The New "Religion Vs Science" Thread

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Tvash

climber

Seattle

Jan 19, 2015 - 01:12pm PT

Let's play a universal aesthetics game, shall we?

If resale value were zero, which of the following artworks would you personally choose to hang in your home?

Choose as many as you like.

"None of the above" is allowed.

No googling!

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jan 19, 2015 - 01:23pm PT

CHAOS was and Night and dark Erebus in the beginning and the wide Tartarus. Neither the Earth nor the air, nor heaven existed.

And in the limitless bosom of the Erebus, black-winged Night laid firstly a germless egg, out of which, after a long course of time sprouted cherished Love (Eros), shining with golden wings at his back, being like the whirlwinds of the wind.

And he mated with the winged dark Chaos in wide Tartarus and he hatched forth our generation and brought it first up to the light.

Before Love mixed together everything, the generation of the Immortals did not exist. By Love, mixing everything with each other, Heaven came to be, and Ocean and also the Earth and the immortal generation of all the blissful Gods.

an interesting cosmology, and even compelling to a point...

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Jan 19, 2015 - 01:27pm PT

Card players

Bushman

Social climber

The island of Tristan da Cunha

Jan 19, 2015 - 03:05pm PT

None of the above.

I would prefer this.

Bushman

Social climber

The island of Tristan da Cunha

Jan 19, 2015 - 03:40pm PT

Or this.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Jan 19, 2015 - 03:50pm PT

If resale value is zero, then I'd have to say none of the above.

I'm pretty picky.

You might chalk it up to...
a unique amalgam of science and humanities?

My choice might be... something like...

Bushman

Social climber

The island of Tristan da Cunha

Jan 19, 2015 - 03:50pm PT

Or this.

Bushman

Social climber

The island of Tristan da Cunha

Jan 19, 2015 - 03:58pm PT

Or this.

Bushman

Social climber

The island of Tristan da Cunha

Jan 19, 2015 - 04:15pm PT

Or this.

Sorry Tvash,
I've always had a problem with 'The Rules'.

MikeL

Social climber

Seattle, WA

Jan 19, 2015 - 05:46pm PT

Ed: If the ideas from science out compete the ideas from "the humanities . . .

. . . it would probably be because most of us have become bourgeois in every form and substance. Even science. Look at the movie “Particle Fever” (about the large hadron collider in Geneva). Science does not appear so noble, objective, as it is normally made out to be. Perhaps you too will see personal passions at work, professional biases for outcomes, the wont to withhold experiments to present a successful face, . . . all in all, a “drama” that belongs in the humanities if there ever was one. And the ending is as ambiguous as it could possibly be. Once again, there is no final answer. Ironies, paradoxes, and dilemmas as far as the eye can see (literally).

It’s little different than selling insurance, making earth-moving equipment, and politics. It’s a business, it’s just life, it’s a set of little self-referential disciplinary bubbles that make claims as to their ultimate importance.

As for competition among disciplines and ideas, I know more than a little something about competition. It’s something I teach. “Competition” has its upsides, and it has it downsides . . . even in the realm of ideas. Just because something outcompetes something else doesn’t mean that it’s better or virtuous. It doesn’t mean that it should have won either. Anyone studying the social construction of technology can show list off all the supposed better products or technologies that lost the competitive battle in their domains. How come? Because at the end of the day, competition is not simply about better ideas, virtue, or righteousness.

And yes, I may darned well continue to point out that nothing is objective, that nothing is permanent, that everything is provisional. (They are irksome showstoppers, aren’t they?)

DMT: Why do you persist in the nothing matters bs?

I understand this question and perhaps where it comes from.

You might remember a year and a half ago that my wife fell down a stairs that put her into an ICU trauma center for 4 days. I reported she came back with that very mantra: “it doesn’t matter.” Today she says she still lives with that mantra and can’t find meaning in work anymore.

I agree. No work is significant—not the law, not anthropology, not teaching, not research, not nursing. Nothing changes anything significantly. Even a cure for cancer only seems to put off the inevitable only for a while. Reality remains what it is, as it is. Some things may appear to be relatively impactful, but they are simply so because we hold beliefs, norms, and values. This kind of disillusionment must be gone through to finally start to see things clearly.

So then, what the hell . . . why do anything? More importantly, why do anything with energy, with commitment, with engagement, “as if” it mattered?

Because at your core, that is who and what you are. If you take your hands off the controls, you will find that there are many things that will show up for you about you. You won't be able to help yourself. It will all become completely natural.

Nothing must matter for a person to function, to be alive, to experience living life. If we listen to what the sages tell us, peace, happiness, verve, and doing comes effortlessly from being without judgment, without evaluation, without interpretation, without saying that this or that is more important or valuable than another other thing (and ditto for what is “bad”).

The quote that PSP PP posted of Hsin Hsin Ming’s statement above hits the nail on the head. When nothing really matters, then everything takes care of itself—perfectly. Everything is already perfect just as it is right here and right now. And where is right here and right now? It’s your raw and pristine experience.

There are many narratives of men and women (even climbers) who find themselves lost and without hope in a barren, empty land. Once a final disillusionment has been achieved, they return to the so-called mundane world with new eyes. After being laid low by providence (cancer, combat, a great loss of love, etc.) these beings return to the world to see it as it is, plainly and simply, without all of the afflictions, obscurations, attractions, and aversions of beings that strive, struggle, discriminate, and try. Resurrection.

Disillusionment is the only game in town.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jan 19, 2015 - 06:01pm PT

They are irksome showstoppers, aren’t they?

no those points are not showstoppers at all...

John M

climber

Jan 19, 2015 - 06:06pm PT

Disillusionment is the only game in town.

Thats a hard row to hoe. Though one I am well acquainted with.

Could I give you perhaps a different perspective? One thats maybe a bit harder, but perhaps a bit more fulfilling.

And that is non attachment to outcome. From that perspective, then things do matter, but because one is non attached, then, from the perspective of a non believer, what comes comes. And from the perspective of a believer, what comes is in God's hands.

Disillusionment is a hard row because it shuts off ones heart. and without heart, the world is a bleak place. The problem is healing ones heart. Your wifes heart is broken. That is a tough place to be. She needs you to be her heart.

I'm sorry if I sound like I am preaching. I don't mean to be. This is just very personal for me, as its a place that I am attempting to reach myself.

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Jan 19, 2015 - 07:25pm PT

I may darned well continue to point out that nothing is objective, that nothing is permanent,

where does it say anything that's objective IS permanent??
--------------

jus when i thought i knew where you were comin from you loft a doosey like this;

Disillusionment is the only game in town.

Now ur startin to sound like TVash. i think you should run from seattle like ur on fire!!

maybe ur trying to say to much with to little words?

jgill

Boulder climber

Colorado

Jan 19, 2015 - 07:36pm PT

This has been an interesting dialogue with the meditators. The thing that strikes me is that JL seems to be speaking an entirely different language. The comments about leaving one's "I" behind for awhile makes perfectly good sense, but since John isn't here I don't see references to no-thingness, open awareness, quantum flux, Hilbert spaces, form is emptiness & emptiness is form, etc. Except for the Ode to Despair by MikeL.

So I guess I'm not going to learn how to reach those exotic states by engaging in moving meditation.

That's OK. I can live with that.

Ed: I mentioned some time back that when I "reported for duty" at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1958 I was surprised to find that all math courses supporting physics had been moved to the physics department. I would be curious to know what you might have asked for in undergraduate complex variable theory, since I taught that course here in Colorado a number of times. I'm old and when I look at the math for physics in a book on quantum theory I find it difficult to follow, to unravel the notation, e.g.

Bushman

Social climber

The island of Tristan da Cunha

Jan 19, 2015 - 07:39pm PT

Put disillusionment in one hand, and non attachment to the outcome in the other, and see which one fills up first.

The turning point for this hard hearted optimistic came about four years ago when my wife was going through treatment for three years and surgery, chemo, and radiation for lymphoma. My religious upbringing being steeped in hypocrisy had pushed my thinking towards agnosticism for over thirty years. But when I saw how helpless I was in the case of my afflicted wife I felt such enormous anger that any benevolent being could sit idly by and watch the suffering of people, well I had had my fill. The idea of a supreme being seemed all too ridiculous to me after that. I attributed my wife's slow road back to recovery to doctors and people of science and see nothing spiritual about it.

She was and still is a catholic she says, "just in case", which I find humorous and I do humor her but my quest is to cut out the heart, spirit, soul, and non scientific ideology out of my thinking, as difficult as that is in a culture and society based on Judeo/Christian thinking. I have to constantly mentally chide myself and retranslate my thinking for thoughts such as "that's the spirit" and "with all my heart". Of course I'm teaching myself to acquiesce out of courtesy to family members and customers who might have a sensitivity to my atheist views. I know I sure have put the back hair up on a few at this site.

Control freak that I am, I'm trying to lean towards the non attachment to the outcome end of the spectrum as it seems the easier softer way. But in regards to my hard heart, the outcome remains bleak. Am still upbeat about the idea of some form of intelligent life riding out and witnessing the unfolding of the cosmos even though it may not be our species and I definitely won't be there to see it. Even so, were it somehow documented, that would be something awesome to read. Ahem, please don't say it's the bible.

-bushman

BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Jan 19, 2015 - 09:04pm PT

by engaging in moving meditation.

there is no NON-moving meditation. unless ur dead? Sit as still as you can. There are still a guzillion atoms moving at the speed of light, or there abouts. If non-moving is what meditation is all about, people would have 'open awareness' and be having dialog with their liver or pinky toe, etc. Sorry i'm not so scientific.

no-thingness, open awareness, quantum flux, form is emptiness & emptiness is form,

The quasimotive of these terms can happen to anyone at anytime of the day. For instance, when witnessing a car crash, or in the middle of a kiss. i bet when Base on his second to last step before hucking off Zodiac is pulsating 'form is emptiness'. And JGill, when you were all pimped up for a 'Go' on a route, hands chalked,looking at the ground, exhaling the last big breath before grabbing the rock. For two seconds there you were experiencing 'no-thingness' and 'open-awareness'.

There is a point in time that all congealed information a person has acquired must take a back seat to experience/movement. When jumping off elCap with a parachute, there be only one asperation in life. Pull the rip cord! Prior to that, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. For a second or two.

i'd ask Largo as a 'meditator', can a meditator, meditating, ever experience 'open-awareness' without first stumbling across it? or, how does a meditator know he's achieved awareness if he 's never known open-awareness??

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Jan 19, 2015 - 09:21pm PT

jgill I had the bad judgment to actually take the math courses in the Math department, contemplating a double major, but that wasn't going to happen for me at UC Berkeley in the 70's, Physics was a handful, there were plenty of distractions, and I just didn't have enough to put math on top of it all.

My 1974 Complex Analysis course used Ahlfors and sometime after that my Real Analysis course used Royden, but of the 8 students in that course, 2 were undergraduates (I was one of them). Taking that course was another sign of bad judgment on my part, but it was interesting.

In the end I became an experimental physicist anyway...