Aw, Muadib.
I agree with you about not being up for the 'long drawn out argument'. That's the way I feel whenever I see a scrambled bit of text with every 'spice on the shelf peppered in' to make a rebuttal post. Teasing through all the 'entanglement' of ideas and words (what someone thinks I said versus what I actually said or meant, or worse, being told I think in a certain way - being of that 'ilk' - when nothing of the kind was even remotely broached) is just not anything I have time for. In fact, were I to so engage, it really would look like I was trying to convince - when I'm not.
A lot in there - an example of just too much to tease it all out. Evidence also that I am not into convincing you of anything. If this is how you think - okay. I think you've got some stuff scrambled there but that's not the issue. I swear there are people on this site that would take issue with Leonardo de Vinci - and their reasoning would be sound. Ha!
Very kind obituary. Many thanks.
That's because you assume I am trying to convince you of something - when alls I am doing is presenting information from another way of seeing existence.
To quote myself in a previous post - I think part of the problem regarding me for skeptics is that I operate from a world-view supported by experiences a skeptic doesn't share. I have evidence for why I see the world as I do. I suspect you do, too. For me to be a skeptic would be to disassociate myself from myself. It would be like someone with physical eye-sight convincing themselves that they don't see a physical world. Here is the crux - we all assume that we are all having the same subjective experiences (more or less) of an objective world (that does not vary). It's not the case. Skeptics are always flashing alternative explanations for 'spiritual' [pick your word] experiences, as though their
ad hoc spinning trumps anything else. (Curious imo).
It does - and I've both alluded to them and in a handful of instances supplied some concrete examples of them (problematic metaphor for this). However, without actual experience the counter argument is that what is said is a belief. To someone without the experiences - and the consequent concept - it does look like a belief, yes - and would be a belief for them given the experience does not yet exist for them.
Do you understand that the idea of 'natural laws' is the 'ghost in the machine' of science - which takes it's lineage from its theological birth? 'Laws' imply a 'law-giver' - God. The idea of there being 'natural laws' is a residue from that time - I always find that little factoid fascinating.
Talking about 'spiritual laws' can be problematic. There are certain principles that apply - like that of cause-and effect - in the realm of spirit (in the Sanskrit) called karma. I alluded to this prior - and that as we travel the path we begin to 'clear our karma' (not a pleasant task, btw
no). Someone who has successfully achieved high levels of consciousness (the best I can do when speaking in this way) has an acute sensibility of this cause-and-effect. They will understand the ripples they send into existence by their merest thought, never mind actual action in the physical world. This level of 'seeing' means a wholly different set of considerations when it comes to motivation and intention. At this level we are perilously close to creation - in an aware way.
Homeopaths! Hmmm....as you can see, for some of us, the assault on our reality goes to the very medical paradigm we can consult. (Sigh')
From a very gifted [intuitive] astrologer pal of mine. Dave writes, clearly from an astrologer's perspective (and with his own 'politics') - but with great insight nonetheless, revealing the quandary for many of us - bolding emphasis my own -
"I chanced upon the website of [...], an unorthodox doctor. He has an endless number of articles that say conventional medicine has it exactly backwards. Reading the articles on the heart, I was reminded of the sheer medical guesswork of the past half century. Heart disease was because of lipids, or cholesterol, or saturated fats or maybe the wrong kinds of sugars and could be treated with this drug or that. Salt, which cardiac doctors prohibit, was actually necessary (which I have found to be true). With diabetes – which my wife has – the problem wasn’t sugar consumption at all. Which she had noted some time ago. Don’t get me started on the four food groups and the food pyramid.
"Which implies that a lot of medicine is simple guesswork, a succession of fads. Surely with billions of people on the planet and the heart being our principal organ, we could do better than guess? Which underscored my deduction that Enlightenment Science of 1650, as codified by Diderot’s Encyclopedie of 1750, was based on consensus. Whatever a bunch of people thought was right.
"But you will say, isn’t science based on hard-won truth? Experiment? Replication? Surprisingly, no, and medicine is the proof. We would not be constantly throwing out last year’s remedies in favor of this year’s remedies if there was anything objective about them. What we have instead is someone gets an idea and sells it to his friends. They try it for a while to see if it works. If it does, we keep it. But far too often, we throw it away and go on to the next guess.
"Remember when electro-shock was the treatment for mental illness? How about lobotomies? Now it’s drugs. If the mother is in distress during labor, she should have a cesarian. And eventually, of course, a hysterectomy. How many of you had your tonsils out? Did you know they sometimes re-grow?
"It is hard to trace the history of science because so much of it is simply thrown away. Public libraries commonly discard science books after 20 years or so, when they haven’t been borrowed in 15 years or more, and when the press of new science books puts a premium on limited shelf space. Few science books get more than a single printing. The best record of scientific progress are found in old issues of science magazines. Where they look more dated than pop music.
"Which is a useful analogy. Rock musicians, who are never each other’s students, inspire each other. The late 1960’s were an excellent example. Popular music is faddish, just like science, but unlike science, the greatest hits of the ’50’s, ’60’s, and ’70’s, still have fans. The science of those decades have none. The science of 1970 said the planet is getting colder and we should spray arctic ice with ground charcoal to help it melt. The hard science supporting this was knee-deep. There was no question about it.
[...]
"Consensus science [...] having no reality upon which to base their opinions, are being reduced to burning heretics at the stake. Red lines have been drawn. We must believe in evolution, we must not believe in evil creationism, though I cannot see what difference it makes either way. Belief in one or the other won’t put hair on my chest or get us jobs, make us high or heal a sick child. At the moment global warming is too touchy a subject, but it is clear the earth is releasing its inner heat for reasons of its own. Global warming is not the fault of man, though pollution is. Weak sunshine that is largely parallel to the ground will not melt arctic sea ice that is nine-tenths submerged, nor will it melt permafrost two feet below the surface.
"The embarrassment of science is shortly to end [...] inexorably [with the] revival of Aristotle. Aristotle is a game-changer.
"The whole reason for Aristotle, the whole reason for the I-Ching, the whole reason for the Hindu Doshas, was to replace opinion with structure. Science must be superior to mere ego.
"It is structure that western science lacks. It is lack of structure that has rendered science a long series of fads, many of them dead ends, more than a few of them dangerous.
"It was Aristotelian physics that guided the Greeks and Romans. It was lost when Rome fell, but kept alive in the Islamic world, where it was rediscovered in the plunder of the Crusades and then laboriously translated (12th Century Translators), which then touched off the Italian Renaissance.
"Where it was picked up by the Germans. Who were suffering from an excess of Church repression, which led to Luther’s revolt, which led to the 30 Years War of 1618- 48, which destroyed Germany and German culture and science.
"Whereupon, not two years later, the French declared a new “enlightened” system. The French had not studied Aristotle, they were not interested. The French knew what they liked, and they knew they were right. Monarchists at heart (they still are, bless their Catholic souls), they declared their opinions to be “science.”
"The link between the 30 Years War and the Enlightenment, the critical link, is that the Germans declared a right to the religion of their choice, whereupon the French declared a right to the science of theirs. The Germans discarded the Trinity. The French discarded Aristotle.
"And both will swear, to their dying day, that God told them so, and that logic and proof are on their side. If either were true, there would not be a thousand post-Luther Christian religions, nor a science so complex and messy and contradictory that no living person can understand it.
"Unable to publish coherent books, engaged in mindless witch hunts, science is dead. [...] ARISTOTLE, THE REAL SCIENCE"
Maybe. We'll see if the thread is allowed to proceed without hectoring from the sidelines.
PLEASE NOTE: I feel I need to say for clarity: I subscribe to the scientific method, honor science and it's accomplishments and enjoy a good crackin' analytical deconstruct. However, I don't see the scientific mind-set as the one-and-only way of looking at existence. The idea of narrowing my world experience to 'one way' feels claustrophobic. As always, any idea needs to be held lightly, turned often and let go when no longer helpful to one - allowing that it may be valuable for others still.
The universe, I am convinced, is far more complex than even the best thinker I have come across has been able to articulate. I prefer my personal experience of the mysteries of being - and the warmth of a good love. In the end, that is all that matters in any given moment.
)