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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Oct 18, 2016 - 10:27am PT
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Werner, that is why what you say is called Faith. You don't have empirical evidence. Like it or not, but physical evidence is super important.
I suppose that is why Jesus walked on water, and performed so many miracles. If he were alive and present, in person, today. His miracles could go a long way towards increasing belief in him.
Without that, we rely on 2000 year old stories of miracles.
Show me some present day miracles.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 18, 2016 - 10:38am PT
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John 20:28 And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Jesus said to him, “Thomas because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30 And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 18, 2016 - 10:52am PT
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If one holds beliefs dear, then one has faith. There are many kinds of faith (from direct experience, from authorities, from consensus, from books, from ideologies, etc.), but at the end of the day, beliefs (if taken seriously or concretely) require faith.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Oct 18, 2016 - 05:57pm PT
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So I tend to be a proponent of books that edify the so-called Scientific Story (aka The Evolutionary Epic). Haven't read it but this appears to be another great one...
A Brief History of Everyone who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes
Adam Rutherford
"Utterly brilliant & compelling reading. I'm advising all my Human Evolution students to read this." -Retweet by Brian Cox
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brief-History-Everyone-Ever-Lived/dp/0297609378
....
Is secularism vs theocracy the next big ideological battle? eg, in the Middle East?
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/the-meaningless-politics-of-liberal-democracies/486089/
"I see very little reason to think secularism is going to win out in the war of ideas." -Shadi Hamid
...
re: faith
btw, from the above article...
It’s interesting that we’re having this conversation at a time when many people, including outside the Middle East, are losing faith in technocratic, liberal democracy. There’s a desire for a politics of substantive meaning. At the end of the day, people want more than economic tinkering."
Note here "faith" used simply as a synonym for trust.
When we use "faith" as shorthand for "blind faith" (1) we play right into the hands of ol time Christian religion and (2) we aggravate the confusion and misunderstanding that already exists. It's the 21st century, time we raised our game.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 18, 2016 - 08:41pm PT
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You're a totally brainwashed atheist, HFCS
You wouldn't know what Christian is if you met one.
The only thing you see is your own screwed up out of control egotism projected onto the world outside of you.
You can't even see a Christian to begin with ......
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 18, 2016 - 08:49pm PT
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Wisdom is knowing when to cut one's losses!
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Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
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Oct 19, 2016 - 04:23am PT
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 19, 2016 - 01:09pm PT
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The graphics that Marc Force sent down is instructive. Except the lower graphic should have also featured a wedge saying, "Sh#t we think we know."
If, using our sense data, we look at the upper graphic we see an "actual" object, a cylinder whose image is projected on the wall. From one angle, the shadow is a square. From a second, the shadow is a circle. Quite naturally we ask, Which of the three things is the "real" one?
Our discursive minds tell us that what is really real, in the first place, is the cylinder itself, that the shadows are merely representations "caused" by light bounding off the actual object. And as representations of a real thing or object, the shadows are subject to misinterpretation.
What's more, the fundamental nature of the actual cylinder is such that it gives us the impression that this object is a stand-alone object that exists independent of the shadows and everything else. That the cylinder, composed of actual matter, has a kind of realness that the shadows do not.
In other words, the reality of the cylinder is not CONTINGENT on anything else for its existence. It is what it is and it's a real physical thing that would appear selfsame to all sentient beings.
The wisdom traditions, with their philosophy of impermanence, says, no. You have it wrong. The cylinder is NOT real in the way your mind tells you it is. There is no such "thing" that enjoys a non-contingent status, no such object that is actually a stand-alone thing with its own real and unchanging and immutable essence. That the physical cylinder is just as fleeting and evanescent as the shadows.
Things, the philosophy runs, are not as they seem or appear to our minds and in this seemingly physical world of ours.
Even science suggests as much. For example, matter is commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed. However most physicists tell us that the distinction is difficult to enforce, that while matter is said to have mass and to occupy space, there are technical problems with both criteria when viewed as having a "real" or unchanging nature.
A now-common definition of matter is that all things physical are constituted of "truly" elementary particles including fermions. The problem here is that fermions are thought to have no substructure, and the latest rage about Weyl fermions includes the proviso that they have a "massless nature."
In other words, the cylinder is not "there" in way that our senses and mind tell us it is there - as having a stand-alone true nature exclusive to external objects.
Sorry, folks, but it seems its all shadows on the wall. Nothing is "there" in the way we think it is, as non-contingent objects. As one scientist friend of mind says, the biggest woo is the false belief that what we see and measure and make predictions on is not itself in flux, that it is really and truly there.
In fact it's all woo.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 19, 2016 - 01:34pm PT
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This truth is just illusion and that's putting a round peg in a square hole!
But I know I'm in hot water when my foot's in the tub!
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 19, 2016 - 02:30pm PT
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 19, 2016 - 02:35pm PT
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There is no such "thing" that enjoys a non-contingent status, no such object that is actually a stand-alone thing with its own real and unchanging and immutable essence. That the physical cylinder is just as fleeting and evanescent as the shadows
Of course it is fleeting and evanescent . . . given a time span of millennia. Were we creatures who sensed the passage of time not as seconds but centuries most of what you say is factual. The little wooden cylinder would rot and disappear before our eyes.
As to its independent existence, of course it relies upon a "background" for its delineation.
Such temporal creatures we are not. And the wisdom of the ancients abides primarily in the isolation of their abbeys or ashrams. Why try to convince civilized society? To what purpose? As Andy asked, what difference does it make in our daily lives?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 19, 2016 - 04:11pm PT
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Of course it is fleeting and evanescent . . . given a time span of millennia.
I think the point here John is that it is only the appearance that "exists" as a real and unchanging "thing" over a time span of millennia.
When physicists look closer at objects on the micro level, and others conduct the same measured study on the meta level, both camps conclude, quite independently, without needed the other camps confirmation, that moment to moment, what appears to be there as a real thing is composed of nothing at all.
In other words, there is no, "but..." no qualification, no hierarchy to this or that being more real or authentic or bona fide than any other apparent thing or substance or object.
What's more, I don't know any current person who meditates who limits their practice to ashrans and cloisters. Not sure where you got such a quaint idea. The effect the practice has on your life, once impermanence is grasped experientially, is strong, resulting in a reorganization of the world and the self.
What is this? What does this mean? This line of reasoning also goes back to the cause and effect relationship we build in our minds based on the theory of real things. That too goes out the window, as does our conception of ever being here in the way (as stand alone beings separate from all else) our minds tell us. And this is just the start of it.
Just look how poor Dingus stomps his feet about this object being real, physical, a thing goddammit. What happens when he discovers it's all shadow play? You don't think that has a profound effect on a person's life?
Look at it this way - the most real and physical thing in the world is composed of that which has no lasting mass or fixed substructure. Our very experience is a river of change. There is nothing to grab onto for sure, though our bodies and sense data says the initial holds on the Left Eliminator are as real as it gets, and if I fall off awkwardly, real bones will be showing. Tell me that isn't some powerful woo.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Oct 19, 2016 - 04:25pm PT
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Just look how poor Dingus stomps his feet about this object being real, physical, a thing goddammit. What happens when he discovers it's all shadow play?
I'd love to be a fly on the wall when that happens!
There is nothing to grab onto for sure, though our bodies and sense data says the initial holds on the Left Eliminator are as real as it gets, and if I fall off awkwardly, real bones will be showing
Boy, those were the days, John. Before we were eclipsed by 9 year-old girls!
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 19, 2016 - 04:28pm PT
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It's how you play the game...
Philippians 4:11 Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: 12 I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. 13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
If—
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 19, 2016 - 08:48pm PT
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Good poem, Go-B.
Largo, you've been on a roll recently.
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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Oct 20, 2016 - 10:28am PT
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 21, 2016 - 03:01pm PT
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MARILYNN ROBINSON
Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I’ve found fruitful to think about. Religion has been profoundly effective in enlarging human imagination and expression. It’s only very recently that you couldn’t see how the high arts are intimately connected to religion.
INTERVIEWER
Is this frame of religion something we’ve lost?
ROBINSON
There was a time when people felt as if structure in most forms were a constraint and they attacked it, which in a culture is like an autoimmune problem: the organism is not allowing itself the conditions of its own existence. We’re cultural creatures and meaning doesn’t simply generate itself out of thin air; it’s sustained by a cultural framework. It’s like deciding how much more interesting it would be if you had no skeleton: you could just slide under the door.
INTERVIEWER
How does science fit into this framework?
ROBINSON
I read as much as I can of contemporary cosmology because reality itself is profoundly mysterious. Quantum theory and classical physics, for instance, are both lovely within their own limits and yet at present they cannot be reconciled with each other. If different systems don’t merge in a comprehensible way, that’s a flaw in our comprehension and not a flaw in one system or the other.
INTERVIEWER
Are religion and science simply two systems that don’t merge?
ROBINSON
The debate seems to be between a naive understanding of religion and a naive understanding of science. When people try to debunk religion, it seems to me they are referring to an eighteenth-century notion of what science is. I’m talking about Richard Dawkins here, who has a status that I can’t quite understand. He acts as if the physical world that is manifest to us describes reality exhaustively. On the other side, many of the people who articulate and form religious expression have not acted in good faith. The us-versus-them mentality is a terrible corruption of the whole culture.
INTERVIEWER
You’ve written critically about Dawkins and the other New Atheists. Is it their disdain for religion and championing of pure science that troubles you?
ROBINSON
No, I read as much pure science as I can take in. It’s a fact that their thinking does not feel scientific. The whole excitement of science is that it’s always pushing toward the discovery of something that it cannot account for or did not anticipate. The New Atheist types, like Dawkins, act as if science had revealed the world as a closed system. That simply is not what contemporary science is about. A lot of scientists are atheists, but they don’t talk about reality in the same way that Dawkins does. And they would not assume that there is a simple-as-that kind of response to everything in question. Certainly not on the grounds of anything that science has discovered in the last hundred years.
The science that I prefer tends toward cosmology, theories of quantum reality, things that are finer-textured than classical physics in terms of their powers of description. Science is amazing. On a mote of celestial dust, we have figured out how to look to the edge of our universe. I feel instructed by everything I have read. Science has a lot of the satisfactions for me that good theology has.
INTERVIEWER
But doesn’t science address an objective notion of reality while religion addresses how we conceive of ourselves?
ROBINSON
As an achievement, science is itself a spectacular argument for the singularity of human beings among all things that exist. It has a prestige that comes with unambiguous changes in people’s experience—space travel, immunizations. It has an authority that’s based on its demonstrable power. But in discussions of human beings it tends to compare downwards: we’re intelligent because hyenas are intelligent and we just took a few more leaps.
The first obligation of religion is to maintain the sense of the value of human beings. If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves. But it is not in our nature to stop harming ourselves. We don’t behave consistently with our own dignity or with the dignity of other people. The Bible reiterates this endlessly.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Oct 21, 2016 - 03:11pm PT
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Wonderful interview, Paul.
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