution within a species is important. All of my argument ties into together it's like a mystical thing of repetitiveness so keep this in mind throughout.

"I do not believe that the natural process of evolution within a species is in any way proof of any kind that evolution has ever resulted in one species of animal evolving into another sort of animal. "
"the main reason I hate this debate is that evolutionists generally refuse to admit that this is a debate of opinions and ultimately one of sociology rather than science."

No, but it is an example of the functioning, and considering no person has ever sat around thinking evolution was about turning from a fish into mammal but rather a SLOW change from one thing to another it's obviously the process by which one species can turn into another sort of animal.

"I'm not trying to refute anything here. If you start picking on me, I will almost surely simply quote that which I just said."

None of what you have been responding to so far was even directed at you. You just think it's directed at you because you're paranoid and insecure, or something, I can't imagine why you'd think it's directed at you when there's a quote right above it directed at someone else.

"Why would we be able to? That doesn't make any sense."
"That's you completely missing the point. "

More like me arguing the fact that we don't have a crystal ball to look into the past and tell exactly what happened, that we actually have to investigate and make discoveries and pursue the idea and uncover more fossils and more evidence and keep trudging forward insert some more progressive words because the simple fact is we aren't omniscient and we don't know everything and the recorded history of the world only goes back so many years and like I said we don't have a crystal ball so all we can do is assume based on events that have transpired within our history to look back at the future and build a logical model.
This is the foundation of alot of science. Going off of what we KNOW to find what we DON'T KNOW. Right now evolution is a theory, thus we DONT KNOW alot about it but we are struggling TO KNOW based on w hat we KNOW. The reason this is important is because that is how most science works and if you're in a science class room learning about science it's nice to have some nice modern examples especially when it's an idea that's still a theory still in pusuit so you can be exposed to it at an early age maybe contribute to it I don't know but mostly as an example as something modern because it's a science classroom and that's what you do in classrooms and expose people to knowledge especially crucial elements like current scientific theories and rules and stuff that's around about science.

Notice I didn't use much punction there because I really didn't want to explain it.

Also notice I used the example of a science class room which seems horribly evident and quite relevant to the thread and also that my original post was how evolution is a good example of scientific mothod and all that shit I'm sure you can find some correlation.

"Neither is that which hopes to prove that just because some things are similar that all things are the same."

lol what the hell are you even talking about. Similar, same? I was explaining the concept of science and the scientific method and the simple fact that we can't prove it. Jesus we talk about proof so much I get confused.
There is no proof in this, that's where this argument comes from. He thinks the schools teach that it's the ab solute truth in defiance of god and common sense but really it's just an idea being added on like scientists and philosopher often do over the course of history up until present and ONWARD INTO THE FUTURE

"Explain to me exactly why koalas suddenly appeared while giant predator dinosaurs had managed to die out?"

It wasn't sudden. This is the problem with you creationists, you think the universe has only been around for six thousand years, even when you are trying to assimilate ideas outside of your perception. The entire point of evolution is that it took a long fucking time to make koalas.

"How about we chase down the specific reasons nature simply had to have koalas because pottos and sloths were no longer satisfying it's needs"

Now we're talking about nature having wants and needs? Sorry, I guess gods penis just couldn't fulfill her. lol but seriously scroll down a bit

"how the survival of the fittest explains the continued existence of so many more sub-species of life than ever when each sub-species evolved from the most dominant versions of themselves. "

Dominant? Survival of the fittest? You only think carnivores are capable of surviving? Plant eatters dominate plants, and plants grow and survive alot better than most carnivores. Obviously you don't consider ecology when you think about "Survival of the fittest". Your perception makes me laugh ;(
From what I heard about dinosaurs they suffered from alot of problems including having cold blood, they probably didn't have much of an immune system or very developed bodies at all... Just because you can kill things easily doesn't mean you're the best evolutionarily.
There's millions of variables there, and I don't know why you expect there to be just one variable. It's ridiculous, the entire idea is that there's tons of variables. That's what evolution does, creates variables. Creating variables out of variables to be a good variable capable of withstanding bad variables;bad variables relative to your variables which may be good variables to another variable but hopefully something you have as a good variable is really bad to them and that variable is currently a very strong variable so hopefully your variable will variate more but who knows if their variables will change and variate even more in response to bad variables or maybe they'll migrate where variables are more favorable and their variables are superior or maybe their variable will just die suddenly.

Dinosaurs died because they have cold blood and can't survive cold temperatures also it's been speculated that their bodies, while quite large, were incapable of moving at highspeeds thus small quick moving and more mobile creatures could easily avoid them. But who really knows, like I said, it's speculation. Which is alot of what science is about. You guys can speculate the opposite, which is fine, but if it's not scientifically valid speculations than you can't really expect them to teach it in a classroom. I don't mind them listing your objections, and I'm pretty sure they list the inconsistancies, which I mentioned within my education that they did.
However most of your argument is ridiculous and would only be made by someone who has never been exposed to scientific principles.

lol by the way here's a whacky idea why don't all churches preach/teach evolution I mean just to offer an alternative theory.

[Archduke Tips]

I was talking about the bullshit that is called feminism, btw.

[Dole]

Yeah! fuck those women and their 'equal rights' crap!

[Archduke Tips]

Women don't deserve special treatment because they whine a lot.

[Dole]

What joy you must bring to everyone around you.

[Emu]

Originally Posted by ScruU2wice

My overarching message was that everything requires degrees of faith. Whether its quantum mechanics and string theory or whatever Sciences of all sorts have fundamental axioms that require you to just have faith. So you can't just pull the blanket on religion as completely illogical and wrong.

I never said that. I don't know who did. Certainly you have to take things on faith in life, including things in science, but some things require less faith than others. For example, the statement "The sky is blue" requires less faith than the statement "The sky is polka-dot." The reason is that the sky is OBSERVABLY blue. We can SEE it as it is.

And some might make the argument that human senses are too fallible to know for certain that the sky is, in fact, blue. But so what? I could expand that argument to EVERYTHING in life, just like your faith argument. Perhaps we see design in everything because our senses are too fallible to grasp how it could have arisen otherwise.

I'm kinda digressing from my point, but math in all of its' forms is based off of the perceptions of humans and human reasoning. It has its' unproven fundamentals and philosophies. For example you can't prove that a+b=b+a so it's just taking on faith. I do a crappy job of explaining it but if you talk to someone who's way more well versed in pure math and philosophy they can give you a run down on the implications of 2+2 not equalling 4.

No, I get what you're saying. But my response to this is the same as the one above. Just because you take either side of a position on faith doesn't make one closer to the truth than it actually is.

You're suppose to memorize the different evolutionary phases of man just like you would prophets in the bible. There is no real explanation to it Teachers just say "well this is what they were, it's in the book"

Well, that's just bad teaching. Aside from the truly bad teachers out there, you have to remember that students only spend a finite amount of time in school and only a fraction of that time is spent in biology class, and only a fraction of biology class is spent on evolution at all, and an EVEN SMALLER fraction is spent on the evolution of man specifically. And besides, just because the explanations they give you in school aren't exactly adequate doesn't mean that there is no explanation. Richard Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale" goes into deep explanations of our evolutionary past, retrographing it from our most recent ancestors to our most ancient. You just have to look for it, like you would in any classroom topic. They don't explain why half the battles of the Civil War were fought, either, but you can find out if you're really interested.

Well I got it from some article I had from a Econ professor who was trying to dissociate Social Darwinism as a model for economic theory, and I kinda extrapolated that to a criticism of Darwinism. Basically my horrible run down of what the guy sais is that evolution says is that a species evolves, but it can't really narrow down what makes it evolve and how it makes it evolve. In this sense it's not really providing any evidence to the theory besides a certain species exists.

This is the point of natural selection. Using what we know about a species today, we can deduce what must have happened to it to make it evolve that way. Evolution can't tell you EXACTLY what made the species evolve the way it did, but it can tell you what factors would have selected a species to evolve in this manner. For example, evolution can't tell you that an earthquake caused an underwater cave to collapse, but it can tell you why a species of fish in that cave evolved vestigial (nonfunctional) eyes and developed sonar detection: It was fucking dark.

I wish I could explain it better but what I got from it was that a species could have grown wings because it wished really hard for all we know. since evolution is the result of some change, it results in a change in the species. but if we change one variable in an environment it causes immeasurable change so any determining power of an darwinian model won't provide any predicitve power, which is why it's bad economic model.

Here's where your confusion lies. Evolution is by no means concerned with the future. You're falling into eugenics territory, which is something wholly seperate from evolution, and a disproven theory besides. Evolution as a theory has no concern whatsoever with what a species will evolve in to, as opposed to what it evolved from. Yes, social darwinism is a terrible economic model. It was only in vogue because it gave an explanation for why the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

But the point he was making was that the darwian model says that that species exists in it's current form because it was the only form evolution would let it take. So it kinda is just self fulfilling evidence.

Evolution had nothing to do with what form the species was "allowed" take. It was environmental factors that caused a species to evolve the way it did, not evolution in and of itself. The same way the existence of a wall prevents you from walking through it.

I've already mixed and shredded whatever tattered remains of a message I wanted to get across. I really wish I could explain what I was trying to talk about better but I'm just not intellegent enough. So I think I'll just try laps back in to life requiring degrees of faith..

No, I understand your criticism, but just because evolution and creationism both require faith doesn't mean anything. Creationism requires leaps and bounds more faith than evolution does because you have to suppose the existence of 1) A supernatural power, 2) An intelligent supernatural power, 3) and all of the implications that go along with it (Where did that intelligence come from? How did it become intelligent? Where is it now? What is it? How did it create life? What created the intelligence?) all of whicha re questions absolutely unasnwerable by science; they're completely outside of the realm of science. Which is why science doesn't concern itself with or suppose the existence of supernatural powers.

[kahljorn]

Did you guys know that almost everything in science can't be absolutely proven "absolute" and alot of the supposed laws even have loopholes in them? Especially when you start to put the various laws into the contextual origin, relative to the rest of the universe.

Wow. It just blows my mind. How is that possible? With these magical scientist people who know everything about the world, how is it that some ideas escape our all-knowing grasp? Could it be because the human realm is still rather stupid, and before 100 years ago we didn't have magical objects that ran on magic water to take us to places at magic speeds!?!?
Could it be that, as a civilization, we are still rather young and new, and that our scientific endeavors reflect this? Could it be that the goal of science is the aquisition of new knowledge in an objective and pure way, to attempt to know more about the world since we are still new and young? Could it be that, currently, evolution is in this proccess of attainment of knowledge on the subject, and since that is at the very heart and foundation of science(lack of knowledge signaling us to gain knowledge) this is why the subject of evolution appears in classrooms.

Could it be that that's why evolution is more appropriate for a class room than a religous belief that has no physical evidence supporting it? Whereas evolution has an actual study going on, to prove and disprove it, by means of physical evidence and 'objective' observation. Could it be that this was my first post on the subject and preechr somehow couldn't get it :O NO!Q

It's like emu said, if you want to start talking about creationism you start talking about God. The only problem with that is there's absolutely no scientific evidence that God even exists, whereas with evolution there's evidence that there is, at the very least, change within a species and a long history of recorded creatures that are different than what you'd see recently but look similar to what we have today. Basically, there's some evidence that something like evolution exists, rather than with creationism where there's no evidence of anything related to it, in fact there's more contradictive evidence than anything(at least in the approach most creationists have submitted to me). Like I said in my first post on the subject, creationism isn't even a theory.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theory

Just so you guys know. Enjoy your days.

---------------------------------

lol okay preechr I got a little experiment for you. First find a box of crayons and a piece of paper, try drawing the following in alternating colours, perhaps(maybe color code it)! In the middle of the paper draw a circle. Now draw a dot in the middle. Now draw a square around it. Now draw a triangle at the top. Now draw a hexagon around it. Now make a cross through it. Now make some triangles at the end of the crosses, and some more triangles pointing at the triangles. Now draw a big fuzzy circle around all of that. Add some more triangles and squares around it.
Tell me, does that look anything like the original circle? Does it still contain the original circle and fundamental building blocks? But does it look the same? Huh? Does it?

Now do another experiment, start with the circle and try some different shapes and colors and such, really try to mix it up! Does that circle look like the other circle you did? You don't even have to stick to normal shapes! Really use your creativity!

I developed that genius idea not long ago when I was trying to imagine how to teach the fundamental concepts of evolution to a five year old. I hope it helps.

[ziggytrix]

I just got back from a museum where I looked at bowls Mayans bled into so they could talk to the spirits.

Thanks to you fucking liberals, my school never taught me how to talk to the spirits by bleeding enough. Jerks ruin everything.

[ScruU2wice]

Originally Posted by Emu

I never said that. I don't know who did.

Yeah no one said that. I feel like I'm going off a tangent about evolution and stuff where the topic is about Politics in school. and I don't feel strongly about either issue.

[kahljorn]

"I just got back from a museum where I looked at bowls Mayans bled into so they could talk to the spirits. "

that actually makes alot of sense when I stop and think about it when gnostics and others say that blood is our material soul, and spirit desires to be free of that. ;(
Mayans were weird, i really need to study them.

[Big Papa Goat]

Originally Posted by RussoNWM

I was talking about the bullshit that is called feminism, btw.

For serious, I took a class on biopolitics that was basically about evolutionary ideas in politics from this archconservative professor, and it was mostly about how feminism is basically pretty stupid.

Also, I had never heard about the gnostics talking about blood being symbolic of the soul before

[kahljorn]

Soul and Spirit are different things to them(i think to everyone), in fact I think soul is just a part of spirit. Maybe that's more of a rosicrucian idea, but I'm pretty sure it's gnostic. To them the spirit is what people call the soul. While looking through sites I saw alot of mentions about the gospel of judas talking about the blood as the soul, so that might be worth a read.

Deuteronomy 12:23-25 is supposed to be about it, but i couldn't find a translation that said soul, they all said life(that's addressed at the end of this post).

Here's a catholic encyclopedia, not sure how accurate it is:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm

... it is evident that the Old Testament throughout either asserts or implies the distinct reality of the soul. An important contribution to later Jewish thought was the infusion of Platonism into it by Philo of Alexandria. He taught the immediately Divine origin of the soul, its pre-existence and transmigration; he contrasts the pneuma, or spiritual essence, with the soul proper, the source of vital phenomena, whose seat is the blood; finally he revived the old Platonic Dualism, attributing the origin of sin and evil to the union of spirit with matter.

Like I said, plato's philosophies and gnosticism are pretty much the same thing. I didn't read that whole link so who knows what else is on there.

16. It is the same for them who go out from the body.

"For when the soul withdraws into itself, the spirit doth contract itself within the blood, and the soul within the spirit. And then the mind, stripped of its wrappings, and naturally divine, taking unto itself a fiery body, doth traverse every space, after abandoning the soul unto its judgement and whatever chastisement it hath deserved. "

That's from the corpus hermeticum, I know it's not direct and the terminology is kind of odd but it works sort of. Hard to find things for this on the internet, blood and soul are very popular words.
If you're going to read the corpus hermeticum try to find the narrative version, personally I think it's a much better writing and it's not tainted by the christian church(because it seems pretty tainted for a supposedly pagan writing).

This looks like an interesting read on the soul

It's funny because it even talks about the breath being the spirit. Look up pranayama of the hindus.

Just as thee divine illustration of the spirit was in the breath, so we have the divine picture of the soul in the blood. Much has been lost by the arbitrary change of the word soul to "life" in the passages where this is clearly taught. Notice how the two are used together in Genesis 9:4. "Yea, only flesh with its soul, its blood, you shall not eat" (CV). This truth is again emphasized in the phrase, "for the soul of all flesh, it is in the blood" (Lev.17:11, CV). And again, "...for the soul of all flesh is its blood. It is in its soul ...for the soul of all flesh, its blood is it" (Lev.17:14, CV).

Now, why should the blood be chosen to picture the soul to us? We have already seen that the soul has its origin, not in the body merely, nor yet in the spirit alone, but in their combination. And what could better portray this than the blood? It is fed from food by means of assimilation and thus is linked to the body and the soil; it is fed from the air by means of respiration and is thus linked to the breath and spirit."

Ziggy I hope you're reading this because some of the verses, like in Deuteronomy leviticus and genesis , talk about why you shouldn't eat meat(or in this case blood). I can't remember the exact versus anymore, i just saw them when I was looking for this information and didn't think of you until after.

Like I've mentioned before I don't really see much of a distinction between gnosticism and christianity. The distinction was created by the church. To be entirely honest, I don't really see much of a distinction between any religions. They all pretty much say the same thing in different ways to me. Stuff like this is a good example.

[Big Papa Goat]

plato's philosophies and gnosticism are pretty much the same thing

I don't really see much of a distinction between gnosticism and christianity

You're so blasphemous kahl

In any case, as long as they don't start teaching the kids to be gnostics, I think we'll be alright.

[kahljorn]

I just think all religions and many philosophers are similar because they are all observing the same universe and the same functions and naturally any intelligent person would expound on the intelligent plot lines. Also the place most of these people learned is the same. I don't know, there's really alot of reasons why their teachings are so similar. Most of them all originated in the same area under the same or similar eras, so it's only natural they would all influence eachother.

You don't see any connections between them with the information I've shared so far?

I know all you guys think gnosticism is really weird but have you ever actually read through the entire bible?

[Sethomas]

The Old Testament, given the times, is pretty damn conservative in terms of ancient religion. It's mostly just fanciful histories with moral overtones. A few quaint stories to teach human virtues (Job, Ruth), some nice anthologies of religious introspections (The Book of Psalms, Proverbs), more histories, yadda yadda. It's unique in that it shows a singular God with the full spectrum of human emotion: anger, love, mercy, ruthlessness, jealousy. By comparison, the polytheistic mythologies of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece/Rome show a multitude of characters that together form a nice corpus of colorful stories but are individually flat and undeveloped. The mythologies themselves are pretty void of any moralistic meaning, though individual philosophies rose to fulfill this end. In a lot of pre-Socratic philosophical texts, there are innumerable citations of Homer's epics in much the same way that Christian literature will quote Scripture as often as possible.

The New Testament is "weird" in that a Judean ascetic borrowed ideas from works of Plato to which he almost certainly had no literary access, and was something of a socialist 1500 years before Utopia was written. Telling his own culture that they were no longer the only people God cared about was pretty weird. Telling the Jewish people to "turn the other cheek" and "love those that hate you" while they were seething for revolution against the Empire was, well, weird. Predicating the doctrine of transubstantiation? Yeah, I'd call that weird.

[Big Papa Goat]

Oh ya, there's definitely a connection, but it's still blasphemous to point it out ;(

I learned about gnosticism in the context of studying Eric Voegelin, so I was looking at it kind of from his perspective, which was that gnosticism is at the root of (or is at least one of the original and most clear symbolic expressions of) pretty much the worst things human beings can do.

Basically the understanding of the unique and important aspects of gnosticism were that the gnostics thought the universe was a shitty prison that could be overpowered by human beings who had recovered their divine essence and overcome the alienation caused by the shitty psychic and material aspects of their beings. That basic attitude is reflected in such as Marx, Nietzsche and other totalitarians who speculated that there was some superhuman essence to human beings that could be recovered through some kind of really brutal activity. (read: proletarian revolution/dictatorship, all that bullshit about the importance of suffering and such, concentration camps to get rid of what isn't quite human) The recovery of that essence would turn man into superman, who would then be able to have power over reality.

In any case, gnosticism is weird, and it's certainly based in the same philosophical and religious tradition as plato or christianity, but I'd say it confuses some of its symbols, places the wrong importance on such things as dualism and in general don't have a lot of respect for the universe.
It's a good point about all philosophies and religions being similar from giving accounts of the same universe, but the whole problem of gnosticism as far as I see it is that it doesn't have an attitude of loving openness to the reality of the universe, it has more of a bitter and arrogant view of position of human beings in the universe, where they think humans are superior to the universe and dont' belong in it.


This might get even more relevant to politics in schols than the evolution nonsense if we don't watch out though :O
Though later I might post some nonsense about the gnostic attitude in the education system what with the whole emphasis some teachers have on such as creativity.

edit: oh certainly the bible is weird too though, and I have read it, and it's got all kinds of weird stuff. All truth be told I'd say the gnostic apocrypha I've read is weirder though.

[kahljorn]

" It's unique in that it shows a singular God with the full spectrum of human emotion: anger, love, mercy, ruthlessness, jealousy."

Aren't there like ten different names for God in the bible?

" By comparison, the polytheistic mythologies of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece/Rome show a multitude of characters that together form a nice corpus of colorful stories but are individually flat and undeveloped"

Consider them all the same god and it becomes a very rich personage. Remember God has the full spectrum of human emotion! Angry, love, mercy, ruthlessness and jealousy.

"Basically the understanding of the unique and important aspects of gnosticism were that the gnostics thought the universe was a shitty prison..."

That's my only problem with them. Just about every religion depicts the exact same circumstance and I don't really see the bible as depicting the earth as a beautiful place. If it was why do we need a savior? Hindus/buddhists say the same thing. You just have to accept what they are saying as truth, this is a shitty place where shitty things happen alot and probably won't stop. Right? Case in point.

"it has more of a bitter and arrogant view of position of human beings in the universe, where they think humans are superior to the universe and dont' belong in it. "

I hate that too, that's actually why I stopped attending their lectures. However, that doesn't take anything away from it or the points about it I'm making.
I actually think it's kind of exciting here for that purpose exactly. Also, jesus and buddha both tried to fix the world so it must be worth something. I don't know, too much dread and not enough happiness, like you said. That's exactly how my girlfriend and I felt about them and their constantly oblivious voices. Personally I think there's alot that can be built, manifested and evolved here and I think that's part of what's great about the universe. I don't really see what's so great about an infinitey of abyss.

Also you know a funny thing about the fall that was presented to me by the tibetan book of the dead is that we perpetually and infiniteley fluctuate between states of supreme godly enlightenment down to lowly earth creatures again, which makes perfect fucking sense in context. If we fell once in eternity it's bound to happen again. I'm personally of the opinion that, if the fall is true, it happens all the damn time just as a natural function of existance.


"Nietzsche and other totalitarians who speculated that there was some superhuman essence to human beings that could be recovered through some kind of really brutal activity."

You mean like suffering and being sacraficed on the cross?

I also enjoy the parallels between buddhism and christianity in that respect. Buddha sees all the suffering in the world and wants to relieve them of that, so he gives up all of his earthly belongings(which he had alot of since he was an indian prince) and meditates under a tree(that's coincidentally made of wood just like the cross!lol no that's not really a good point) without eatting or sleeping until he attains enlightenment and then goes about trying to free men from suffering.
I don't know like I said I think it's all the same shit and the bible is teaching man-kind how to redeem themselves. Why else give them a moral outline? Shit, if man is already redeemed what's the point of the religion anyway? I used to have tons of points of how jesus wanted us to become like him, I'll have to try to remember them. I think the fact that he's called a shepherd who guides people is one factor. That he usually called himself son of man, which we all are, and also called us all sons of god. Um, some other stupid shit I can't remember.

"The New Testament is "weird" in that a Judean ascetic borrowed ideas from works of Plato to which he almost certainly had no literary access, and was something of a socialist 1500 years before Utopia was written. "

I find that weird too and is why I find it hard to accept the general consensus, i think plato or socrates derived alot of his knowledge from either india or possibly egypt. Their influence is a little more believable. It's just my personal belief that anybody who becomes "Enlightened" has these same core beliefs because, like i said, they are built on the universe around us.

That's probably all from me tonight I'm getting delirious.

Thanks for your interesting responses, goat and seth. If either of you guys want to reccomend and books or, preferably, online reading material I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

Again sorry there's two threads about the same thing ;(