by Terry 44 Replies latest jw friends
SAHS: But when you look at the history of humankind from a psychological, anthropological perspective, it become so obvious that people’s believe in a “God” is not coincidentally quite self-serving and rife with all the basic human defects of character – such as fear, pride, greed, and lust.
And those are the good points!
Finklestein,
I wish I was as innately imperturbable as Sam Harris. He's always laid back and thoughtful.
Rub a dub
How many people even know the Onion's articles are supposed to be funny? So often they seem to hit the bull's eye.
Twitch
religious people build hospitals and schools, feed the hungry and help others.
No question about it.
I'll never fault anybody who takes the trouble and time to reach out and help another person for whatever motive. Help is help!
Again I am reminded of an observation made by my college classmate Jim Morgan, who said, "Most people are just looking for somebody to follow." While it's great to seek wisdom from varied sources, following someone limits you so much. Learn from anyone who has wisdom and insight, but be you, who you are inside. No one else can tell you who you are and what you want to do. Look inward, for there is "where it's at."
One of the most thoughtful, intelligent and logical posts I have read in a long time on JWD or anywhere!
I know I feel really irritated when my JW mother says she worries about me because I have a chronic illness and she was praying for me to find a good job and when I found one she said her prayers were answered.
No, I worked like hell and went into debt for the last 10 years to educate myself. I worked on my resume, I sent them out, I went on interviews and tried to "sell" my services to the highest bidder. When I get a job, I work like hell to do a good job. That's why I have a good job. Her worry and prayers didn't do a damn thing to help me in any practical way.
If I have any energy or money left over at the end of the day, which I often don't, I will use it to try and help my family or those less fortunate with some sort of practical help, no matter how small.
How does my saying a prayer or worrying about my children's struggles help them one iota? It doesn't. It is just a way to feel like you are doing something useful when in fact you are doing nothing useful to help a situation.
cognizant dissonant: How does my saying a prayer or worrying about my children's struggles help them one iota? It doesn't. It is just a way to feel like you are doing something useful when in fact you are doing nothing useful to help a situation.
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When people say true things, those who listen flinch and turn away in disgust. I don't blame them. This life can be very hard indeed if
you disrespect reality and insist on fantastic mind-sturbation instead. But, the quicker we acknowledge the way things work the better
prepared we will be for what comes.
I developed a mind experiment one day.
I'll share it with you.
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Three men are sitting quietly on a long park bench facing forward with no expression on their faces.
Each person looks as normal as normal can be. In fact, you wouldn't look twice if you passed them.
Now here is where the experiment begins. . .
IT IS TEN MINUTES TILL NOON
1. One of these men is in the last stages of brain cancer and today he is calming himself before suicide by gazing on the
faces of the living, the beauty of nature he'll leave behind, and reflecting on his memories of triumph and despair.
2. The second man is wearing an explosive vest which he will detonate at the stroke of noon when crowds are surrounding him
walking their dogs, playing with their children, sunning the newborns, and planning their future.
3. The third man is about to donate a lung and kidney so that his 19-year-old daughter can survive. The wait for other donors
is at end and today is the last possible moment a transplant could be effective.
QUESTION:
Since there is nothing remarkable about appearances, how would YOU know which was which if you casually passed by?
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What is the point of this mind experiment?
It was to remind me how the essential truth hides from our eyes so easily at every moment.
That park looks so warm, safe and inviting--and it is--except for what is hidden.
Those men appear so normal--and they are--except for personal circumstances, beliefs, bad luck and heartfelt passions.
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Each of us, at a mature age, and with some experience at life is--no matter how clever we are--IGNORANT about life and people.
Anything can happen at any time any place we are.
OUR OWN LIFE must be kept orderly and purposeful--as though we must depart quickly.
1. Have you told the people you love how much you love them? BETTER DO SO NOW.
2. Have you sorted out your "things" as to who should receive them when you go? Do you even have anything worth leaving?
3. Do you know who will be most pleased and most hurt when you die?
4. Can you speak two sentences filled with your finest accomplishments?
5. Did your life MATTER? Why?
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You see? We are all somewhere in that park and it is always ten minutes till noon.
That is the real 'truth.'
Each of us could be any one or all of those men on the bench at some odd moment in our life!
Terry: This is brutally honest but good
“Terry”: “Each person looks as normal as normal can be. . . . Since there is nothing remarkable about appearances, how would YOU know which was which if you casually passed by?”
That brings to mind a saying which my mother once told me regarding perceptions of what is truth: There is (1) what a person thinks is true in his or her own mind, there is (2) what another person thinks is true in his or her own mind, and then there is (3) the actual truth, whatever that may be.
Truth is truth. It’s just a matter of how close anyone can get to perceiving it.
I think that whatever the ultimate truth is – you know, what caused the big bang and what mathematical phenomena ended up being put in place to evolve the results of that big bang, and how it all works – spacetime creation (initial instant hyperinflation stage and current continual spacetime expansion, as per “Hubble’s constant”), dark matter/energy, logic of chaos theory, limits of the “infinite” (in time and space) – the cosmic and quantum physics stuff that is in the realm of folks like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, which often tends to somewhat straddle both the purely empirical and the scientifically philosophical camps . . . . . . . . Sorry if I may have become somewhat sidetracked (just had a large black coffee and doughnut), but, anyway . . . . as I was saying: I think that whatever the ultimate truth is, it’s kind of like the classic illustration of the six blind men and the elephant. (Possibly some versions may differ in the number of blind men being six, but the standard version involves six blind men – that’s not important!) Anyway, the illustration goes like this: the little group of six men, each being blind, are feeling all around this elephant (not naughtily – get your mind out of the gutter!) . . . . okay, these blind men are feeling the elephant to attempt to deduce exactly what it is. Each one feels just one part of it but all feel a different part. Now, one of them says it’s one thing, another says it’s something else, and so on – they each think it’s something different. As stated at “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant” (under the subheading “The story”): “In some versions, they stop talking, start listening and collaborate to ‘see’ the full elephant. When a sighted man walks by and sees the entire elephant all at once, they also learn they are blind. While one’s subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth. If the sighted man was deaf, he would not hear the elephant bellow.”
My point in this is that everyone is “feeling around” for some kind of “God” as a form of some cosmic superbeing, and everyone has their own little take on it, but I think, going back to the above illustration, that in reality what is there is actually NOT an elephant! And, in fact, I think that the profound twist of it all is that in reality there is actually NOTHING there at all! I believe that all those blind men are delusional and that the “elephant” is actually a collective fabrication!
Indeed, I think that we are all in a kind of super psychological thriller – you know, the kind with a shocking twist at the end. (Like in the classic thriller movie Psycho, where the main character actually hasn’t been talking to his mother but conversing with himself in two different voices, and his mother had already been dead and pickled in her room.) And the big twist as far as the “God” thing goes is that there is actually nothing there at all. “God” is simply a collective delusional fabrication, and the real “God” is simply that which has ended up being put in place through the evolving mathematical chaos manifest by the processes and functioning of the universe and spacetime quantum energies as a whole. Well, that’s what I think, anyway.
Dear Talesin,
Yes, speaking from outside the mind can be pretty quiet. Similar perhaps to the deep silent presence of a thousand year old tree.
Hope all is well.
