Fear and Hope

[omar]

Sometime ago, someone started a post with a proposition: Taking, as a given, that the mythologies of the global religions are false, is it worth it to maintain them?
The poster believed that “believing falsehoods is detrimental to one’s health.” But that: “On the other, in a large and perhaps necessarily stratified society, religion may play an important role as a social lubricant.” This is a practical good which “religion” brings to our material world.
The other use for religion that could still justify it’s existence is to “a community structure (one which Humanism is striving to replicate, and so far without much luck that I’m aware of). Though that kind of group formation causes problems between groups, within groups it enables great cohesion. The same downsides could be said of any group scaffold, and there’s reason to believe that religion functions better as a scaffold than others.”
A third use for this “falsehood” is that: “They also offer some hope to people who would otherwise have none.” False hope, yes, but “it is nonetheless comforting to believe for those who do. Insofar as that comfort translates into docility, productivity, and cohesion, it serves a practical purpose for others who may or may not believe.”

So, while false, religion has it’s “practical” uses, at least three:
1- Social lubricant
2- Social scaffold for social structure-cohesion
3- social opium of hope.

I only provide this as a background. My subject can do without this, but I wanted to give you guys context, contrast with what I’ll say on my subject. Moving along, the posters formulated some interesting questions:

“1) Is it in my interest to convert others away from religion if I can, or am I better served by allowing them to believe falsehoods?”
“2) Is it always in the interest of the person who believes to be convinced that they believe a falsity, or might there be times when the compassionate thing to do is to allow ignorance to be bliss?”

I said that these are interesting questions, but my question is whether these are even legitimate questions? For example, the first question about beliefs should be “allowed” or if we instead should “convert” others away from religion, as IF a believer’s belief is in our hands to modify, or our right to modify or allow. That is a supposition that should be explored.
The second question makes the assumption that we can convince a person that their beliefs are false. That it is in our power to either allow a false belief or to crush it by “revealing”, I guess, it’s falsehood.
I would like to see anyone perform such a miracle. You can PROPOSE IT, you can POSIT IT, and this proposition is either to be accepted or rejected based on the likes and dislikes of the person who makes this choice, but none is compelled by an argument about God or other metaphysical subjects, that their religious beliefs are true or false. After all what we are discussing is “belief”. Even if it was in my interests to change a person’s beliefs, that does not mean that I’ll be able or am capable of “converting” them away from their beliefs. I may set up a false causal chain and presume that behaviour X corresponds to belief X and that a different behaviour corresponds with a different belief, but in humans behaviour has no necessity to match belief, nor belief to match behaviour, so there is no public means to dicern that which is patently private.

The second question is the Santa Claus dilema, but because Santa Claus is not as entertwined with our social interactions, believing or not believing in Santa Claus does not affect us in quite the same way. Wouldn’t it be better to tell someone who is anxious about Hell that there is no hell and that God doesn’t exist? He doesn’t need to FEAR for what doesn’t exist, but by extension, he cannot HOPE in that which does not exists either.

Fear and Hope stand as distinctly human emotions. I don’t mean the feeling of temporary fear because you had a dog bark at you, but a pervaisive fear of something that doesn’t exist now, at the moment of your emotion. Same with Hope. Hope is perhaps determined by the same structure than allow us to become anxious. Hope is elation over what is not yet tangible, feeling good about what is not yet. This is the ability of man to project himself into the future and to recollect the past, along with the emotions that attended that moment in the past and recreated in the recollection of a memory. Projecting ourselves a furture creates a set of emotions. The future need only be “possible”, and that is key. Religous belief in Heaven is a source of hope. Some might consider it an irrational optimism about the future, but is is still a logical possibility, or rational rather than irrational optimism. The exuberance of this capacity is to create metaphysical realms.

Only a God can kill a God as only a new belief can convert a person to a new belief. All the same, all that we are left with is beliefs. That a belief is false is yet another belief that might be false. The only belief that is true is that which we cannot even identify as a belief but on which all our other beliefs depend- the belief that we can distinguish, judge, and choose.
A person might be convinced, or made to believe that their belief is false- this is however yet another belief about the truth and a belief about what is false. Our ignorance is really the ignorance about which is which. But belief itself is bliss, belief that we can overcome our partiality, our finiteness and dicern right from wrong. It is no coincidence that the ancients related this to the drive for man to become like the Gods. The person that believes that they believe in truth while others believe in a falsity is him/herself living a moment of bliss due to their belief. How is she or he different from the person the regard as in need of the truth?

It is perhaps the most ancient and prevalent belief, belief in certainty, in infallibility, from which all other belief, religious or not, stem from. Within religion there are two ways: Positive religion and Negative religion. Positive religion is the belief in truth and falsehood, of knowing “the right way forward”, the belief in Progress. Negative religion is the belief that there is no one way forward, no objective truth or falsehood, but only an opinion about truth and falsehoods, whith this belief itself being either in the mind of the reader. There is, according to this view, no way of KNOWING the RIGHT way, but we can still, and have no choice but to believe in a right way. What could be a “cool” tall tree with a few branches that tapper off the higher the tree grows (in Positive religion) Negative religion makes that tree become a “burning” bush. Burning, because it is tied to the private, heighten, internal states of the person who believes, and a bush because it “grows” rather sideways more than it does upward. The branches do not tapper off but grow much like the ones below, so it takes the shape of a cube rather than a pyramid.

Fear and Hope are powerful emotions that shape that tree into either a tall pine tree or a short bush. They are the fertilizers that these trees feed on. When these questions come accross this religious board you can imagine that the poster is perhaps motivated (I am not saying that they were- nor can I know- but that I can imagine) by that dual capacity for fear and for hope and that like all dualities, this one can be worked into other dalities through which we organize our existence, our realities. Fear and Hope= Wrong and Right= False and True.

…Believing falsehoods…who does that? We believe only in truth, or believe that what we believe is true. Because of our condition we can be wrong. That we are either right or wrong however is of upmost importance and so we create a narrative by which we can overcome our condition by which we can dicern the truth and this is our hope and what silence our fear of not knowing. This itself, and in short, is as util as religious myth. This too can serve those three functions, and like religions it can still be all a false belief.

I suggest in closing that perhaps we are pulling the cart ahead of the horse. Perhaps the three effects are actually the causes of religion and other not-so-religious alternatives. Perhaps we need Social lubricants, as we are social by nature, and a social scaffold for social structure-cohesion, for the same reason, and perhaps we need, in the face of our finiteness and limits something that can serve as a social opium that can serve as a glue that keeps us vital. The opposite of depression or pervaisive sadness is not happiness but vitality. Hope is vitality. Hope is that energy that keeps us engaged to this world and to human society and interaction. These needs can POSSIBLY be met by formal religion, but not SOLELY through it. Religion is the effect of all these dispositions and not the cause of such human needs. But apparently “God is a jealous God” or shall we again put the horse ahead and say that it is we who are rather jealous, jealous of the truth and treathened by multiplicity?

[Bob]

Hi omar,

Sometime ago, someone started a post with a proposition: Taking, as a given, that the mythologies of the global religions are false, is it worth it to maintain them?

Isn’t the start of the post already posing questions? What is “false” about the mythologies of the global religions and did the poster believe that one can separate such literature in “false” and “correct”?

The poster believed that “believing falsehoods is detrimental to one’s health.” But that: “On the other, in a large and perhaps necessarily stratified society, religion may play an important role as a social lubricant.”

Going down the road of the assumption that religious literature can be “false”, the attempt is made to rectify that by giving it a task which doesn’t care whether it is “correct” or “false”, rather it asks whether it is entertaining or can it keep people together?

A third use for this “falsehood” is that: “They also offer some hope to people who would otherwise have none.”

Where would this “hope” aspire to lead people? Belief in the literal truth of its narrative? Is that what people who have no hope need? Do people believe in LOTR because of comfort, and to enable their productivity or cohesion?

“1) Is it in my interest to convert others away from religion if I can, or am I better served by allowing them to believe falsehoods?”
“2) Is it always in the interest of the person who believes to be convinced that they believe a falsity, or might there be times when the compassionate thing to do is to allow ignorance to be bliss?”

Am I not being presumptive by assuming first of all that I know what is “correct” or “false” for other people? Secondly, who’s “allowing” anybody anything? Thirdly, is it only a question of how I am “better served”? Finally, why assume (with the original poster) that we are dealing with something that can be polarised in this way? This may be the weakness of some religious groups and the source of social conflict, but isn’t the question taken from a completely inappropriate direction? Even if you are aiming your rhetorical questions at such people, they proselytise for different reasons.

Fear and Hope stand as distinctly human emotions. I don’t mean the feeling of temporary fear because you had a dog bark at you, but a pervaisive fear of something that doesn’t exist now, at the moment of your emotion. Same with Hope. Hope is perhaps determined by the same structure than allow us to become anxious. Hope is elation over what is not yet tangible, feeling good about what is not yet. This is the ability of man to project himself into the future and to recollect the past, along with the emotions that attended that moment in the past and recreated in the recollection of a memory. Projecting ourselves a furture creates a set of emotions. The future need only be “possible”, and that is key. Religous belief in Heaven is a source of hope. Some might consider it an irrational optimism about the future, but is is still a logical possibility, or rational rather than irrational optimism. The exuberance of this capacity is to create metaphysical realms.

First off, I don’t think that fear and hope are opposites. Rather, fear is “a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; it is the feeling or condition of being afraid” - the opposite is courage or bravery. Hope, on the other hand, is “the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best” which will lead people to pursue that which is wanted or the events that will provide the best scenario for them. The opposite would be despair. A similarity, however, could be seen in the representing two sides of stress: distress or eustress.

Hope isn’t the “elation” you describe, but a feeling that the pursuit of something could prove healthful or give one the feeling of fulfillment. Maybe elation could follow that but it certainly isn’t guaranteed. I agree that religious hope provides this kind of motivation and that here and there the elation is in the foreground, but it isn’t the truth of human experience. Even religious hope can have a certain amount of rationality about it, although its expression of such hope is mythical and therefore only representative of an unknown in detail, but positive outcome. Still, we all need this kind of hope as motivation for getting up in the morning, and this is the true character of religious hope – as a mover, a motivator and even an instigator.

Within religion there are two ways: Positive religion and Negative religion. Positive religion is the belief in truth and falsehood, of knowing “the right way forward”, the belief in Progress. Negative religion is the belief that there is no one way forward, no objective truth or falsehood, but only an opinion about truth and falsehoods, whith this belief itself being either in the mind of the reader. There is, according to this view, no way of KNOWING the RIGHT way, but we can still, and have no choice but to believe in a right way.

The idea of having an orthodox or conventional faith, or a conservative or even punctilious faith as the only way to salvation is a belief that rises above the prime faith in their Way, and goes on to speak out against other ways. There is a different opinion that is different to claiming that there is “no one way forward, no objective truth or falsehood”, and that is in believing that all “Ways” have their roots in something essentially important for human life and that they can all be the “one” Way for those who follow it, without aspiring to define other ways as false. After all, we are silent in other areas where we are not competent to give exhaustive information, aren’t we?

When God is described as a “jealous God”, we have to understand that his jealousy is towards his proverbial “wife” who is committing adultery again with a fraud, although God is seen as the one who once freed her of her original imprisonment from a fraudulent affair. It is a drama that is unfolding like in the Hindu and Greek classics, which describes reality from an abstract point of view. If we could understand this, we would read religious literature with joy.

Shalom

[Xunzian]

@omar

Sometime ago, someone started a post with a proposition: Taking, as a given, that the mythologies of the global religions are false, is it worth it to maintain them?
The poster believed that “believing falsehoods is detrimental to one’s health.” But that: “On the other, in a large and perhaps necessarily stratified society, religion may play an important role as a social lubricant.” This is a practical good which “religion” brings to our material world.
The other use for religion that could still justify it’s existence is to “a community structure (one which Humanism is striving to replicate, and so far without much luck that I’m aware of). Though that kind of group formation causes problems between groups, within groups it enables great cohesion. The same downsides could be said of any group scaffold, and there’s reason to believe that religion functions better as a scaffold than others.”
A third use for this “falsehood” is that: “They also offer some hope to people who would otherwise have none.” False hope, yes, but “it is nonetheless comforting to believe for those who do. Insofar as that comfort translates into docility, productivity, and cohesion, it serves a practical purpose for others who may or may not believe.”

So, while false, religion has it’s “practical” uses, at least three:
1- Social lubricant
2- Social scaffold for social structure-cohesion
3- social opium of hope.

I only provide this as a background. My subject can do without this, but I wanted to give you guys context, contrast with what I’ll say on my subject. Moving along, the posters formulated some interesting questions:

“1) Is it in my interest to convert others away from religion if I can, or am I better served by allowing them to believe falsehoods?”
“2) Is it always in the interest of the person who believes to be convinced that they believe a falsity, or might there be times when the compassionate thing to do is to allow ignorance to be bliss?”

I said that these are interesting questions, but my question is whether these are even legitimate questions? For example, the first question about beliefs should be “allowed” or if we instead should “convert” others away from religion, as IF a believer’s belief is in our hands to modify, or our right to modify or allow. That is a supposition that should be explored.
The second question makes the assumption that we can convince a person that their beliefs are false. That it is in our power to either allow a false belief or to crush it by “revealing”, I guess, it’s falsehood.
I would like to see anyone perform such a miracle. You can PROPOSE IT, you can POSIT IT, and this proposition is either to be accepted or rejected based on the likes and dislikes of the person who makes this choice, but none is compelled by an argument about God or other metaphysical subjects, that their religious beliefs are true or false. After all what we are discussing is “belief”. Even if it was in my interests to change a person’s beliefs, that does not mean that I’ll be able or am capable of “converting” them away from their beliefs. I may set up a false causal chain and presume that behaviour X corresponds to belief X and that a different behaviour corresponds with a different belief, but in humans behaviour has no necessity to match belief, nor belief to match behaviour, so there is no public means to dicern that which is patently private.

Well, it is about interests. As an atheist, would it be in my best interest to model myself after Richard Dawkins? New Atheists spend a lot of energy evangelizing, so questioning whether that energy is indeed well-spent is a fair question. Another, more extreme interpretation would involve whether states ought make (certain?) religions illegal or codify “freedom of religion” to mean “freedom from religion” as France has done.

The second question is the Santa Claus dilema, but because Santa Claus is not as entertwined with our social interactions, believing or not believing in Santa Claus does not affect us in quite the same way. Wouldn’t it be better to tell someone who is anxious about Hell that there is no hell and that God doesn’t exist? He doesn’t need to FEAR for what doesn’t exist, but by extension, he cannot HOPE in that which does not exists either.

Fear and Hope stand as distinctly human emotions. I don’t mean the feeling of temporary fear because you had a dog bark at you, but a pervaisive fear of something that doesn’t exist now, at the moment of your emotion. Same with Hope. Hope is perhaps determined by the same structure than allow us to become anxious. Hope is elation over what is not yet tangible, feeling good about what is not yet. This is the ability of man to project himself into the future and to recollect the past, along with the emotions that attended that moment in the past and recreated in the recollection of a memory. Projecting ourselves a furture creates a set of emotions. The future need only be “possible”, and that is key. Religous belief in Heaven is a source of hope. Some might consider it an irrational optimism about the future, but is is still a logical possibility, or rational rather than irrational optimism. The exuberance of this capacity is to create metaphysical realms.

Only a God can kill a God as only a new belief can convert a person to a new belief. All the same, all that we are left with is beliefs. That a belief is false is yet another belief that might be false. The only belief that is true is that which we cannot even identify as a belief but on which all our other beliefs depend- the belief that we can distinguish, judge, and choose.
A person might be convinced, or made to believe that their belief is false- this is however yet another belief about the truth and a belief about what is false. Our ignorance is really the ignorance about which is which. But belief itself is bliss, belief that we can overcome our partiality, our finiteness and dicern right from wrong. It is no coincidence that the ancients related this to the drive for man to become like the Gods. The person that believes that they believe in truth while others believe in a falsity is him/herself living a moment of bliss due to their belief. How is she or he different from the person the regard as in need of the truth?

It is perhaps the most ancient and prevalent belief, belief in certainty, in infallibility, from which all other belief, religious or not, stem from. Within religion there are two ways: Positive religion and Negative religion. Positive religion is the belief in truth and falsehood, of knowing “the right way forward”, the belief in Progress. Negative religion is the belief that there is no one way forward, no objective truth or falsehood, but only an opinion about truth and falsehoods, whith this belief itself being either in the mind of the reader. There is, according to this view, no way of KNOWING the RIGHT way, but we can still, and have no choice but to believe in a right way. What could be a “cool” tall tree with a few branches that tapper off the higher the tree grows (in Positive religion) Negative religion makes that tree become a “burning” bush. Burning, because it is tied to the private, heighten, internal states of the person who believes, and a bush because it “grows” rather sideways more than it does upward. The branches do not tapper off but grow much like the ones below, so it takes the shape of a cube rather than a pyramid.

Fear and Hope are powerful emotions that shape that tree into either a tall pine tree or a short bush. They are the fertilizers that these trees feed on. When these questions come accross this religious board you can imagine that the poster is perhaps motivated (I am not saying that they were- nor can I know- but that I can imagine) by that dual capacity for fear and for hope and that like all dualities, this one can be worked into other dalities through which we organize our existence, our realities. Fear and Hope= Wrong and Right= False and True.

…Believing falsehoods…who does that? We believe only in truth, or believe that what we believe is true. Because of our condition we can be wrong. That we are either right or wrong however is of upmost importance and so we create a narrative by which we can overcome our condition by which we can dicern the truth and this is our hope and what silence our fear of not knowing. This itself, and in short, is as util as religious myth. This too can serve those three functions, and like religions it can still be all a false belief.

I suggest in closing that perhaps we are pulling the cart ahead of the horse. Perhaps the three effects are actually the causes of religion and other not-so-religious alternatives. Perhaps we need Social lubricants, as we are social by nature, and a social scaffold for social structure-cohesion, for the same reason, and perhaps we need, in the face of our finiteness and limits something that can serve as a social opium that can serve as a glue that keeps us vital. The opposite of depression or pervaisive sadness is not happiness but vitality. Hope is vitality. Hope is that energy that keeps us engaged to this world and to human society and interaction. These needs can POSSIBLY be met by formal religion, but not SOLELY through it. Religion is the effect of all these dispositions and not the cause of such human needs. But apparently “God is a jealous God” or shall we again put the horse ahead and say that it is we who are rather jealous, jealous of the truth and treathened by multiplicity?

I think most structuralists would agree that religion arises from those needs as opposed to the reverse. While it is true that religion is not the only tool available to meet these needs, it is already in place. Why reinvent the wheel?

[Mad_Man_P]

Here’s the thing that comes to my mind reading the above…

What does belief have to do with anything?

What is all this talk about truth, knowledge and right or wrong… they don’t adress the reason anyone cares what someone else believes:

What people believe often has behavioral consequences that to a very large degree shapes our world… I want you to see the world as I do, not because I’m right and you’re wrong nor because I even care, but because I want you to share my goals. That way we can work together; we can cooperate. We are social beings… we want you to want the same as us… and we want your cooperation… and if you should deny it, we throw you out and If you should HINDER us more than you help us… we consider you an enemy.

Other than that… you can believe whatever you like… and no one will care.

Who would care in the least if I anounced a belief in Grundags?
What’s a Grundag?
It’s something I’m imagiing… that has absolutely no behavioral consequences… aside from me mentioning that I believe in them this one and only time.
Right or wrong…
Truly… who would care?

EDIT:
Aside from the religious dude who wants to save my soul I guess…

[Xunzian]

Bingo!

Hence my insistence on the unity of action and belief. It cuts out a lot of the middle-crap.

[omar]

Hello Bob:

— Isn’t the start of the post already posing questions? What is “false” about the mythologies of the global religions and did the poster believe that one can separate such literature in “false” and “correct”?
O- Yes. That was part of the critique I made of the position.

— First off, I don’t think that fear and hope are opposites.
O- Not momentary fear. Fear, I meant, as a prevalent fear, more like despair or an irrational pesimism. I thought I explained that one. But it is not the point to contrast opposites, but to make the point that these responses, though seemingly distinct, share a common origin in the abilities of the human mind to imagine what is not physically before us, to imagine what MIGHT BE, what is possible. We hope for what might be, we fear, in the pervaisive sense I address, what might be.

— Rather, fear is “a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined;
O- When it is it something imagined the body has no way of deactivating the hormonal response to danger and because it is originated within us, rather than by an outside stimuli, the mechanism can become a pervaisive condition, a mood, a distressed mood, or depressive. Hope, as well, is triggered by our imagination. A certain outcome, a certain future can be imagined that is favourable to our interests. This attitude towards what may be, what might be, like fear, due to what can be imagined, is what I call hope.

O- the opposite is courage or bravery. Hope, on the other hand, is “the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best” which will lead people to pursue that which is wanted or the events that will provide the best scenario for them.
O- Without hope, I fail to see courage or bravery as possible. I already associated hope with vitality, because hopes allows us to re-engage reality. A courageus person might not fear what may happen to him on the battlefield but fear what may happen to loved ones. This fear may not be due to what he knows but due to what he can imagine, and thus the courageous too can feel fear. Likewise, the brave can feel hope as well.

— The opposite would be despair.
O- Despair is what I call a pervaisive fear. Under regular conditions, a person facing a dangerous situation may act, in fear, in ways to escape said threat. But when the fear is psychological, no action on the subject side can eliminate the feeling of danger. Despair ranks his prospects in a negative way, just as the person facing a threat or danger, ranks that threat or danger in a negative way. We fear the unknown, an unknown that is cast in a negative light. Hope is casting the unknown in a positive light. The unknown can give such varied effects because it is the whims of our imagination, interpretation, which gives it, or shines on the unknown in either way.

— Even religious hope can have a certain amount of rationality about it
O- I don’t think that you understood me. I consider hope just as rational. The subject’s hope is quite logical, in a formal way. What is often debated is just the truth of the propositions which lead them to a positive conclusion.

— … and this is the true character of religious hope – as a mover, a motivator and even an instigator.
O- But I say that is the character of hope in general, wherever it may be found. Hope is vitality, which is just what you just described.

— …and that is in believing that all “Ways” have their roots in something essentially important for human life and that they can all be the “one” Way for those who follow it, without aspiring to define other ways as false. After all, we are silent in other areas where we are not competent to give exhaustive information, aren’t we?
O- This is still an attempt to dicern a positive referent outside of ourselves; a common link that all apparently diverse approaches contain that is a pivot of objective truth that is reflective in all possible opinions. The negative way simply judges even this as something outside of our control. I used to say that God was the light in a tiffany lamp. It burns brigth, but it is just one. yet, every different piece of glass reflects this common light in whatever color it happens to be and mistakes this color as the color of the light itself. But this difficulty of our station does not change the fact that there is some truth behind all these colors. That behind all religious approaches there are certain common truths that could represent the experience of the objectively divine by all humans. But what we forget is that it might be just our own nature, our own biological needs which create the similarity in our approaches. Perhaps the points that unite us is not due to our shared experience of the divine, but the evidence of our shared biology.

— When God is described as a “jealous God”, we have to understand that his jealousy is towards his proverbial “wife” who is committing adultery again with a fraud, although God is seen as the one who once freed her of her original imprisonment from a fraudulent affair. It is a drama that is unfolding like in the Hindu and Greek classics, which describes reality from an abstract point of view. If we could understand this, we would read religious literature with joy.
O- If we are not feminists, who distrust the choices and good will of the husband.

[Bob]

Hi Omar,

This is still an attempt to dicern a positive referent outside of ourselves; a common link that all apparently diverse approaches contain that is a pivot of objective truth that is reflective in all possible opinions. The negative way simply judges even this as something outside of our control. I used to say that God was the light in a tiffany lamp. It burns brigth, but it is just one. yet, every different piece of glass reflects this common light in whatever color it happens to be and mistakes this color as the color of the light itself. But this difficulty of our station does not change the fact that there is some truth behind all these colors. That behind all religious approaches there are certain common truths that could represent the experience of the objectively divine by all humans. But what we forget is that it might be just our own nature, our own biological needs which create the similarity in our approaches. Perhaps the points that unite us is not due to our shared experience of the divine, but the evidence of our shared biology.

What is the divine? I consider the divine to be the unavoidable reality behind all life that is all deciding, whether we see that concept as a theist, polytheist, atheist or whatever other form we decide to follow. The point about this reality is that it has many forms and images, and then again none. If we follow it too closely to one image, it becomes an idol and evades us. If we accept that there is no image, it becomes transient and fades in our awareness. If we accept that our diverse perceptions all mark an aspect, but that it remains the ineffable reality, the Way things are, and invariably different to the way that we, in our self-deception, expect them to be, we are prepared to be surprised – and stand in awe.

I still believe it to be a reference point outside of us, but perhaps it is more like Alan Watts once quoted, that the ineffable plays hide-and-seek with himself, and we are all part of the game. Perhaps the greeting Namaste should have this message, and we should bow to the divine in the other person or life form. Now, this may not be particularly theistic and you will argue that I am leaving Christianity behind me, but I can’t help but believe that we have lost something essential along the way that transcends the (non-)images of God that have (inadvertently) been passed on in all anti-idolatric tradition, and failed to see that God, if a Father, then also a Mother, a Daughter and a Son, because the only way out of idolatry is to see God in everything – or in nothing.

This would be my rendering of your assumption that God may be simply the superimposed “I” on nature, giving it a personality rather than having a personality. But I do see a personality, not human-like, but like a myriad of characters, striving towards the goal of enlightenment and rebirth for his creation – but also seemingly losing at present against the entropy of pride and separation, because prince Adam and princess Adamah just can’t find the way back into paradise so than they can sustain the planet, rather than exploit everything. They largely haven’t even realised that this is the goal.

Shalom

[Jayson]

For whatever it’s worth Omar, and by no means as an opposition to anything anyone is talking about, as just for observers consideration…I do not hold belief rooted in either fear or hope.

I’m not saying that defiantly, but instead, I mean that thinking in these terms would actually invalidate my entire belief structure as I don’t hold a long-view fashion of belief, nor do I hold a resting (or leaning) form of belief; either in fear, or in hope.

If I had to define a relative term to fear and hope that is at the root of my belief causality I would probably choose the word, “clean”.
I don’t know a word for it, but it’s the same as attempting to explain walking outside and taking in a breath of fresh, clean, cold winter air…but not being invigorated or energized by it.

If you could mix clean, crisp, orderly, and peaceful together without adding escapism into the concept, then whatever word defines these attributes would be at the root for me.

I suppose, for lack of a better word, one could call this tranquility.

But I don’t do this out of implicit or explicit fears or hopes.
I spend, in all honestly, most of my spiritual meditation (meaning focus; not meaning the term as a practice) on not fooling myself with hopes and fears that are trifle to the experience of my belief itself, as I see these two things as inhibitors for me sensing my spiritual experience, emotionally, clean.

I don’t really have to work hard at this, as it has always struck me as odd and strange (meaning strange in the innocent term) that people placed large amounts of belief around the construct of hope (or fear, as it may be); even as a child, it confused me on the level of simply not understanding how to relate to this.

I still don’t.

For my life, whatever is, is what is and that is what I have to live with and mold as I am able.
And I see this as good.

So anyways…there’s that, just for consideration of whatever it does in your noodles.

[omar]

Hello Bob:

— What is the divine? I consider the divine to be the unavoidable reality behind all life.
O- It is an interesting question that reveals, or will reveal more about the respondent than about Reality at large. What IS in fact divine? All things and no-thing. A certain spot of land, a funny looking lump of molded clay, can be seen, interpreted, as divine, while yet at the same time, an onlooker from a different biography, may not see the same things as divine. Divinity then is more about how we feel about such and such thing. A grave is somehow valued differently by the adult members of the buried person’s family, than by the small children of the family. Because of this variety of attitudes, I do not consider the divine to be an unavoidable reality. What is unavoidable is that we shall have a disposition towards the sanctification of something that is otherwise part of every day life. Divinity is an affectation within an individual. Reality in itself can give alternative reactions, so in itself, Reality is not what confronts us and “inevitably” is considered by all present as divine. We might as well as what is “beauty”, and the answer echoes even here. The Divine is in the eye of the beholder.

—… If we accept that there is no image, it becomes transient and fades in our awareness. If we accept that our diverse perceptions all mark an aspect
O- They either mark an aspect or they mark a common biology/biography- that it is a common response to what is common across cultures.

— but that it remains the ineffable reality, the Way things are
O- Our reality, our life, human life, the way things are for us. This is very real, but not quite as objective is what is considered divine, what is mundane, because these are supplied by the judgment of man and not by the unavoidable reality. The reaction to what is common in life, by beings that are noramtively alike represents an unavoidable reality. But that reaction is regulated by human imagination.

[omar]

Hello Stumps:

— For whatever it’s worth Omar, and by no means as an opposition to anything anyone is talking about, as just for observers consideration…I do not hold belief rooted in either fear or hope.
O- Well, consider that my statement is a generalization. As such, as always, it aims at a broad majority of cases and not at all possible cases.

— I suppose, for lack of a better word, one could call this tranquility.
O- We haven’t discussed your beliefs at lenght. As Bob asked before: “What is the Divine”?

— But I don’t do this out of implicit or explicit fears or hopes.
O- What about unconscious needs?

— I don’t really have to work hard at this, as it has always struck me as odd and strange (meaning strange in the innocent term) that people placed large amounts of belief around the construct of hope (or fear, as it may be); even as a child, it confused me on the level of simply not understanding how to relate to this.
O- Again this might have to do with your ideas about what God is or what is It’s character, or what It is supposed to do and what what we do relate to it. If your needs are just to achieve tranquility then you may have very little need of God and could even do away with God; which leads me to my next question: Why theism?

[Bob]

Hi Omar

What IS in fact divine? All things and no-thing. A certain spot of land, a funny looking lump of molded clay, can be seen, interpreted, as divine, while yet at the same time, an onlooker from a different biography, may not see the same things as divine. Divinity then is more about how we feel about such and such thing. A grave is somehow valued differently by the adult members of the buried person’s family, than by the small children of the family. Because of this variety of attitudes, I do not consider the divine to be an unavoidable reality. What is unavoidable is that we shall have a disposition towards the sanctification of something that is otherwise part of every day life. Divinity is an affectation within an individual. Reality in itself can give alternative reactions, so in itself, Reality is not what confronts us and “inevitably” is considered by all present as divine. We might as well as what is “beauty”, and the answer echoes even here. The Divine is in the eye of the beholder.

Being taken to Alan Watts at the moment, something he said appeals to me: “An intelligent being doesn’t arise out of unintelligent universe.” The potential has to be there for something like us to evolve, whether it is the way that the various traditions variously envisioned or differently, somehow the reality out of which we grow contains all of our potential. I think this is what religions have been telling us in their different ways from the beginning. Your wink with “The Divine is in the eye of the beholder” actually points to that.

If this is true, and intelligence is one accomplishment of life, evolving through a series of possibilities, allowing mammals to be dominant on this planet, perhaps other species at other times or on other worlds, it suggests that intelligence isn’t a fluke, but an intention. That is probably where we must agree to disagree, but to me this intention is injected into creation/nature by something that gives us transience to discover its shadow or its footprint here and there, and to regard life in its many forms as holy and mystical. This approach also furthers that transience, deepening its perception, broadening its scope of discernment, and sharpening its intuition.

This leads to awe, wonder, dread, trepidation, hope. A mixture of emotions that arises in confrontation with the unavoidable but unspeakable reality of this vast universe, that is too sovereign as to obey our wishes but holds so much promise that it could fulfil our dreams.

Shalom

[omar]

Hello Bob:

— Being taken to Alan Watts at the moment, something he said appeals to me: “An intelligent being doesn’t arise out of unintelligent universe.”
O- Very nicely put, but it doesn’t change my point. What is intelligence? That still requires the same judge, and as he finds it in men, so he finds it in nature, yet, what he finds “is” by virtue of his/her definition. An intelligent universe doesn’t arise out of an unintelligent beholder.

— The potential has to be there for something like us to evolve, whether it is the way that the various traditions variously envisioned or differently, somehow the reality out of which we grow contains all of our potential.
O- I believe that we have the potential to believe, but that doesn’t mean that such beliefs are rooted totally or in part on an unavoidable reality. They can be rooted in our imagination.

— If this is true, and intelligence is one accomplishment of life, evolving through a series of possibilities, allowing mammals to be dominant on this planet, perhaps other species at other times or on other worlds, it suggests that intelligence isn’t a fluke, but an intention.
O- What is intelligence? Once we define that which we seek, we may find evidence for it or not. I think that intelligence is not the goal of life, but that LIFE is the goal of life. A chicken is just an egg’s way of making another egg. Intelligence is just a means to ensure the continuance of life. Ask yourself what is it that intelligence does? What does it enable us to do and other beings similarly endowed? In the end, intelligence arises in organism with biological needs that are marked in our bodies. Intelligence has been an add on to a body that had already prior needs which were being met quite long before intelligence emerged. Things for which we praise intelligence may not be what was intended, by anything or our genes, but a by-product which results from the exuberance of life itself.

— That is probably where we must agree to disagree, but to me this intention is injected into creation/nature by something that gives us transience to discover its shadow or its footprint here and there, and to regard life in its many forms as holy and mystical.
O- No problem there. It is what each person should do.

— This approach also furthers that transience, deepening its perception, broadening its scope of discernment, and sharpening its intuition.
O- …The truth about religion is that it is not about God, but about ourselves and how we improve our condition according to our interests.

[Jayson]

@omar

— For whatever it’s worth Omar, and by no means as an opposition to anything anyone is talking about, as just for observers consideration…I do not hold belief rooted in either fear or hope.
O- Well, consider that my statement is a generalization. As such, as always, it aims at a broad majority of cases and not at all possible cases.

Oh truly; but if I am at least just one, and the planet is of billions…chances are realistic enough that sizable amounts more similar in concept to myself exist.

— I suppose, for lack of a better word, one could call this tranquility.
O- We haven’t discussed your beliefs at lenght. As Bob asked before: “What is the Divine”?

The divine, for myself, is simply that sense of sentience which I feel a sense of in existence but have no name for.
I call this sensation, “God”, because I live in the west and this is the easiest translation of the term.

— But I don’t do this out of implicit or explicit fears or hopes.
O- What about unconscious needs?

Implicit is unconscious.

There is only one fear I actually have in all honesty, and it’s more of a sadness than a fear.
And that is simply of man being destroyed.
Mostly this is a dread of mine because I truly love man, and I think man is a magnificent brilliance of existence in all forms; including the atrocious.

And I say this is more a sadness than a fear, because it’s a given that one day man will actually be destroyed in one fashion or another.
All things are.
And so, reflecting on that visualization is capable of causing me deep sadness that can affect me for an entire week or month.

However, staying focused on now, and the world of amazing brilliance that is here right now is always what reminds me of how joyous it is that I am part of this all; that I am sharing this experience amongst man.

— I don’t really have to work hard at this, as it has always struck me as odd and strange (meaning strange in the innocent term) that people placed large amounts of belief around the construct of hope (or fear, as it may be); even as a child, it confused me on the level of simply not understanding how to relate to this.
O- Again this might have to do with your ideas about what God is or what is It’s character, or what It is supposed to do and what what we do relate to it. If your needs are just to achieve tranquility then you may have very little need of God and could even do away with God; which leads me to my next question: Why theism?

It would seem that I have little justification for theism, and far more justification for something far less divine based such as several Asian based formats.
In fact, as you know, I am practicing in zen simply due to the draw.

So why stay on theism’s side of the fence?
Simple.

Sensation.
I feel that concept; a sentience unified in some fashion beyond our imagining…but not beyond our senses.
I don’t even have a sense that I will ever know much about this sentience; even in whatever lies after death.

---

So to bring it around.

Fear and Hope; I think is one format.

But perhaps a sister of it is Sadness and Tranquility.

[Bob]

Hi Omar,

What is intelligence? That still requires the same judge, and as he finds it in men, so he finds it in nature, yet, what he finds “is” by virtue of his/her definition. An intelligent universe doesn’t arise out of an unintelligent beholder.

Intelligence is “the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, learning quickly, storing and retrieving information, using language fluently, classifying, generalizing, and adjusting to new situations.” (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.)

Despite your chicken/egg analogy, intelligence remains a real experience and is not to be credited to some particular behaviour that brought it about. There is a lot to suggest that this potential is something that we have inherited out of the primal substance from which we have evolved, and is not just a fluke brought about by some coincidence or merit, except that at some time it was no longer quashed but was allowed to happen. For all of the entropy going on in our world, the development of man’s awareness has remained, though under duress and oppression. I believe that it is the stuff from which prophecy is made, and probably what could hold the world together if we could reconnect. Referred to in a pre-scientific language, it is also the experience of the “seed of eternity”, of Gods and Wisdom, which has been the illustrated method of depiction.

I believe that we have the potential to believe, but that doesn’t mean that such beliefs are rooted totally or in part on an unavoidable reality. They can be rooted in our imagination.

If it wasn’t a real experience, but rather a pious hope, I would agree with you. Our problem is our view of the universe and our world within it, which is mechanic rather than organic, leading us to believe that we are biological constructions rather than expressions of life in its diversity. To entertain your idea there was an impressive talk held on TED by Jill Bolte Taylor who, as a brain scientist, had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions – motion, speech, self-awareness – shut down one by one. She says:

“… when you look at the brain, it’s obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another. For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor, while our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus collosum, which is made up of some 300 million axonal fibres. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely separate. Because they process information differently, each of our hemispheres think about different things, they care about different things, and, dare I say, they have very different personalities.”

As long as these two sides are talking to each other, even with our bias to one side or the other, we don’t notice the extent of this difference. Only when you have the experience of a stroke and can come back to tell the story, are we able to understand our dependency upon both sides of our brain to experience the way we do. She tells of how the left side of the brain began to malfunction:

“Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out details, details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It’s that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It’s that little voice that says to me, "Hey, you gotta remember to pick up bananas on your way home. I need them in the morning.

It’s that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it’s that little voice that says to me, “I am. I am.” And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me “I am,” I become separate. I become a single solid individual, separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you. And this was the portion of my brain that I lost on the morning of my stroke.”

“And then I lost my balance, and I’m propped up against the wall. And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy – energy … And in that moment, my brain chatter – my left hemisphere brain chatter – went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button. Total silence. And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.”

It is well worth going to TED (ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_ … sight.html) and listening to her speaking of that experience, which she has reviewed using all of her knowledge and come to an astounding conclusion, which you will find pertinent to our discussion.

Shalom

[omar]

Hello Bob:

— Intelligence is “the general mental ability involved in calculating, reasoning, perceiving relationships and analogies, learning quickly, storing and retrieving information, using language fluently, classifying, generalizing, and adjusting to new situations.” (The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004.)
O- Can my chair have those abilities? Or is the definition intended as a description of certain biological systems (though not all) rather than inorganic structures?

— Despite your chicken/egg analogy, intelligence remains a real experience and is not to be credited to some particular behaviour that brought it about.
O- Why could it not be credited to survival needs?

— There is a lot to suggest that this potential is something that we have inherited out of the primal substance from which we have evolved, and is not just a fluke brought about by some coincidence or merit, except that at some time it was no longer quashed but was allowed to happen.
O- There is a lot to suggest exactly that our intelligence was not something inherited out of the “primal substance”, if you mean atomic star dust. There is a lot to suggest that it was indeed just a fluke, not because it was that fit within a niche in nature. Not because “it was allowed” where once it was “quashed”- that implies the very thing for which we need evidence.

— For all of the entropy going on in our world, the development of man’s awareness has remained, though under duress and oppression.
O- The dominion of man is still a fraction of the dominion of dinosaurs and we know how that ended.

…on Bolte Taylor, I didn’t really get to the video, but Ill say a few things based on what you write about her:

— had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions – motion, speech, self-awareness – shut down one by one. She says:

“… when you look at the brain, it’s obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from one another.
O- “Completely”? That seems debatable.

— As long as these two sides are talking to each other, even with our bias to one side or the other, we don’t notice the extent of this difference. Only when you have the experience of a stroke and can come back to tell the story, are we able to understand our dependency upon both sides of our brain to experience the way we do.
O- How she was able to remember brings a set of philosophical questions. As you say:“our dependency” is on both sides. If one side is compromised via a stroke, how reliable is the analysis of the remaining half?

— “Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it’s all about the future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment and start picking out details, details and more details about those details. It then categorizes and organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we’ve ever learned, and projects into the future all of our possibilities.
O- Sounds like a homunculous, but going ahead…

— But perhaps most important, it’s that little voice that says to me, “I am. I am.”
And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me “I am,” I become separate. I become a single solid individual, separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you.
O- Makes me wonder if she got this from studying brains or from listening to the Dalai Lama. But she lost this defect(?) and so was enlightened by her stroke. …But can we even speak of a “she” anymore". As soon as the “I” is abandoned, escaped, then what is left to be enlightened? And if your left hemisphere says to “you”, your “I”, that “I am”, isn’t that redundant? How do you see a tear in the rain?

— “And then I lost my balance, and I’m propped up against the wall.
O- “I”, “I”, “I”…if this left side is so critical fro the sense of identity, the “I”, then how does she remember what happens to what did no longer exist?

— And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can’t define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy – energy … And in that moment, my brain chatter – my left hemisphere brain chatter – went totally silent.
O- An excellent analysis that seems impossible if we are to believe it.

[Bob]

Hi Omar,

Can my chair have those abilities? Or is the definition intended as a description of certain biological systems (though not all) rather than inorganic structures?

Does your chair have mental abilities? Where do such abilities take place in a chair?

Why could it not be credited to survival needs?

I have no objections.

There is a lot to suggest exactly that our intelligence was not something inherited out of the “primal substance”, if you mean atomic star dust. There is a lot to suggest that it was indeed just a fluke, not because it was that fit within a niche in nature. Not because “it was allowed” where once it was “quashed”- that implies the very thing for which we need evidence.

I think that it is more a case of the universe produces life where it can survive, and it produces intelligent life under given circumstances. It is all part of what is supposed to happen and not an accident. Everything that has happened had to be able to happen; this ability is inbuilt in the universe.

How she was able to remember brings a set of philosophical questions. As you say:“our dependency” is on both sides. If one side is compromised via a stroke, how reliable is the analysis of the remaining half?

It is the experience which is important and the analysis follows the experience. Your scepticism shows me that we can’t proceed along this path. It is just strange that the hundreds of listeners at TED were scientists like her and they offered her a standing ovation.

Shalom

[omar]

Hello Bob,
Sorry to see you about to leave, but my OP had a clear position. I said there were two ways: the Positive and the Negative, with science and religion being positive while agnosticism and simple theism as possible negative ways. If you expected a conversion on-line, then I am sorry to disappoint.

— Does your chair have mental abilities? Where do such abilities take place in a chair?
O- So the question is as relevant to Mr. Watts, about his intelligent Universe.

— I think that it is more a case of the universe produces life where it can survive, and it produces intelligent life under given circumstances. It is all part of what is supposed to happen and not an accident. Everything that has happened had to be able to happen; this ability is inbuilt in the universe.
O- It seems to me by the exclusivity of life, that the Universe only produces structures, and that impersonal forces within the universe, along with impersonal time, create ever changing combinations, of which, only a few, by chance, produce “life”.
I think that “meant” overstates simple probability. Life is a likely product, but I don’t know whether a product or a by-product. Everything that happen had to be able to happen…no argument against that…but being able to happen and “meant to happen” are different things. A given event, if an accident, was able, likely to happen. Anyone is “able” to take a fall on a flight of stairs. But if someone else pushes them from behind then that fall was meant, by the pusher, to happen. No one really has denied what was able to happen. Occam’s Razor simply would state that what was able to happen works well as an explanation without the need of someone to meaning it to happen.

— It is the experience which is important and the analysis follows the experience.
O- The experience by what? A compromised brain? And if true that her more logical “I” went silent, while her creative “I” remain, then the experience might have been recreated, as memories often do, with a creative bias.

— Your scepticism shows me that we can’t proceed along this path. It is just strange that the hundreds of listeners at TED were scientists like her and they offered her a standing ovation.
O- To her as a person who has overcome great odds or as a scientist with impressive lab work to support her claims? With an objectivity that is accessible for peer review? Scientists are people too, and while they applaud they do not have to only do so in the capacity of scientists rending with their applause a scientific criticism.

[Bob]

Hi Omar,

Sorry to see you about to leave, but my OP had a clear position. I said there were two ways: the Positive and the Negative, with science and religion being positive while agnosticism and simple theism as possible negative ways. If you expected a conversion on-line, then I am sorry to disappoint.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I only said that we couldn’t proceed along this path, not that I was leaving. Presuming that you did state your case in the way you said above, I find it to be anything but clear.

So the question is as relevant to Mr. Watts, about his intelligent Universe.

Only Mr. Watts can provide examples of intelligent life in the intelligent Universe.

It seems to me by the exclusivity of life, that the Universe only produces structures, and that impersonal forces within the universe, along with impersonal time, create ever changing combinations, of which, only a few, by chance, produce “life”.

This is also a good example (given by William Earle) of Philosophers who would come to work in a white coat if they thought they could get away with it. It is an awesome feeling that started people thinking, not the assumption that it is all coincidence and we can get back to chewing the cud. That is really what philosophy and religion is primarily about, rather than the competition of beliefs. There are varying explanations, but the same basic awesome experience at the beginning.

I think that “meant” overstates simple probability. Life is a likely product, but I don’t know whether a product or a by-product. Everything that happen had to be able to happen…no argument against that…but being able to happen and “meant to happen” are different things. A given event, if an accident, was able, likely to happen. Anyone is “able” to take a fall on a flight of stairs. But if someone else pushes them from behind then that fall was meant, by the pusher, to happen. No one really has denied what was able to happen. Occam’s Razor simply would state that what was able to happen works well as an explanation without the need of someone to meaning it to happen.

If Murphy is right and everything that can happen will happen, then people will fall on stairs and it is accepted that they will – but nobody needs to push. I think that the Universe is full of things that can happen – and do – although it would be adverse to human life. Even on our planet, numerous adverse things can happen, and it all has it’s time. But something like intelligent life is taking coincidence very far. The Cambrian explosion of life on this seemingly remote rock revolving around a spherical fire is amazing in itself, but that a life form should come out of it that starts to measure it out (also thoughts of Mr. Watts that I can only agree with) and work out how it all functions, that seems to me to push a fluke too far.
Shalom

[omar]

Hello Bob:

— Presuming that you did state your case in the way you said above, I find it to be anything but clear.
O- If it is not clear you can always ask me for clarification on whatever obscures it. What I presented was an idea, an intuition, an opinion, how it seems to me. Based on my biography, my life, my studies, it seems that a dualist system could be used to explain human approaches to that which we could define as “knowledge”. It isn’t that controversial Bob. Have you notice that for every new discovery there are doubters, skeptics. Some witness an event and conclude that something higher becomes known (the Positive Way) while others refuse to judge it in such positive ways (Negative Way). At first it would seem that doubters offer nothing, but they do, they offer a vision of the universe, of something, just one thing, higher. The negative way offers few opportunities to extend human knowledge and to stich human experience together. The positive way offers more ways to do just that. No one is entirely an skeptic nor a credulous person. Life depends on a healthy mixture of each.

— Only Mr. Watts can provide examples of intelligent life in the intelligent Universe.
O- Not examples of intelligence life, but evidence of a Universal mind. Can we find evidence of a mind sans brain?

— There are varying explanations, but the same basic awesome experience at the beginning.
O- Wiki quotes Earle:
"“The problem of knowledge is essentially, what does mind know? Does it know what is, or does it know only what it creates in the very act of knowing it? And the view for which I have argued is that all cognitive consciousness is an acquaintance with what is, or with reality… The mind does not have to infer its way out of itself; it is always outside itself looking at an object… If we must have a name for this old idea of the truth, it is perhaps an ‘acquaintance’ theory. When we are aware of something, we are not aware of something that ‘corresponds’ to something else; nor is the awareness itself a correspondence to anything. Nor is our view that of the coherence theory… Our analysis finally is metaphysical… The mind, in its cognitive dimension, intends Being.”
— Objectivity, pp. 153-7.
O- Take what he says: "The mind does not have to infer its way out of itself; it is always outside itself looking at an object…
O- It is always looking at itself. The object remains out there. “Seeing” is a mental state excited by our eye’s interaction with the world. By the time we interact with our eye, the original interaction is lost and replaced by what the eye relays to us.
"When we are aware of something, we are not aware of something that ‘corresponds’ to something else;
O- That is fine, but this is our animal faith. Philosophy however is capable of enquiring about what we are not normally aware of but COULD BE aware of. I am aware of a tree outside of my window, for example. That awareness of a tree can be something else entirely than what I define as being aware of a tree. Though I am not aware of it, could it be possible that what I am aware of (the tree) is not what I think, that is a plant that is in a plane of existence which I share, that could nourish me, could give me shade etc, etc? That instead it is a computer generated image that is being furnished into my brain as electrical impulses meant to imitate the mental state I would be in normally if I was seeing a tree? Thus the image that I am aware of, COULD, though I am not aware of it, be something entirely different from my idea.
“nor is the awareness itself a correspondence to anything.”
Awareness corresponds to a mental state- that we can say without fail. But what, whether a computer generated image or life giving tree corresponds to our state we cannot be sure. Lucky for us, nature has given us the default disposition to belief rather than disbelief. In this sense, the mind does intends, or prefers to presume Being rather than illusion.

— If Murphy is right and everything that can happen will happen, then people will fall on stairs and it is accepted that they will – but nobody needs to push.
O- Murphy is wrong, very wrong. Anyone could become rich, but many people die without actually becoming rich. Now the mind enquires: “Why do some become rich and others do not?” Is it by chance or by intelligent design. Did some Universal mind find it better that some suffer and die in poverty while others swim in debauchery?

— I think that the Universe is full of things that can happen – and do – although it would be adverse to human life.
O- How do you reconcille Intelligence with these “adverse” conditions or events?

— Even on our planet, numerous adverse things can happen, and it all has it’s time. But something like intelligent life is taking coincidence very far.
O- Why? Do we have a standard form of measurement of what goes too far or too short, or “just right”? Couldn’t it be that this simply expresses the comfortable thought that we are special? Everything else could’ve been an accident, but not us, we are special, we require the intervention of some Intelligence that intended our intelligence. This could simply be a way to fulfill a wish of ours. The evidence itself, what we are actually aware of does not corresponds to anything besides itself. This is part of the problem. Awareness is not narrowly confined to what we experience. Through what we experience, we also can “experience” or better, “become aware” of items that cannot be experience through anything but our reason.

[Bob]

Hi Omar,

What I presented was an idea, an intuition, an opinion, how it seems to me. Based on my biography, my life, my studies, it seems that a dualist system could be used to explain human approaches to that which we could define as “knowledge”. It isn’t that controversial Bob. Have you notice that for every new discovery there are doubters, skeptics. Some witness an event and conclude that something higher becomes known (the Positive Way) while others refuse to judge it in such positive ways (Negative Way). At first it would seem that doubters offer nothing, but they do, they offer a vision of the universe, of something, just one thing, higher. The negative way offers few opportunities to extend human knowledge and to stich human experience together. The positive way offers more ways to do just that. No one is entirely an skeptic nor a credulous person. Life depends on a healthy mixture of each.

The way I experience people, including myself, is that we are all fallible and that we all have blind spots which make us see things more positive or negative than they actually are. It is only when we observe ourselves in relation to those things over a number of years that we observe that our perspective changes and our opinion with it. The safer way is not to judge but rather to be patient and let the truth come out. It seems that the truth is the middle way, rather than the positive or negative way.

Not examples of intelligence life, but evidence of a Universal mind. Can we find evidence of a mind sans brain?

There is no claim by Watts that he knows what is behind the intelligence of the universe, nor how this relates to the brain-bound intelligence of human beings. It is simply awe and the observation that what we witness goes beyond coincidence. These observations are described in various ways, whether using the image of the theistic, imperial God, or the pantheistic depiction with Brahman und Atman at the centre of everything. You might choose to see the relevance of the Buddhist depiction as more acceptable, but however you want to approach the subject, it is a de-piction, a pictorial circumscription of experienced reality.

O- Wiki quotes Earle:
"“The problem of knowledge is essentially, what does mind know? Does it know what is, or does it know only what it creates in the very act of knowing it? And the view for which I have argued is that all cognitive consciousness is an acquaintance with what is, or with reality… The mind does not have to infer its way out of itself; it is always outside itself looking at an object… If we must have a name for this old idea of the truth, it is perhaps an ‘acquaintance’ theory. When we are aware of something, we are not aware of something that ‘corresponds’ to something else; nor is the awareness itself a correspondence to anything. Nor is our view that of the coherence theory… Our analysis finally is metaphysical… The mind, in its cognitive dimension, intends Being.”
— Objectivity, pp. 153-7.
O- Take what he says: "The mind does not have to infer its way out of itself; it is always outside itself looking at an object…

The problem arises with the term “knowledge”, since what is knowledge? It is being able to repeat something we have been told or taught, or is it having experienced something first hand? When do I really know something? I would suggest that it is when we have recognised its interconnection with the whole. As long as I observe something separated from its environment, I have no idea of many of its motivations or the influences that move it. Can it be said that I “know” anything about it, except of its existence?

O- It is always looking at itself. The object remains out there. “Seeing” is a mental state excited by our eye’s interaction with the world. By the time we interact with our eye, the original interaction is lost and replaced by what the eye relays to us.
"When we are aware of something, we are not aware of something that ‘corresponds’ to something else;

My mind automatically sorts its perceptions into those it has already identified and catalogued. In that way, it looks for those things that correspond with what our brain has already identified. This is why the unknown is always described in similes and as being “like” something. However, when I am aware of something, I am attentive and sentient, and not just watching an event. I am already seeing the interconnection between that which I am observing and it’s surrounding and distinguish whether the image I am seeing is separate from the apparent surrounding or whether they influence each other, and if so, to what degree. I try to fathom a situation and measure its importance for me. All of these things happen so fast that I only realise that I’m doing it in the split second that I’ve done it.

O- That is fine, but this is our animal faith. Philosophy however is capable of enquiring about what we are not normally aware of but COULD BE aware of. I am aware of a tree outside of my window, for example. That awareness of a tree can be something else entirely than what I define as being aware of a tree. Though I am not aware of it, could it be possible that what I am aware of (the tree) is not what I think, that is a plant that is in a plane of existence which I share, that could nourish me, could give me shade etc, etc? That instead it is a computer generated image that is being furnished into my brain as electrical impulses meant to imitate the mental state I would be in normally if I was seeing a tree? Thus the image that I am aware of, COULD, though I am not aware of it, be something entirely different from my idea.
“nor is the awareness itself a correspondence to anything.”

First of all I wouldn’t see this as “faith”, since confidence, trust, assurance, conviction and belief do not enter into it, especially not “animal faith”. It is only a method of grasping something mentally rather than physically. What you describe here is the second step of speculation as to whether I could be duping myself and confusing the object of observation with something I am familiar with, although it is not.

Murphy is wrong, very wrong. Anyone could become rich, but many people die without actually becoming rich. Now the mind enquires: “Why do some become rich and others do not?” Is it by chance or by intelligent design. Did some Universal mind find it better that some suffer and die in poverty while others swim in debauchery?

But Murphy didn’t say that anything that can happen will happen – to me! He just said that those things that can conceivably happen will happen somewhere, and mostly where we don’t want them to happen. You seem to be going off at a tangent here. The questions that are probably more striking are regarding the poor people in Haiti. Why do they suffer? Is the earthquake at fault, or is it the buildings they have lived in when living in an earthquake endangered area? Did the earthquake kill people, or was it falling bricks and concrete blocks? Now I’m not saying that nature doesn’t kill people, but that much of our suffering in the modern day has to do with supposed achievements. If we heard Murphy, we’d know that an earthquake is coming someday and we may not have left our mud huts because of it.

How do you reconcille Intelligence with these “adverse” conditions or events?

It is probably in the same way that I think that until someone has burnt their finger, they don’t know what “hot” is.

Do we have a standard form of measurement of what goes too far or too short, or “just right”? Couldn’t it be that this simply expresses the comfortable thought that we are special? Everything else could’ve been an accident, but not us, we are special, we require the intervention of some Intelligence that intended our intelligence. This could simply be a way to fulfill a wish of ours. The evidence itself, what we are actually aware of does not corresponds to anything besides itself. This is part of the problem. Awareness is not narrowly confined to what we experience. Through what we experience, we also can “experience” or better, “become aware” of items that cannot be experience through anything but our reason.

We are special on this planet in as much that we are aware of our awareness. We go about, as coincidental as you may see it, measuring and weighing our perceived universe to the degree that we have discovered that we exist on the edge of a mesh made out of material that we cannot see with our eyes, but something that interconnects the vast area of the universe. Our insignificance on a universal scale makes the whole thing even more amazing –not less.

Shalom