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Parent Category: Engels

Category: Training

Created: Saturday, April 22 2017 11:56

Published: Saturday, April 22 2017 11:56

Written by Bart

Zandvoort aan zee, 360°, today. Perceive [ project ]

Above: Dutch socialism/neo-liberalism at work; cars, refrigerators and gated communities. Beach sign reads: 'Private Property. Entrance only for members and benefactors of K.V. [ camping association ] Helios'

Min/max temperature: 6°C/9°C; humidity: 69%; precipitation: 0.51 mm; sea level pressure: 1027.65 hPa; wind: NNW 24.1 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 518 m., Few 762 m. ; Moon: Waning Crescent, 21% illuminated

"When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. [...] Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time.

But he loves you. He loves you, and he needs money. He always needs money. He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money. Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, you talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit.

But I want you to know something, this is sincere, I want you to know, when it comes to believing in God, I really tried. I really, really tried. I tried to believe that there is a God, who created each of us in his own image and likeness, loves us very much, and keeps a close eye on things. I really tried to believe that, but I gotta tell you, the longer you live, the more you look around, the more you realize, something is fucked up.

Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would've been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago. And by the way, I say "this guy", because I firmly believe, looking at these results, that if there is a God, it has to be a man.

No woman could or would ever fuck things up like this. So, if there is a God, I think most reasonable people might agree that he's at least incompetent, and maybe, just maybe, doesn't give a shit. Doesn't give a shit, which I admire in a person, and which would explain a lot of these bad results.

So rather than be just another mindless religious robot, mindlessly and aimlessly and blindly believing that all of this is in the hands of some spooky incompetent father figure who doesn't give a shit, I decided to look around for something else to worship. Something I could really count on."

George Carlin in 'You Are All Diseased', recorded February 6, 1999, Beacon Theater, New York City, New York, released May 14 1999 trough Eardrum, USA

"Why have the higher mental processes been so resistant to meaningful investigation? […] In accounting for the course of thought and action, there has been repeated reference to the subject's motives and action, and even to an "executive" that seems to have purpose of its own. [ In the book 'Cognitive Psychology' ] we have seen that this leads to no logical impasse. […] but it surely does raise a practical issue. If what the subject will remember depends in large part on what he is trying to accomplish, on his purposes, do not predictions become impossible and explanations ad hoc? If we give no further account of these purposes, how can we tell what [ the subject ] will think of next? [ T] he course of thinking or of "inner-directed" activity is determined at every moment by what the subject is trying to do. Although we cannot always see only what we want to see, we can generally think what we like. The classical procedures of experimental psychology attempt […] brutal force. In an ordinary learning experiment, the subject is supposed to have only a single motive: he must get on with the experimental task, learn what he is told to learn, and solve what he is told to solve. If he has any other desires -- to outwit the experimenter, or walk out, to ask what the answer is -- he must do his best to act as if they did not exist. In this respect, experimental situations are very different from those of daily life. [ S ]implicity of motivation and flexibility of response are characteristic of ordinary life, but they are absent -- or are assumed to be absent -- from experiments on the higher mental processes. […] The simplifications introduced by confining the subject to a single motive and a fixed set of alternative responses can be justified only if motivation and cognition are genuinely distinct. If […] they are inseparable where remembering and thinking are concerned, the common experimental paradigms may pay too high a price for simplicity. Thus, it is no accident that the cognitive approach gives us no way to know what the subject will think of next. We cannot possibly know this, unless we have a detailed understanding of what he is trying to do, and why. "

Ulric Neisser in 'Cognitive Psychology', page 304, 305, first published in 1967 by Pretice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey