KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE between what is real and what isn't.

by Terry 65 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  Gregor

  Terry,

  Good points. There is a great book on this subject, "On Being Certain" Robert Burton, M.D. St Martins.
• 

  Terry

  What I want to know what is real or not is Terry's boobs.

  If a person does not ponder things.... while doing other things, how can plans be made? If I'm building a fence but have an appointment to go to later in the day, I have to remind myself of that appointment. I also have to think of what other things I could do while I'm in town.

  So, since a person can think much faster than one hears, how is it we all need to only live in the moment?

  Gumboobs

  If I had a green, slanty head I'd worry about boobs too!

  Living in the moment is unavoidable, if you think about it. It is keeping track of what page you are on while wondering how the novel will end that helps avoid problems.

  Everything in the mind is interconnected.

  Women have more connecting tissue than men. So, they multi-task better, but, on the downside; they find it more difficult to cut through processing toward and end decision.

  The connections, I am told, is mostly a kind of fat! Like Gumby's pointy head. b
• 

  R.Crusoe

  How we experience reality seems to imapct on how we view it and ultimately.....

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llLY9VUKpRM

  ......how soon we each achieve the inevitable reality!

  Which is death!

  So a pessimists reality is to generally achieve the inevitable reality much sooner than the optimist who tends to attempt to postpone it in favor of the 'reality tunnel' they currently occupy!

  How to change reality tunnels is not something I know too much about since my perception is that it is already established from the permutation of the individuals experiences/ emotions and circumstance though I understand some would argue that to be an irrelevance regarding the reality at this instant - my hunch is they can say that because of their permutation of experience to date and not independent of it!
• 

  Terry

  Your sentence: What is the point in discussing what cannot be known?........for me that says it all.

  What is the point in intellectual exercise if one cannot discuss the possibility that what we THINK cannot be known

  might actually have a key to the known.

  We seem to be slicing the baloney too thin here.

  Think of all the things we are de facto unknowable which people waste their lives thinking about, discussing, reading about, studying and devoting effort toward when more profitably productive alternatives are available.

  Superstitions, religious ideas, transcendant states, afterlife, luck, xenomorphy, outrageous nonsense offered as personal experience, etc.

  We all have the same number of hours in our day. The people who spend their time productively have results. Those who fantasize themselves into entertaining speculative scenarios are time wasters (unless they are writing a book for other time-wasters to purchase.)

  There is a genuine difference between what ISN'T YET known and what is UNKNOWABLE. This is a distinction with a difference.

  Think of all the time religious people spend studying scripture and pondering the "meaning" and importance. Now, take that same amount of time and apply it to reading about the bible's origins, development, canonizing, copying, orthodoxy wars and endless revisions by interested parties.

  An honest seeker of fact will readily discover a shocking fact! We simply are not told how little authentic basis there is for attributing divine status to those writings. Without divine status being present there can be NO REAL IMPORTANCE to pondering the content of those sayings, admonitions, "guidance", etc.

  You are confusing "possibility" with impossibility and weighing them on the same scale of pursuit and attainment.

  We cannot know what cannot be accessed by our senses, tested, demonstrated and measured by our instrumentations and repeated under conditions available to everybody.

  To opine differently is to fool one's self. Hardly a profitable enterprise.

  The Loch Ness monster, Noah's ark, Bigfoot, living (dead) Elvis, alien abductions, ghost hunting, ESP, spoon bending, etc. are time wasters for gullible yokels to ponder.

  To each his own pursuit, I say. But, we cannot pretend the validity of something into existence. The the above list of nuttiness is a real money maker only because there are plenty of people who cannot distinguish real from unreal in importance. The 24 hour days of our lives zip by and we are old and dying soon enough without having frittered it all away on nonsense.
• 

  R.Crusoe

  Maybe this debate will lead into an arena proposing that human realities which prolong the reality tunnels we each inhabit, are holier than those which advance the ultimate reality we all face - which of course is human death!

  So essentially we subliminally are imprinted with a notion of good and evil practise being that which extends or reduces each of our ultimate realities!
• 

  trevor

  Terry’s outstanding threads are always worth reading and for the most part I am in favour of what you say Terry.

  There is too much nonsense and mysticism polluting people minds. Charlatans are everywhere waiting to pray on gullible minds. Religion is to me one of the biggest cons ever inflicted on the human race.

  Science is responsible for the advances that have made our modern life’s so rich and our life spans so long if we exercise and avoid eating crap.

  What I would like to say is every invention or advance in science started as a thought in someone’s mind. Men (mostly) have dared to ask the question - What if?

  They have stepped outside of the conventional views of their time and asked - What if?

  To bring their dreams to life they have had to work with in the rules and boundaries of the natural world in a scientific way.

  What if - it were possible to make an airplane engine that has no propellers - a jet engine?

  They harnessed the forces that already existed but to do so they had to take a leap of faith and ask - What if?

  Things such as telepathy may be nonsense but - What if? Maybe one day science will discover that some of the things that are at present flaky and far out become functional and scientific parts of our lives, like microwaves, infrared, x-rays, radio waves and so on.

  For one I am happy to live to life within the boundaries that science has already established. At the same time I still allow for dreaming and asking What if?

  Today’s day dream may be tomorrows new invention. What if?
• 

  chrisjoel

  What is the point in discussing what cannot be known

  You're a very logical person and everything you have said is straightforward logic. However the answer to this question, for me, is simple. For example, the point in discussing what cannot be known is to mentally prepare myself for the possiblity that "alien" contact on our shared planet will come in my lifetime. By refusing to accept that out of all those galaxies only this planet in this galaxy had a pair of brothers, the "wright brothers" who started the whole areospace industry is to close my mind to the real possiblity that smarter life did it before us and better. It doesnt take any imagination. Just ask Gordon Cooper.
• 

  Terry

  Today’s day dream may be tomorrows new invention. What if?

  Well said.

  Jules Verne gave others an imaginative start in bringing his concrete speculations about how things without technological wherewithal might be achieved. A lot of science fiction is only fiction because the technology state-of-the-art hasn't caught up with the propositions.

  A silly, yet, effective example is Dick Tracy's two-way wrist-radio.

  Our current cellphones are pretty darned close and so are iPods. But, it took over half a century to get there.

  Those who employ their imaginations in getting us somewhere are to be praised and congratulated for all the advances science has achieved s tanding on the shoulders of the geniuses who thunk it up in the first place.

  I've no problem with creative minds building something we can all use to better our lives.

  But, the passive ponderers who get stuck in a mind fugue contemplating angels, demons and space invaders are another matter altogether.

  Art Bell, are you listening?
• 

  R.Crusoe

  Chris Joel , did you know that the Wright brothers stuff is a BS reality?

  Its only official because certain officials defined flying to be a certain disance - and not sure about other technicalities. But around where I live in England there were dozens who flew, and some to an untimely end, but didnt get official clearance or measures!

  It was a hobby of locals to hit the jackpot - one small town in NW England so who knows country wide how many 'Did it first!'?

  Unknowns undoubtedly!

  So much of life is the same!
• 

  Terry

  Charles A. Lindbergh wasn't the first to fly across the ocean successfully, either. He is credited as the first to do it solo.

  Publicity has a lot to do with who gets recognised for achievements.

  For the majority of man's time on Earth, word of mouth, rumor and hearsay have been the only means of getting information about what is going on outside a person's city limits. The distortions and humbuggery must have been legion.

  What could have been attained intellectually in earlier times had they had an Internet? :)