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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Nov 23, 2014 - 10:02am PT
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"I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration."
J. Keats
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Norton
Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
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Nov 23, 2014 - 01:58pm PT
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nice read, Fructose
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Nov 23, 2014 - 03:34pm PT
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^^^^^^
Preaching to the converted.
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MH2
climber
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Nov 23, 2014 - 06:05pm PT
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I would prefer a peace that is not glooming.
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Norton
Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
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Nov 23, 2014 - 06:32pm PT
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preaching to the converted
beats singing in an empty church
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Nov 23, 2014 - 07:53pm PT
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When it comes to truth-claims, it is... Science vs. Religion. Just as it needs to be. At least till (Abrahamic) religion is out of the truth-claims business
i bet you a double double cheeseburger you can't prove ANYTHING in the (Abrahamic) writings to be not true. For that matter, anything out of the entire Bible. i'll even up the stakes with fries and a shake that i can prove TWO so-called "truths" in science to be false for every ONE you can come up with. Come'on humor me Mr Knowledge, lets see ur list of lies. Should be easy for you every sentence is numbered in the bible. Jus give me a number.
unless your scared of course
i hope you watched Jan's links. Both you and Tvash could right many misnomers you posses.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Nov 23, 2014 - 08:32pm PT
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I would prefer a peace that is not glooming (MH2)
Ditto.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 25, 2014 - 08:46am PT
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Thanks Cragman! That reference is the most positive idea that I've come across in a long time. I personally feel that religious naturalism is the direction we are headed though it make take a couple of centuries for the average person to get there.
The biggest problem I see is that the scientists who understand nature are not capable of developing a philosophy that can be understood and applied by the average person. The breakthrough to my mind will come not when people become scientists but when our artists and moralists become capable of inspring people to a new worldview based on science.Just as most people could care less about the intricacies of theology as their basis for belief, most people will never care about the details of science either.
Here's a synopsis of this new way of thinking.
Who is a religious naturalist?
A religious naturalist is a naturalist who has adopted the epic as a core narrative and goes on to explore its religious potential, developing interpretive, spiritual and moral/ethical responses to the story.
Importantly, these responses are not front-loaded into the story as they are in the traditions. Therefore, the religious naturalist engages in a process, both individually and in the company of fellow explorers, to discover and experience them. These explorations are informed and guided by the mindful understandings inherent in our human traditions, including art, literature, philosophy and the religions of the world.
What is meant by interpretive, spiritual and moral?
The interpretive axis entails asking the big questions along philosophical/existential axes. How do our science-based understandings inform our experience of self? What do they tell us about free will? Death? Love? The search for the meaning of life? Why there is anything at all rather than nothing?
The spiritual axis entails exploring inward religious responses to the epic, including awe and wonder, gratitude, assent, commitment, humility, reverence, joy and the astonishment of being alive at all.
The moral axis entails outward communal responses to the epic, where our deepening understandings of the animal/primate antecedents of our social sensibilities offer important resources for furthering social justice and human cooperation.
It also entails an orientation that can be called "ecomorality," seeking right relations between the earth and its creatures, absorbing our interrelatedness, interdependence and responsibilities.
Importantly, all of these projects are proposals. At this stage in the journey, our core text is nature.
http://religious-naturalist-association.org/
http://religiousnaturalism.org
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Nov 25, 2014 - 08:50am PT
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And here's a chart to think about where one stands on the issue of God. Clearly blublocr is on one end of the spectrum and fructose on another. I'm guessing most of us are somewhere in the middle, and quite possibly not sure of where exactly we stand.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 25, 2014 - 09:51am PT
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"The biggest problem I see is that the scientists who understand nature are not capable of developing a philosophy that can be understood and applied by the average person."
Nor is it their job.
You've done this since the start, taking this angle against scientists. It's the equivalent of criticizing the author of Volcanoes in Hawaii for not having ("developing") any acct of earthquakes in Mongolia.
You can rest assured though, as I've stated many times now, that creative folks, mindful of science, ARE working on an "alternative context" to religion / theism when it comes to belief (systems) in terms of not only "what is" but also "what matters" and "what works" regarding life guidance, community support, inspiring core narrative, etc... Like the building of Rome, these things take time, tho. Where's your patience? :)
In the meantime, Neil deGrasse Tyson, EO Wilson and Bill Nye, as egs, offer a light and breezy inviting approach to science and beyond - if the likes of Dawkins or Harris are too harsh or somehow too strident either for you personally or all those avg joes you so often reference.
Last I checked, Tyson had 2M-plus followers on Twitter, Dawkins 1M-plus - hardly small change; so (a) something must be getting through; (b) some of these "science types" must be striking sympathetic chords.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 25, 2014 - 10:05am PT
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scientists who understand nature
Are you sure that the material scientists actually fully understand the inferior energies as they really are?
They only have a very limited basic idea that ultimately completely bewilders them.
Then the illusion is created by them that they are in the know.
Their mantra always is "In the future we will know"
All while it's all right there in front of them all along without any theory or spending billions of dollars needed.
That was the point that largo and MikeL were trying to make.
It's so simple we just can't "See it".
We make it complex .......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Nov 25, 2014 - 10:10am PT
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"The breakthrough to my mind will come ...when our artists and moralists [et al?] become capable of inspring people to a new worldview based on science."
There you go. So what exactly are you criticizing then?
Is this very thing not underway in our world at large right now? Cultural evolution regarding post-religious belief and practice has never been hotter. So if this is what you - like so many of us - look forward to, you can relax.
It's on the way. :)
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 25, 2014 - 10:13am PT
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Well they did a piss poor job of it.
No .... you did.
They pointed in the direction.
You never walked ......
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MH2
climber
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Nov 25, 2014 - 10:47am PT
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Oh, THAT kind of point.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 25, 2014 - 10:53am PT
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Yes
Even the material scientist after making his theory has to do the work.
Not just waving hands around and making claims ......
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Nov 25, 2014 - 11:29am PT
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The biggest problem I see is that the scientists who understand nature are not capable of developing a philosophy that can be understood and applied by the average person.
Right on the money. I have nigh given up trying to explain fracking to any lay person. They can scour Google and the NYT, and get wrong answers. The simple physics of it are beyond almost everyone, it seems, but it is actually a very simple topic. Far simpler than most of the science that we discuss here. At least here we don't have a dis-information machine running, though. Most everyone here is interested in the truth, and even though they seem far apart at times, the concepts are usually understood by all.
Technically wrong answers have so infested the internet and much of popular media that I've given up on it. I won't even post on the fracking thread here. It might take me a couple of hours to write a cogent post, and it will be forgotten after 20 more posts. It is a huge waste of time.
Do any of you remember Young's Modulus? Poisson's Ratio? They aren't based on belief. They quantify brittleness and elastic properties of a material, properties that can be felt by your hands in many circumstances.
There is so much bad information out there that I don't blame people for gobbling it up. However, that fact, that what is wrong is popular belief, makes for an interesting case history.
I watched the movie "Network" the other night. It was decades ahead of its time. Good movie, too.
Look over there at the Climate Change thread. Absolutely no new information has been posted there for thousands of posts. The deniers have access to so much bad data, that those guys play dueling charts with Ed. Why Ed wastes his time on them is beyond me. (He did just write a good article about how climbers damage micro flora)
If you look at how often certain people post each day on this place, you can find some people with seriously messed up priorities. I was posting too much myself, so I've cut down on my time here to work, play, and read books.
I am going to take off for the desert after Thanksgiving if I can finish a project. I'll try to stay off of roads for a month. Man, I need it.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Nov 25, 2014 - 07:43pm PT
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My Dear Jan:
You really try to be a conciliator, you stick your head up, and it gets shot off. I honor your good heart.
I think it was Billy Preston who said, “everything is everything” (or was it Laura Hill?). In any event, leave it to our urban brothers (now up in arms) who recognized that “it is what it is.” IT can be nothing else.
I think the Duck said that, too.
Just take a look at the notion of a singularity.
We think that "individuality" exists as separate entities. But for anything to be an absolute unit, (a singularity), it would have to be non-dimensional and beyond designation, since anything capable of occupying space or time is itself divisible into parts. In the end, a metaphysical singularity cannot have existence.
Certain scientific thinkers have concluded that wholes, though divisible into microscopic parts, must be constituted of ultimate elements. All things must owe their reality and solidity to the fact that they are composed of irreducible part-less atoms (elementary particles). Even if conventional atoms of least perceptible magnitude were divisible into smaller parts, there is the assumption that ultimately irreducible particles must exist. These would be true singularities—and the final actualities out of which the whole universe would be constructed.
But that idea is not intelligible.
Unity and diversity are givens in (accepted) empirical experience. Yet both assumptions are impossible to confirm scientifically, and with the collapse of one the other collapses.
An ultimate unity is impossible to locate. The least intelligible magnitude, since being intelligible it must have extension, would be made of parts. If the smallest extension thereof were to be defined as the smallest conceivable unit, that extension would still be definable in terms of what are mathematical units of yet a smaller size. It does’t matter if it is an atom or a star, the 'whole' which is reduced to a singularity (where the density and curvature of space-time are infinite) shrinks to zero-radius.
Units with zero-radius are literally zero. (Buddhists refer to that as sunyata, emptiness.)
The logic of an atomism is that whatever is gross must have parts which have further parts and so on, until we reach the elementary particle, which atomists believe is not made up of anything smaller and that cannot be subdivided. It is precisely THAT which cannot be made intelligible.
Infinite numbers of zero-radius singularities cannot produce objects of measurable size, either.
Some arguments suggest qualities can combine to create quantity through a critical mass (like as if a certain quantity of zeros could reach critical mass). But that too is invalid.
Any differences presupposes a physical measurement. But a singularity must be partless and unitary. (There cannot be an other.)
Reality is pure and absolute brahman only. The world is maya. It is beyond judgment or discernment. It is beyond intelligent elaboration.
(With a nod to Nagarjuna, and a scripture entitled, "The Cuckoo of Awareness: The 6 diamond stanzas." In the end, much of this is simply meant to challenge the mind's beliefs in its own sense of power.)
*Mind is a tool; it is not the source of self.
*A thought is just a thought; it has no truthfulness to it; most thoughts are about other thoughts.
*Since thoughts don't have any intrinsic reality; the world perceived through thoughts can't have any either.
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