Please do a story on "I, Me, Mine" or "Across the Universe" these were two of the last recorded songs by the Beatles which followed from their interest in Hindu philosophy and Transcendental Meditation. Thus, they are fascinating and have interesting stories behind them. They are also spiritually-significant masterpieces, IMO.
Really though - it's no more of an anthropomoprhism than attributing the same properties to humans. Don't take this as a troll, but it seems like the defining difference between anthropomorphic attributions and otherwise is the temporal relation of causal events. According to a naive realist outlook the human self or ego is a causative agent who "intends" to do something and then does it, so the self is a kind of causeless first-cause, or a "free-willing" entity, who is otherwise cut-off from the causal nexus that permeates the universe. This sense seems to be what separates anthropomorphic attributes from everything else, but this also amounts to a homunculus problem. On the other hand if we accept that human beings are as much a part of the causal continuum as everything else, then our anthropomorphic attributes are even erroneously applied to ourselves. We may not "intend" to do anything at all, perhaps we do what we do as the consequence of deterministic factors, meanwhile our conscious delusion of being a causative agent is entirely a false construct.
I mean, there are plenty more reasons to believe this is the case from psychology and physics. Humans are constantly imagining ourselves to be above everything else, even the lawful regularities that bind everything together (i.e. Physics). We have "decision-making processes" but this may not be fundamentally any different than a computer algorithm arriving at different results based on different inputs.
Wikipedia suggests that "French spacing" was dominant until the advent of the Typewriter, at which time "double-spacing" became popular, but by 1950 publishers reverted back to single spaces. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing) Which may explain why, in the 1990s I was taught single-spacing.
This is really nonsense though, because if Socrates was alive today he'd be denouncing the vast majority of our laws, customs and mores. He'd be dead against much of what we do and would be accused of being subversive, unpatriotic, even treasonous. And someone would probably kill him all over again. The moral of the story of the death of socrates is that people get offended at the suggestion that their deeply cherished beliefs are wrong, and they react with threats and violence (if they can't shut you up some other way). Take for example the recent smearing of MSNBC's Chris Hayes
Great Gifs! I like apophysis videos - and of course zooming mandelbrots. Also check out the video "Trippy Animation courtesy of Anthony Francisco Schepperd" set to a dub-step version of Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues. The video was originally for a Blockhead song.
Accordingly, the famous UCLA Lawyer Clarence Darrow said:
"The restrictions placed around the accumulation of property are multiplying faster than any other portions of the criminal code. It takes a long time for new customs or habits or restraints to become a part of the life and consciousness of man so that the mere suggestion of the act causes the reaction that doing it is wrong. No matter how long some statutes are on the books, and how severe the penalties, many men never believe that doing the forbidden act is really a crime. For instance, the violations of many revenue laws, game laws, prohibition laws, and many laws against various means of getting property are often considered as not really criminal. In fact, a large and probably growing class of men disputes the justice of creating many legal rules in reference to private property.
Even the most intelligent ones never know or feel the whole code, and in fact, lawyers are forever debating and judges doubting as to whether many ways of getting property are inside or outside the law. No doubt many of the methods that intelligent and respected men adopt for getting property have more inherent criminality than others that are directly forbidden by the law. It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class. " - Crime Its Cause and Treatment (1922)
I've never questioned that one-space is standard. It's what I was taught in school. 5 spaces or indent using tab at the beginning of a paragraph, otherwise its a single space. I've actually gone through text removing double-spacing because I think it looks bad.
Descartes was French so it's actually "Je pense, donc je suis". Keep in mind that this is from his meditations and what he really said was "I doubt therefor I think; I think therefor I am". It was all predicated on his ability to doubt everything but his own existence. Some rephrase it as "I doubt therefor I am".
"Memento mori"
If you've never read Jill Bolte-Taylor's "My Stroke of Insight" during her stroke in which half of her brain was destroyed, she had feelings approaching death, but in that very dark moment that signaled the end of her life she had thoughts about the future. She insisted on not dying for the sake of a presentation she had to give later that week, car payments, and these kinds of things. Point is, that even in the face of death our minds keep thinking about what we are going to do after we are dead. Our thinking minds do not typically view death as of any consequence and continue on our daily lives as if it will never happen. So I take "Memento mori" not as a reason to live any particular way, but as a kind of Koan to meditate on, and realize how much I am ignoring the fact of it in my daily life.
As a CompTIA A+ Certified technician, I believe compressed air is the correct choice. A lot of people use vacuums but these generate static electricity that can damage PC components. I don't use 30OHM Anti-static wrist straps like I should, but I drain the caps before working inside.
Exactly my point, they could be officially functionally identical, but most people will not accept that possibility because they have an identity invested one way or the other. I am here talking about why a website that rarely gets comments to it's posts suddenly gets 25+ naysaying comments from non-religious people. It's pretty clear that none of these people had strong enough opinions to express when the topic was how much human beings cheat, or anything else. This topic strikes a chord with a lot of people indicating an affective response to the subject matter. That this biases their thinking is guaranteed. calling someone a troll or other names is a useless thing and pretty much signals an unwillingness to think earnestly about what they are saying. It's one of those strategies we use when our self-esteem/values are threatened. Most religious/non-religious debates are a series of personal attacks, kind of like politics.... again, it's because people have so much invested in their private viewpoints, they really aren't interested in facts. You almost never see politicians talking about facts they didn't make up to suit their opinions.
@epe "if I have any resentment at all it’s for people who insist it has some inherent value that I’m just ‘missing’ somehow because I haven’t actually ever met a ‘real’ religion."
This speaks precisely to my point though. As a person who used have that same feeling of resentment myself. The feeling is of an offense, generally. When human beings process information they do so in the context of being a social animal. The implications of the statement as far as social value are concerned are the first response of the human brain. The suggestion that there is something "I" am missing immediately engenders a negative affect for the proposition. Because it has implications for my own cognitive-affective self, my self-concept or self-esteem. To anyone who is just approaching this notion for the first time it will be difficult to grasp. Our minds are biologically determined to "puff ourselves up". And even the suggestion that our minds are biologically determined to do so has negative connotations for our view of ourselves, so it is not easy in principle to accept that view either. It amounts to saying that we are "selfish" but because we are so selfish and it underlies our cognitive-affect apparatus we are self-deluded into viewing ourselves differently. In other words; we feel like innocent righteous people, but everyone of us is unconsciously distorting reality through an information processing system that is geared toward personal sexual success and survival. We are nearly incapable of seeing the world correctly and are seemingly damned only to see the world through our egotistical lens. Our entire perception of things is colored by this fact.
As Albert Einstein said:
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Trade "universe" for "God" and bang, you've got Christianity.
I mean, there are plenty more reasons to believe this is the case from psychology and physics. Humans are constantly imagining ourselves to be above everything else, even the lawful regularities that bind everything together (i.e. Physics). We have "decision-making processes" but this may not be fundamentally any different than a computer algorithm arriving at different results based on different inputs.
"The restrictions placed around the accumulation of property are multiplying faster than any other portions of the criminal code. It takes a long time for new customs or habits or restraints to become a part of the life and consciousness of man so that the mere suggestion of the act causes the reaction that doing it is wrong. No matter how long some statutes are on the books, and how severe the penalties, many men never believe that doing the forbidden act is really a crime. For instance, the violations of many revenue laws, game laws, prohibition laws, and many laws against various means of getting property are often considered as not really criminal. In fact, a large and probably growing class of men disputes the justice of creating many legal rules in reference to private property.
Even the most intelligent ones never know or feel the whole code, and in fact, lawyers are forever debating and judges doubting as to whether many ways of getting property are inside or outside the law. No doubt many of the methods that intelligent and respected men adopt for getting property have more inherent criminality than others that are directly forbidden by the law. It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class. " - Crime Its Cause and Treatment (1922)
Descartes was French so it's actually "Je pense, donc je suis". Keep in mind that this is from his meditations and what he really said was "I doubt therefor I think; I think therefor I am". It was all predicated on his ability to doubt everything but his own existence. Some rephrase it as "I doubt therefor I am".
"Memento mori"
If you've never read Jill Bolte-Taylor's "My Stroke of Insight" during her stroke in which half of her brain was destroyed, she had feelings approaching death, but in that very dark moment that signaled the end of her life she had thoughts about the future. She insisted on not dying for the sake of a presentation she had to give later that week, car payments, and these kinds of things. Point is, that even in the face of death our minds keep thinking about what we are going to do after we are dead. Our thinking minds do not typically view death as of any consequence and continue on our daily lives as if it will never happen. So I take "Memento mori" not as a reason to live any particular way, but as a kind of Koan to meditate on, and realize how much I am ignoring the fact of it in my daily life.
This speaks precisely to my point though. As a person who used have that same feeling of resentment myself. The feeling is of an offense, generally. When human beings process information they do so in the context of being a social animal. The implications of the statement as far as social value are concerned are the first response of the human brain. The suggestion that there is something "I" am missing immediately engenders a negative affect for the proposition. Because it has implications for my own cognitive-affective self, my self-concept or self-esteem. To anyone who is just approaching this notion for the first time it will be difficult to grasp. Our minds are biologically determined to "puff ourselves up". And even the suggestion that our minds are biologically determined to do so has negative connotations for our view of ourselves, so it is not easy in principle to accept that view either. It amounts to saying that we are "selfish" but because we are so selfish and it underlies our cognitive-affect apparatus we are self-deluded into viewing ourselves differently. In other words; we feel like innocent righteous people, but everyone of us is unconsciously distorting reality through an information processing system that is geared toward personal sexual success and survival. We are nearly incapable of seeing the world correctly and are seemingly damned only to see the world through our egotistical lens. Our entire perception of things is colored by this fact.
As Albert Einstein said:
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
Trade "universe" for "God" and bang, you've got Christianity.