mid atlantic - 15 August 2012 08:02 PM

RLK, the only non pseudo - scientific item that you’ve produced in this thread is the link to Baumeister’s research; which does not fit into your concept of “pneumatology”.

Of course I agree that—though the word is older than psychology—pneumatology, like theology, is still at the philosophy stage. I have no problem accepting that theology and pneumatology are about questions having to do with the whyand meaning of things—the kind philosophers like to ask. Scientists, as Baumeister puts its, get involved answering questions having to do with the how of things.

The thread, as I indicated in my first post, was started with Baumeister’s book in mind. The book is: WILLPOWER—Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (2011). It was given to me for Christmas, 2011 by my three very perceptive grandchildren—then 16, 20, & 23. I read it and underlined it as soon as I could; and I have been studying it ever since. If someone else had published this kind of information—as one who was born an inquirer—does anyone think that I would have wasted time making mean-spirited and demeaning remarks? 

No way! In my closing post to this thread, I prefer to ask questions like: Where are, and who are, the enthusiastic inquirers at CFI? MA, I am saddened that you and others, at CFI, have chosen to express so little interest in this new science and say that

...this thread belongs in the Pseudoscience sub - forum.

In the light of the facts listed in the following link—
http://www.ideafit.com/library/how-to-strengthen-willpower-part-1 —those I found by my personal experiences and those I found in my search for other links, I am having lots of fun using WILLpower to further the rediscovery of “the Greatest Human Strength” which the ancient Greeks called agape—the highest and moral good for all of us, without any negative-emotions and other such limiting conditions.

Those are your personal feelings, but they do not change the fact that most of what you say is pseudoscience.

mid atlantic - 17 August 2012 11:10 PM

Those are your personal feelings, but they do not change the fact that most of what you say is pseudoscience.

  mid atlantic - 15 August 2012 08:02 PM

  RLK, the only non pseudo - scientific item that you’ve produced in this thread is the link to Baumeister’s research; which does not fit into your concept of “pneumatology”.
==========================================
MAtlantic, you say

Of course I agree that—though the word is older than psychology—pneumatology, like theology, is still at the philosophy stage. I have no problem accepting that theology and pneumatology are about questions having to do with the why and meaning of things—the kind philosophers like to ask. Scientists, as Baumeister puts its, get involved answering questions having to do with the how of things.

And I agree with you. In his History of Philosophy, Will R. Durant put it this way:

All science begins as a philosophy and ends as an art.

http://www.ideafit.com/library/how-to-strengthen-willpower-part-1

Fifteen years ago, Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, now a researcher at Florida State University, set out to answer these questions. He pitted several possible models of willpower against each other, and when the dust of his early studies settled, the results supported a surprising model. According to Baumeister, willpower is not a personality trait, a skill or a virtue. Instead, it operates like a muscle. And as such, it can be strengthened—but also easily exhausted (Baumeister 2003).

This “strength” model of willpower has important implications for fitness and wellness professionals who seek to inspire and support healthy behavior in others. By understanding how willpower can be strengthened, you can find new strategies for helping clients meet their goals. And by understanding why willpower is necessarily limited, you can identify ways of supporting behavior change without exhausting willpower.

A strength model of willpower proposes four important ideas:

  Willpower is a mind-body response, not merely a mindset.
  Using willpower depletes resources in the body.
  Willpower is limited.
  Willpower is trainable.

Let’s consider each of these ideas; the evidence that supports them; and how they can be applied to health behaviors. In this first part, we’ll take a look at the first two. ...

As a pneumatologist/philosopher, I like what the above quote says about the nature of the human will, which in my opinion originates in the pneuma (human spirit), not in the psyche (animal mind) or the soma (animal body).

LOOKING AHEAD
It is also my opinion that, eventually, it could be demonstrated that hypnosis, self (pneuma)-hypnosis and the placebo (the ability to have pain-free peace of mind)—which, for decades, I have studied and used in very practical ways—are products of the pneuma. 

BE AWARE OF THE NOCEBO effect

For basic information, check out this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo 
Ironically, the human spirit (Pneuma) which is capable of doing much good is also capable of doing so much evil ... depending on whether we are motivated by agape-love, or hate. (...more on this).

RevLGKing
Ironically, the human spirit (Pneuma) which is capable of doing much good is also capable of doing so much evil ... depending on whether we are motivated by agape-love, or hate. (...more on this).

I am not sure if your conclusion is correct, especially in context of “pneuma”; I would condense your phrase to, “humans are motivated by desire”.
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Pneuma

IMO, willpower is an expression of “desire”.  There is only one pneuma which is common to all life “the desire (will) to survive”. It drives evolution at all levels, without emotion. Good and Evil are meaningless terms in context of pneuma.

It is true that, unlike most species, human desires may exceed what we are naturally entitled to and thereby upset the natural balance (on earth), but except for the most egregious and blatant disregard for other life, such as dumping radioactive wastes in rivers, etc., good and evil are relative characteristics in the larger picture. Survival is good, survival by killing everything (everyone) else is evil. But is culling weak or sick animals from a herd good or evil? According to natural pneuma, this is a good thing. But if we start culling our weak and sick, according to human pneuma, this is bad.

But does this prove a pervasive ethical pneuma other than “desire for survival”?

RevLGKing - 19 October 2012 02:40 PM

mid atlantic - 17 August 2012 11:10 PM

Those are your personal feelings, but they do not change the fact that most of what you say is pseudoscience.

  mid atlantic - 15 August 2012 08:02 PM

  RLK, the only non pseudo - scientific item that you’ve produced in this thread is the link to Baumeister’s research; which does not fit into your concept of “pneumatology”.
==========================================
MAtlantic, you say

Of course I agree that—though the word is older than psychology—pneumatology, like theology, is still at the philosophy stage. I have no problem accepting that theology and pneumatology are about questions having to do with the why and meaning of things—the kind philosophers like to ask. Scientists, as Baumeister puts its, get involved answering questions having to do with the how of things.

And I agree with you. In his History of Philosophy, Will R. Durant put it this way:

All science begins as a philosophy and ends as an art.

http://www.ideafit.com/library/how-to-strengthen-willpower-part-1

Fifteen years ago, Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, now a researcher at Florida State University, set out to answer these questions. He pitted several possible models of willpower against each other, and when the dust of his early studies settled, the results supported a surprising model. According to Baumeister, willpower is not a personality trait, a skill or a virtue. Instead, it operates like a muscle. And as such, it can be strengthened—but also easily exhausted (Baumeister 2003).

This “strength” model of willpower has important implications for fitness and wellness professionals who seek to inspire and support healthy behavior in others. By understanding how willpower can be strengthened, you can find new strategies for helping clients meet their goals. And by understanding why willpower is necessarily limited, you can identify ways of supporting behavior change without exhausting willpower.

A strength model of willpower proposes four important ideas:

  Willpower is a mind-body response, not merely a mindset.
  Using willpower depletes resources in the body.
  Willpower is limited.
  Willpower is trainable.

Let’s consider each of these ideas; the evidence that supports them; and how they can be applied to health behaviors. In this first part, we’ll take a look at the first two. ...

As a pneumatologist/philosopher, I like what the above quote says about the nature of the human will, which in my opinion originates in the pneuma (human spirit), not in the psyche (animal mind) or the soma (animal body).

LOOKING AHEAD
It is also my opinion that, eventually, it could be demonstrated that hypnosis, self (pneuma)-hypnosis and the placebo (the ability to have pain-free peace of mind)—which, for decades, I have studied and used in very practical ways—are products of the pneuma. 

BE AWARE OF THE NOCEBO effect

For basic information, check out this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo 
Ironically, the human spirit (Pneuma) which is capable of doing much good is also capable of doing so much evil ... depending on whether we are motivated by agape-love, or hate. (...more on this).

You don’t get it; you had your chance to prove you were a rationalist, and you blew it sky high.

I don’t care what you have to say.

mid atlantic - 20 October 2012 03:50 AM

You don’t get it; you had your chance to prove you were a rationalist, and you blew it sky high. I don’t care what you have to say.

Rationalism? What kind of rationalism?

THE AGE OF REASON—the 1600’s
The dogmatic kind of materialism and secular statism as held by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)? He was a non-theistic sceptic.

THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT—the 1700’s
Or by Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650)? or by John Locke (1632 – 1704)? Or Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804)? Or GWF Hegel (1770 – 1831)

Descartes was accused of harboring secret deist or atheist beliefs. Contemporary Blaise Pascal said that “I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God.”

Critical of organized religions, all of these philosophers it appears advocated the use of reason as a way of understanding the idea of God. Hegel said that, “a reason-derived knowledge of God is the highest problem of philosophy.”

ME? I HAVE NO FAITH IN BLIND NON-CRITICAL FAITH
I am all in agreement with a rational kind of sighted faith—not a blind leap in the dark, but a rational and careful walk in the light that we have.

This why I like the work of Dr. Roy Baumeister, prof of psychology, Florida State University. He wrote, WILLPOWER—The Greatest Human Strength

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/baumeister.dp.html
==========================
Review in the NT Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/books/review/willpower-by-roy-f-baumeister-and-john-tierney-book-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/baumeister.dp.html

OI? 

mid atlantic - 22 October 2012 03:27 AM

OI? 

Someone needs to give the Rev two clues: 1) we are living in the 21st Century and 2) Baumeister’s work on willpower is completely unrelated to the supernatural BS the Rev has spread in this thread and other threads.

Can you say “cognitive dissonance”?

mid atlantic - 22 October 2012 03:27 AM

OI? 

Mid A, how are you using the interjection, OI? Is it the same as “Oy vey”? In searching, I came across

Oy vey is correct - it’s the Yiddish equivalent of:  “Mamma Mia!”  “Good grief” “Lordy” and so on.

Ms. Derek was essentially saying, “Jesus, what a spaz you are!”  Asker’s Comment:
  Hmm… Yiddish, eh? She told me it was French! Thanks!

Other Answers (1)

  picador picador
  It literally means “Woe is me;” but like all clichés it has been devalued. Irreligious Christians are likely to say “Jesus!” in that context.
======================
Oi! - Wikipedia says, “Oi! is a working class subgenre of punk rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The music and its associated subculture had the goal of ...
History - Association with far right ... ”

It matters not to me. I am easy. I think of information as information, which I am free to take or leave as I see fit.
=========================
BTW, MA, when I joined CFI and read its reason for being, I truly looked forward to getting helpful, important, and science-based information, which I enjoy getting—from a few (too few) here. Unfortunately, this has not happened. Sad!

Too often, there have been too many george-like (the George I ignore) comments filled with insignificant, meaningless and barb-like whatever—intended, I suppose to make me feel insulted enough to leave CFI—like other clergy, conspicuous by their absence.

One final question: In my posts, when did I ever advocate that anyone must have a blind-faith approach to super-naturalism and the papal-kind of authority of Catholicism?

Sure, as an amateur interested in science and with some expertise in psychology (child of pneumatology),  I believe in exploring the unknown, as did, and do, all the great scientists I respect—for example, Einstein who, in his studies of space and time, held the attitude of awe . And should not all curious people have the same attitude?

WILLPOWER—I am here to inquire: Is WILLpower, in your opinion, a real power? Is it a product of evolution? What do you think?

If it is—and I feel that Baumeister has shown us that it is a real power—this prompts us to ask so many questions about what it means to be a human being with the ability to be aware and conscious that we are aware.

Just a few questions that come to mind: Does every so called human being, and or animal, have this ability? And to the same degree?  How come some of us can be—without even stopping to ask ourselves or others questions—so easily be hypnotised, brain-washed, whatever, to do much that is socially moral, holy, good and true; or much that is totally evil—like allow ourselves to remain trapped in a narrow culture, to be terrorists, members of a cult and kill, even ourselves, in the service of the state, religion, whatever.

Is willpower what the researcher Roy Baumeister says it is,  a real power? In the spirit of agape/good will love—will used to know and to do the highest good—I hope so! 

RevLGKing - 29 October 2012 03:45 PM

Sure, as an amateur interested in science and with some expertise in psychology (child of pneumatology),  I believe in exploring the unknown, as did, and do, all the great scientists I respect—for example, Einstein who, in his studies of space and time, held the attitude of awe . And should not all curious people have the same attitude?

In the spirit of agape/good will love, I hope so! 

No, you have been exploring the unknowable. Einstein explored the unknown and presented empirically testable theories. This is not a subtle difference.

You have also contradicted yourself several times, refused to answer questions directly, and (as your last post shows) gone off on tangents unrelated to the discussion. Not all of us are trying to insult you. Some of us are just so annoyed with your communication style that we cannot hide our frustration.

Now, for the tenth time: Do you believe humans have souls that survive our bodily death? (Hint: this is not an essay question.)