[geitir]

People with empathy naturally don't want to inflict unnecessary pain on other people. Sure, you could argue that empathy is a human construct, but then you might argue that the very nature of our reality has been evolutionarily hewn to maximize our species survival. And you'd probably be right. But does that allow you to escape the nature of our reality? No, not if you yourself are human. Being able to offset our perception in this way is extremely powerful and is in the roots of the scientific method and what has led us to be such an advanced society. But continuing to apply this perception to every aspect of your life is essentially nihilism. What makes us who we are can't be shoved under the rug like that and every emotional attempted to be processed analytically.

[MilanoCookie]

Nihilism may be too extreme, but we need to discern what parts of society are man-made (laws, ethics, morality...all principles that we generally converge and agree on to be civilized and orderly) vs. objective reality.

Calling laws, ethics, and morality absolute or divine truths only serves our own ego. It’s dangerous and misleading when religion defines human constructs as truths, since they are only characteristics of our society.

We definitely should acknowledge who we are, that’s why the study of human psychology and human nature are fascinating. We should also take a third-person view of the world and deeply analyze actual, natural phenomena.

[squirrelicus]

I don't quite take your point. There are truths about being a human. Psychological realities of how the human brain works in ways that are distressing to someone who assumes they have control and are capable of being objective when they think they are being objective.

Then there are ways of dealing with those truths. They cannot be right or wrong, because the fitness of those ways depends on what you're optimizing for. And there are many different things to optimize for which have no objective way to weigh them as such.

I can say to you that the best society is one that emphasizes maximally the consequences of what you choose, while deemphasizing maximally that which you do not choose. I can point to Christianity and capitalism and the West in general as systems that align with that aim and, empirically, have the highest standard of living.

But that's not objective. All I can do is say what you should do in my estimation of what I think will maximize your fulfillment in your own life in the long term.

The Bible is a guide built on thousands of years of people trying to figure out what our aim should be, and how we should act in accordance with that aim.

It's fine to reject it. But there is no objective discovery to be made in this realm. You must choose your subjective values for yourself. And if the world is just, you must experience the systemic consequences of that choice in your own life.

[MilanoCookie]

Could you list some of the truths of being human? Also give some examples of psychological realities of the human brain?

The only ones I know of are biological in nature, as we are living, breathing, conscious, sentient organisms. I used to think us humans were all skeletons, but in reality we're just brains. And our brains, like all matter, are made out of atoms. The body parts are just the physical layer. Think about that next time you talk to someone face to face, you're two brains communicating with each other.

See, the above statements are what I mean when I talk about seeking objective reality. I analyzed us as creatures and stripped it down to the bare bones characteristics, no metaphors involved.

When you speak of fulfillment and having an aim, it's an attempt to rationalize a meaning to life. But the premise may be false, that people assume there is a meaning to be found in life in the first place. And supposedly the answer to what our aims should be are found in a book known as the Bible, which we should interpret as deep, grand metaphors.

Religion and the Bible give people an easy way out of asking the tough questions about the nature of our reality, preventing critical thinking and logical thoughts. It provides comfort for the aimless, lest they have to confront existential dread.

Laws, ethics, and morality are human/social constructs that are characteristics of our society. There are no divine, absolute, or deep truths to be found there. It just defines basic human behavior so society remains civil.

[squirrelicus]

.... cont from previous

> Laws, ethics, and morality are human/social constructs that are characteristics of our society.

Uncontrovertibly true. And I am infinitely grateful for that. We are truly privileged. Almost everybody reading this is, even those in the developing world. History was a lot worse in too many ways for the vast majority of the globe.

> There are no divine, absolute, or deep truths to be found there.

Absolute... Facts are absolutely true or false, so I disagree to the extent that we're talking about facts. I agree to the extent we're talking about opinions, interpretations, and the realm of the subjective.

Divine? Depends on your definition of divine. For me, since I view Christianity in a purely material/temporal context, divine means that which is worth saving above all else. So surely, there exists divinity under this definition. Indeed, the entire West is predicated on the idea that everybody, even the worst of humanity, has divinity within them. Even Nazis deserve a trial before a sentence. Thank God we all believe that. Well, we used to. These days it's common to hear people convicted that Nazis should be punched in the face. That a mere belief deserves violence, no matter if any action is taken on that belief. shudder

As for deep? Hard one to define, but let me try: Let's say... deep is a qualitative relative measurement of literary prowess from which useful abstractions can be drawn out. The Bible is almost unfathomably deep compared to House of Cards, Game of Thrones, and Avengers. Compared to high quality stand-up comedy, the aforementioned texts are so deep the Mariana Trench is jealous.

Truths, that's a tough one. We often use the word "proof" in different contexts. Legal proof is different from mathematical proof, for example -- the former being highly convincing evidence, and the latter being absolutely, 100%, correct. So, for example, is it true that Mercury is closer to the Sun than the Earth right now? Yes. Is that deep? No. Is it true that before you die you will change the lives of thousands of people? Probably. Is that deep? Yes. Is it true that when your ego is defeated your brain, and thus your entire perception of the world will reconfigure itself permanently in a way you cannot control? Yes. Is that deep? Little more is deeper for the invidividual who is defeated, and the Bible will help you understand what happened and help you through it.

> It just defines basic human behavior so society remains civil.

I can't find any way to read this that isn't the assumption that this is kind of... a given. You stand on the shoulders of giants. Be careful not to treat civilization so flippantly. It wasn't so long ago that the basic human behavior we take for granted did not exist. And it may not in the future, objectivity and science notwithstanding. Hell is a long way down.

Indeed, Auschwitz and the Gulags and Maoist China show us that "basic human behavior" wasn't a given merely 80 years ago. And it might not be tomorrow.

---

And now, we return to the beginning.

> Could you list some of the truths of being human? ...

You asked. This may be pandora's box for the reader. If so, I hope you're ready.

Without an aim, you will find it exhausting to do a good job at anything because your mind will be pulling you in a thousand different directions at once. Humans without an aim are more vulnerable to anxiety and depression and suicide.

You are not a different kind of human from the Nazi citizens, soldiers, or leaders. You're not a different kind of human from the slave abusers. You're not a different kind of human from the Israelites who developed the oral tradition of the Torah. All the same neurochemical processes govern you that governed them. Let that one soak in. There's nothing about your meat that would prevent you from being a Nazi cooperator or perpetrator. The largest, and probably only reason you're not, is the context of the environment you were born into.

Jealousy is one of the strongest driving forces of the human brain. Almost everything you do is because of your reaction to a shrinking feeling you get when you observe those who are more competant or lucky than you having better lives than you. Be grateful most of the time your reaction is to try harder. That bit gets flipped fast, and it's hard to notice. Before you know it, you're Cain shouting "Why isn't my work good enough!?" and desiring revenge.

> Also give some examples of psychological realities of the human brain?

When you are defeated, let's say your boss fired you when you screwed up and you spent three months unemployed while you try to regain your ego and find a new job. Your amygdala grows. It will never shrink again, if you're healthy. You will forever fear the world more, and you will release stress-related adrenaline more often which will trigger fear and hatred of those you suspect are trying to hurt you again, even if they're not, because...

Your perception is dependent on your predictions. Most of what you think you see, hear, think, and read is not even close to an accurate depiction of reality. Additionally...

Most of your actions are dependent on your predictions. You predict the cup is in your hand, and your brain fills in the details without you even thinking about. Almost everything you do has abritrarily close to zero thought behind it. Which sucks because...

Humans are hard wired to be worried about everything all the time. We have to be ready, at all times, to know what to do when we don't know what to do. Prediction is the force that calms this urge. The more the world follows your predictions, the calmer you will be. When the world doesn't conform to your predictions, you'll ignore it or rationalize it, or find yourself in the pit of anxiety trying to reconfigure your deepest predictions about the world. You cannot escape this. Worse,

Enough about prediction, how about this: You are not, nor ever were, nor ever will be neurochamically capable of ethically evaluating almost every action you take. You will summarize and abstract. Without an abstract aim and system to guide you, you will fall short in your own estimation eternally as your brain randomly assigns actions prescribed by your previous experience.

Given the HN demographics, most people are not as smart as you, and do all of this more poorly than you do. But they think they're at least as good, if not moreso, than you are at this.

Okay, religion time: You're an imperfect human being. But you almost never say out loud, even in private, when you fall short of your own view of morality. The process of saying your own screw-ups out loud, however, is the most powerful psychological tool for (a) recognizing that there's something wrong, and (b) fixing it. Practicing religious folk that pray are light-years ahead in moral self-improvement because they are constantly saying out loud [to the ether, to God, it doesn't matter] how they fucked up. And then they ask [themselves, God, it doesn't matter] how to fix it. And the "voice of God" or "spiritual confirmation" that speaks to them is [almost certainly their own mind] helping them discover how to fix it. But your brain will usually not actually react to you trying to fix anything until you say it and want to actually know the answer for how to fix it. This is Repentance, back to front.

---

I hope that helped you understand my perspective. Thanks for reading.

Here's a quick parting thought: Why is every society religious? Why did religious societies out-compete non-religious societies. I submit to you, because religious societies are more "fit" than non-religious societies. The reasons may be complex, but they are real, and true.

The start of my journey was this question: "What if I'm missing out on something huge, something that a deep, animal part of my brain needs, something that is whatever religion provides; but it can't tell me that's what it needs because that part of the brain doesn't communicate in words..."

[MilanoCookie]

I read both of your comments, this has been an interesting discussion and I'll keep these views in mind as I explore the topic some more.

I'm trying to craft an objective reality/worldview filled with objective truths. I need an accurate model to work off of so I don't make any errors in judgement. My main goal is to further mankind in the most significant matter possible, like you said, we're standing on the shoulders of giants.

Although, fame and money is not what I seek, I only wish contribute immensely in terms of work. I'm not trying to create something small like a social media site for pets, I'm trying to aim for innovations like the discovery and harnessing of electricity.

[squirrelicus]

Good luck. It's a tough world. You know, Christ was born under an order for his death with soldiers knocking on doors killing babies, born into a rickety wooden construct for holding animal feed, full of snot and spit. Even the greatest man is born into a world of threats of death, disease, and eventual death. We all share this burden together. And whether Christ was real doesn't actually matter. Almost every historical figure is a legend, an abstraction, and history shows us who we are nonetheless.

Godspeed on your journey my friend.

[geitir]

Thanks for taking the time to form your perspective in words. It was an interesting read and one which I (at first pass) agree with.

[squirrelicus]

Absolutely!

You know, there's a lot of videos of Jordan Peterson being randomly harassed in public by people with a political agenda trying to make him look bad. Even though it's an obvious bad faith harassment situation, he takes the time to answer the questions anyway. Likely because he has full knowledge that even if his answer isn't for the "interviewer", many others will see it too.

I've tried to learn from his example.

https://youtu.be/O-nvNAcvUPE

[squirrelicus]

I want to be extra clear: All the things I believe about religion are rooted in a belef in neurochemical reactions in meatbrains in a purely, exclusively, hard-materialistic perspective.

I also want to state that I'm trying to see what you're written in the best possible light. I mean that. But I might fail, and for that I apologize in advance. I'm not trying to straw man, and if you think I am, know that's not my intention and feel free to clarify.

> Could you list some of the truths of being human? Also give some examples of psychological realities of the human brain?

Sure. This is going to take quite a bit of effort to unpack. But first, let me address the remainder of your post because I think it's important context. But my answer to this question is at the end.

> The only ones I know of are biological in nature, as we are living, breathing, conscious, sentient organisms. I used to think us humans were all skeletons, but in reality we're just brains. And our brains, like all matter, are made out of atoms. The body parts are just the physical layer. Think about that next time you talk to someone face to face, you're two brains communicating with each other.

Indeed. In fact, while the center of our perception might be our brains, what we are at a deeper level is worms. Coelemates, to be precise. We are incredibly sophisticated survival systems for a digestive tract. In any case, the things you said are probably true, and I do accept them as true with a high degree of confidence. All things I think religion has to teach me are biological, or more accurately, mental. But to be clear, I believe mental things are merely emergent from biological things and non-supernatural.

> See, the above statements are what I mean when I talk about seeking objective reality. I analyzed us as creatures and stripped it down to the bare bones characteristics, no metaphors involved.

What you've done is the easy part. All mentally capable people can trivially get where you arrived with minimal thinking. And they have for millenia, since the first body was literally and metaphorically carved up by makeshift spears and knives.

> When you speak of fulfillment and having an aim, it's an attempt to rationalize a meaning to life.

I do not think I'm rationalizing anything, but...

> But the premise may be false, that people assume there is a meaning to be found in life in the first place.

I think what you're trying to say is that people try to construct unbelievably false narratives, like "this life is a test" or "God will judge you in the afterlife", so you can attain a level of comfort that "everything has a purpose". These are comforting thoughts. And by the way, who are you to say people shouldn't have these comforts? Or that you shouldn't have these comforts? Maybe you shouldn't have a couch because the ground under it is hard. But in any case. It's extraordinarily unlikely that these comforts accurately describe reality. But there's much, much more meaning to life than believing fairy tales. Ever helped a struggling child solve homework problems? Ever helped an old lady across the street? Ever contributed to a project where you solved what seemed like an impossibly complex problem at the outset? That feeling is good. And it's meaningful.

If what you're saying is that there is no personal meaning to your actions, then that is exactly what nihilism is. Nihilism is stupid. It's worse than heroin. And it's empirically known to be a gateway to unncessary suffering including depression, anxiety, malicious behavior, suicide, and other undesirable things. Is it objective that those things are undesirable? No. But that doesn't matter. If you do not want these things, then you ought to find meaning, because meaning is the only weapon you have to fight nihilism.

As Jordan Peterson was struggling for over a decade to find a singular axiom, one from which he could begin to understand the human condition at a fundamental level, as he was deeply studying totalitarianism with the aim of preventing it from ever happening again, he found it.

The reality of pain. Everyone feels it. You can say it has no meaning, but you're wrong. Goddamnit when you are in pain, your life suddenly has an aim, a meaning: Stop the pain. You cannot dispute this (yeah yeah masochists, but they have a relatively low ceiling for "pleasurable" pain compared to what you can do to them). The reality of pain and the meaning behind it is universal, a fundamental axiom. And, to your earlier point, it's nothing but nerves and brainmeats passively doing their neurochemical thing.

> And supposedly the answer to what our aims should be are found in a book known as the Bible, which we should interpret as deep, grand metaphors.

Supposedly, they say. I didn't. Now I do. It took me a long time to take the Bible seriously. Once I did, it started to become more clear, with the guidance of Jordan Peterson's study. I can say you'll never see it if you don't look yourself. Or, actually, take the easy way out like I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w

> Religion and the Bible give people an easy way out of asking the tough questions about the nature of our reality ...

I'm not sure what you mean here. What you say sounds dramatically incorrect in a way that you must be completely ignoring (or ignorant of) the philosophical shoulders on which you stand. But, maybe I'm reading that incorrectly. Text is hard.

Theology and philosophy in general has always been the practice of asking the hardest of questions about the nature of our existence. But you said nature of our reality. I think you might be referring to facts that we believe with a high degree of confidence like "We're alone in the universe" and "The Earth is the center of nothing but itself". I think history does a pretty good job of showing that religion prevents neither the investigation nor acceptance of such extraordinarily likely facts. Here we are in a religious world, after all. However, I do think that religious tradition has caused quite a large minority of believers to unfortunately reject many facts in lieu of purely religious explanations, such as Young Earth Creationism. But these things die, even if they die slowly.

> ... preventing critical thinking and logical thoughts. ...

Again, I think what you're describing is a minority of believers, even if the minority is large. And it's shrinking over time. These things take time. And the record of history pushes us in the right direction.

What I hope you're not saying is that religion actually does prevent critical thinking and logical thoughts in general. Clearly this is not the case. The scientific method, and most all scientific discoveries in history, have been due to religious people -- largely Christians and Jews specifically. So that's just empirically wrong.

> It provides comfort for the aimless, lest they have to confront existential dread.

I don't know what you mean by aimless. But I am certain that everybody (above a rather low level of mental capacity) confronts existential dread. There are two things I learned about faith prior to being converted: (a) everybody, everybody who believes struggles with faith. Everybody, even the faithless, have times in their life where they confront the question of whether they're wrong about everything, "maybe nothing has any meaning", and the dread that follows. There is no blind follower. Merely people who, for a short time, aren't considering the question right now. And (b), there's a large number of believers who have never had a spiritual experience, no "special knowledge". Merely people who have reasoned their way into their beliefs for one reason or another.

.... cont on next comment