COMMENTS: 72
Why Atheists Have Great Sex
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For some reason, the sex- positive community is also, very often, a spiritual community. (At least in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live.) It’s not often a conventionally religious community; but many varieties of Wicca, Goddess worship, shamanism, Tantra, astrology, chi, chakras, belief in a collective metaphysical consciousness, and other forms of New Age belief and magical thinking permeate it, both privately and publicly.
This troubles me. I am a hard- core atheist/ materialist/ naturalist/ humanist/ skeptic/ whatever you want to call someone who doesn’t believe in any supernatural entities or substances. And I’m just as unconvinced — and almost as troubled — by the ideas of the Goddess and chi energy and immortal consciousness and so on, as I am by the ideas of God and angels and Hell.
Now, I’m not writing this piece to argue against religion. I may yet write a piece criticizing spiritual beliefs and practices in the sex- positive community . . . but it’s not what I’m doing here. (If you want to see my reasons and arguments for my lack of spiritual belief, you can do so here, and here, and here and here and here.)
What I want to do here is offer an alternative.
I want to offer a positive way of looking at sexuality and sexual transcendence that doesn’t involve any sort of belief in the supernatural. I want to offer a sex- positive philosophy that is entirely materialist. The materialist view of life in general and sex in particular is often viewed as cold, bleak, narrow, mechanical, reductionist, and generally a downer. I don’t think it is. And I want to talk about why.
•
The materialist view says that there is no supernatural world. At all. There is only the physical world. All those things that seem non- physical — thoughts, feelings, choices, selfhood, transcendent sexual ecstasy, consciousness in general — are actually products of the brain, and of the brain’s interactions with the rest of the body and the rest of the world. We don’t yet know exactly how this works — the science of neuropsychology is still in its infancy — but the overwhelming evidence we have so far is that this seems to be so.
And to me, this is not a downer. This is magnificent.
To me, the idea that, out of nothing but earth and water and sunlight, these wildly complex living beings have developed, not only with the capacity for consciousness but with the capacity to create the experience of ecstasy for ourselves and one another . . . that is just jaw-droppingly astonishing. We can create the experience of joy, of deep, expansive pleasure that takes us out of ourselves and into one another . . . and we do it through a complex re-arrangement of the energy of the sun, and the atoms and molecules of the planet.
That is magnificent. That, more than any spiritual belief I ever had, makes me feel both humble and proud. That makes me feel intimately connected with the rest of the Universe . . . in a way that no spiritual practice ever did. What’s that old hippie song about how we’re stardust, made of billion- year- old carbon? You don’t have to believe in metaphysical energy to think that that is wicked cool.
There’s something else, too. When you look at human beings from a materialist and evolutionary standpoint, not as special spiritual entities or children of the Goddess but simply as another twig on the evolutionary tree . . . that view puts sex squarely front and center in the human experience. Sex has an immensely important place in the evolutionary scheme. Darwin wrote an entire book about it.
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Posted by: kogwonton on May 14, 2009 1:17 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This troubles me. I am a hard- core atheist/ materialist/ naturalist/ humanist/ skeptic/ whatever you want to call someone who doesn’t believe in any supernatural entities or substances.”
Supernatural is an oxymoron in the English language, and unfortunately a lack of attention to language tends to confuse philosophy. I believe this is why so any philosophic or religious/ideological arguments eventually devolve into semantics. Abiogenesis (origins of life itself) is a question which science seems far from answering without even touching on the idea of consciousness or will, which are equally mysterious questions in a deterministic/material universe.
I firmly believe that there is no supernatural, at all. Yet I think that consciousness and life are aspects of this material universe, and we continually increase our scientific understanding of them. With sufficient advances in technology we may even conceivably render time and space, even our bodies, irrelevant. I believe our only limitations are those of imagination, understanding, desire and our ability to resist fear. How much space does an idea require? How much flesh? We are constantly reducing the amount of space and matter required for computer data storage and processing. We are constantly increasing the speed of processing that data. Only a few years ago a photon was frozen, and they were already talking about quantum computing, and just a year or two ago I read that they have already built those computers. Our scientific breakthroughs are marching along at a telescopic/exponential rate - allowing for technology which is still withheld from the public. I believe that consciousness and imagination could be considered forces of nature, potentially capable of diverting stars from their paths. It is a simple fact that we are products of this universe, therefore products of nature. Therefore at least part of this universe is conscious. If electrochemistry can give rise to human consciousness, and the known universe proves to be a veritable cauldron of electrochemistry, then it follows that far higher and less materially significant forms of consciousness (assuming we would recognize it) , and the necessary mechanics which would make it possible, may be yet await discovery.
Supernatural is a word that is mutually exclusive all by itself, and yet there are real phenomena which cannot be quantified (matter literally means ‘to measure) or which tend toward progressive material insignificance. It is wrong to think of several of the things listed by the author as being 'supernatural' when in fact the followers of most of these ideas see them as utterly natural, and likely could be described in materialistic scientific terms if they were understood. We still have a lot of interesting questions that are not answered, and I believe the answers are obstructed by the arbitrary distinction between nature (deterministic/materialistic universe and all that is yet to be learned about it) and Supernature, which is a term that basically says that there is something above and beyond 'everything that we know, and everything we don't know' (all that is) - as in the idea that there are 'many universes in the universe'. I’ve heard it said that “sufficiently advanced technology would appear as magic". I’ll go one better. “Sufficiently advanced technology would appear as biology"
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Posted by: kogwonton on May 14, 2009 1:18 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As for the topic of this article, I believe that transcendent sex (the truly best sex) comes when a person is able to trust themselves to their partner (faith? Oh no!), and submit to abandonment of ‘self’. It appears to me that sexual desire is primordial, an animal instinct, a hunger to seek dissipation of 'self' while simultaneously consume and assimilate the ‘other’. In a way I see it as similar to death - yet not lifelessness, but rather being open to sensual and truly objective experience without judgment – to ‘know’ in the often overlooked and utterly profound ‘Biblical sense’. Not academic knowing, but knowing through experience, of knowing ‘even as we are known’. "It is judgment that defeats us." (Col. Kurtz).
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Posted by: writer7 on May 14, 2009 2:32 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: so what do they yell...
Posted by: Marlena
» RE: so what do they yell...
Posted by: EinMD
» RE: so what do they yell...
Posted by: Aquinas
» RE: so what do they yell...
Posted by: Eddie Van Helsing
» me too...
Posted by: doorma
» OH!!! MY NON-EXISTANT SUPREME BEING!!!
Posted by: Landbaron
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Posted by: DrGeneNelson on May 14, 2009 3:54 AM
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Posted by: Moonray on May 14, 2009 4:28 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I used to take a live-and-let-live stance toward religion, but this human penchant for embracing irrationality now threatens to destroy the entire planet. That's why it's so sad to see the U.S. president and other heads of state genuflecting to religious leaders -- some of them ignorant buffoons -- merely to show their "respect for" (actually fear of) religion. Unless humanity can get past this tendency to create gods and other supernatural forces, what's left of us will soon be living in caves again. Maybe the survivors will learn to live as rational beings -- but I doubt it.
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» RE: A very thoughtful article . . .
Posted by: Urmutt
» RE: A very thoughtful article . . .
Posted by: kogwonton
» RE: A very thoughtful article . . .with the dumbest title ever
Posted by: Beck
» RE: the dumbest title ever
Posted by: Xynyx
» What About Smilin' Bob?
Posted by: doorma
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Posted by: indradawn on May 14, 2009 4:48 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: Now, somebody show this to my brother...
Posted by: sureshot45
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Posted by: jhop on May 14, 2009 4:52 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
denies the potential for growth inherent in diversity.
As to who has better sex, I'm glad you're happy whoever you are.
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» RE: The religion thing
Posted by: sureshot45
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Posted by: deni_haven on May 14, 2009 5:06 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As a former extreme fundamentalist Christian, I used to believe that sex could only be rightly enjoyed between a man and his wife ~ and even that pleasure was only God-approved if the couple eschewed birth control and left it totally up to God as to whether their union would result in the creation of a new life.
A "queer spanking fetishist who neither has nor wants kids" ~ I'd have felt so sorry for this person who was obviously missing out on "God's best."
I lived my life "by the Book" for over 25 years ~ had seven kids, homeschooled, dutifully submitted to and supported a controlling, abusive husband ~ I was so committed to following God that I was willing to lose my life for His sake ~ and I nearly did on several occasions because bearing children never came easy for me.
It took a year-long email correspondence with my atheist uncle ~ plus having my oldest daughter end up in the psych ward after she tried to kill herself ~ to wake me up to the absolute insanity of my religious beliefs.
I am no longer married to the misogynistic asshole who made us all hate our lives, I am no longer ordering my life according to the teachings of an ancient book of patriarchal sheep herders, I am No Longer Quivering.
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» RE: No Longer Quivering ‹(ô¿ô)›
Posted by: kogwonton
» RE: No Longer Quivering ‹(ô¿ô)›
Posted by: Xynyx
» RE: No Longer Quivering ‹(ô¿ô)›
Posted by: kogwonton
» Hallelujah, sister! Welcome home!
Posted by: Fog
» I'm happy for you too!
Posted by: chance garden
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Posted by: bobgalli on May 14, 2009 5:15 AM
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To touch briefly on a comment in one of Ms. Christina's links, we atheists have an unfettered reason to live our lives in harmony with others - perhaps even more so than those who profess to be religious. Consider the fact that we have no ethereal god to protect against infidels who have their own gods to protect - and so on. One less burden to carry - defending one's 'religion'. To the extent one should believe in a god, let it be that which is characterized by Gary Larson - you know, the one making snakes, etc. out of clay and having a 'devilishly' good time at it ;>)
Best wishes to all
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Posted by: solrev on May 14, 2009 6:28 AM
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Posted by: EinMD on May 14, 2009 7:18 AM
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You can wrap it up in any fancy costume, prop, tradition, religion or other mumbo jumbo you want but it's all just biology at work.
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Posted by: Jesse Forgione on May 14, 2009 7:48 AM
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"...taking advantage of the joyful experiences it has to offer, suddenly becomes a whole lot more important. It’s almost a moral obligation."
Just take out the word "almost" and you've got it exactly right.
Or as the last rational philosopher put it:
"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."
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Posted by: Mousey on May 14, 2009 7:59 AM
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One can't be controlling or powerful or exploitative if one recognizes this, and if there's one thing that's anathema to the powerful and their devotees, it's equality.
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Posted by: GPFrank on May 14, 2009 8:15 AM
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Adding to passages in the text about the Lord not suffering women and Paul the great founder of the actual church's bachelorhood and general
hostility to sexual practice it is a wonder good Christians have any fun at all. Unitarians
and other liberals always display some sort of embarasment.
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Posted by: Zimbly on May 14, 2009 8:22 AM
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Its funny , in an age where we accept the Quantum Theory...ie a Fourth dimension and Law of Conservation of Energy and so forth, we can't seem to apply this to ourselves and our lives, as if all of this stuff somehow had nothing to do with us, only with "things"
We still live back in a 17th Century Newtonian world of "things and objects".
When Albert Einstein was asked to explain what E=mc2 meant to him personally, his answer was very interesting, he said " E=mc2 was a spiritual experience that I managed to express mathematically"
Yet we know that this "vapor" that Einstein cooked up is very real.
Lastly as humans we also make the mistake that "thoughts and feelings" are somehow our proprietary right, that as a species , only humans can think and feel. Wade Davis and David Suzuki both called this view, "Anthropo-centric".
In most of the Indigenous cultures around the world including the Aborigines of Australia, it is their understanding that " thoughts and feelings" are a dimension on there own and are not exclusive to the human domain, they enter human awareness, can posses someone and can also destroy someone as well as be a great benefit
It is this particular brand of unconsciousness that CG Jung found repulsive in the European/ Western outlook.
It is only we in the Western world with our typical hubris and arrogance , believe that the world is a playground or shopping mall where you go out and exploit it for your egotistic enjoyment.
The author is speaking to an audience via the "Unspoken Religion"...full of half baked unconscious assumptions and beliefs that when carefully scrutinized, are as irrational and idiotic as any mainstream religion can be.
Yet believed in they are, in a world where there in US/ human beings/Me/Myself and I and the rest of the world is a "thing" .
How tragic, vacuous and sad.
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» RE: If thats what the author thinks
Posted by: kogwonton
» RE: If thats what the author thinks
Posted by: Zimbly
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Posted by: jesme on May 14, 2009 9:17 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I mean, how the heck can anybody know whether theists or atheists have better sex? The assumption that one group or the other is missing out is just that--an assumption, and a rather silly one at that. I'd never presume to say that gettin' it on Godless-style is no fun. I couldn't possibly know.
I always figured atheists favored a hardcore, evidence-based, just-the-facts approach to life. Which makes the central claim of this article seem kinda ridiculous.
BTW, I jes' love sex! Why do you think I was so eager to read this article? I suppose there are religious people who hate getting busy, but I've not met very many of them. And based on my personal experience, I know at least two Baptists who are pretty darn good at it!
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» lol
Posted by: EinMD
» Ah, yes, you're rockin' your copy of "Intended for Pleasure" pretty hard, aren't you?
Posted by: Smackback
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Posted by: Jaffe on May 14, 2009 9:41 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
See, I'm Roman Catholic and love oral which to me is Transubstantiation all over again.
And when I cry out in unadulterated sexual pleasure the image that strikes like lightning through my loins is of Saint Theresa in Her ecstasy.
I am also an avid sports fan who roots like mad for the San Diego Chargers, so don't even mention your godless Oakland Raiders or SF 'Niners because I'm also into Mixed Martial Arts and know how to kick butt.
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» RE: Transub-sexualization
Posted by: EinMD
» RE: Transub-sexualization
Posted by: Jaffe
» RE: Transub-sexualization
Posted by: kogwonton
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Posted by: Ranjit Kumar on May 14, 2009 9:52 AM
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» RE: What nonsense ! Is that why atheists are restless in life ?
Posted by: EinMD
» RE: What nonsense ! Is that why atheists are restless in life ?
Posted by: Aquinas
» Restless?
Posted by: bbq
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Posted by: sunnywater on May 14, 2009 10:14 AM
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How's your funkentelechy?
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Posted by: puf_almighty on May 14, 2009 10:29 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I dunno man. I've got a bio degree, I've got no doubt about evolution, I've studied neuroscience and am fascinated by it. I understand that you can poke a brain in the right spot and thusly change the person's awareness, drives, actions. But even beyond all the infinite magic and majesty of the human body, I'm disturbed at the concept of so many people, their stories so long and complex, their lives full of struggle, virtue and vice. And that they all go into the blackness, the void of unbeing, like a candle snuffed or a sand-painting swept from the floor.
Just people? What about the dogs, the cats, the dinosaurs, the parrots, the trees? Why should my conception of a preserved soul be so anthropocentric?
I go to church, but I don't like much of what they say there. I go because it focuses me, gives me a ritual, a place to meditate and commune.
I agree that your perspective on the joy of sex is a good one, and I'd hope that many religious people could share it! I sure do. I don't see it as exclusively an atheist one, at all.
I dunno, man. My arguments for the supernatural are simple: one is that the very fact of the existence of anything is itself irrational. Either everything is eternal and has always existed (which doesn't make sense) or everything spontaneously sprang into being (which also doesn't make sense), so your only possibilities are each supernatural in nature.
My other argument is the fact of consciousness. It's unnecessary for function- we could be computers or calculators and carry out all the same evolutionarily adaptive (or maladaptive) behaviors. To say that consciousness, the quality of awareness, is an emergent property of the interaction between neurons, is a lacking explanation. Emergent properties- i.e. the dipole of a water molecule- always draw logically from an interaction of the properties of their parts. What's necessary or logical about consciousness?
" ... and it seemed to be a matter of wandering through room after room of my brain looking for the owner and not finding him anywhere, sweat broke out on my forehead, it was becoming desperate because I was running out of rooms and the Padre was still watching me.
"Nobody home," I said finally, sure that the answer wasn't good enough.
"That's odd," he said. "Who's conducting the search?""
-Illuminatus! Trilogy, R.A. Wilson
These ideas tell me nothing about god. But they derive, from no assumptions, Cartesian-style, the existence of the supernatural. And that's a good start.
Historically the church has been the home of turds and charlatans who would sell the people visions of Rock Candy Mountain to get 'em to comply with the boss man's whip. Ain't no denyin that. So I see atheism as a good social movement, away from a traditional form of oppression, and I applaud it.
I just don't necessarily think it's true.
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» RE: I like it! Also I'm not an atheist.
Posted by: kogwonton
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Posted by: evasta7 on May 14, 2009 10:37 AM
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http://www.tantra.org/basis.html
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Posted by: DaBear on May 14, 2009 12:31 PM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is one of the flaws I see in a lot of progressive thought too, the itch to have to include the supernatural in order to legitimate something. David Korten's wonderful book The Great Turning falls down flat when he goes into a three chapter long diatribe about how intelligent design of all bloody things is a vital part of a mature spiritual consciousness. At that point the old guy lost me. I've been around long enough to know the shine-on from the hard-on and I'm sorry if that offends Mr. Korten and the other weak minded 'merkaaner simps but when you own your shit you own your arousal. You don't give it away to some mumbo jumbo'd nonsense because it suits your white cultural sensibility or whatever. That's frakked.
Earth never lies. People do. There is profound ecstasy in what is right here in front of us. Own that. Never give it away to some bullshit Beyond.
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» RE: ight on, Greta.
Posted by: kogwonton
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Posted by: Defenestrator on May 14, 2009 12:59 PM
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Posted by: GretaChristina on May 14, 2009 1:45 PM
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» RE: Clarification from the author on the title
Posted by: Defenestrator
» I hate the word sex in this context - prefer "making love"
Posted by: stilldreaming
» The phrase "making love: makes me want to puke
Posted by: bbq
» Greta,
Posted by: chance garden
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Posted by: dith on May 14, 2009 3:29 PM
Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
He talks about sex in way spiritual terms and throws a evolutionary cloak over it. Why can't evolution also be a spiritual/moral process at the same time? C'mon, I know you can do it, be nondual. That's what yer screaming about anyway.
We like to be angry at other people's perceived wrongness.
Regardless of the righteousness, definitions all point to the same thing. Thanks for clarifying it.
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Posted by: sausage on May 14, 2009 4:56 PM
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» Oh my! Looks like one fisher of men hooked a real sausage!
Posted by: chance garden
» YOU ARE NOT WRONG.
Posted by: Raymond Emerson
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Posted by: yale on May 14, 2009 5:48 PM
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Posted by: kenhymes on May 14, 2009 7:16 PM
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Anyway, every one knows that South Philly Catholics have the best sex. They don't worry, they just do it and then tell the priest, if they feel like it. Come on, what is this garbage? Humans have great sex and crappy sex in every town, every religion, every nook and cranny of the earth. On top of cars, in the choir robing room, on a bench by a river. Great sex is all about mutual passion and trust. People who believe in God are also quite capable of that, you know. I'm not saying that some odd birds with distorted theology haven't ruined sex for a lot of people, but if you think atheists don't know how to have bad, abusive, stupid sex... you don't know my relatives and ancestors very well.
Can we get over this absurd obsession with religion? Man, you atheists are way more interested in religion than most of the churchgoers I know. Hmmmmm.....
Peace y'all
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Posted by: chance garden on May 14, 2009 10:10 PM
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ARE YOU LISTENING TO WHAT YOU ARE EVEN SAYING?
ALL THAT TALK ABOUT "CONNECTING WITH ALL OF LIFE, AND WITH THE EXPANSE OF HISTORY."
THAT'S THE SAME KIND OF NON-SENSE THAT YOU SAY YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN!
We don't connect with anything else but the person we are having sex with, period. But I like the spanking part!
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Posted by: nonyio on May 15, 2009 12:49 AM
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Posted by: Douglas_Wilson on May 15, 2009 5:32 AM
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» Next time you have a thought you should just let it go...
Posted by: Landbaron
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Posted by: socrates2 on May 15, 2009 8:15 AM
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By "connecting with all living things" as you wrote this reader gets your point in a metaphorical, 6 degrees of separation, non-metaphysical sense.
When will some folks learn that language is yet another tool derived by the human brain?
And that it's offshoot, logic, is limited, as Kant taught us, to _experience_.
And more to the point, all language is symbolic; symbols tend to be absolute, and when we discourse in symbols we all too often tend to fall into the anti-experiential trap of believing that our _conclusions_ in "symbols" or symbolic language are absolute...
"The map is not the territory," Korzybski warned us.
I tend to believe we put language to its purest use when we use it to express our feelings and our perceptions. Beyond that, all we can use language for is salesmanship (to persuade you to accept my "goods" or my "gods").
As you sagely wrote, what were my probable-istic chances of coming into existence as a human being before and during my parents' act of coitus? Slender, very slender. But it is that un-likely--if not random--result which compels me, in following my empathic/tribal impulse, to understand the joy/pain/struggles of others and let each man enjoy his finite moments of ecstasy without my interference...
Then we die and our atoms re-join the cosmic brew. No teleology, no theology, no metaphysics, no linguistic mumbo-jumbo. No manipulative symbol-word games.
"Man makes himself," assuming he understands the chthonic pull (endorpin-based conditioning, actually) of the atavistic, survival impulses (sexual, tribal, territorial/acquisitive, religious, sado-masochistic, revenge, etc.) embedded in his evolutionary, simian brain.
And until our culture strips the taboo nature from the study and understanding of many of these impulses, we will remain the slaves of these easily-reinforced/conditioned impulses.
Till then, Greta, spank on, spank on...
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Posted by: Aquinas on May 15, 2009 9:17 AM
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Posted by: Raymond Emerson on May 18, 2009 11:49 PM
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Posted by: davisd on May 20, 2009 11:09 AM
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Posted by: kogwonton on May 14, 2009 1:17 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This troubles me. I am a hard- core atheist/ materialist/ naturalist/ humanist/ skeptic/ whatever you want to call someone who doesn’t believe in any supernatural entities or substances.”
Supernatural is an oxymoron in the English language, and unfortunately a lack of attention to language tends to confuse philosophy. I believe this is why so any philosophic or religious/ideological arguments eventually devolve into semantics. Abiogenesis (origins of life itself) is a question which science seems far from answering without even touching on the idea of consciousness or will, which are equally mysterious questions in a deterministic/material universe.
I firmly believe that there is no supernatural, at all. Yet I think that consciousness and life are aspects of this material universe, and we continually increase our scientific understanding of them. With sufficient advances in technology we may even conceivably render time and space, even our bodies, irrelevant. I believe our only limitations are those of imagination, understanding, desire and our ability to resist fear. How much space does an idea require? How much flesh? We are constantly reducing the amount of space and matter required for computer data storage and processing. We are constantly increasing the speed of processing that data. Only a few years ago a photon was frozen, and they were already talking about quantum computing, and just a year or two ago I read that they have already built those computers. Our scientific breakthroughs are marching along at a telescopic/exponential rate - allowing for technology which is still withheld from the public. I believe that consciousness and imagination could be considered forces of nature, potentially capable of diverting stars from their paths. It is a simple fact that we are products of this universe, therefore products of nature. Therefore at least part of this universe is conscious. If electrochemistry can give rise to human consciousness, and the known universe proves to be a veritable cauldron of electrochemistry, then it follows that far higher and less materially significant forms of consciousness (assuming we would recognize it) , and the necessary mechanics which would make it possible, may be yet await discovery.
Supernatural is a word that is mutually exclusive all by itself, and yet there are real phenomena which cannot be quantified (matter literally means ‘to measure) or which tend toward progressive material insignificance. It is wrong to think of several of the things listed by the author as being 'supernatural' when in fact the followers of most of these ideas see them as utterly natural, and likely could be described in materialistic scientific terms if they were understood. We still have a lot of interesting questions that are not answered, and I believe the answers are obstructed by the arbitrary distinction between nature (deterministic/materialistic universe and all that is yet to be learned about it) and Supernature, which is a term that basically says that there is something above and beyond 'everything that we know, and everything we don't know' (all that is) - as in the idea that there are 'many universes in the universe'. I’ve heard it said that “sufficiently advanced technology would appear as magic". I’ll go one better. “Sufficiently advanced technology would appear as biology"
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Posted by: kogwonton on May 14, 2009 1:18 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As for the topic of this article, I believe that transcendent sex (the truly best sex) comes when a person is able to trust themselves to their partner (faith? Oh no!), and submit to abandonment of ‘self’. It appears to me that sexual desire is primordial, an animal instinct, a hunger to seek dissipation of 'self' while simultaneously consume and assimilate the ‘other’. In a way I see it as similar to death - yet not lifelessness, but rather being open to sensual and truly objective experience without judgment – to ‘know’ in the often overlooked and utterly profound ‘Biblical sense’. Not academic knowing, but knowing through experience, of knowing ‘even as we are known’. "It is judgment that defeats us." (Col. Kurtz).
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Posted by: writer7 on May 14, 2009 2:32 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: so what do they yell...
Posted by: Marlena
» RE: so what do they yell...
Posted by: EinMD
» RE: so what do they yell...
Posted by: Aquinas
» RE: so what do they yell...
Posted by: Eddie Van Helsing
» me too...
Posted by: doorma
» OH!!! MY NON-EXISTANT SUPREME BEING!!!
Posted by: Landbaron
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Posted by: DrGeneNelson on May 14, 2009 3:54 AM
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Posted by: Moonray on May 14, 2009 4:28 AM
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I used to take a live-and-let-live stance toward religion, but this human penchant for embracing irrationality now threatens to destroy the entire planet. That's why it's so sad to see the U.S. president and other heads of state genuflecting to religious leaders -- some of them ignorant buffoons -- merely to show their "respect for" (actually fear of) religion. Unless humanity can get past this tendency to create gods and other supernatural forces, what's left of us will soon be living in caves again. Maybe the survivors will learn to live as rational beings -- but I doubt it.
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» RE: A very thoughtful article . . .
Posted by: Urmutt
» RE: A very thoughtful article . . .
Posted by: kogwonton
» RE: A very thoughtful article . . .with the dumbest title ever
Posted by: Beck
» RE: the dumbest title ever
Posted by: Xynyx
» What About Smilin' Bob?
Posted by: doorma
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Posted by: indradawn on May 14, 2009 4:48 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: Now, somebody show this to my brother...
Posted by: sureshot45
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Posted by: jhop on May 14, 2009 4:52 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
denies the potential for growth inherent in diversity.
As to who has better sex, I'm glad you're happy whoever you are.
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» RE: The religion thing
Posted by: sureshot45
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Posted by: deni_haven on May 14, 2009 5:06 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As a former extreme fundamentalist Christian, I used to believe that sex could only be rightly enjoyed between a man and his wife ~ and even that pleasure was only God-approved if the couple eschewed birth control and left it totally up to God as to whether their union would result in the creation of a new life.
A "queer spanking fetishist who neither has nor wants kids" ~ I'd have felt so sorry for this person who was obviously missing out on "God's best."
I lived my life "by the Book" for over 25 years ~ had seven kids, homeschooled, dutifully submitted to and supported a controlling, abusive husband ~ I was so committed to following God that I was willing to lose my life for His sake ~ and I nearly did on several occasions because bearing children never came easy for me.
It took a year-long email correspondence with my atheist uncle ~ plus having my oldest daughter end up in the psych ward after she tried to kill herself ~ to wake me up to the absolute insanity of my religious beliefs.
I am no longer married to the misogynistic asshole who made us all hate our lives, I am no longer ordering my life according to the teachings of an ancient book of patriarchal sheep herders, I am No Longer Quivering.
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» RE: No Longer Quivering ‹(ô¿ô)›
Posted by: kogwonton
» RE: No Longer Quivering ‹(ô¿ô)›
Posted by: Xynyx
» RE: No Longer Quivering ‹(ô¿ô)›
Posted by: kogwonton
» Hallelujah, sister! Welcome home!
Posted by: Fog
» I'm happy for you too!
Posted by: chance garden
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Posted by: bobgalli on May 14, 2009 5:15 AM
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To touch briefly on a comment in one of Ms. Christina's links, we atheists have an unfettered reason to live our lives in harmony with others - perhaps even more so than those who profess to be religious. Consider the fact that we have no ethereal god to protect against infidels who have their own gods to protect - and so on. One less burden to carry - defending one's 'religion'. To the extent one should believe in a god, let it be that which is characterized by Gary Larson - you know, the one making snakes, etc. out of clay and having a 'devilishly' good time at it ;>)
Best wishes to all
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Posted by: solrev on May 14, 2009 6:28 AM
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Posted by: EinMD on May 14, 2009 7:18 AM
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You can wrap it up in any fancy costume, prop, tradition, religion or other mumbo jumbo you want but it's all just biology at work.
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Posted by: Jesse Forgione on May 14, 2009 7:48 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"...taking advantage of the joyful experiences it has to offer, suddenly becomes a whole lot more important. It’s almost a moral obligation."
Just take out the word "almost" and you've got it exactly right.
Or as the last rational philosopher put it:
"The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live."
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Posted by: Mousey on May 14, 2009 7:59 AM
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One can't be controlling or powerful or exploitative if one recognizes this, and if there's one thing that's anathema to the powerful and their devotees, it's equality.
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Posted by: GPFrank on May 14, 2009 8:15 AM
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Adding to passages in the text about the Lord not suffering women and Paul the great founder of the actual church's bachelorhood and general
hostility to sexual practice it is a wonder good Christians have any fun at all. Unitarians
and other liberals always display some sort of embarasment.
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Posted by: Zimbly on May 14, 2009 8:22 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Its funny , in an age where we accept the Quantum Theory...ie a Fourth dimension and Law of Conservation of Energy and so forth, we can't seem to apply this to ourselves and our lives, as if all of this stuff somehow had nothing to do with us, only with "things"
We still live back in a 17th Century Newtonian world of "things and objects".
When Albert Einstein was asked to explain what E=mc2 meant to him personally, his answer was very interesting, he said " E=mc2 was a spiritual experience that I managed to express mathematically"
Yet we know that this "vapor" that Einstein cooked up is very real.
Lastly as humans we also make the mistake that "thoughts and feelings" are somehow our proprietary right, that as a species , only humans can think and feel. Wade Davis and David Suzuki both called this view, "Anthropo-centric".
In most of the Indigenous cultures around the world including the Aborigines of Australia, it is their understanding that " thoughts and feelings" are a dimension on there own and are not exclusive to the human domain, they enter human awareness, can posses someone and can also destroy someone as well as be a great benefit
It is this particular brand of unconsciousness that CG Jung found repulsive in the European/ Western outlook.
It is only we in the Western world with our typical hubris and arrogance , believe that the world is a playground or shopping mall where you go out and exploit it for your egotistic enjoyment.
The author is speaking to an audience via the "Unspoken Religion"...full of half baked unconscious assumptions and beliefs that when carefully scrutinized, are as irrational and idiotic as any mainstream religion can be.
Yet believed in they are, in a world where there in US/ human beings/Me/Myself and I and the rest of the world is a "thing" .
How tragic, vacuous and sad.
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» RE: If thats what the author thinks
Posted by: kogwonton
» RE: If thats what the author thinks
Posted by: Zimbly
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Posted by: jesme on May 14, 2009 9:17 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I mean, how the heck can anybody know whether theists or atheists have better sex? The assumption that one group or the other is missing out is just that--an assumption, and a rather silly one at that. I'd never presume to say that gettin' it on Godless-style is no fun. I couldn't possibly know.
I always figured atheists favored a hardcore, evidence-based, just-the-facts approach to life. Which makes the central claim of this article seem kinda ridiculous.
BTW, I jes' love sex! Why do you think I was so eager to read this article? I suppose there are religious people who hate getting busy, but I've not met very many of them. And based on my personal experience, I know at least two Baptists who are pretty darn good at it!
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» lol
Posted by: EinMD
» Ah, yes, you're rockin' your copy of "Intended for Pleasure" pretty hard, aren't you?
Posted by: Smackback
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Posted by: Jaffe on May 14, 2009 9:41 AM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
See, I'm Roman Catholic and love oral which to me is Transubstantiation all over again.
And when I cry out in unadulterated sexual pleasure the image that strikes like lightning through my loins is of Saint Theresa in Her ecstasy.
I am also an avid sports fan who roots like mad for the San Diego Chargers, so don't even mention your godless Oakland Raiders or SF 'Niners because I'm also into Mixed Martial Arts and know how to kick butt.
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» RE: Transub-sexualization
Posted by: EinMD
» RE: Transub-sexualization
Posted by: Jaffe
» RE: Transub-sexualization
Posted by: kogwonton
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Posted by: Ranjit Kumar on May 14, 2009 9:52 AM
Current rating: 3 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: What nonsense ! Is that why atheists are restless in life ?
Posted by: EinMD
» RE: What nonsense ! Is that why atheists are restless in life ?
Posted by: Aquinas
» Restless?
Posted by: bbq
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Posted by: sunnywater on May 14, 2009 10:14 AM
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How's your funkentelechy?
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Posted by: puf_almighty on May 14, 2009 10:29 AM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I dunno man. I've got a bio degree, I've got no doubt about evolution, I've studied neuroscience and am fascinated by it. I understand that you can poke a brain in the right spot and thusly change the person's awareness, drives, actions. But even beyond all the infinite magic and majesty of the human body, I'm disturbed at the concept of so many people, their stories so long and complex, their lives full of struggle, virtue and vice. And that they all go into the blackness, the void of unbeing, like a candle snuffed or a sand-painting swept from the floor.
Just people? What about the dogs, the cats, the dinosaurs, the parrots, the trees? Why should my conception of a preserved soul be so anthropocentric?
I go to church, but I don't like much of what they say there. I go because it focuses me, gives me a ritual, a place to meditate and commune.
I agree that your perspective on the joy of sex is a good one, and I'd hope that many religious people could share it! I sure do. I don't see it as exclusively an atheist one, at all.
I dunno, man. My arguments for the supernatural are simple: one is that the very fact of the existence of anything is itself irrational. Either everything is eternal and has always existed (which doesn't make sense) or everything spontaneously sprang into being (which also doesn't make sense), so your only possibilities are each supernatural in nature.
My other argument is the fact of consciousness. It's unnecessary for function- we could be computers or calculators and carry out all the same evolutionarily adaptive (or maladaptive) behaviors. To say that consciousness, the quality of awareness, is an emergent property of the interaction between neurons, is a lacking explanation. Emergent properties- i.e. the dipole of a water molecule- always draw logically from an interaction of the properties of their parts. What's necessary or logical about consciousness?
" ... and it seemed to be a matter of wandering through room after room of my brain looking for the owner and not finding him anywhere, sweat broke out on my forehead, it was becoming desperate because I was running out of rooms and the Padre was still watching me.
"Nobody home," I said finally, sure that the answer wasn't good enough.
"That's odd," he said. "Who's conducting the search?""
-Illuminatus! Trilogy, R.A. Wilson
These ideas tell me nothing about god. But they derive, from no assumptions, Cartesian-style, the existence of the supernatural. And that's a good start.
Historically the church has been the home of turds and charlatans who would sell the people visions of Rock Candy Mountain to get 'em to comply with the boss man's whip. Ain't no denyin that. So I see atheism as a good social movement, away from a traditional form of oppression, and I applaud it.
I just don't necessarily think it's true.
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» RE: I like it! Also I'm not an atheist.
Posted by: kogwonton
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Posted by: evasta7 on May 14, 2009 10:37 AM
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http://www.tantra.org/basis.html
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Posted by: DaBear on May 14, 2009 12:31 PM
Current rating: 4 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is one of the flaws I see in a lot of progressive thought too, the itch to have to include the supernatural in order to legitimate something. David Korten's wonderful book The Great Turning falls down flat when he goes into a three chapter long diatribe about how intelligent design of all bloody things is a vital part of a mature spiritual consciousness. At that point the old guy lost me. I've been around long enough to know the shine-on from the hard-on and I'm sorry if that offends Mr. Korten and the other weak minded 'merkaaner simps but when you own your shit you own your arousal. You don't give it away to some mumbo jumbo'd nonsense because it suits your white cultural sensibility or whatever. That's frakked.
Earth never lies. People do. There is profound ecstasy in what is right here in front of us. Own that. Never give it away to some bullshit Beyond.
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» RE: ight on, Greta.
Posted by: kogwonton
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Posted by: Defenestrator on May 14, 2009 12:59 PM
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Posted by: GretaChristina on May 14, 2009 1:45 PM
Current rating: 5 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
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» RE: Clarification from the author on the title
Posted by: Defenestrator
» I hate the word sex in this context - prefer "making love"
Posted by: stilldreaming
» The phrase "making love: makes me want to puke
Posted by: bbq
» Greta,
Posted by: chance garden
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Posted by: dith on May 14, 2009 3:29 PM
Current rating: 1 [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
He talks about sex in way spiritual terms and throws a evolutionary cloak over it. Why can't evolution also be a spiritual/moral process at the same time? C'mon, I know you can do it, be nondual. That's what yer screaming about anyway.
We like to be angry at other people's perceived wrongness.
Regardless of the righteousness, definitions all point to the same thing. Thanks for clarifying it.
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Posted by: sausage on May 14, 2009 4:56 PM
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» Oh my! Looks like one fisher of men hooked a real sausage!
Posted by: chance garden
» YOU ARE NOT WRONG.
Posted by: Raymond Emerson
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Posted by: yale on May 14, 2009 5:48 PM
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Posted by: kenhymes on May 14, 2009 7:16 PM
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Anyway, every one knows that South Philly Catholics have the best sex. They don't worry, they just do it and then tell the priest, if they feel like it. Come on, what is this garbage? Humans have great sex and crappy sex in every town, every religion, every nook and cranny of the earth. On top of cars, in the choir robing room, on a bench by a river. Great sex is all about mutual passion and trust. People who believe in God are also quite capable of that, you know. I'm not saying that some odd birds with distorted theology haven't ruined sex for a lot of people, but if you think atheists don't know how to have bad, abusive, stupid sex... you don't know my relatives and ancestors very well.
Can we get over this absurd obsession with religion? Man, you atheists are way more interested in religion than most of the churchgoers I know. Hmmmmm.....
Peace y'all
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Posted by: chance garden on May 14, 2009 10:10 PM
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ARE YOU LISTENING TO WHAT YOU ARE EVEN SAYING?
ALL THAT TALK ABOUT "CONNECTING WITH ALL OF LIFE, AND WITH THE EXPANSE OF HISTORY."
THAT'S THE SAME KIND OF NON-SENSE THAT YOU SAY YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN!
We don't connect with anything else but the person we are having sex with, period. But I like the spanking part!
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Posted by: nonyio on May 15, 2009 12:49 AM
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Posted by: Douglas_Wilson on May 15, 2009 5:32 AM
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» Next time you have a thought you should just let it go...
Posted by: Landbaron
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Posted by: socrates2 on May 15, 2009 8:15 AM
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By "connecting with all living things" as you wrote this reader gets your point in a metaphorical, 6 degrees of separation, non-metaphysical sense.
When will some folks learn that language is yet another tool derived by the human brain?
And that it's offshoot, logic, is limited, as Kant taught us, to _experience_.
And more to the point, all language is symbolic; symbols tend to be absolute, and when we discourse in symbols we all too often tend to fall into the anti-experiential trap of believing that our _conclusions_ in "symbols" or symbolic language are absolute...
"The map is not the territory," Korzybski warned us.
I tend to believe we put language to its purest use when we use it to express our feelings and our perceptions. Beyond that, all we can use language for is salesmanship (to persuade you to accept my "goods" or my "gods").
As you sagely wrote, what were my probable-istic chances of coming into existence as a human being before and during my parents' act of coitus? Slender, very slender. But it is that un-likely--if not random--result which compels me, in following my empathic/tribal impulse, to understand the joy/pain/struggles of others and let each man enjoy his finite moments of ecstasy without my interference...
Then we die and our atoms re-join the cosmic brew. No teleology, no theology, no metaphysics, no linguistic mumbo-jumbo. No manipulative symbol-word games.
"Man makes himself," assuming he understands the chthonic pull (endorpin-based conditioning, actually) of the atavistic, survival impulses (sexual, tribal, territorial/acquisitive, religious, sado-masochistic, revenge, etc.) embedded in his evolutionary, simian brain.
And until our culture strips the taboo nature from the study and understanding of many of these impulses, we will remain the slaves of these easily-reinforced/conditioned impulses.
Till then, Greta, spank on, spank on...
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Posted by: Aquinas on May 15, 2009 9:17 AM
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Posted by: Raymond Emerson on May 18, 2009 11:49 PM
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Posted by: davisd on May 20, 2009 11:09 AM
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