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MikeL
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Horse Pucky!
"Science" emerged in the 1800s when man built appartus that could record reproducible measurements. Before those machines, there was metaphysical speculation (based upon common yet systematic observations). So science itself is an artifact based upon machines that measure. Without measurement machines, science (as you know it) would not exist. (Yeah, I know, there is that whole "enlightenment thing," but let's hold the ideas of reason and progress in abeyance this time.)
Ask anyone who has undertaken and completed a Ph.D. dissertation, and they may admit to you that the holes in academic research ("science" to the uninitiated) are as wide as the universe itself. Learned men and women in science argue all the time about what is, what is not, relevancy, validity, verification, as well as the appropriateness of various statistics, measurements, and data collection methods. (BTW, just who decided that .05 constitutes statistical significance, anyway?) There is no such thing as an exact science. Sure, science predicts better than many other methods, but beliefs in the gods, fate, and the muses did pretty well on their own. Read good stories from any culture (Shakespeare, Homer, Tarentino), and you'll discover universes that set-up and fulfill predictions consistently (according to the genres: romance, tragedy, comedy, irony, science fiction). There is nothing sacrosanct about prediction. It is not a Holy Grail of Existence. It must have a relationship with meaning . . .and therein lies the rub.
Second, man is a remarkable interpretive machine. With all due respect to Chomsky (who said that language was most innate in Man), there is one thing Man does really, really well: it's his ability to make sense out of loose and disparate data. (Ask any child "What happened?" and you'll see genius at work.) This means that even observations (empirical stuff--the stuff that science relies upon) are suspect because so-called "facts" are themselves theory-laden. That is, you cannot see what you are unprepared to see. You must have a theory (albeit intuitive most of the time) before you can filter out the overwhelming amount of sense data that your body is taking in all the time and "see" what is there (and ignore what is not there). Other than Buddhist adepts who are trained to observe *before conceptualizations*, I'm unaware of anyone who can purely observe anything. Observing anything that does not fit within any concept is commonly incomprehensible. To observe purely one must see without ideas, categories, feelings, judgments, thoughts, etc. Science does not do this. It can't.
So be careful about what you claim is real, unequivocal, uncontovertible, and obvious. Quit calling on those Gods of Science. What is obvious, is obvious to you. Science is not a religion--but many of you talk like it is.
As for what God is, is not, and could be . . . I am reminded of a wonderful little tale that Alan Watts wrote in a little book called (oddly enough), "The Book: On the taboo of knowing who you are." There Watts tried to explain the need to know what "I am" and its place in the world (as all important philosophers seek to understand). Watts gently tries to explain that what is obvious to us, is all a hoax, and we're the ones who cast the spell on ourselves. Watts is forced to myths, since myths explain the most important paradoxes of life: Where did the world come from? Where was I before I was born? Where do people go when they die?
Watts says that *all* things come and go. Now you see them, now you don't (seasons, experiences, thoughts, time, etc.). Things keep coming back and disappearing. Like breath, things go in and out of existence all the time.
It's sort of like hide and seek. You know, it's always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek someone who doesn't always hide in the same place. The same holds true for God. He likes to play hide and seek, too. But because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one to play with but himself. But he gets over that difficulty by pretending he is not himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people, animals, plants, rocks, and stars in the universe. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening [ahem, Ouch!]. (But they are really only bad dreams.) When God pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that's the whole fun of it--just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game.
Like a Mobius strip (a ring of paper twisted once so that it only has one side and one edge), the inside and outside of God are the same. God is the Self of the world, but you can't see or perceive God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, or bite your own teeth, or look inside your head. If you ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people or people in great pain, you must remember that God isn't really doing this to anyone but himself.
This story is, of course, mythical in form, not a scientific description. But that doesn't make it invalid . . . just unverifiable. As Joseph Campbell said repeatedly, myths get to the most important issues of life, the same ones that are at the heart of this thread to me: who are you, where are you, and what's the meaning of it all? If science answers those questions for you, then hooray (I guess). However, Ken Wilbur describes a purely scientifically perceived world as a one-dimensional flatland: a land with no interior, no personal meaning, no expression, no creativity, and no social meaning. If God (or Jung or Socrates or Martin Scorsese) gives you answer those questions, then that's ok, too.
Life is a riddle, and we are all, sooner or later, driven to know what it--and we--are. Science, religion, mystical experiences, art, metaphysics, literature, etc. are all positing their own views on these questions and issues.
I just wanted to say two things in all of this. First of all, do not make science into a religion--it's just a method, for heaven's sake. Second, keep your eye on the real issues: figure out who you are, what you are, and where you are.
ml
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Watusi
Social climber
Joshua Tree, CA
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Aug 10, 2005 - 12:01am PT
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Sharing a joke with Buddha...
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Sally OConnor
Social climber
Canada
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Aug 10, 2005 - 12:02am PT
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"Sally, I for one, never doubted for a second that you are a good person. A very nice person, even if you do speak in a foreign language."
Ouch,
Some things get lost in translation and so it is a struggle for me a lot of times, eh. How's your French or Swedish?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 10, 2005 - 12:02am PT
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Largo wrote: "I think the only way to make these threads interesting--instead of flogging the same old horse--is for everyone posting to start with the words--I really want this to be the case because . . ."
but did not start his post "I really want this to be the caser because..."
how about it John?
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Ouch!
climber
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Aug 10, 2005 - 12:04am PT
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MikeL, Spoken like a true philosophy major...with 3 minors in Theology.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 10, 2005 - 12:06am PT
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”If you ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people or people in great pain, you must remember that God isn't really doing this to anyone but himself.”
This is the Mayavadi interpretation and it is the most dangerous consciousness in existence.
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Ouch!
climber
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Aug 10, 2005 - 12:13am PT
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"I really want this to be the caser because..."
That gets pretty well covered in the stories we humans spin to justify what we hope will slip by the facts.
It ain't just the Lord that works in mysterious ways.
Anything that exists in the imagination can be answered with another plucked from the same source.
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MikeL
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Aug 10, 2005 - 12:56am PT
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Werner, my friend, your choices mystify me sometimes.
Ouch!, it's not the field I have my advanced degrees in, but a Ph.D. does stand for "Doctorate of Philosophy." If you study any field long and deeply enough, and you'll find yourself in conversations steeped in philosophy. I believe that's just how it is. I quit academia and the research / publishing game because of the politics and institutionalization that I found in it. But the issues that I wrote about are no less alive for me today than they were as an academic or as a young man. I must also say that I've come to find that they are no less alive for business clients and colleague and most every other person I know who tries to live life as honestly and fully as he can. Perhaps the issues do not exist at the surface for them as they do for me--somewhat fully articulated--but I do believe they are felt and taken seriously by those people. That's what they tell me. If you have people (lovers, children, students, employees, family) you truly care about (and this includes yourself), then it seems to me that you occasionally wonder, "What's it all about, Alfie?"
Let us hope that it's not just what Yul Brenner said in his final days of his life: "You come into this world alone, and you'll leave it alone." If that's all it is, then the long-game of life is meaningless, ironic, and cruel.
ml
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Ouch!
climber
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Aug 10, 2005 - 01:22am PT
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Well said, Mike.
"If that's all it is, then the long-game of life is meaningless, ironic, and cruel."
Maybe we make it that by expecting more, if we are just smarter animals that can look beyond our immediate situation. Maybe we are, maybe we are more. Too bad we have to die to find out for sure.
Maybe that's why our brains evolved to allow us to have religious experiences. Relieving the pain of hopelessness through Qualia. There are warm and fuzzy moments in religion.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Aug 10, 2005 - 01:31am PT
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Largo wrote: "I think the only way to make these threads interesting--instead of flogging the same old horse--is for everyone posting to start with the words--I really want this to be the case because . . ."
but did not start his post "I really want this to be the caser because..."
how about it John?
That's a fair question, Ed.
In almost all my posts I "really want" to be able to articulate my (and everyone's I figure) own direct and tangible experience "because" there is a mysterious, unquantifiable and measurelessness to being in that experience that is more than the sum of it's various aspects. The idea of irreducible is apt here. There is a subtle but profound music to existence that cannot be found through the exhaustive reduction of matter--and I here I imagine the poor guy putting the sax under an electron microscope searching for the Coltrane solo, or measuring the sound waves thinking they ARE the music, or the neurobiologist saying the music is owing to the ability of our neocortex to orgainze the sound impulses into something our awareness recognizes and labels "music." The shame here is that people expect far too much of science, inasmuch as they often believe there is a material cause or basis or foundation to being, experience and (fill in the blank). This kind of mechanistic materialism has contributed tremendously to our ability to harness energy and master much in the world, but it has not made us any more conscious or any better folk, meaning our understanding of who we are had not been increased much if any by all the brilliant science going on. The idea of the pre-big bang era is most interesting because here the laws break down and "definitions" are either babble or silly somatic constructs that try and cancil the investigation becaue there is no-thing or recognizable time continum to grapple with.
The void, the unknowable, the infinate and measureless is writeen off because we can stretch a tape measure around it. But there's an aspect of mind, or raw awareness that is fine with this because they are the same.
I remember Matzumi Roshi, my first Zen teacher, asking, "And what is the fundamental nature of this mind?" We all just stared at him and he yelled: "It's ungraspable!" In other words, it's not a "thing" to grasp. When folks say there is no such "thing" as this mind, or any "thing" before the Big Bang, they are right, but not in the sense they imagine.
I wish I could get this across, but I can't.
JL
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 10, 2005 - 02:43am PT
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Thanks John...
From my own point of view the mind is a very interesting idea. However, I would not be able to make the statement that it is "ungraspable", it may very well be something quite different than we can conceive. But that is my "materialistic" self imposing its optimism on the limits of understanding, I do fundamentally believe that understanding is possible through the scientific method.
Does understanding acoustics deminish a Coltrane solo? of course not, and in some case it might enhance the experience. Scientific understanding does not have to get in the way of the experience, it is yet another aspect of experience.
As far as the pre-big-bang era, that too may be understandable in terms of physical "laws", it is the subject of intense theoretical speculation. But these theories must be testable in order to be physical, otherwise they are just "beautiful mathematics". The physical universe is measurable. We live in it and experience it. One can posit a universe which is not physical but the point of my previous post was that an affect on the physical universe is measurable, quantifiable... accessible to understanding from a materialistic stand point.
I do not see that a materialistic explanation of consciousness, mind, thought, etc, necessarily trivializes our experience as individuals. If such an explanation exists, my belief is that it will make that experience all the more wonderful and amazing.
Zen is a path to knowledge through a particular discipline. Science is too. The disciplines are very different as is the knowledge gained through their practice. How one chooses a path depends on the questions one wants to answer.
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MikeL
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Aug 10, 2005 - 09:44am PT
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Thank you, Ouch!, John, and Ed for these cogent, heartfelt, and friendly thoughts. All this on a climbing forum thread. Must say something significant about the community IMHO.
Ouch!, "qualia" was a new addition for me. Thx. Cheers.
ml
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Aug 10, 2005 - 01:15pm PT
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I also would like to debunk the theory that material is the basis and cause and source of everything real and imagined and so forth. I believe that the seen and measureable and the unseen and unmeasurable source each other, taht causation runs both ways.
JL
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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Aug 10, 2005 - 01:47pm PT
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MikeL, Just curious are you in the Legend Basher camp as oposed to that Legend camp? I’m assuming you’re familiar with it. I would like to hear your thoughts on it, if you feel so inclined.
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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Aug 10, 2005 - 02:17pm PT
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Sally
That’s awesome you’ve been through something similar to me. I’m thankful for you about that. Thank you for your comments too. Keep up the race and when you fall may you always recover quickly.
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Ouch!
climber
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Aug 10, 2005 - 03:07pm PT
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I believe the answer to who and what we are may eventually come through the "miracle" of neuroscience. The problem then will be to accept what we find. That will be the task of the philosophers and soothsayers.
The proof is in the powerplant in the noggin. Mine is usually rated at about 50KVA. I shock myself sometimes.
Infinite is the time between your first and last mortgage payment.
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MikeL
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Aug 10, 2005 - 04:01pm PT
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Oh-oh . . . I don't know, Jay. Not even sure I'm aware of what you're talking about. Is it whether a person believes in legends or not? (Oh, well. So much for education.) Can you help a guy out?
Also, John, that's really one of the points that I'm interested in, as well. I'm all for science . . . and religion, art, ethics, literature, etc. Gotta do the whole "renaissance man" thing. Gotta be a man or woman for all seasons. All science and no art etc. makes Jack (or Jacqueline) a dull boy / girl.
ml
(And hey, I'm with you on that mortgage thing, Ouch! And I mean, "ouch.")
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Aug 10, 2005 - 04:14pm PT
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Mind and rational mind are two diferent but related things, at least the way I'm using the terms. Mind might be easier to understand when considered as "raw awareness," that part of attenion that is without an agenda or preferences and which can witness what our small, rational mind is doing (always evaluating).
JL
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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Aug 10, 2005 - 05:06pm PT
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Well ML, I can only go on the memory of a class I took called the Philosophy of Science. I might even have the text books stashed somewhere’s deep in my mother garage back in San Jose. Anyway one of the books the professor lead us through was all about this group of people that the author called Legend, and opposed to their philosophy were a rather newer group (formed back in the 40s or 50s I think) he called Legend Bashers. The Legend people asserted that science, technology, current truth, etc. was a progressive front. That absolute truth is out there, it’s fixed or primarily fixed and that we collectively are approaching it asymptotically in our search for knowledge and understanding. This continues forever so long as there is no regression as in a Dark Age or extinction.
The Legend Bashers are quite naturally opposed to this view. They suggest that there is no such thing as truth. They have the ancient Greek mentality of “Everything Flows,” “You can’t step into the same river twice,” it’s all in the mind type of thinking. Based on this premise they say that when a new theory comes along to replace an older less comprehensive or relatively inaccurate one that it’s not progress at all, just simply change. And so forth.
Anyway I haven’t thought about it in a while and I’m not so sure the two camps are as disparate as I made them seem. I was hoping you had some experience with it and thought it would be nice for someone well versed on the subject to enlighten us. It would be rather poignant to our topic. I would have brought it up but I don’t think I know enough about it to really do it right.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about?
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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Aug 10, 2005 - 05:10pm PT
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BTW Largo, include our senses and nervous system in that “raw awareness” component. They are big part of how were perceive things. Like how can we see something and evaluate it without the constraints of our vision. When I was a child I used to think that when I saw blue that blue to someone else was possibly red. I’m not talking about color blindness. I was concerned that what I saw was completely different than what everyone else saw, but for some strange reason we were all able to work together anyway. I don’t think we’re all that much different but hey, just figured I’d throw that out there. Even subtle differences may be accounted for.
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