TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking

by Terry 172 Replies latest jw friends

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  Check_Your_Premises

  Another great thread Terry.

  I am new to it, so I haven't read through it past your initial post. I have a feeling your message of rationalism vs mysticism got lost in the cultural application you made. You were probably called a racist by someone. You are actually a culturalist. And really, what is wrong with trying to establish a standard, and then compare cultures by that standard? I never understood the "who are we to say our culture is better" mindset. How else are we to improve as a species?

  So what is your standard? I think a very universal one is that whatever culture allows the most people to have the greatest control over their own destiny.

  But what is the ultimate goal? What is the purpose we serve? Do we only matter within context of our own lives and those we care about? Do we matter perhaps also to the extent that we owe a debt of gratitude (where would that sense of obligation come from) which we can only pay forward, to those who established the rule of rational thought?

  Is that why I matter? The enjoyment of myself and those I care about, as well as my position in a long chain of rational thinkers who ultimately made our stay here on this rock more enjoyable for as many of as as possible until the next planet killing meteor or Big-Collapse (opposite of Big Bang)?
• 

  Terry

  But what is the ultimate goal? What is the purpose we serve? Do we only matter within context of our own lives and those we care about? Do we matter perhaps also to the extent that we owe a debt of gratitude (where would that sense of obligation come from) which we can only pay forward, to those who established the rule of rational thought

  My ultimate goal or purpose is a long life well-lived with as much happiness as I can obtain. I pursue the values and measure the rewards to sharpen my skills in thinking.

  The "meaning" of life is what we choose for it to mean. The end result will test the means we used.

  People with a larger and larger capacity for goodness will affect the lives of others in many ways unknown to the smaller and smaller capacity person who cannot seem to figure out how life is lived.

  We monitor our contexts or we are lost to progress in achievement. How we measure the treasure is by careful choice of standards which simply must include the actual things that happen to ourselves and those around us.

  Life is practical. It has to be because we cannot escape the practical result of our actions.

  But, too, we must see ourselves as responsible for what we espouse. If we fool ourself that is bad enough. If we take down others in the process that is evil.

  Terry
• 

  Terry

  You do not know me, nor what I enjoy

  I read your story and your previous posts!

  Amazing read. Quite well done too, by the way.

  T.
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  confession,

  i can't tell if you are talking to me or terry, though i think it may have been to me?

  While I will never accept these things as fact merely from their testimony, like Tetrapod, I am willing to conclude... "i could be wrong. can you do the same?"

  wha?? i'm sorry, you are going to have to explain now what you mean by this. please show me how i have done this.

  As you have well demonstrated, many sad things have resulted from those who are held captive by the mystical. I will also submit that many sad things have resulted from people who hardheadedly insist that the view they hold is the only correct one.

  again, terry or i? i hope it's not me, considering my quote that you used above. although, i am sure you would find pretty much any atheist willing to admit that they can be wrong. at the same time, i am not going to engage in magical thinking myself, or let posters give lurkers the opinion that magical thinking is in any way parsimonious or related to rationality.

  So many of us enjoy reading (most of) what you write. It's also clear that you enjoy debate. Great. But a little respect please. If not the "respect" that suggests those who disagree on this subject might actually be correct--that's okay. But how about the "respect" that doesn't resort to scornfully belittling those with whom you disagree? I look forward to reading more of your posts.

  i would not give a rat's ass if no one liked any of what i wrote. i'll call it as i think it. you must not be aware of the post history between LT and i. i have admitted on occasion that i could certainly be wrong about my worldview. this has been because he has been gracious enough to admit that his is subjective. but then again, i have nothing to lose if i am wrong. no life after death, not heaven or hell, no friend in the sky and in my heart. so in that sense i have been respectful. however, like terry said, there is people, and then there is their bullshit. since when does religion or magical thinking have a birthright to respect? just because some old guy with white hair said it should be respected? is a lack of belief equally respected? if it was, then LT would be willing to admit, as i have, that he could be wrong. but that would be offensive to jesus, so he won't. for me, respecting the bullshit, respecting the religion, is on par with respecting the motives of osama bin laden, or george bush when he engages in faith based leadership. the root of what i disrespect is abraham. from people here, or otherwise.

  TS
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  confession,

  i can see now that it was most likely to terry, sorry. although, i am interested in you answering my challenge.

  thanks,

  TS
• 

  BrendaCloutier

  Tell me, are you and I falsifiable?

  our existence is, yes.

  Will you wake one day and come to the conclusion that you never actually had a conversaion with a Scot called Ross, but had been deluding yourself?

  if i did, then i suppose that there would be numerous people that could verify that the conversations took place. it could be verified through archives that we did indeed have conversations.

  The basic premise of mystical experiences. It can often be verified by witnesses, yet no rational/scientific explanation is available.

  I've attended many indian (Native American) sweatlodge ceremonies. One specific sweat, we had about 8 people in the lodge. 2 women 6 or 7 men. During MOST of the songs, it sounded like there was a chorus of women singing. I don't sing well, nor do I know the Lakota songs well. The woman sitting next to me was Lakota and knew the songs well, but she doesn't sing in multipart harmony! Everyone in the lodge heard it. There was no one outside the lodge. We were 150 feet away through the woods from the house, and there weren't enough women at the house to make up the chorus we heard. Each of us heard the singing behind us and on each side of us. As we emerged from the last round of the ceremony, we were all "did you hear that? It wasn't you ladies was it? Wow!"

  Mass hysteria? Maybe. It's the only time I've been in a lodge where we all had the same experience that wasn't physical. Most experiences are private or shared by one or two others in different ways for different reasons.
• 

  zen nudist

  This is what happens to your mind when you read Fritjof Capra and the TAO OF PHYSICS!

  no, actually you are wrong once again.

  we all try to make sense of the only world we know, the one we experience and make beliefs about to try to explain it to ourselves

  and when you have had some freaky experiences such as I have had, you will try to make sense of them too... until then, you can stay with what seems to work for you.

  when I left JWs I returned to some of my agnostic roots and thought I had everything figured out to a degree where pure materialism could explain everything known to mankind... including hallucinations etc... .but then something or someone made something vanish right before my eyes and it turned up in another room... there was no indication of who or what this mystery force was. a few years later, this same invisible something or other grabbed the inside of my hands and forced me to fail a job interview which required typing, which lead to a job ten times better.... its stuff like this which is not testible by science as it happens rarely and uniquely and is not repeated ever that causes many of us who have had such experiences to know with a certainty as great as your own that something more than the material realm exists and any explanation of reality which ignores this is missing something... sure rational assessments of the experienced world work fine for most of the time and under most circumstances, but they are not the end all and be all.

  there is also the past life regerssion which I underwent which had me experience something I had never learned about history and was able to verify as factual to my suprise.

  finally the one aspect of this realm which eludes any explanation is consciousness itself-- brains boil down to data manipulators, computers made out of meat, chemicals and some small electrical charges dynamically changing structure with incoming data.... but like any computers they all come down to moving symbolic bits of data around a circuit and there is no explanation of what is actually conscious of the end result, the world we experience. no amount of ones or zeros can give the feeling of pain nor pleasure, nor any other perception that makes up the world we seem to share.... there is something fundamentally missing from the brain in this regard.... not only that, each neuron is isolated electrically from all others by a gap where only neural transmitter chemicals can pass making a unified overal experience seemingly impossible as there is no central location which can perceive enough data to make a unified world simulation that we often mistake for reality....or rightly view as a dream while we sleep.

  so while there are many reasons we need to deal with the only world we know as we experience it, there are plenty of reasons to suspect that the world as we know it is only a mental invention which cannot tell us everything that is going on in the true reality which makes the world we know...this is where mystical experiences arise and cannot be ignored complete as they make profound impacts on us.
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  trevor

  Mysticism

  A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.

  The word Mysticism means different concepts to different people. Against my better judgement I am going to share a story with you. It is a boring little story but please bear with me.

  A few years ago, when my parents were still just about talking to me, I had a vivid dream. In the dream they had suddenly moved to a small bungalow that was totally square. Pillar box shaped. It had a breezeblock front garden wall that spoilt the property. I noted that it needed to be replaced with a brick wall.

  Inside there was a large hall. The kitchen was not really big enough for a table and chair. In the dream my father was telling me that he would like to move a wall and open the kitchen out into the hall but the design of the bungalow prevented this. He had thought of having the Table and chairs in the hall. In the corner of the kitchen behind the door was a large empty glass tank that had no apparent use.

  When I woke up I wrote all this and more down. I then dated it and got my wife to read it.

  One month later I received a letter from my parents to say they had sold their house in just one week and on an impulse move a hundred miles further north. This would be two hundred miles from me.

  In due course we visited the bungalow. It was exactly as I had described in side and out, with a breeze block front wall. We were shown around and within minutes my father started telling us the problem with the kitchen and table. He explained word for word what I had written down. In the end they had brought a very small table and chair set which just fitted in the kitchen that they had by now replaced.

  I asked them if there had been a large glass tank when they moved in and gestures to where it would have been, outlying the size. Yes there had been. My mother asked how I knew. I simply said I had a dream. She looked at floor in silence no doubt convinced that I was demonised!

  Now this experience was witnessed and verified.

  I did not share any more with parents than my knowledge of the glass tank. The unsightly wall has since been replaced with a brick wall.

  The only person who I would expect to believe me would be my wife. She has never had a single premonition in her life. I have had many. Because she lives with me she accepts that such things happen.

  I am not about to start a new religion or waste time trying to convince others that these things happen. It is simply my experience. It does not in itself cause me to believe in a deity or fate or luck. How or why I had access to such detailed information is open to debate.

  Those who are utterly convinced that such an occurrence could not happen will have to find a way of discrediting my story. They will say that until it happens to them, or they are as involved as my wife was, they will continue to be certain that I am a liar. That is exactly how it should be. When people insist that such things are impossible I simply feel sorry for them, that they have not had any similar experiences, that could enrich their understanding and cause them to be more tolerant of others.

  I don’t expect anyone reading the story I have related to believe a word of what I have said.

  I do not share such happenings with my friends because it would make them feel uncomfortable. If such experiences happened repeatedly to a person, then they would have to accept the reality of their experience, regardless of their beliefs. This is simply my experience. It is not dangerous or damaging nor does it affect my ability to be logical.

  I am totally cynical of anything that can not be proved or I can not experience and verify. It does however affect my paradigm or view of how time and mind work. It also means that I do not discount other peoples experiences just because they are not mine. Science has no explanation for my experience - yet!

  trevor
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  Check_Your_Premises

  My ultimate goal or purpose is a long life well-lived with as much happiness as I can obtain.

  And what if belief in a benevolent creator actually adds to that happiness? The existence or non-existence of a creator cannot be proven. The best I think anyone could claim is that their belief in the matter is the more likely explanation.

  But let's say there really is no God. All other things being equal, is it necessarily harmful to believe He exists?

  Do the costs always outweigh the benefits if a believer is wrong?

  I would anticipate that you would think so, since you feel as I do that detachment from reality inevitably leads to misfortune.
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  zen nudist

  I am not about to start a new religion or waste time trying to convince others that these things happen. It is simply my experience. It does not in itself cause me to believe in a deity or fate or luck. How or why I had access to such detailed information is open to debate.

  personally I dont believe the future exists as more than guess work....yet things like you described have happened to me as well.... I have only a few plausible beliefs that make sense to me now....but I am open to the possibility I may be completely wrong.

  1. that what we are about to do has some sort of substance in a realm some call the astral plane and some are able to access that realm and see what is about to happen.... however that will not explain how you can know something that is not planned before it is planned...

  2. that we are reading some sort of 4-dimensional book which is already written out and perhaps allows for us to alter the story to some degree, or not...

  3. there are many possible world history lines and when we make choices we elminate some of them and open others and some can see down the line?

  all my life I have tried to make sense of the world rationally much as terry has, but in the end, I find that just paying attention and keeping uncertainty and an open mind to work best