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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Sep 12, 2015 - 09:15pm PT
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JGill, i like that argument quote. Who said that?
My own opinion - which is easily subject to catastrophic revision - is that time, matter, energy, and physical law appeared simultaneously at the origin of the universe . . . if it had an origin.
Trying to remember from Cosmos, after the BB it was 6mill or 6bill yrs before Suns. Or balls. So for awhile there was no roundness, or orbits, nor magnetism or gravity(?) So were they a product of causation/circumstance? OR were they preordained?
Otherwise, your questioning of a "beginning" has hopes..
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Sep 13, 2015 - 08:11am PT
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Eye Glasses in Short Supply
When I was younger and thought about doing some writing, I only wrote things on occasion, short stories, poems, songs, or serenades which were written for girls. But mostly I wrote for an audience of one, myself. I had 2020 vision then and was used to reading a book or novel in about a day or two. But my writing was sporadic, sometimes what little I wrote was separated by weeks and sometimes years.
About five years ago out of the blue after not having written much in years I began writing poetry on almost a daily basis. It was not long after my health had begun deteriorating starting with a series of lower back problems that finally caught up with me many years after a tree accident in which I fractured two lumbar vertebrae. I began writing again as though a dam had opened inside me. It was uncanny. Thoughts and ideas were suddenly being expressed by my mind in a rhythmic beat-rap tempo that was flowing so rapidly that I could barely type it out in time before the next idea came. My family and friends thought I was channeling some kind of drug crazed beat poet. At over twenty years clean and sober I can assure you I was not, although of that genre I am well read.
Now looking back on it there is one particular metamorphoses in my life that I can attribute my recent creative outburst to. Several years ago there was a dramatic shift in my thinking. But the first major shift in my thinking came within a few weeks after my twelfth birthday and the first moon landing.
I was born into a fundamentalist Christian family and raised as a preachers son, taught to believe in the bible as the word of God by a strict father and stern grandparents. My mother was a school teacher and secretly of a more eclectic and progressive mindset. When I became twelve my family went through a dramatic upheaval, with my parents divorcing and my father leaving the home. It was 1969 and my parents had been found out by their church fellows to be leading a double life, preaching and worshipping by day, while partying and carousing with the hippie set during the off hours. Our family left the church and was ostracized by them socially. Needless to say this all came as a shock to me and my siblings and it rocked my idea of security and what I had thought was our little God protected family unit.
It felt as if a mental limb had been severed and all of the faith I had been taught to believe in had been exploded. A whole new world I had never been fully exposed to was being suddenly revealed to me as the rug of religious dogma was traumatically yanked away. I felt a betrayal and questioned everything about everything I was raised to believe in. I cursed God and denounced faith. I saw art, music, history, and culture in a new light, but in matters spiritual my position about God was torn and twisted by circumstance. Though I then thought myself to be an agnostic, chaos reigned in my philosophy for the next forty years.
After my parents split there came twenty years of alcohol and drug experimentation coupled with alcohol and drug abuse. At thirty two years I gave it all up which saved my life, my marriage, and most of my brain cells. A proponent of science, rebellious by nature, and always questioning everything, I could never go back to believing in an authoritarian God, but the agnosticism thing really left my thinking in turmoil. I wanted to believe in something but had a grudge to settle with religion.
The most recent major shift in my thinking came about twenty years after I became sober around 2009 when I read the book 'God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,' by Christopher Hutchins. After reading and pondering that book my agnosticism took a major hit. The idea of a mysterious benevolent being that had been the spiritual go to God of most of my life was built on the fractured foundation of the God I was raised on. From the hotbed of the Protestant church of fire and brimstone southern racist thinking of my grandparents to the southern Californian new age feel good fair weather whatever religious thinking of my parents, tiring and cumbersome, the morphed idea of some universal all knowing all seeing deity, exhaustingly abstract and laced with its associated religious hypocrisy and guilt, of all of it I'd had enough. Aside from the stigma of communism that many pious christian and patriotic Americans might attach to it, at that moment atheism made perfect sense to me. So that was the most recent upheaval in my thinking, and that's why I believe I'm an atheist, in a nutshell.
I still write primarily for an audience of one but share my work more often out of a desire to share of my deeper thoughts, poems, aspirations, and humorous theories about human nature and observations about the ironic nature of the universe and the world around us. Reading glasses are a requirement now but I read fewer books, my favorites being science, sci-fi, history, and humor-mystery. Mostly I write. My philosophical view of the world has changed so often that I fear the next new pair of glasses will bring with them, unbeknownst to me, a new world view as well.
-bushman
09/13/2015
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Sep 13, 2015 - 08:25am PT
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If chaos begat chaos, I'm at peace with that.
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cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
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Sep 13, 2015 - 09:25am PT
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 13, 2015 - 09:26am PT
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I get the sense, Bushman, you are soul searching.
For the first time? the tenth time? the hundredth time? through life's ups and downs, order and disorder, knowns and unknowns. So I'll just take a moment here to encourage the search, if that's what it is, which, as you know, is no easy path - that's for damn sure! - and cheer you on and forward. as I believe there is no greater pursuit, adventure, or art form in life than this.
So... Keep the charge, Bushman! suck it up and push on Artist Warrior!
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Sep 13, 2015 - 09:28am PT
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Thanks Jan and Fructose,
I'm reading that article now...
On his deathbed, Morgenbesser is said to have asked: “Why is God making me suffer so much? Just because I don’t believe in him?”
That's priceless!
Great article, compelling.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 13, 2015 - 09:42am PT
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"Thoughts and ideas were suddenly being expressed by my mind in a rhythmic beat-rap tempo that was flowing so rapidly that I could barely type it out in time before the next idea came." Bushman
Hear hear! for the positive side of discursive thinking!
"A whole new world I had never been fully exposed to was being suddenly revealed to me as the rug of religious dogma was traumatically yanked away. I felt a betrayal and questioned everything about everything I was raised to believe in."
This is exactly what science, othewise a science education, does. It's exactly what many have experienced, including myself. Chapter by chapter through all the books, week after week through the years, the "rug" is taken away.
Recall the Matthew Arnold line which I've mentioned many times here: Caught between two worlds, one dead the other powerless to be born.
I cursed God and denounced faith.
How about? I cursed the concept of God and denounced faith. Or, I cursed the crazy, made-up Christian theology of the God of Moses (Jehovah) and denounced faith. Even more precise, no?
I know you've read the Books of the Bible. It depicts ONE very specific God. Jealous. A Warrior God. A prejudiced God. Christians and Muslims believe in this one God out of hundreds humans have imagined. It turns out Christians and Muslims are atheistic with respect to all these other God concepts. But they don't like to talk about that. Or those. Or refer to their God as Jehovah (or Yahweh) because that's remindful in its own way of all the other God concepts and God names. Christians as atheists. Muslims as atheists. Sounds weird. But it's true and not weird at all from other outside religious perspectives.
For comparison sake, while I am "agnostic" (not knowing) with respect to the claim that there is a First Cause, Reason or Intelligence behind the Cosmos, I am "atheistic" (not agnostic at all) with respect to a personal, intervening God Jehovah just as I am atheistic with respect to Amon Re, Zeus or Quetzalcoatl. But having said that I should say I do not identify with the terms atheistic or atheist at all.
I have found it very useful over many years to distinguish the many and various god concepts.
I read the book 'God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,' by Christopher Hitchins.
Good to hear! I hope you also had the chance to read "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris. There's no finer, concise and clear exposition of the subjects and their issues.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 13, 2015 - 10:11am PT
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at a certain stage of climbing you encounter your first hanging belay off of a gear anchor you have constructed... if you are at all thoughtful, you realize that this gear anchor has to first support your body weight and second be strong enough to hold the tremendous force of a leader fall (at this stage of your climbing life, an abstract phenomenon).
the sense of easing back onto an anchor you have built yourself, and to which you are trusting your life, and also using to ensure your partner's life, represents a huge commitment, a trust in your knowledge and ability, and the beginning of employing your skills and experience in a truly consequential act, a tremendous responsibility.
there is no faking it, and you have that sense as you gingerly weight the anchor system, nervously vigilant to the shifting of your pieces, the way the weight is taken up by the slings, the idea of what a failure would mean.
you take a metallic, dry, rough breath and yell down "belay on!" and in your mind the full force of the responsibility comes to the fore.
my own personal "philosophy" on science is simply that, the entirety of the universe, of what exists, is what we "see," is the consequence of the physical properties of that stuff, nothing more nothing less.
it doesn't deny the existence of our own experience, or the experience of others, or the expression of those experiences through the arts, through literature, through spiritual, emotional, of any such feelings.
it doesn't answer all the questions, and usually leads to more questions when answers arrive.
it doesn't represent an enduring and unchanging "truth"
it doesn't provide some external meaning, or some larger meaning, or any meaning at all
but in some ways I think a life in science requires you to learn how to build those anchors and lean back on them with confidence and in time know that they are built strong enough to endure, and that the skills and experience in building them are sufficient, that they are self-sufficient.
one can always choose to do routes with bolted anchors and believe that they are secure, or to find routes with ledges with features that make them secure
but if you are venturing out onto the unknown steep places, you will have to build your own anchors with confidence, no one is going to do it for you, no one is forcing you out there, no one senses your purpose in being there...
a metaphor
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 13, 2015 - 10:14am PT
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"at that moment atheism made perfect sense to me. So that was the most recent upheaval in my thinking, and that's why I believe I'm an atheist, in a nutshell... -Bushman
Yes, especially in regard to God Jehovah (the God of Moses and Abraham of Abrahamic scriptures, most notably today Islam and Chrstianity).
Good on ya, Bushman. It is a path of the brave and a path of the free. Keep the charge!
Times are changing with each passing hour.
.....
PS
Days ago I asked Paul R if he was familiar with the term "amythia". The response: crickets.
Anyways, the concept is important enough that Loyal Rue, a philos of science and religion, wrote an entire book around it. It's the same idea of that Matthew Arnold line I cited earlier. Modern man is currently without a modern, truly viable, truly workable narrative (mythology, blueprint) upon which to organize his life and thinking esp at the mega-social levels. So it's no wonder we are confused and upset about so many things going on and all the changes underway. This understanding itself can be somewhat consoling, palliative; some reason to cut yourself and others some slack in the great scheme of things and also every day.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 13, 2015 - 10:31am PT
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"The events coming in the approaching days will render this conversation moot." -Cragman
Elaborate please.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Sep 13, 2015 - 10:33am PT
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MH2 said: Per why no one has ever found an actual dream in the brain (and NOT the neuro processes we associate with dreams).
I find them there often. I probably never found one anywhere else. Your friend's thought experiment speaks of poor thought.
Insofar as a dream itself - above and beyond any assumed material underpinnings - is a subjective experience directly knowable to the subject, our boy MH2 is now suggesting there is in fact a God who can read the experiences/dreams of other subjects - and that God is none other than resident foggy MH2.
The poor old duffer never got the memo that the map is not the territory.
I think this embarrissing blooper underscores the need for everyone dealing with this material to study and make clear to themselves that the maxim - the subjective is NOT reductive to the objective - is not an opinion but a law as basic and incontrovertible as gravity.
JL
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Bushman
Social climber
Elk Grove, California
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Sep 13, 2015 - 10:34am PT
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I sometimes wish I were a dog, until I remember about their short life span and the nuetering thing.
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Norton
Social climber
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Sep 13, 2015 - 11:10am PT
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"The events coming in the approaching days will render this conversation moot." -Cragman
Elaborate please.
yes please I would like to hear the forecast, presumably catastrophic?
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Sep 13, 2015 - 11:23am PT
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Days ago I asked Paul R if he was familiar with the term "amythia". The response: crickets.
Why do I always have to assure you of what I'm familiar with/ know? Dawkins, Rue? Rue wrote in 1989 a book of that same title exposing an idea you'll find in Campbell's four vol "The Masks of God" from 20 years earlier that mythology must keep pace with the nature knowledge of a culture... and can. You're better off picking up the "Masks of God" and reading it you may be shocked at what you learn.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Sep 13, 2015 - 11:28am PT
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You're better off picking up the "Masks of God" and reading it you may be shocked at what you learn.
In keeping with the convention of digs...
You may be shocked to learn I am a big fan of Campbell's already - for more than a decade now. I enjoyed his series with Bill Moyers and I already have the Masks book.
I'm sure you can search my early ref's to him right here on this site.
Be assured. Be assured you're presuming once again.
Why do I always have to assure you of what I'm familiar with/ know?
It's not to assure me, at least not in any pathological or other twisted way, it's to see if there's any common ground to use as a starting point for furthering / moving the conversation. So far, the batting success is pretty minimal. Aw, dang.
Then again, in opposition to your post, I seriously doubt you were aware of Rue before either my mention or BB06. Yeah, I'd take that bet. With all due respect of course.
Amythia might explain your angsts and discontents. In part?
.....
"You're better off picking up..."
btw, the two books, Amythia and Masks of God have what to do with each other? ANS Pretty much nothing.
lol
.....
Correction: What I have are his Power of Myth book and his Companion book. Plus his series with Moyer on tape. That's enough.
.....
Blast from the past...
"Never said religion is responsible for all the worlds problems. Part of the problem here is nobody seems to be reading the posts. My only real goal here is to get post 666 and then this will all be over and I can get out of here." -Paul R, 2009
"This just seems like ambiguous, nebulous, ephemeral nothingness. If spiritual thought is everything or anything to everybody then how is it anything?" -Paul R, 2009
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Sep 13, 2015 - 11:42am PT
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my own personal "philosophy" on science is simply that, the entirety of the universe, of what exists, is what we "see," is the consequence of the physical properties of that stuff, nothing more nothing less.
--
How about that which we cannot see, such as consciousness, that with no rest mass, or the no-thing from which the big bang and all physical properties are believed by many to have emerged?
I think we can agree that physicality is not an absolute, but why is it so difficult to even define matter/material.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Sep 13, 2015 - 11:51am PT
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... is the consequence of the physical properties of that stuff, nothing more nothing less.
you keep insisting that I say things I did not say...
why?
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