TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking

by Terry 172 Replies latest jw friends

AntiPode

So long as you kiss me - (and) the world around us shatters

How little it matters - how little we know

As vast and complex the universe we live in is, there will always be something more to learn, something learned to be discarded, but what remains, what has been the constant throughout history, is love.
And so, each time I'm out on my bike, climbing a mountain, each time I'm with my wife, using as much energy, I feel life. And I feel alive.
Whether this is mystical, practical, or a combination does not matter (to me) as much as the experience. To me, that is the beauty of life.
The experience removes the cobwebs that get in the way of feeling this.
S
free2beme

I felt like I read so much, because of how often I scrolled with the mouse, but actually read so little. I consider myself a mystic, and correct me if I am wrong, but have all great advancements in science, political science, inventions, etc. been done by people who did not consider themselves to be mystic or has it been a balance of people in believes. Stalin, felt that religion would hurt the nation and Lenin felt that religion was the opiom of the people. Yet what did such concepts do for the USSR? It caused them to focus to much on power, science, military, etc. and lose balance and in the end, a nation with the term "Under God" on their money became the most powerful nation in history. So perhaps, us mystics are not all fools. We are the Yang to the the science Ying!
Golf

I test the results of my thinking by 'doing' things, not talking about it!!!!!

Have a nice day.

Golf
Terry

I felt like I read so much, because of how often I scrolled with the mouse, but actually read so little. I consider myself a mystic, and correct me if I am wrong, but have all great advancements in science, political science, inventions, etc. been done by people who did not consider themselves to be mystic or has it been a balance of people in believes. Stalin, felt that religion would hurt the nation and Lenin felt that religion was the opiom of the people. Yet what did such concepts do for the USSR? It caused them to focus to much on power, science, military, etc. and lose balance and in the end, a nation with the term "Under God" on their money became the most powerful nation in history. So perhaps, us mystics are not all fools. We are the Yang to the the science Ying!

Think of a math test at school where you have to "show your work" rather than just give an answer.
When you "show your work" you demonstrate HOW you came to the final answer and the process which you employed to arrive there.
Mystics make up the answers and don't show their work.
Scientists use a methodology which works. It is totally irrelevent what their personal belief system is as long as their methodology is clear and the work is testable and falsifiable.
What an inventor "thinks" is irrelevent. The invention works or doesn't work. Crackpot inventions don't work but THE CLAIM IS MADE that they do. Cold Fusion is such a crackpot claim. Perpetual Motion is a crackpot claim. These are mystical "inventions" because they rely on mere assertion and are untestable.
The USSR was a SOCIALIST system. Under communist socialism the individual sacrifices himself for the good of the People in a textbook example of pure Mysticism. Religion was traded for Socialist Communism; but, both are mystical because men must destroy their own rational selves to serve the assertions of others.
Your analysis is astoundingly naive.
Putting "Under God" on your money makes your nation powerful??? What have you been smoking?
Here is what made America great. People are allowed to OWN the product of their efforts and are not under compulsion to do with it as the whims of another might indicate. Communist Socialism removes actual CONTROL from the people and places it in the hands of THE STATE (i.e. a cadre of cronies for their benefit at the expense of the majority.)
In America you can work and earn and invest and own and then maintain the right of ownership of property. In the U.S.S.R. you could only produce what the State told you to produce and were lucky to have any share of it. Productive people, entrepreneurs flee from Socialism and travel to America and commence their prolific productivity for self-benefit. That is why Socialism fails ultimately. The productive people bear the burden of the lazy men. Soon no innovations occur and the breadwinners exit the country.
When Great Britain began confiscatory taxation in the 70's, they lost most of their creative people. That is Socialism.
Socialism is mysticism.
T.
MerryMagdalene

Think of a math test at school where you have to "show your work" rather than just give an answer.
When you "show your work" you demonstrate HOW you came to the final answer and the process which you employed to arrive there.
Mystics make up the answers and don't show their work.

Too strange. When I was in 7th grade, I had a terrible struggle getting barely passing math grades.
In 8th grade I had a better teacher and I did much better but I still came close to failing early on because I wasn't "showing my work" on my tests. Why? I couldn't. I was getting the right answers but I didn't know how I was getting them and so couldn't show my processes.
I tried to explain this to the teacher. So he made up a new test and stood behind me while I did it to make sure I wasn't cheating. He watched in bewilderment as I got most of the answers right. I even managed to show my processes on a couple problems, but when he looked at those he couldn't understand them----my processes made no sense to him---- and he just shook his head in puzzlement and gave me an "A".
And yes, I am a "mystic" (LOL) but have no idea what my experience says, if anything, as to testing the results of two different ways of thinking.
~Merry
Terry

And yes, I am a "mystic" (LOL) but have no idea what my experience says, if anything, as to testing the results of two different ways of thinking

Nothing wrong with your personal subjective experiences at all.
That isn't the point (as I keep saying over and over).
The problem with mysticism is when it is offered as an ideology and the process begins where an authority holds out THEIR SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE as the answer to important questions and you accept it without question, test or quibble.
When somebody has their hand out collecting for the gods; you can be sure the gods ain't gettin' any.
T.
talesin

That isn't the point (as I keep saying over and over).
The problem with mysticism is when it is offered as an ideology and the process begins where an authority holds out THEIR SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE as the answer to important questions and you accept it without question, test or quibble.

Terry, maybe this is a communications problem.
What I understand from your writings, is that you_____discount_____any_____validity to any teeny-tiny consideration that what you call 'mysticism'. You seem to scoff at anyone who feels the ethereal may have some basis in reality, and not just those who embrace it as an ideology.
So which is it?
tal
Terry

Terry, maybe this is a communications problem.
What I understand from your writings, is that you_____discount_____any_____validity to any teeny-tiny consideration that what you call 'mysticism'. You seem to scoff at anyone who feels the ethereal may have some basis in reality, and not just those who embrace it as an ideology.
So which is it?

Fair question.
First off, I like the fact that you used the word "ethereal". That is an excellent example of what I'm talking about.
In the late 1800's people could not accept that space is any kind of vacuum. There "must be" some kind of substance between planets, they opined. How else could light travel but within some medium? Just as sound travels through air; light must travel through some insubstantial...."something" which eventually was named the ETHER.
It was a kind of necessary construct to enable them to accept a fact of nature while holding on to a previous preconception.
I remember conversations with my Grandad. He use to be a telegraph operator around the time of the Titanic. He told me he was taught in school that electromagnetic signals (such as the telegraph signals) travelled through "the ether".
Well, as you undoubtedly know, there turned out there WAS NOT ether! It was never even there. People wanted and needed it to be there and pretended it WAS there; but, it wasn't. Space is, alas, a vacuum.
Remember the song, "Help me make it through the night?" I think of the ETHER and all things ETHEREAL as something that helps people make it through the night of not knowing.
It is just fine and dandy with me if people do it. They can make things up all they want to if it serves some psychologial need.
In a way, it is like inventing the ZERO. It took thousands of years for people to see the need for a placeholder in their number systems. The Arabs invented a sign for holding a place and we call it ZERO. Now this confuses some people. They think ZERO IS SOMETHING. It isn't something and it isn't nothing in the conventional sense of no--thing. It is an empty chair that somebody can sit on. Only, there is no chair!
If your understanding of mystical thoughts is like the ETHER or the ZERO I can see how useful they are for you and others. No problem with me.
I don't happen to define MYSTICISM in quite that way and it isn't really what I am against. It isn't really what I scoff at.
Here is the definition of MYSTICISM I subscribe to: .
MYSTICISM is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one's senses and one's reason. Further:
Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as "instinct", "intuition", "revelation", or any form of "just knowing". Animals simply DO. Human's simply DON'T.
I know this is a crushing insult to the Star Wars philosophy of Obe wan Kenobe. But, Zen and other Middle Eastern assertions of ethereal "energy" and "knowledge" are not my cup o' tea.
Yes, I scoff at them.
If somebody could explain them in actual vocabulary words that have actual meanings and referents and ostensible confirmations I'd jump into the same soup as the rest of you.
But, the Deepak Chopras of the world give me a stomach ache.
What is the crossroads between a rational man and a Mystic?
The crossroads comes between: "I KNOW" and 'THEY SAY".
How do we identify the illness of mysticism?
When a person feels he must hide his lack of understanding, that others possess some mysterious knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever THEY want it to be, through some means forever denied to him---that person becomes a victim and must trade I KNOW for "I BELIEVE".
Jehovahs' Witnesses have that peculiar form of mysticism called the ANOINTED! The anointed are hardcore examples of mysticism.
Why? Because they "just know" they are anointed. They cannot explain it to anybody and you just have to TAKE THEIR WORD FOR IT.
No thank you. Been there; done that!
T.
Terry

For some reason a duplicate of my post popped up.
T
itsallgoodnow

I didn't read all of Terry's original post, but briefly skimmed it and saw a few comments about it using the black/white and strawman fallacies. It's easy to fall into using fallacies, and unless you want your article or statement to be picked apart, it's good to check it for any fallacies you might have inadvertently put in. Sometimes we can't see the fallacies in our own thinking.
I think I understand what Terry was trying to say and in general I agree with the idea of trusting what can be proven vs what can't be proven. The god of the gaps theory seems to be all that the "usual suspects" (ie people I'm not surprised to see on this thread, arguing it) can lean on when everything else is thrown at them.
IMO, some people who used to not be so preachy and claim to not be preachy are obviously preachy in this thread.
Why is it all threads like this get hit up by a lot of people trying to prove god exists?
Maybe what we should have is a forum for believers to post their thing,and a forum for non-believers to post threads like this, where people who just want to preach and convert can stay away, otherwise be called out on their trolling.

TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking

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