[Saberist]

CV#2,

Religion is a crutch that props up the dogma of specific spiritualistic views. Technology can become a defacto religion to those who follow it with the same unerring dogmatic beliefs.

And then a 'miracle happens' and the technologists are thrown for a loop because they don't want religion and their science can't explain the event any other way. Causing them to either deny or denigrate it as a function of non-acceptance.

Which is crucial because Spirituality as a belief in a connection with something greater than the immediate norms of reality does not necessarily have to be detectable/quantifiable/manipulable by technology. If the reality in which technology works is not the reality in which the spiritual inhabits, it is no wonder that there is a sense of a swing and a miss on something being possible because all your senses and perceptions are trained and attuned to defining something which is outside the rules of your expected understanding.

This is where people get mixed up. They -assume- that if magic works in our world, it must work through laws that we know and can understand. If gravity can be manipulated by repulsorlift/antigravity technology then surely levitation which _gains the same effect_ must be a function of gravity.

And the answer to that one is maybe. Maybe not.

If you cannot detect it, you might as well call it religion because to those who have blocked their minds to a wider understanding of the universal spiritual based on the propoganda that is religion; the only two 'allowable' alternatives are in fact:

Science = Proof.
Religion = Faith.

If I were to apply a theory of Jedi mysticism to a spiritual way of acting that does not constrain the mind from understanding the grey area inbetween, it would be as an expanding path upon which you set your children when young and expect them to hold to as their awareness of the world grows without specific labels for the effects that they will encounter only how to govern their reactions to them:

Ease.
That you never take more than you can give. And vice versa.
Sense.
That you realize that there are things beyond your immediate experience which must be detected as independent realities /before/ you engage in their incipient precursor actions.
Alter.
That not all things which you sense must be explicit in acceptance or denial but that by timing or preparation you can modify their form and your ability to interact with them.
Love.
That what you sense+alter=experience as your own can and should be shared with other people. So that you are not alone in your perception of what is and is not yours to do.
Duty.
That what you share of love with one person, you see in the actions of all things that you might preserve what is wondrous or useful to you and not impinge on what is the same to others.

There should furthermore be two hidden paths which are the ultimate exp​ression of life itself and which the Jedi grow into a detection threshold of as a specific function of what their minds detect that others do not.

And all seven paths TOGETHER (synthesis) are The Way Of Ways by which adult Jedi are expected to act at all times.

There is no G-od here. No religious absolute. Because all Paths derive from each other and flow back into each other. The difference is that my Jedi do not so abhor life as the creator of The Force that they would rob children from the cradle to deny them the experience of The Living Force as an actively participative/interactive lifestyle and indeed having/teaching children of their own.

While within the Path they also have no explicit 'Code' to exact obedience from as a denial of the cueing emotions and feelings which make life an internal as much as external exploration 'in progress'.

Rather they use a philosophical approach to bending the appropriate sense of Ways into agreement with the situational ethics of the moment.

If you begin teaching psionically gifted children that it's /okay/ not to want to do the herd-thing as a function of expending mental effort on triviality. But that in trade, they must SEE what they want to do in a fashion that internalizes all the possible outcomes from it. And then begin to teach them how to alter the outcomes as _precursor_ behaviors. Before initiating them into a society where their best efforts at moderating reality come with real rewards (in taught skills) early enough to give them a hunger for more experience rather than more rewards.

You create a scenario by which integrity is an endemic rather than transitional skill set that allows them to expand upon simple instinct->cognitive response by 'using their powers' to both soak up The Force. And utilize it. In a very moral = efficient way.

Unfortunately, we don't teach this way. Because to us, everything is a law. Or it is nothing. And as there is no interaction so when we grow up, we don't see life spiritually but rather as a shell of ordered existence beyond which 'all is religion or anarchy'.


Saberist

[KurganX]

In reply to an earlier message:

Regarding 25,000 years of "existence," why should the SW universe be any more enlightened than our civilization? I find it particularly embarassing that the president of the US believes in creationism, as might a simple majority of Americans. It's just unbelieveable, but the reality Americans have to live with and a reality everyone else must suffer.

Because 25,000 years is a long, long time, in human terms. Look at the "progress" made by humanity in 25,000 years. Now imagine another 25,000 years. Sure, it might not be all good and we would most likely still have crushing problems (as the people in Star Wars do too, they don't live in some kind of perfect society by any means and people are still huge jerks). So I don't see how Star Wars is unrealistic in its predictions that way. But on the other hand, you'd think that if they had 25,000 years to study "the Force" they'd know a little more about it than they do. Maybe not. I could go back and forth on that. The point is that Lucas didn't have it very well planned. "The Force" and the Jedi and all that works best as a metaphor for real life beliefs and as a stand-in for magic in other popular fantasy, rather than something "realistic."

Dan Brown also pulls a rabbit out of a hat and people believe him. The ideas about Christ's blood being the "grail" has been around for centuries. Brown popularized it, and an ingorant audience entertains the possibility that it might be true. It is the same for those who, because they don't have either a very strong religious background or knowledge, might embrace some religious idea of the Force.

Actually no, it hasn't been around for centuries. The first "Holy Grail" story appeared in the late 12th century, as a piece of popular (but unfinished) fiction by Chrétien de Troyes. He didn't specify the "graal" as being anything other than some kind of mysterious artifact (not blood, or a person, and no tangible connection to Jesus Christ). Later authors would create continuations of Chrétien's story, and eventually the connection to the cup of the Last Supper would be solidified in the popular consciousness (I'm most familiar with Malory's 15th century version, contained in Le Morte D'Arthur).

There is no evidence that anybody believed it was the bloodline of Christ until the late 20th century, when the authors of HBHG started going off into la-la land with Pierre Plantard's Priory of Sion hoax. Prior to that, I think some Mormon or another suggested that Jesus was a polygamist and Martin Luther made some (possibly drunken, nobody really knows what he was talking about) offhand comment about Jesus being an "adulterer," but there was really no suggestion that Jesus was a married man, much less that he had any offspring, much less a lineage that survived any length of time. Really the first time that the idea of a married Jesus was popularized was in the controversial 1951 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis (The Last Temptation of Christ) in which he was a bigamist (spoiler: in a dream sent by satan), which of course was made into a much ballyhooed movie in 1988. Picknett, Prince, and Starbird wrote their books in the 1990's, so these ideas were kept floating in and out of the public consciousness for the past twenty years, giving Brown a ready audience for his best-seller.

So all Brown did was re-popularize a 1980's European pseudo-study of a 1960's French hoax.


Sorry to nitpick, but I'm a bit tired of hearing about how the "secret bloodline of Christ" theory is "ancient" when it's really a very recent thing.

[Saberist]

KurganX,

Because 25,000 years is a long, long time, in human terms. Look at the "progress" made by humanity in 25,000 years.

Look at it in 5,000 or 1,000 or 100. For much of those 25,000 years we were still living a hunter gatherer life style and depending on your definition of 'recorded' time, we don't have a reliable history much before about 5KBC. Yet our ability to UNDERSTAND certain things, specifically related to ideas not on the menu for creationism (genetics, evolution, continental drift, the planets and stars) really only began around 1880.

Now imagine another 25,000 years. Sure, it might not be all good and we would most likely still have crushing problems (as the people in Star Wars do too, they don't live in some kind of perfect society by any means and people are still huge jerks).

Actually this is Lucas playing on the same sense of 'ancient = less degrees of difference from G-od' assumptions of Atlantean or Edenesque perfection. Which is fine for a fairytale where you are looking at swords and sorcery but not so much for a technological universe.

Not least because many of the 'crushing problems' simply have no excuse to still be so. With cheap FTL interstellar travel, who would willingly live on Tatooine? Particularly one which uses KOTOR's Rakatan War definition of why the place has ZERO useful resources?

If you have droids, why do you -want- slaves? Droids are self repairing, presumably self-reproducing given the right materials and tools, instantly trainable and have vastly lower expectations in terms of energy use and immediate reconfiguration between thankless tasks. Slaves are moody, apt to shoddy work and outright dangerous while generally only as useful as they are biologically persistent with very long new-skill acquisition windows. Finally, if you have ready made Fusion electricity and gravimetric propulsion, WHY are you at war if the basics of living no longer have to be paid for or fought over?

The sadness here is that _it's alright_ to create a character study in a strange environment. That kind of 'how would you react?' notion is implicit to good science fiction. But when you suspend disbelief over the environmental factors, you cannot also render the characters as 2 dimensional understandings and expect there to be ANY value to the story.

So I don't see how Star Wars is unrealistic in its predictions that way.

I go the other direction actually. Once you hit a peak social evolutionary threshold, it is likely that you make a bubble of homeostatic equilibrium whereby you level out until genetics (as either evolution or drift) take you up the next rung. Or kill you off. The difference is that the Star Wars characters seem to be high-centered on a very unlikely set of circumstances by which none of what they have is doing what it should for them. And that is very strange.

...but there was really no suggestion that Jesus was a married man, much less that he had any offspring, much less a lineage that survived any length of time.

Actually, I am curious, to what degree would a priest or other (equivalent to Jesus' social role) position be expected to remain celibate so as to 'better study G-od' or whatever other precept of devouness applies? If the expectation for Jewish Males of the time was to universally marry for purposes of fulfilling holy/cultural writ on procreation and Jesus expected to minister to them, it stands to reason he would either explain explicitly why it was uncool for him to do so (leaving a record).

Or 'when in Judea' do as the culture he expected to teach would have him do.

That said, the real ridicule of the pompous must go to the notion that this is just deliberate publicity to hype Christianity after two millenia of literally 'the same ol' story'. Such that Jesus is more or less special if his bloodline DOES exist in our world. More than anything, this is what Dan Brown and all the other's attempted mystery-not-mysticism fails to (have the guts to) stating one way or another as a function of making the process of becoming Christ's descendent less important than 'the proof' that she is so.

Such signals to me that people like the controversy as coffee table discussion but really are not comfortable with the (never said otherwise) notion of a God whose Son was indeed _just a man_. With a man's needs and duties.

If you don't like the notion of there being a God whose creations are merely mortal but you also don't like the reality of a living deity having 'something to say' (the hidden artifacts underneath the pyramid at the end of Brown's work are a poorly exploited mission statement for belief) as a function of a holy legacy's implicit ability to 'better learn' their ancestral beliefs, then really there is no point to the story, one way or the other.

Why preserve something simply to highlight it's mundane nature? Surely not as JUST a kick in the lower extremites to the Church.


KPl.

[xenduck]

1: my point,

Whether you think the New Testament is truth or not, you can see that within the book itself, the future martyrs of Christianity, the apostles themselves, did not believe. Notice, even though they followed Big J around for 3 whole years, and saw manifold miracles; they still did not believe. They saw Lazarus raised from the dead, the fishes and loaves, walking on water, calming of the seas, casting out demons, water to wine etc… but after the crucifixion they all sat around picking their noses and lamenting their foolishness. Jesus was a good man, now dead. They had to see the body, not a body anymore; only then would they believe unto their deaths. For example (and this is just me but I think it relates) if I spent a week with God itself, saw all there was to see, and you had asked me on Wednesday if God was real, I would say YES! But, ten-twnety years later… I would answer less assuredly, maybe. Say, well, I saw some wacky shit…but… where is God right now?
So too, with the Jedi. Most people were convinced, even if it were impossible to study the Force through technology- people went along with it. hell, they even made old Ben a General. But, if the Jedi got their butts whipped and fire snuffed, then, well, I guess whatever they were doing is done now. From an Imperial standpoint, the Jedi were traitors and whatever their power was- religion, sorcery, nonquantifiable quantumsis- it’s no longer viable. The Empire beat ‘em, therefore the Empire is better (thank you, fascism!).
Now, is Jedi-ness a religion? Well, the only one (as I recall) to label it such was a detractor of the Force, so, though I hesitate to invoke unreliable characters, this label is unreliable and not really (being that it is impossible to know the writer’s intentions) worth talking about.
I would like to note however, the different (not necessarily contradictory) ways in which the Force is portrayed. (throughout the whole saga, but lets take ANH). Motti laughs and calls bullshit. Vader chokes in response. Maybe tired of validating his role in the Empire. But Han, when he calls nonsense, he gets a sly smile from Ben and an indirect, equivocal demonstration ala’blastshield. Thus we, the audience, may build our own understanding of the Force through various, biased, appraisals. We need not know what it is, only that it DOES exist, in order for the story- the allegory?- to progress.

But if you want to wax intellectual about midichlorians, consider only that we can measure a hand, a brush, a canvas, a medium, but not art. Luke has all the midichlorians he could ever want (apparently) but is he a Jedi in ANH; in ESB? No, not till he has been sufficiently trained and tested. In fact, there is hardly any reason to believe he would have demonstrated ANY Jedi powers, beyond bulls-eyeing womp rats, had he remained at home. Therefore, Jedi/Force/Midichlorian are all separate entities and we have a gestalt style situation; the interactions of which cannot/should not be understood.

2: apologia,

I haven’t been around in a long time, so I'm sorry if this idea is old news. I read the whole thread and was irritated to see no one saying what seemed obvious: with all the proof in the world, people will still doubt. And with all the contradiction, still believe. I guess that’s true even of STAR WARS. You have to take everything you see at face value- without any assumption; then decide what assumptions can reasonably be made, then second-guess the author, then finally (since this is a movie) differ to artistic license versus the limits of suspension of disbelief. And since this is a story, I must point out certain devices which must be employed from time to time. stop gaps, imperfect/perfect knowledge, unreliable characters, metanarration, palinodes, pro/analepsis … all in all, you have to ask whether you enjoyed the art of the story. And art is subjective. So saying, I must admit I'm in Saberists camp but not his tent. And Helena, njamilla, and most everyone, we’ve disagreed often enough before but please know I respect your opinions and intellect but must staunchly stand apart from MOST of what you said. I wont bore anyone with a longer post, but I will argue upon request

This post has been edited by xenduck: 24 February 2008 - 06:36 AM

[Radu094]

I can't seem to find anyone mentioning that scene in ep4 on the Milenium Falcon when Solo says something along the lines "i've traveled to one end of the galaxy to the other, I have seen a lot of crazy stuff, but never some Force that binds everything together,bla,bla,bla".

This was implying that
1. the galaxy was a big place
2. perhaps not everyone (even in the Republic) has even heard of the Jedi order
3. the Force had a big religion-like aspect. It was something you had either to believe in ,or not. (yes, like FAITH). It wasn't something you could directly prove, and certainly not something you could measure using midiclorians.
Obi-Wan could have been using the Force, or he could have been just a good spadasin that knew how to jump very high and make strange desert noises.

The PT took care to dismiss all of this, and now Solo's line doesn't make any sense. And all the magic is gone

[civilian_number_two]

Well put, Radu094. I think that was the point of Helena's initial post.

[xenduck]

But Han, when he calls nonsense, he gets a sly smile from Ben and an indirect, equivocal demonstration ala’blastshield. Thus we, the audience, may build our own understanding of the Force through various, biased, appraisals. We need not know what it is, only that it DOES exist, in order for the story- the allegory?- to progress.

i just wanted to point this out, Rad

[KurganX]

Saberist,
You make some fair points. We know that Tatooine is a haven for "those who don't wish to be found." It's outside the Republic and Empire, so it's a haven for criminals and other folks. Sure, you'd think people could just run away, but perhaps there's a reason they're there. Perhaps the rest of the galaxy doesn't want them, or they're forced to stay there by those who control the planet (the Hutts). It's is a bit of a stretch, sure. Ditto with slavery. Presumably slavery is a punishment and a luxury (if you're so rich you can afford to have live slaves instead of mechanical ones). But it's true, there's a lot of unrealism in Star Wars, not just the aeroplane maneuvers, explosions and sounds in space, but Tatooine and Coruscant themselves are very unrealistic. Yeah, it does get worse with the prequels, sure enough (but then the prequels tell us the Republic is only 1,000 years old, rather than 25,000).

Actually, I am curious, to what degree would a priest or other (equivalent to Jesus' social role) position be expected to remain celibate so as to 'better study G-od' or whatever other precept of devouness applies? If the expectation for Jewish Males of the time was to universally marry for purposes of fulfilling holy/cultural writ on procreation and Jesus expected to minister to them, it stands to reason he would either explain explicitly why it was uncool for him to do so (leaving a record).

A lot of people assume that because the standard for MODERN JUDAISM is for respectable Rabbis to be married asap, this was not always true. Rabbinic Judaism didn't really begin until the school at Jamnia was started (70-90 CE). Prior to that time, Judaism was much more diverse, full of squabbling sects. Groups like the Essenes and the Theraputae practiced and promoted celibacy. John the Baptist, Bannus (the teacher of Josephus, iirc), and Saul of Tarsus were celibate. Yes, the term "Rabbi" is applied to Jesus at various points in the gospels, but the term at that time meant any teacher, not a specific title with a specific job description as it would come to have in later centuries. There's simply no historical evidence that Jesus was married and some he was not (why entrust his mother to a disciple, but neglect his wife, children, etc? Why does Paul, when talking about how apostles are allowed to marry have to look to Peter and so forth as examples rather than Jesus, if Jesus were married? If Jesus had a wife and children to protect, why did he go so readily to his death to make her a widow and them orphans? etc). Even the non-canonical writings of the Gnostics (so frequently cited by conspiracy theorists) don't support the married Jesus theory, and in fact speak against it... considering their theology tends to be anti-material (which translates to anti-body, anti-sex, etc).

I could be wrong but I think the High Priest(s) at the time were married, but there's no evidence Jesus was ever a "priest" and in fact the Sadducee party was rather small and elite (the Essenes considered them corrupt and soon to be punished by G-d).

The idea of a holy man giving up marriage and sexual pleasure for the sake of a higher calling (religious reasons) was not that uncommon.

That said, the real ridicule of the pompous must go to the notion that this is just deliberate publicity to hype Christianity after two millenia of literally 'the same ol' story'. Such that Jesus is more or less special if his bloodline DOES exist in our world. More than anything, this is what Dan Brown and all the other's attempted mystery-not-mysticism fails to (have the guts to) stating one way or another as a function of making the process of becoming Christ's descendent less important than 'the proof' that she is so.

I thought the point was to dumb down Jesus and make him seem more like an average joe, so people wouldn't be intimidated? But then why bother with him at all? I can worship Joe Six Pack, I don't need some Jewish hippie from 2,000 years ago, right? Plus, if Jesus really started a bloodline, you'd think a large portion of the earth's population would be descended from him today. So what? According to the DVC he wasn't divine, so it's not like they'd have super powers or something.

Such signals to me that people like the controversy as coffee table discussion but really are not comfortable with the (never said otherwise) notion of a G-d whose Son was indeed _just a man_. With a man's needs and duties.

Well the conspiracy theory Dan Brown promotes is that he was just some hippie, and that people later turned him INTO a G-d. (nevermind that the earliest writings about him, within 20 years of his death, all say he was both divine and human... and the gnostic writings that take away his humanity still promote his divinity). Nobody was saying G-d had a totally human (0 divine) son.

If you don't like the notion of there being a G-d whose creations are merely mortal but you also don't like the reality of a living deity having 'something to say' (the hidden artifacts underneath the pyramid at the end of Brown's work are a poorly exploited mission statement for belief) as a function of a holy legacy's implicit ability to 'better learn' their ancestral beliefs, then really there is no point to the story, one way or the other.

Why preserve something simply to highlight it's mundane nature? Surely not as JUST a kick in the lower extremites to the Church.

I agree. But for some reason it became very popular (hype, widespread ignorance and an interest in controversy around religion I guess). I lot of people I talk to who liked it claimed it strengthened their faith. They just ignored the "Jesus wasn't divine" part and just focused on the marriage thing. They just like the idea of a Jesus who is still the son of God and has a white picket fence, two car garage and a pretty wife who bakes cakes and stuff while the kids play in the yard. Deity embodying the American Dream or something like that... maybe. And mistrust of authorities and institutions is a great excuse to not bother learning and latch onto a conspiracy theory any day.

This post has been edited by KurganX: 26 February 2008 - 09:58 PM

[Otal Nimrodi]

Ought we to send this to the DC?

[KurganX]

Why are there dead video links every other post?