»Hmm...I'm so picky!«

Haha...you guys are gonna flame the hell outta me for this one, I see it coming...

Isn't religion...illogical, unreasonable, and unsubstantiated? Belief is a powerful thing, not something to be mocked, so I'm not mocking it. Just calling attention to the fact that religion is a human idea...one of those "temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose!" It's not meant as an offensive remark or a mockery, but I do chuckle a bit when people refer to that machine at the end of revolutions (the one that speaks to Neo) as "The Machine God." What makes it a machine god? Why would the machines have any reason to believe in such a god? If it really were a machine god, wouldn't it be omnipotent or something...hiding somewhere that none of the machines can see (much like "our" god)? I think it's just another machine, one that just happens to be talking to Neo...a machine ambassador, if you will...

A human idea, like maths.

Maths is a human idea. Do you know that within maths there is a proof that 2 + 2 can sometimes equal 5? And there is an even longer proof that 1 + 1 = 2!

However, despite being a human construct we still see maths as being very important. Religion is just a way of working out the mysteries of life. No one really understands God. It isn't possible to truly understand Him. However religion does get us closer than we might otherwise acheive.

As for the machine God, well I don't remember it being called a God anywhere within the movie. I guess you COULD just as easily call it the machine king or machine ambassador or even the machine emperor. I guess it is a God for the reason that it controls all things within the matrix and even some things outside of it. If the matrix is the universe then it is undoubtedly that universe's God.

Well I consider religion to be a form of control like the goverment. However religion provides us with answers to our questions and for most of us it makes life a lot easier. I agree on the belief being a very powerful thing.

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Do you know that within maths there is a proof that 2 + 2 can sometimes equal 5? And there is an even longer proof that 1 + 1 = 2!

Couple of years ago this chap showed me the proof of 2 + 2 = 5. But that was based on an assumption hence it contained a logical fallacy (Toulim's model). Lemme know about the mathematical model that you are reffering to.

Fraid I was told about it by someone studying maths at my uni. Personally I study philosophy (I generally choose theology for my subsidiary courses) so I wouldn't have the faintest idea what the proof meant.

-That's not to say all philosophers can't do maths. There is actually a philosophy of maths. However, personally I suck at maths because I get frightened by the different symbols.

Check out someone doing a maths degree - they ought to be able to tell you something about it....

Math is something we've gone with for a LONG LONG time... equations... calculations all that stuff...

why do we stick so well with mathematics? BECAUSE IT WORKS!

how do we build rockets, and machines and all that? Physics and all that algebra - etc etc the list goes on.

we've incoperated these maths into life, into creating things. And it is the mathematics that MAKES these things work.

for example I have X amount of movie tickets to go watch M3. You give me an extra 3. I now have a total of 10.

X + 3 = 10

X = 10 - 3

x = 7

hey kool! it really works! i had SEVEN tickets before you gave me yours!

Yeah but what I am trying to say is that it is just a man-made method of explaining the world around us. The word seven has little to do with anything unless there are really seven things somewhere in the world.

In a similar way religion is a way of understanding the world. Sure, it works in a different way, but nevertheless it is no less valid.

Religion :

Yes, religion is a form of control. Religion had a little truth to start with and it is so distorted by the opinion of people of various times. It is a perfect example for a simulation in "hyper real"...totally cut off with the basic real and became its own simulacrum. Read Simulation and Simulation keeping in mind that God is the real and Religion is the simulation/model meant to understand God. It makes a lot of sense. My opinion is that religion should be viewed from an allegorical point of view rather than a fundamentalist point of view. When everybody does that the world would be a lot better without those Jehad/Zionism/Crusades/Hindutva etc.

Only because of religions did civilizations evolve. If not for religions, we would have been barbaric and cannibalistic like primitive apes. Consider the examples of most prosperous civilzations of the past...Roman,Egyptian,Indian etc... all had a religion and ONLY because of the religion these civilizations PROGRESSED. Think abt the african continent. Africa (central and southern) never had a religion. Thats why its civilization is so backward.


Maths :

Maths is NOT a human invention. Nobody created maths. Nobody can destroy maths. Maths never had a begining and will never have an end. Simply put Maths is an abstract truth which is eternal, and the so-called human maths is a simulation to understand the abstract truth of Maths. Maths is a best example for Plato's truth.

Um....excuse me. Maths is man-made. It couldn't be more man-made if it tried. Can you have a green 3? no! Why? Because three is just a human concept and doesn't exist in real life.

Sure there can be three objects but that isn't maths. Mathematics is the use of numbers in certain patterns to REPRESENT real life. Maths cannot be said to true life in itself.

Africa is not backward because of a lack of religion. Africa had its own religions within its various tribes. Also there used to be the great empire of the moors (who were muslim) in northern Africa. There are still some great pieces of architecture like the Alhambra in Spain from when they occupied it. I notice you made a point of saying central and southern, but what makes you think that these areas were any less religious than the northern. They had religions, just not always Islam. Africa isn't backward because of lack of religion; it is backward because of lack of money and political influence.

while you say that mathamatics is man made-which it is in terms of the numerical display of it...

here is something else which is arguably man made although scientists wwould argue that it is not

time...without man made watches there would be no concept of time as we know it...things would just happen so you wouldnt be able to travel back in time by setting a clock in a machine as the clock is not the event it is a display of the events "time"

maths is the same...things happen and humans explain what is happening in terms of numbers...the numbers mearly show us what would happen anyway...

it enables us to predict certain things such as "will a building stand or fall down in certain conditions" but the maths itself would happen without our explanation of it

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Religion is just a way of working out the mysteries of life. No one really understands God. It isn't possible to truly understand Him. However religion does get us closer than we might otherwise acheive.

I believe culture comes before religion.

Ethololgy, which is the study of animal behaviour might look at religion in terms of the evolution of collective human behaviour. By the way I got my ideas on this from Rene Girard's book Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World.

If I understand what he's saying even slightly when we moved from being animals to humans, called hominization, we discovered that we were better able to survive if we stuck together and so culture was born: a community. However, due to our propensity for violent action in order to get our way and our tendency towards rivalry which again ends in disaster, prohibitions had to be set in place in order that we didn't kill each other. For example, the prohibition against incest was first introduced in these early stages
(remember we're talking a long time ago; a time where child sacrifice and animal sacrifice in order to keep the peace, was not a foreign concept and interestingly enough we probably have religion to thank for the end of this barbaric practise else many of you first born wouldn't be here right now).

Prohibitions can of course, only contain our natural instincts toward violent behaviour in order to get our way, to a certain point and so violence breaks out again and again. Our only way around the conflict was more prohibitions versus the possible extermination of a culture. There is a third way but I'm still trying to figure out what Girard means.

The third way has to do with a ritualized killing that brings peace to the community and so it is repeated over and over but because it can never be like the first spontaneous murder which brought peace to the culture the first time, these new murders have to be reconstructed and so is born a surrogate victim. A surrogate whose murder brings peace to the community. All the while the community is unaware, unconsious of the collective agreement to murder one individual in order to appease the instinct to kill. This desire does not work at the conscious level which is why it is so dangerous.

For example Cain and Abel - Cain kills Abel and leaves his community to set up shop elsewhere. He begins an entire new culture founded on the murder of his brother. How can that be a postive start. It is born in violence and anger - born from man.... but I digress.

On pg 166 Girard says the following,
" Religion is organized around a more or less violent disavowal of human violence. That is what the religion that comes from man amounts to, as opposed to the religion that comes from God".

While reading this book which eventually moves to explaining what the actual meaning behind Christ's death means, it made me think about how Neo's death while seemingly sacrificial, is best described in what Niobe says to Morpheus about the prophecy. Paraphrased,she says she doesn't believe in the prophecy she believes in him ( Neo). Morpheus is from this old school way of thinking and was readying Neo for this sacrifice without really understanding what it meant.


Somehow the first One freed the first of the matrix humans, and ever since then the humans could only go back to what they knew - use the One to repeat the sequence that had lost its meaning after the first time and was only a hollow endeavour now in this 6th version and while aiding the machines end use was not useful to humans. That the machines are agreeable to this speaks volumes of how one culture will accept another's rituals without question.

Somehow Neo, was able to become aware of what his end meant and changed the course of humanity for good ( we think). By telling Morpheus the prophecy was a lie is just like what Christ does by choosing to die and have it written down in the scriptures - putting it on paper. Having people study it, reflect and realize the emptiness of the gesture.

(pg183) " Thus mankind no longer has to base harmonious relationships on bloody sacrifices, ridiculous fables of a violent deity and the whole range of mythological cultural formations".

Neo didn't have to tell Morpheus ( he didn't even have to die - he could have chosen not to and stay with Trinity) and he could have continued to fight Smith into eternity, but by choosing to go the the Machine World and submitting to Smith he reveals that action born of violence does not have to end violently - to just submit within a reason for the sake of prophecy is empty - an empty lie that will not bring peace to the community.

Again, I haven't quite figured out the parallels but Neo as the Christ figure means its only fair to go and figure out exactly what the Christ figure represents. In this case Girard is saying that he is revealing something that has been hidden since the foundation of the world. Be it our world or the Matrix.

reading all about the 'math' thing... maybe i'll say that math is just something we use to represent a certain type of 'thinking' that goes around in our heads.

just like language. We use English, and its a certain way we express ourselves and make others understand what we think etc.

=P

Fatpie42 wrote:

Um....excuse me. Maths is man-made.

I see you have deep misconceptions abt maths. If u would'nt mind my "hidden formulas for enlightenment", here is the explanation...

You have to make a distinction between the truth and the simulation. The CONCEPT of maths is true and abstract. Like every abstract idea, we need a model (could be a material model) to understand/represent this abstract truth. Consider this example...

1 + 2 = 3
I + II = III
* + ** = ***
. + .. = ...


All of the above represent the abstract idea of "one plus two equals three". May be the symbols "1,2,3" are human inventions, but they represent an abstract truth.

We use different MODELS to represent the ABSTRACT idea of maths. Persian symbols and Roman symbols are good examples for models which represent the abstract truth of maths. Its just like idol worship. Man creates idols, but these idols represent the abstract God.

Fatpie42 wrote:

Africa is not backward because of a lack of religion.

You have already agreed that there is some form of tribal religion. Because of that religion they (the tribes) atleast behave as humans and not as animals. The culture which originated from the middle east did not penetrate deep into africa. Thats a major reason for its backwardness. Where was all these "economy" stuff before say 4000 years ago ? As far as I know, there were three major cultures which developed parallely independent of each other.

1. Middle east / European / Parts of northern africa (Egypt etc.)

2. Indian

3. Chinese

Why do u think the European languages are very similar to each other ? Because it was once unified under the rule of Rome. India and China have totally different cultures because they were geographically isolated. China isolated itself from the rest of the world by building its great wall. There are some similarities, but the point I'm trying to make is that civilizations originated from middle east and spread to the rest of the world. Those civilizations penetrated into Europe, northern africa etc. But these middle-eastern civilizational progress never reached central and southern africa. (In Second Renaissance, the persian gulf was referred to as "cradle of civilizations".)

Fatpie42 wrote:

They had religions, just not always Islam. Africa isn't backward because of lack of religion; it is backward because of lack of money and political influence

Africa is called as "the dark continent". Its "dark" not because of the colour, but because of the lack of penetration of culture. Most of the african nations were civilized ONLY because of colonialism. The Europeans who occupied african nations took their cultures to those nations.

Think abt the civilizations of the past

1. Middle-east had Judaism,Christianity and Islam

2. Egypt had its own religion where the sun was worshipped

3. Romans and Greek had their own religions

4. India had Hinduism

5. China had confucianism

These civilizations were successful only because of the religion. Africa never had its own major religion. There were only tribal religions. Religion created a boogie-man figure which forced the people into discipline. Ofcourse there were those who revolted and they were banished from the society. These religions invented the notion of "good" and "evil". And I know you're gonna bash me for this, but think abt this deeply...Even the worst criminal in the world is "good" from his perspective and the best leader is "bad" from the perspective of a detained criminal. Hitler was a "good" leader to the nazis and Jesus was a "bad" man to the Romans. "Good" and "bad" are invented by religions. They vary from person to person. Its PURPOSE is to civilize man !

the anomaly wrote:

time...without man made watches there would be no concept of time as we know it

So did I think when I was in 6th grade, but later learned that time is NOT a human invention, but the fourth dimension. Let me give this example. Have you heard abt three dimensional coordinate systems ? Say there are two points, then the relation between two points can be computed in terms of distances between (x1,y1,z1) and (x2,y2,z2). This applies to a small space say the volume of earth. (wonder why I call it "small space" ?).

Now consider this one : The earth and sun are at a distance of some million kilo meters OR eight minutes ! Where does this time come from ? Because large distances (like distance between a star and another) is measured in 4 dimensions (ie) (x,y,z,t). Time is'nt just a human invention (may be the meaningless hours,minutes and seconds are human inventions), but it is the fourth dimension. Time is key factor in several physical quantities like velocity, acceleration etc.

My interrpretation:

Time/math/religion....none of them were CREATED by man. They were thought about by man and the ideas involved in each area were narrowed down a bit, maybe specified a bit, and over time, refined to the current standards of what each is. The current standards of each of these is only our current grasp of each subject. Each subject is only meant to give us an understanding of an abstract truth. In the future, man may think further upon each subject and develop more concise representations of each abstract truth.

That's basically what I got out of it...slap me if I'm wrong

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China isolated itself from the rest of the world by building its great wall

outta the topic but hehe...

China did not build the Great Wall to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. The Great Wall of China was a protective barrier against the Mongolians (who are just about right above, that's why the Wall is near the top, the border).

China 'isolated' itself when Communism was established in the country in 1949 =P

As shown in the movie "Hero" (Jet Li's), China was divided into six states. The Emperor of Quin dynasty united them all through force and built the wall to represent the border of his dominions. Thus China was culturally cut off from the rest of the world. The wall also served the purpose of defending China from Mongolian attack

This is what i picked off from a travel tour website thing... yeh ur right....

"The Great Wall was originally built in the Spring, Autumn, and Warring States Periods as a defensive fortification by the three states: Yan, Zhao and Qin. The Great Wall went through constant extensions and repairs in later dynasties. In fact, it began as independent walls for different states when it was first built, and did not become the "Great" wall until the Qin Dynasty. Emperor Qin Shihuang succeeded in his effort to have the walls joined together to fend off the invasions from the Huns in the north after the unification of China. Since then, the Great Wall has served as a monument of the Chinese nation throughout history."

the "Huns" of the north.... yup mongolians i'd say.

Nice stuff about the great wall. Lovely bit of 'ist'ry,

Anyway back to this is maths man-made thingy. Well quite frankly I like Dweebs view best so far. Obviously there must be something like maths in the world otherwise no one could talk about it. However, if you take something like astrology (which i personally don't believe in) it is certainly true that stars exist, but it does not follow from this that they will always produce the results expected by the astrologers.

In the case of maths certainly numerical things exist, but the system of dealing with those numerical things is certainly man-made. In the same way the mysteries of life exist, but the system of dealing with them is man-made.

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As for this "Africa is the dark conitinent" thing, I think your theory is getting increasingly flawed.
You've accepted that Africa is full of tribal religions, but you are claiming that it is backward because of a lack of religion.
Is the tribal religion not good enough?
You also claim that without religion humans are uncivilised. Actually I know some VERY civillised atheists wheras I would see the ancient human sacrifices of old religions like the Aztecs to be very uncivilised indeed. What exactly do we mean by "civillised"?
What we seem to know as civillisation was spread by opressive and brutal empires such as the empire of the Romans. This civillisation was only spread in Europe because of the Romans taking on board the ingenuitive advances of the Greeks.
I think you need to make yourself more clear when you say what you mean by civillised.

I'd have to disagree with you on this one. It's difficult to guage the successes and failures on an entire country (or countries, for that matter) based solely on it's primary religious structure, or lack thereof. Countries rise in success, countries fall from success. While religion MAY play a key role in this rise/fall of success, it is not ALWAYS a pivotal element. There are many other reasons for such things. Too hard for me to associate ONLY religion with the success of a country, sorry.

I see that I've been interpreted totally wrong. Let me explain it clearly.

A discipline can be acheived in two ways

1. Discipline through rules

2. Discipline through realization

Success of man as dominant species in this planet is his creativity/innovation and team-work/communication. To acheive team-work, you must be united and work towards a common goal. Thats why religions were "invented" in the first place...to enforce discipline through rules. I'm not a patron of religions coz I believe I can discipline myself through realization rather than rules.

Lets come back to civilizations. Success of any civilization is team-work. All the successful civilization of past had a major religion. So religion played a key role in shaping the progress of a civilization. Even in the case of tribal religions, a clan is united through a common belief system. These religions facilitated team-work. (Tribals do build huts, canoes etc.). Now imagine what the world would have been without religions. (At present, the world will be a lot better without religions ! We dont need religions, we only need an understanding of ourselves to progress.)

The civilizations originated from Middle-east/Egypt and spread to the rest of the world. The civilizational PROGRESS spread to the rest of the world. This "progress" never reached central/southern africa for a long time. (I hope you get what I mean by "progress").

What you are saying is that religion is bullshit and the only reason it has survived over the years is because it encourages people to work together to follow a certain set of rules (which society would not be able to acheive without it).

I also said religion is a simulation in hyper-real ! My opinion is that God is the real and religion is a simulation created by men to represent God. But that simulation is distorted and cut off with the basic real and became pure simulacrum. Read Simulacra and Simulations keeping this in mind, it makes lot of sense.

God is real, but religion isn't? That doesn't make any sense! Religion is about God and so in what way can it be considered out of touch with Him?

How exactly do you expect people to worship a God without any religious belief. It doesn't work!

d1, great post, pity everyone ignored it. Also, a great thread.

To stick my obnoxious nose into these arguments:

1. Maths has always existed, 1 plus 1 will always equal two, even if humans know it or not. Humans merely discovered it, rather than made it. Like oxygen, oxygen has always existed and always will, but humans knew nothing of it for a long time, they didn't make it though, they discovered it.

2. Religion, the way it was in ancient times, was itself uncivilised. People make rules, not religions, the rules pertaining to religions, e.g. lie and you'll go to hell, were made by people too, as they interpreted the various religious texts. Civilisation itself was made up by the Romans to make themselves feeel better than the various European tribes at the time.

3. Africa is backward because of European colonialism and unfair trade. Civil wars tear Africa apart daily, because European colonists drew lines to suit there own wants, disregarding tribal boundaries, causing inter-tribal wars all over. Relgion doesn't have anything to do with it. Religion is a way for humans to overcome their fear of the unknown after death, it was hijacked in a nuber of cases by power-hungry mobsters who wanted to control everything and make plenty of gains themselves. Eg. pre-reformation christianity.

Timothy,

Very well written post. I liked all of it. However, I have just these few words to say to defend myself on the first point:

Without humans there are no maths, only numeric qualities.

(but that is just being pedantic )

I'm presuming point 2 is (in part) saying that religion was created to (well or badly) explain the mysteries of the world around us (and God may or may not be involved).

Fatpie42 wrote:

Timothy, Very well written post. I liked all of it.

Well thank you Fatpie. Very refreshing to having someone you're debating against compliment your post.

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However, I have just these few words to say to defend myself on the first point: Without humans there are no maths, only numeric qualities. (but that is just being pedantic )

I think the opposite, our maths are numeric qualities to explain the maths that would be there without us(am I fully understanding you?)

Quote:

I'm presuming point 2 is (in part) saying that religion was created to (well or badly) explain the mysteries of the world around us (and God may or may not be involved).

Yeah, I meant to include that, the God if he does or doesn't exist has becaome so distant from religion that religion no longer has much to do with trying to discover the truth anymore, like the fella was saying, the base real becoming detached from a simulation.