Are your beliefs rooted in logic, or tradition. Truth is like orientation and navigation. The orientation determines the desired path, navigation tells us how to adjust. We may find through navigation that we may need to re orient, or change direction. That’s not the same as wandering with an unverifiable belief. Truth is retrospective. There is a lot of truth that is not available to us unless we are willing to go through significant transformation.
That your method can remain unaltered to gain access to truth is deeply challenged if not outright false.
No scientific theory either, is free of assumptions. In fact the assumption is the core basis of the scientific theory, eg; If you grant me X, I can explain all these other things. Most scientific theory grants reductionism (X) as fundamental. That the smaller and smaller we examine any feature, the more fundamental properties we will encounter. Combining these tiny features just so, creates consciousness. That is an assumption unproven beyond any stretch besides imagination for over 50 years. Maybe it’s time to change directions?
This has been a scientific assumption for so long, yet now we are finding the inverse to be true regarding fundamental reality.
Is it a coincidence that the golden age of physics had this common thread?
Has any religious doctrine ever supplanted a scientific discovery? I used to answer that question with an emphatic no, but I may have been wrong about that. It is highly likely that Newtonian physics was supplanted by the Upanishads—the ideas from Hindu philosophy called quantum mechanics.
What’s different about the Upanishad -vs- say, Christianity, is the Upanishad can be made into math by the most skilled of all scientific minds. It can be tested, and it can be fit into what we know about the nature of duality, consciousness, mind, and matter.
Is it mere coincidence that physics can be so mystical in similarity, that uncertainty is certain, and that through observation we find that waves become particles (matter) and that the “real world” is illusory (not what it appears to be) upon our observation of them?
“The Upanishads describe how reality arises out of consciousness. But consciousness cannot be found inside our bodies as a substance or an organ.” That trying to see the Self (Brahman) with the same electrons and photons as It, the projector only records interference because me are mixing waves of the same substance. What is sought is the seeker—the seeker is the sought.
“Since we haven’t been able to locate or explain this interaction, we’re left with a deceptively simple choice: either consciousness or reality doesn’t exist”—Erwin Schrödinger
But I despise the two choice debate. And as we see psychologically, consciously, physiologically, and every where in between, that consciousness is reality. There is no such thing as experiencing a non-experience. It’s all one thing. Everything is waves—some long and some short. Some last a lifetime while others millennia, but nothing is permanent —so no thing is real but one thing.
Realizing this has boosted physics out of the arena and into space.
On the other hand, the Upanishads uphold an idealist view – that consciousness exists by itself, and that the physical world depends on it. There is no objective reality that exists independently of the observer. Schrödinger supported this view and lamented the aversion for it: “it must be said that to Western thought this doctrine has little appeal, it is unpalatable, it is dubbed fantastic, unscientific. Well, so it is because our science – Greek science – is based on objectivation, whereby it has cut itself off from an adequate understanding of the subject of cognisance, of the mind”
Curious to know what other physicists of the era were influenced by the upanishads?
Werner Heisenberg, Carl Sagan, Robert Oppenheimer, Erwin Schrödinger, Niels Bohr, Nikola Tesla…
The golden age of physics and invention had a common thread that is wont to ignore (customary). The Upanishads and Indian philosophies date back about 5000, years. Their rebirth was witnessed at the turn of the 20th century.
“I do believe that this is precisely the point where our present way of thinking does need to be amended, perhaps by a bit of blood-transfusion from Eastern thought”—Erwin Schrödinger
How speech patterns train us in dualism, yet being and doing are the same thing
Does the forest have trees, or is the forest trees? Are those trees made of wood, or are they wood? No–thing is made of any thing, but of itself is so…The trees are treeing. It is a symptom of the cosmos.
I AM THAT, I am. More appropriately, I am this, not that. This, the subject, that, the object, and objects are simply forms which quintessentially are made of atoms which are made of no-thing. We may as well be analyzing the images on a movie screen—the massless photon, waves or particles, images?—imagines. Everything is happening in the mind.
In the language of Nootka Indians, there are no nouns and are only verbs—simply doings, for the doer and the doing are one and the same. An interesting way to see the world, and maybe more realistic than the dual nature of western thought. There is no one to blame for anything, for it is all your doing—take responsibility for it!
In Indian philosophy, nama-rupa, or named form, gets special distinction as the ultimate reality which is non-dualistic in nature. But it’s not really nature either, but mind. All of it is a projection from the apertures of the organism as in a dream of dreams—so real because it is in fact, all that we know.
In Wei Wu Wei, we are the mind using the mind to seek the ontological truth, but the seeker and the sought is one in the same and can never be found—what is sought is the seeker. That is the secret. So, our biggest hinderance to seeing this begins with language—that things have a subject and a predicate, but everything is a really a gerund. I’m not a jim, but I am jimming. I am a verb-ing. This certainly rings a bell.No wonder nobody can see it—like a fish searching for water in the ocean—it is nowhere to be found.
One thing that sets Christianity and Islam apart from other religions; is theirs must be the ultimate truth, it’s that important—yet it’s all they know. There are better ways of realization without the depreciation—sinners! Yes god has been revealed to others places and times, but…
Fascinating to me how others see the world, without the guilt of being born of no freewill from sin. Who’s right? There is only one contradictory free truth, so how hard can it be?
Can humans think instinctively? Freedom of choice is precisely the state of not choosing. What is freedom of choice, when choice is the analyzing act of hesitation while making a decision and ignoring the instinctive action that has the backing of evolution?
While being a decisive person is considered someone who doesn’t stop to decide, a paradox in the definition itself which pauses me to examine. Why do humans approach everything backwards, abandoning instinct when they seem to know better? Thinking and words may have us spellbound.
Your mind, brain, and consciousness (whatever you want to call it) arises or evolves of the very stuff your thoughts are trying to analyze. No wonder it is such an impossible puzzle. And to examine what we consider the world outside ourselves becomes equally as frustrating, because it isn’t outside yourself either, although you’re inside it. Until one can release the duplicity of examining the world as separate and hostile, it will be utterly and increasingly futile to segment the universe, matter, and consciousness into words and formulas. Is there a more wholistic approach?
Snoqualmie Tunnel Hike today–2.3 miles each way, of course
To treat our brain differently from any other organ that functions automatically without thinking, so too, the subconscious mind functions in an amazing way, unless you try to put effort to it—that thinking, the very specific and narrow channel of conscious attention with which we identify ourselves is the most unreliable means of examining anything, because what is, is being analyzed by the most unreliable portion of the human computer.
The scientific and religious approach, from the very beginning assumes we are separate from what we know to be true—that we are stardust, and to examine what you’re made of using what you’re made of, is a daunting task that should cause a laugh with absurdity, but instead causes contention because we fail to scratch beyond the conscious attention. It has to be examined by what we’re not made of—what is not obvious on the surface.
Thinking and what “should be” is a projection of the mind that creates an illusion of separation. Thought takes time; thought is psychological time that distorts the timeless.
“But were human”, you say, “we have to live in the world we have, with the tools we have”, you say, but the very art of approach from our infancy is at odds with logic and reason, combatting instinct and the underlying reality we have been trained to ignore in modern life. Laden with changing fact and pointless claims of progress, infighting, outfighting, constantly choosing from two wrong sides of beliefs that have us exactly and forever where we don’t want to be.
But human behavior without the thinking is most often heroic, while at the same time the hero says (s)he just did what anyone would do—yes, if they didn’t stop to think about it first.
And after analyzing all the data, the best inventions come by luck, not the scientific method at all. It is used much less frequently than it is lauded, and often used in backsplaining the discovery that was made by instinctive awareness–or luck.
The concept of time must be taught with rigor in order for children to conform to it. What greater illusion exists than to habitualize existence based on the past, to lay out the future while ignoring the present. Children have no concept of time—and they are right. For time is simply a mental relation between two moments—a learned reckoning. Living in the moment is therefor timeless.
“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist only in the present, which is what there is and all there is”—Alan Watts
The past is a memory. The future—an expectation. Is the immediate present simply a fractal marking on a line of events, or a continuous movement through it, where the past is moving with the present?
“Our perception of time’s flow depends entirely on our inability to see the world in all its detail”—Carlo Rovelli
We have a deep intuition that the future is open until it becomes present and that the past is fixed. As time flows, this structure of fixed past, immediate present and open future gets carried forward in time. This structure is built into our language, thought and behavior. How we live our lives hangs on it.
“The concepts of time and change may emerge from a universe that, at root, is utterly static”—Craig Callender
“The concept of time is simply an illusion made of human memories, everything that has ever been and ever will be is happening RIGHT NOW”—Max Tegmark
“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infintesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation (thinking and thinking about thinking) We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas“—Alan Watts. These symbols limit our perceptions of life, for what can be known (accepted as knowledge) is simply that what can be put into words—symbols of events.
Aa a small example, our english language structure changes the meaning of the past every day, even moment to moment, ie; I love…you. Really, I love flowers. See how that works, even in common speech? Forgiveness also changes the meaning of the past, while a grudge locks you in it, held to bitter moments that no longer exist.
“reality is just a complex network of events onto which we project sequences of past, present and future”—Carlos Rovelli
“Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality”—Alan Watts
We teach history, we plan for the future, but rarely teach anything on how to live today—and if you don’t ever live in the present, you wont be able to enjoy the future, because it never comes. Our cultures are constantly preparing for the next level of life.
Learning to think like an adult (to take life seriously) takes effort and repetition. Playing this hoax on our children is the key to maintaining the illusion and keeping players in the game—and kids know life is a game, and of such is the kingdom of heaven, uh, I mean…the game of life. But interesting nonetheless, that mystics, philosophers, and physicists all agree that time is an illusion—simply not what it seems. Language and writing are partly to blame (symbols) yet religion is quite the guilty party—always training for later.
Vibration is a reaction to an action, while sound is a relationship between a vibration and an eardrum. If a tree falls in the woods and there is nothing around with ears, it does not make a sound.
How then, prior to the relationship would ears evolve, when nothing in the primordial soup could comprehend vibration as sound, without already having ears?
Sight is the same problem. How could vision evolve without first being able to comprehend light? I have a friend that was born completely blind. Asking her what it’s like to just see darkness all the time, she has no idea what that means—no comprehension of dark or light at all—can’t even imagine it.
Maybe these questions have been already solved, but I am curious if someone smarter than me about evolution can answer this. It appears that the theory of evolution has the cart before the horse…why I sometimes depend on the reasoning prowess of others.
There is a Zen poem that says, “If you ask where the flowers come from, even the god of spring doesn’t know”. They also teach that these things arise mutually on their own, like backs and fronts, lefts and rights, and bees with flowers (you cant have one without the other) According to that philosophy, polarity is omnipotence—it is not knowing how it is done, but simply doing what is done, like growing your own hair—how do you do that?
Nothing is more evident than the existence of one’s feelings and experiences
“I take it for granted that empirical data, which is the data of normal sensory observation and experience, should inform our best guess at what reality is like. But are there any other sources of data that must be taken into account?”—Phillip Goff
“Nothing is more evident than the existence of one’s feelings and experiences”. If a supposedly complete theory of reality can account for all of the data of observation and experiment, but cannot account for the reality of consciousness, it can be falsified.
In the law of non-contradiction (LNC), it states that there aren’t, and cannot be any contradictory states of affairs. This law is known with a kind of certainty, similar to that with which I know my own feelings exist. One can perhaps debate whether our knowledge of LNC is more or less certain than our knowledge of the reality of consciousness, but it is clear that both are known with much greater justification than anything known on the basis of the senses—Phillip Goff
So if feelings and experiences are real and empirical evidence is real, how can a lack of empirical evidence for those feelings be dismissed by science? Or, is it consciousness that’s not real, but an illusion? Logic tells us one, or the other, is not real if they appear in a contradictory state—but both seem to exist. Which is it? Maybe it’s matter (the seemingly obvious) that is not the underlying reality of the universe…
Where do we draw the line between undiscovered knowledge and mysticism? Using tools we don’t yet understand—
Since there are no gods or god as ultimate ruler, controller and creator, what does atheism allow in between? Is there nothing at all in a mystical sense, or just our minds playing tricks on us?
Do we discount the Buddha’s, Yogis and gurus as the pinnacle of religious delusion—yet the antithesis of belief though knowing by deconstructing belief, as a moment of flatlined brain function through meditation? The moment of knowing may be the grand illusion, or is the world simply asleep at the wheel of the cosmos in a form of conscious chicanery? (I know, a lot of questions)
Do we discount evidence of the data stream as the totality of acquired consciousness, where people in their creative zones unknowingly predict the future? Or where ideas come from? (there is evidence ideas arise in your brain long before you are aware of them)
Do we discount the shaman and forms of primitivism as unlearned quackery grasping for explanations, or are they simply more atuned to the energies of the earth because of there primitive form?
Skill and adaptation can come in a variety of ways and disciplines. How the Polynesian navigators traveled thousands of miles from island to island by being in-tune with the ocean currents and reading the ripples and vibrations in the water to know there was land—days away? (Yes they did) Just imagine the level of skill and intuition required. Would it be any less likely that the Kofan could talk to plants, as a well documented Maori could sail to Easter island with no navigation tools but his skill and intuition of the ripples?
Whether hard atheism is simply non belief in god or gods, does it shut out every piece of evidence that points to a strange world where things aren’t what they seem, even after they seem like it?
Abrahamic tradition and western thought that has infiltrated human thinking, has calcified human perception into two camps—god did it and we don’t know how, or the scientific approach where nothing exists that can’t be measured with a tape and a photograph. But…
“For thousands upon thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have navigated their way across the lands and seas of Australia using paths called songlines or dreaming tracks. Songlines will often follow on from one another, creating an intricate oral map of place“—A songline is based around the creator beings and their formation of the lands and waters during the Dreaming (creation of earth)—Australian National Maritime Museum. Is multiple sources of the same storyline from all corners of the world mere coincidence, or is it evidence?
They have proven they can do what they do, but how they got the knowledge…they just fabricated that part, or are lying? The problem with mystical perception is in its evidence—it cannot be measured except by its utility, so is therefore “magic” as some would say, and discounted as metaphysical mumbo. Who are we to know sophisticated when we can’t even find our fucking car?
As many varieties of skill and neuro-potential there are and has been in the world, can you discount everything else because you don’t understand it?
Every feature has a natural counterpart. There is no up without down nor fronts without backs. Yin has yang and there are no one sided coins. Positive and negative, whether attitudes or poles, one needs the other to manifest, like inside goes with outside.
So what about nature? Is nature natural or created, which would make it unnatural? If this is the real world, where is the yang to this yin? If this is an unnatural world where is the natural one?
But if this is a naturally occurring accident of Big Bang and billions of years tuning trial and error, it would still have the opposing side of its nature. Not supernatural, but as to darkness and light, we can’t have one without the other, unless you must draw the line here and no further, to deny what may be an uncomfortable truth—that there may be more than meets the eye.
Is it a matter of antimatter, the darkness that pulsates between the light, the trough behind every crest, that part of the wave you cannot see unless you’re in it?
Or is the whole of humanity just unnaturally mad? If you will deny the human perception as natural, where do such thoughts come from?
“There are two distinct classes of what we call thoughts—those that we produce in ourselves by reflection in the act of thinking, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord“—Thomas Paine
From where do thoughts arise in your head?
“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists“—Nikola Tesla
Turns out the way, the truth, and the life, is really the half way, the half truth, and a half a life—and it meddles with nature, a serious setback.
Holding to faith as the pinnacle of religious virtue, it has created a great famine of original thought and stunted the collective growth of the species. But we were told it was so much more than it is, which is fine if you never examine any other ways of thinking, or being.
Even atheism with its functional, unlimited connection and hope for humanity—to grant every inhabitant of the planet equal asylum, surpasses religious morality with ethical behavior—simply a more natural, organic development based on fairness.
Religions in general have failed to accept nature as boss. But in the end, after all the information-gathering research, decisions are made by hunches, snap judgments from somewhere in the consciousness, and often against your own judgment. Hunches that have billions of people raising families and living in homes and going on holiday. To the pious skeptic regarding the natural man, isn’t this a testament to the effectiveness of nature and the brain? The more we try to fix the world and shoehorn religious ideals into the public forum, the more we have to look around and say, wow! everyone seems to be getting along just fine, with or without my belief. Nature is best left alone to do its thing. Be happy with that and leave it be—it’s a lot smarter than you think.
“It brings in to play innate and spontaneous intelligence by using it without forcing it. It is fundamental to both the Taoist and Confucian thought, that the natural man is to be trusted, and from their standpoint it appears that the western mistrust of human nature is a kind of schizophrenia”—Alan Watts
This point of view is that the brain is a fundamental organism of nature and is to be trusted without coercion, which is evidenced by the success of humanity—in spite of the various commandments and synthetic religious dogmas. Even the Native American traditions exemplified this process.
How Hebrew creation philosophy is destructive to the human longevity—self fulfilled prophecy
Is there a better way to experience nature rather work against it, or do you prefer the Hebrew creation influence to confront it and lord over it?
Seeing the earth as a construct, an artificial scape to house the finite man that resides in the body, makes mankind a foreigner in a temporary setting, viewing nature as outside of himself.
The ecologist describes every organism and its relationship to the ecosystem. That western man views himself outside of nature has infected these thoughts that now threaten the world.
Underneath the superficial self—that one that pays attention to this and that, counts the rules and feels apart from nature, viewing life as a struggling visitor on a strange planet (trying your best to get out of here in one piece) there is another self, more really us, than I, and the more you become aware of that other self, the more you realize that you are inseparably connected with all that there is. Would that make you a better, more kind and reasonable person, or a worse, more destructive person? Knowing you are not just the ego confined to your skin, but that you are connected to your external environment as a total function of the ecosystem? I would think it would make you more responsible, more kind, and more aware of the needs of others, and intuitively careful with the earth and its resources.
The alternative to Jesus as lord and us as fallen sinners, isn’t that there’s nothing—to the contrary, it’s everything. It’s how many of our ancestors lived for millennia and left very little traces on the world. This fallen world idea (nothing created lasts forever) has an inevitable death sentence to it. And seeing things more deeply connected (which we are) could certainly improve our chances of surviving on this rock.
It is the way of the Tao—to roll with it, not against it. Nurturing it like an aging mother, not in the Judeo-Christian theme as natures lord and master.
If believing in god is enough to imagine him into existence, then god is equally diminished by the arguments against him. The seesaw effect, back and forth, god, no god, poof, there he is, then gone again. There is no advantage to believing because of a cleverly worded argument that can be dismantled by reason. The real existence of a god would be an irrevocable surety. It is not, therefore he is not.
If god were real, no argument would be needed. Take any of the popular arguments for god and at first glance—quite clever. But, that’s about as far as it goes. A genuine treatise shoehorning the existence of god would in fact, be evident without persuasion, manipulating word games, sermonic hormones, and overcoming doubt, which doubt in itself should be a red-enough flag.
The bottom line is this; Religion has the audacity to think it can outwit nature. Accepting this natural order takes the fear out of life and negates the threats of death with endless suffering posed by religion. It also restores the esteem to man taken by religion. Atrophy and decay is a normal part of this experience and getting that little fact takes the decision to fear from our hands and tosses it out—the decisions surrounding death is made for you. Indigenous types all over the world accepted it as the natural course of things. Even in men’s ignorance or brilliance it mattered not. It just is and is nothing to fear. Understanding that keeps one from getting suckered by religious threat and seekers of power.
Accepting the fact we don’t know what happened before this life or what happens after is truly the only thing that could possibly excite an infinite being like myself, infiltrated with all encompassing consciousness in his natural state.
Things have lived and died long before the Abrahamic visions of the monarchical boss. For millions of years species have came and went long before “the fall”, just as the earliest hominids lived and died out, so will we. So what? Oh those poor souls for all those years before Jesus.
“The true meaning of belief is to powerfully imagine“.
Humans have great imaginations and will consider criticism of such supernatural/religious fantasy as an affront to character. If you cannot imagine what they imagine at a ridiculously high level, you are not fit for the kingdom of god.
“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”—Mark 9:24 / ie; Lord, I can imagine that; help my imagination!
Finding the right things to imagine is the key to strong faith. “In my fathers house there are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you“. Notice he never explains what it is like in heaven, but lays it at the feet of your imagination—the most powerful tool in the playbook.
Imagine that! Belief/imagination/religion is to pretend that the question trumps the answer and the search is the true meaning. A philosophical approach that sets “I don’t know” to wordplay. There are answers, but few want to know much beyond feeling good by believing in a system with no substance.
Now we are at an impasse. I am supposed to imagine the unimaginable, and believe that select humans have a personal relationship with it. The masterful play on human psychology—to pretend substance comes through belief and arrival rests on the pinnacle of imagination.
Meanwhile, we imagine a Saviour, someone to come down out of the sky to fix our wastefulness while we remain a greedy people and rationalize human destructiveness by waiting it out—but belief in god will not save us. That is up to us to address reality.
How atheists show the greatest faith of all—but it’s not what they think
It is not about the science. Atheism is the ultimate expression of faith—letting go of the idols of gods with complete confidence in the central mystery—we are the midst of it, swimming in it and completely surrounded. We are It. How else would you know but that it is so central as our being we cannot consciously recognize it.
“Atheism in the informal sense is a profoundly religious attitude. An attitude in life of total trust of letting go. When we form images of god they are all really exhibitions of our lack of faith—something to hold on to, something to grasp.
When we don’t grasp we have the attitude of faith. If you let go of all the idols of faith you will of course discover that what this unknown is precisely, the foundation of the universe, which is precisely you.
It is not the you you think you are (it is not your opinion of yourself) it is not your idea or image of yourself, it is not the chronic sense of muscular strain which we usually call “I” You can’t grasp it, of course not, why would you need to? Suppose you could, what would you do with it? You could never get at it!”.
And so there is the profound central mystery of the attitude of faith—to stop chasing it, to stop grabbing it. Because if that happens the most amazing things follow. All these ideas of the spiritual, the godly as this attitude of “must“—”And we have laid down the laws which we are all bound to follow“.This is not the only way of being religious and relating to the inefable mystery that underlies ourselves in the world—you.
“If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go“—Alan Watts
Physics and philosophy are converging into what is, while religion, the restrictive band (the choke point) is digging another ancient foothold to maintain control through fear and deprecation—
TheCommonAtheist 