It takes a long time to sound like yourself—Miles Davis (then it may take a year or two to get used to it)—Jimoeba
I have to wonder if any of my own ideas are mine, minds, or an amalgam of the matrix. Here’s where the dividing line emerges between acceptance or rejection of a thought—heavily influenced by religious and politicus “men of words” and passionate believers in belief. How do we break from traditions of old to think for ourselves? By unbelief…
Is an idea mine, or submitting to authority of a majority influence? Was the idea put there by an unknown source, or a known source? As Dan Dennett might say, who has hijacked your mind? Who have you allowed to influence you? Either by passive learning, genuine curiosity, or indoctrination, we acquire information, often through chasing rabbits, but the thoughts we nurture or entertain—initiated often by suggestion from an unknown, is our choice. Where we go from there is up to us.
Trying to go somewhere while focusing on the past, hoping the future ends, leaves religion in a muddle of mediocre progress. It hasn’t gone anywhere, produced any results, or fulfilled its promised bliss—ever. We’re still waiting…
Scientific studies of natural history and origins is used to advance the knowledge base, while religion seeks a beginning to justify current and past behavior—then clings to it. All the answers sought by religion have been answered quite nicely. Only by faith—the absence of knowledge, can belief thrive or is considered. The greatest challenge to modern belief is the greatest of all time—to continue faith in the face of fact.
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask”—Jim Morrison
Your own thoughts often come out of the blue, even if our core is in disagreement with those thoughts. This Psychology Today article offers more to ponder. Who you allow to have voice in your life certainly influences you’re decisions, but also much of religion and racism is based on evolutionary defenses.
Whether an idea is yours or not, one big idea can change the course of humanity. Waiting for god to return to fix our problems is a free pass from acting responsibly now.
TheCommonAtheist 
No new thoughts, just different (more complex) ways of seeing something, which in turn constitutes progress, which in turn enables a different perspective on another thing.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Well then, that thought brings me to this thought… it’s not hard to see, even from this brief paragraph how the thoughts and broad imagination of the human mind has created such a grand scheme to know why. And why, as you know, is the one question that plagues religion. All because we are curious and place too much importance in self.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Your post reminds me of one of my poems called “My Body Is An Antenna.” We attract some thoughts to ourselves and repulse other thoughts by changing the figurative channel that we are listening to. Sometimes it is very difficult to escape the zeitgeist of our surrounding culture. People are often punished for doing so. If truth is our goal, we might have to be patient to find the ultimate truth. Until then, we can remain open-minded and, like Socrates, realize that we don’t really know anything for sure. But we need the faith that ultimate truth exists, or we won’t be prepared for it. If we cling to the memes that we grew up with, our minds won’t be open enough for new ideas and ways of thinking.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Send a link.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is my poem about positive and negative energy and thoughts, and about reaping what we have sown. FYI, I believe in God, although I don’t follow a formal religion. My intent is not to have original thoughts but to have true thoughts, but I also believe that the truth exists beyond words, and that we shouldn’t get hung up on particular words.
https://alansite.com/2019/01/14/my-body-is-an-antenna/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting. I think that ties in well with forces and a live universe. I wouldn’t call it god, but well done Alan.
LikeLiked by 2 people
How often we change fervent belief is telling. It’s rare. I was looking at fanaticism the other day and the inability it embraces to see others view points. I think “easy does it” is fairly smart when it comes to any belief. Belief is ambiguous and subject to complete reversal when evidence pops into the picture. Belief should be a temporary means to an end, not a life of its own. Great comment Alan. Welcome aboard.
LikeLiked by 3 people
The real or ultimate truth: All truth is relative.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As social creatures, very few of us ever live our lives in complete isolation. Therefore, our thoughts must be a combination of individual and communal processes. In a post from a few years ago titled Question of the Day: Where do our opinions come from, and do we ever change them?, I asked readers to answer these three questions:
How many times in my life have I conceived a completely original idea which was appreciated and shared by others?
How many of the various opinions I hold were my own original ideas?
How many times have I reversed my strongly-held opinions when refuted by contrary facts or ideas?
LikeLiked by 3 people
Those are great questions Rob. Belief has become so important that it can blind one to the very obvious. When deconstructing religion it is so obvious it is man made, but when I was in it I could hand-wave contradiction with the best of them. One thing that changed me for the better, when I no monger believed I became more tolerant, accepting, and open to others. I had submitted to authority and the things I spewed out were not my own, even though I thought they were at the time. That all changed in a day of unbelief.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I think our mind’s the greatest gift of our species and should not be afriad to use it!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Our minds are great and also difficult. Our ability to imagine should sometimes be bridled, just a bit. The tales grow pretty tall sometimes, like religion.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Very true! I meant using it for intellect, not fantasy 😂
LikeLiked by 3 people
I know what you meant. Lol. But somehow we get by. That is the real amazing part. Even conservatives 🎯
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for sharing, Jim. I especially resonate with the Miles Davis quote and your insightful, encouraging addendum. Aside: I teach music improvisation and would like to add it, with your your permission, to my Improvisation Micro-Lessons Gallery… https://wp.me/p7Zs8I-24r
LikeLiked by 4 people
Very cool!! I never knew. So much for my imagining you like Robert Preston in the music man. Lol
LikeLiked by 1 person
In explaining how one might dance better I said, “You must feel the music, not just hear it. Then you can show how you participate with the musician in seeing the music.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Most people do not even participate in their own lives, life happens in an autonomic way — if you prefer that the cranium function as autonomically as breathing, it will do so. Religions are more than happy to do your thinking for you — The Catholic Church provides adherents a two-volume Bible, a 920-page Catechism, connect-the-dots Papacy, Saints for every eventuality… My personal favorite Church Militant call to war is: The Rosary: an assault weapon with a 50-round clip:
http://thebeautifulcatholicfaith.tumblr.com/
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thanks Bill. I call it Big Box religion. One size fits all, and with a few minor adjustments (and sometimes a table saw and router) we find our place in it—With excuse, of course.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Big-Box Orthodox 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
The percentage of RCs who read the bible (admittedly much is read at Mass) and the Catechism is what? Maybe 10? Less? More?
LikeLike
Hi Bill, 10% or less read 10% or less of the Bible *or* the Catechism IMO. The same stuff gets cherry-picked and endlessly repeated to justify the Primacy of Peter for example — that Jesus wanted Pete to be the first Pope. There is actually little evidence that Peter was even close to Rome geographically, where he presumably joined with Paul to make it happen. And the church has a “magic card” called “tradition,” a code word that means “it doesn’t matter if something happened or didn’t happen, “tradition” makes it just as real as the stuff they actually can prove. A kludge is as good as a clue.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hello Jim. I think a person has to keep learning, keep trying to understand things. I like to take in information. I have had my views altered by the new information I was absorbing. I try to have a diverse group of news and blog sites. For me I try to ask myself if I support a viewpoint because I like the person, or because I like the idea. Hugs
LikeLiked by 2 people
True. I’m super Leary if charismatics nowadays. Is it the person or the message? Almost always it’s the person, and when the cult figure is removed somehow, everybody goes back to being normal.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I heard it put simply once….some people want to believe and some want to know.
This could apply to many things besides religion.
Through my life I’ve noticed some people are naturally more curious and think outside the box some. And some people cannot be bothered to think much at all…
Some people have to be part of a large crowd or group and others relish being independent in thought.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m not sure how much “original” thinking really exists. Progress is dependent on past efforts. We rely on things we learn and how to perceive patterns to draw logical conclusions. Even something as esoteric as string theory is based on mathematics and earlier scientific work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sure, but when you try to prove the past to verify your current position, it doesn’t seem to take us far. We’ve been kicking the tires of religion without any growth for far too long. Standing on the shoulders of of Newton or Einstein is a bit different, I would think…if that’s my thought
LikeLiked by 2 people
The past has to prove itself first before you build on it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It is the spirits in the cells of a body that together make up the spirit of that body. What we feel as our minds is actually the collective consciousnesses of the cells that make us up. We are not one indivifual, but 37 plus billion individuals working together as one.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would have to call that a faith statement. Although the energies of the universe (spirit?) permeates every element and cell, calling it spirit is a choice of words ( maybe for lack of a better word) when it’s most likely just electricity that initially powers every cell.
The Na+
/K+ (sodium potassium) +
ATPase enzyme is a solute pump that pumps sodium out of cells while pumping potassium into cells, both against their concentration gradients. This pumping is active (i.e. it uses energy from ATP). For every ATP molecule that the pump uses, three sodium ions are exported and two potassium ions are imported; there is hence a net export of a single positive charge per pump cycle. That is life, rawgod. Pressure gradients finding equilibrium. Of course there is a little more to it, but not hard to see why biologists are atheists. Things happen that happen quite naturally
LikeLiked by 1 person
In your world, that is life. Jim. My world knows nothing of of such chemicals and reactions, though they are probably used by the living cells. Can a cell be said to think in your world. It can in mine. My mistake was in stating the number of cells as in the billions. Actually that should have read 37 plus trillion cells in the body, but I’m taking that number on faith.
What I was really doing was offering the idea as a possible new thought. Has anyone ever suggested that human consciousness is a collective consciousness in respect to the cells that make up a human body? Besides me, that is; I know I have written that before. Meanwhile, I have extrapolated from that idea that the cells work that way in every living being throughout the physical universe.
Just a thought?
LikeLiked by 1 person
memes come to mind. I have noticed on social media, the over dependence on memes. People seem to begin to think alike, rather than question the source of the meme. Also, what is not said or questioned is interesting to. I started off with a vast rainbow of friends and now am down with primary colors. It seems that they have succumbed to the memes and social media.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Memes are units for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. There are dangerous memes throughout social media, lying in the most believable, unchecked fashion. Attaching an idea to a popular face that has nothing to do with the celebrity, but travels at light speed around as entertaining misinformation
LikeLiked by 1 person
♥️♥️♥️
LikeLiked by 1 person