Philosophy Now Forum

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:A group of Swedish ex-physicists, led by my fine self,

The implication of this statement is that you yourself are claiming to be a Swedish ex-physicist, Gustav, in which case I can safely claim to be a reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, By the way what the hell is an ex-physicist? Is he a bit like an ex-alcoholic, one who has seen the light and chosen to mend his ways? If so there should be more of it.

surreptitious57 wrote: Why should imagination play any part since as the name suggests it has zero bearing on what actually is true ? Furthermore
the Universe is not actually there for our benefit. Since our very existence is completely superfluous with regard to its own
We are just another species on the evolutionary chain passing through. The fact that we are the most complex ever to have
existed is of no consequence as we shall still become extinct like all the other species. So I do not need to invoke imaginary
beings to justify my existence or over come my fear of death. Imagination is of course a wonderful thing but is not required
for the formulation of a world view. As that should be firmly based on observational reality and nothing which contradicts it

Given the track record of major scientific discoveries, I find this line of questioning exceedingly strange. As Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

The Inglorious One wrote:As Eisenstein said

I think you may have meant Einstein. He certainly had a fertile imagination, although it is regrettable that his powers of reasoning weren't the equal of it.

To keep us from dwelling on other shit ie. It keeps us occupied in our quieter moments. Do you need a better personal reason?

Obvious Leo wrote:

The Inglorious One wrote:As Eisenstein said

I think you may have meant Einstein. He certainly had a fertile imagination, although it is regrettable that his powers of reasoning weren't the equal of it.

I wonder where the hell the spell-checker got that?

Anyway, how do your contributions to science compare?

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: - but it is a given that if God is universal spirit, or the entity responsible for creation, or indeed the possibility of creation and the author if existence itself, that the notion of divinity would be present in all living entities similar to us in intelligence and awareness. It also would seem probable that in any society or civilisation of such intelligent beings that they would go through similar processes of evolution in their conceptual structure, just as we note this in human cultures.

It is interesting to see that you, as usual, did not give a clear answer. You started with "but it is a given that if God is universal spirit, or the entity responsible for creation. Not 'since'. 'If'.

To appreciate the idea of God two things seem required: 1) Some sort of inner experience or intuitional link.

Have you ever considered "psychological need"?

One has to have had the sense or the experience, and something has to have been moved or activated on an inner plane because - obviously - the 'existence of God' is not verifable through testing reality in the same way that you might test a deposit for the presence of gold. An underatanding of divinity is an affair of consciousness, of awareness, of translation of sense or experience into symbols and language.

And there we have it. The final argument. This is why I cannot call this philosophy.

You could not be so dense as to imagine it in any other way, or could you?

Yeah. We call it a psychological issue revolving around the comfort of having someone who looks after you. There is also another thing it provides. In a life where not much has been achieved, God also gives a sense of nobility, of having a thought process better than the other, which prevents one from focusing on one's own inability to reach one's believed potential.

Again, I mean you no offence, and yet your questions are questions out of a dense mind. There HAS to be an inner movement or awakening in order to HAVE the sense or the notion of divinity. Thereafter, the experience, rather impossible to explain and communicate, is symbolized in language or in some other way.

Again, we call it a psychological need.

2) I would suggest to you, based on the low-level question that you ask, devoid of imaginative capacity (the question of a dullard, there is no other way to put it) that in order to be able to understand and to appreciate the higher aspect of what is attempted by referring to 'God' or divinity as a substructure or understructure to reality itself, and especially to our own human awareness, that your imaginative capability requires expansion, that much of it has to do with notions of and about both relatedness and connection, and also value.

The problem is that reality works perfectly well without imagining such a substructure. The substructure just complicates things which need no complication. Check it out yourself. Reality works perfectly well without God.

How can one entity, I will ask, be connected to another?

Why do they need to be connected? What difference would it make if they were not connected?

How do you define and speak about, for example, the love of one person to another?

Genetics. And hormones I think.

How do you define this in purely materialist terms?

Genetics. And hormones I think.

But it is not only 'love' in its most exalted sense that might be referred to, but every other higher or supreme value.

Like the way we have basically killed nearly all the animals in the world, turned the world into a nightmare for humans too, or the way we find more and more creative ways of killing each other, those higher or supreme value?

In all literature, art, poetry, music and dance it is ALWAYS the higher dimension of awareness that is expresseed, and it is always the case that it is this sense and this range of value that is expressed in religious writing, poetry, and scrpture.

It is called having a better ability and being able to put in more hard work than you and I are able to.

Yet this seems to go over your head - that is, if I were to concoct an opinion on the basis of such a stupid question. What goes on in that consciousness of yours? I would ask? What kind of a person is there thinking?

The beauty of reality. The acknowledgement of the ability of humans. The awareness of the ugliness of humans. A balance between the two. All people as equals because there is no religion to differentiate us. A fear for any religious zealot out to kill us irrespective of their religion. Science, literature, music and poetry as a product of the human mind and their appreciation. And most of all, no psychological need for a father figure.

What do you *see* in your world?

The real world.

You see, I tend to think that not only is the so-called metaphysical or spiritual connection lost or broken when one cannot even imagine what it is like to imagine divinity - because I consider a metaphysical connection real and tangible in intangibility - but that so many other levels of valuation are affected.

Not really. You just grow up and lose the need for daddy.

Generally, here on this forum, there is little expression of imagination, little range of thought,

I agree. People never get out of a thought process taught to them since thousands of years and passed on from generation to generation mindlessly.

zero appreciation of beauty.

Ignorance and discrimination. This is where your narrow minded thought process really comes out. What has appreciation of beauty got to do with belief in God? This is like the thought process of a man who believes that Gay people are basically bad or there is something wrong with them. You are a bigot through and through.

• "What sphinx of cement and aluminum based open their skulls and ate up their brains and imaginations?"

All you folks seem to do, and all that seems to interest you, is tearing down. If this weren't the case your writing would be different, of this I am sure.

Now read what you have written above. Not only do you do exactly the same thing, you are also a bigot

However still very much favour the pragmatic approach for the very obvious reason that observation is the best one can go on and so it is arguably far superior to either philosophy or religion.

Well, it won't work if you only keep observing atheists and keep ignoring the theists.

Observation of and measurement of the surrounding world of matter, energy and objects, I think it must be understood as a core datum, will not ever render to you an understanding of what thousands and thousands of years of experience have offered to those who have experimented in consciousness to achieve and experience an inner sense of 'what god means'.

Nothing because they never got rid of their daddy issues and after thousands of years, nothing has changed at all, has it?

It is there, in symbolic form, intangibly, often poetically expressed in much writing on the subject, but moreover in music and in art. To understand that requires a shift or a development in the inner field of the inner man. There is no other way.

Thousands of years of this without any real good coming out of it and you still believe in it. Well, I suppose there IS no other way.

The whole reply I gave above is unnecessary. I gave it to point out to you that your whole rant was equally unnecessary. You talk about what you expect discussions to be like. But just read everything you wrote. It is just a rant. Your anger coming out which, by the way, those who spend their lives studying the higher truths have better control over. For someone who talks about the noble pursuits, you need to now start showing some of the supposed maturity that comes along with it.

The Inglorious One wrote:Anyway, how do your contributions to science compare?

That's not for me to judge, but if making sense were to be reinstated as a requirement for physics then history may yet regard my modest contributions as meaningful.

The Inglorious One wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:
Why should imagination play any part since as the name suggests it has zero bearing on what actually is true ? Furthermore
the Universe is not actually there for our benefit. Since our very existence is completely superfluous with regard to its own
We are just another species on the evolutionary chain passing through. The fact that we are the most complex ever to have
existed is of no consequence as we shall still become extinct like all the other species. So I do not need to invoke imaginary
beings to justify my existence or over come my fear of death. Imagination is of course a wonderful thing but is not required
for the formulation of a world view. As that should be firmly based on observational reality and nothing which contradicts it

As Einstein said : Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know
and understand while imagination embraces the entire world and all there ever will be to know and understand

The imagination of metaphysics is not what Einstein was referring to. For he was talking about imagination that acts as the driver for future knowledge. He was most definitely not talking about God. Although he was born a Jew he was actually a pantheist so did not believe in God
as such as the natural world was enough. He did not have to invent imaginary beings to make it more real. Now when he was working in the
Swiss tax office in 1905 he would conduct thought experiments with clocks and trains whilst attempting to formulate Special Relativity. It is
that imagination he meant not the metaphysical imagination of religion. Incidentally he was slightly wrong about it. Imagination is not more important than knowledge but as important as it. As the two have to be entirely complementary and so both have to be equal to each other

Of course they compliment each other, but are you saying that because the interior life is private, studying it and formulating interpretative concepts about it is illegitimate? That the only reality that matters is the one “out there”? I haven't seen anything that dumb since Leo first referred to himself as a philosopher of science. No wonder people scorn scientism.

I impose on no one so you think or believe whatever you want
Avoid telepathy however as the odds are never in ones favour

surreptitious57 wrote:I impose on no one so you think or believe whatever you want
Avoid telepathy however as the odds are never in ones favour

I can take that in one of several ways: the qualitative aspect of reality is irrelevant to you, in which case you might as well put a bullet in your brain for all the good it does; the answer is "yes," in which case you have all the intellectual depth of an amoeba; or you want to avoid discussing the question of purpose altogether, in which case you have nothing relevant to say.l'll go with the second because you are stupid enough to invoke the overused phrase "imaginary beings," as though God is thought to be a being alongside other beings. You also made a liar out of yourself.

sthitapragya wrote:Let us assume that God exists and It created the universe. Let us also assume that It created us for a purpose. It seems to me absolutely ridiculous that IT created us for a purpose and then sent us to this world without telling us what that purpose is. So now we are not only supposed to look for our purpose but to fulfill it once we find it.

Doesn't it seem like a very inefficient system? Can you imagine how many people have not fulfilled their purpose because they could not figure out what it was before they got run over by a manic truck or mammoth before trucks were invented? Why would an omnipotent all knowing God do something like that? How can the search for such a purpose be considered noble? God did not do ITs job properly otherwise, the purpose would be well defined and known to us so that we could fulfill it.

Why would a search for a purpose be considered a noble pursuit? Isn't it a blunder on God's part that IT wishes us to do something on earth but forgot to tell us what that something is? If your child wants you to do something, it tells you what it is. When a child cannot communicate it's needs it results in chaos all around. That is why a child quickly learns to communicate because it understands that to get what it wants, it needs to communicate its requirements clearly.

If a child can understand this in a span of a few years, why has God not figured this out in all these millions of years since we arrived?

Doesn't it make more sense to demand from God that our purposes be very well defined if IT wants that purpose fulfilled? Why is it our fault if we cannot fulfill a purpose that we were not even told about?

How about: it is our purpose to find our purpose. Gandhi found his purpose in life, and Hitler found his. Both these men found their maximum potentials in life.

Sthita wrote:Like the way we have basically killed nearly all the animals in the world, turned the world into a nightmare for humans too, or the way we find more and more creative ways of killing each other, those higher or supreme value?

Reading your post I find that the core of it is here: an emotional appeal. But this 'argument' has no relationship to the questions being considered yet it is designed to appeal, emotionally, to a group of emotions and emoted thoughts about humans and humankind. Bad, eveil, destructive. Numerous here have assigned to religion and to religiousness the blame for the evil of human beings and the argument itself is emotional and also psychologically manipulative. Yet overall it pulls the argument into a territory of conflict or false-conflict and polemic. It could be argued that it is Christian ethics is one of the foundation stones of ecological theory and the desire to extend equal rights to animals, to prairies, forests, etc. In Occidental culture this is in fact the case, and this is no mere unsubstantiated assertion.

But in order to hold this as a value, one has to be able to value. What is the value being asserted here? Preservation of nature? Preservation of natural beauty? Preservation of natural ecological systems in a pristine state? Human kindness and toleration? Protection from irrational hatred and senseless killing? Good, sound systems of law with legal protection? But in a 'world' where (according to Sthita and what seems a half-baked grasp of philosophy) the base of such value can only be defined through 'genetics' and 'hormones', or when value is seen as an expression of the determination of genetics and hormones, the argument looks - and really is - completely absurd.

There has to be a valuating, sensitive, aware, feeling, conscious, and imaginative man there in order to see his world and make decisions in that world. I'd say that the entire structure of Lacewing's 'argument' - that no valuation is possible because no one can make a decision and no one has the right to make a better decision, and a studied one, or a moral or ethical one, and one with a base in what is essentially a metaphysical relationship to life and existence, is seen to be weak and false, and plainly absurd.

Similarly, the core of Sthita's notion of love is in genetics and hormones. Meaning, that human value is determined through biological process, and that there is no example or instance cited but morover understood to occur or to arise out of a higher dimension in human possibility. In this way scientism is enormously reductive. In this way (and all the myriad exmples could be carefully laid out) I would also answer Uwot's query when he asks What then is the result of an atheistic platorfm or what potential destructiveness may arise out of it? It is a grotesque reductionism. It would require a mass revision of all the products of Occidental culture and a reassignation of value to some function of biology. But in real terms what will happen and what IS happening is that you will produce minds such as Surreptitious57's (I mean no offense, really) and Sthita's who are locked into a specific and determined structure of view that is blind to many different aspect of life, consciousness and value, and no longer has any need for them because it cannot any longer see them or recognize them. A culture-wide movement as this will, as Inglorious suggests, produce amoebas, which is to say creatures that only respond to physical stimulus or hormonal impulse.

It does seem to resolve back into 'imagined world' and 'metaphysical dream of the world'. If the world you IMAGINE is so limited, and if the imaginative parameters of the world you imagine are so limited and limiting, then you will certainly reap the consequences of your asserted ideas. Ideas therefor have consequences.

Sthita reduces the inspiration of art. poetry, music, and theatre - and of course with it the religious imagination which has played and still plays a role - to 'more hard work'. So, anyone who 'works hard' will achieve great works of art (as one very concrete example which most understand). This seems to be mind-bogglingly witless as an assertion. It could be insulted of course but insulting it would miss the point and fail to label it correctly. It simply fails to understand, and it cannot understand, and it has no knowledge or and insight into, the truth of high artistic attainment. Try to get your dog to write Bach partidas. Or train a chimpanzee to play Mozart sonatas. It is really something less than stupidity that would allow a person to state that these attainments, and the eleveated and spiritual consciousness ncessary to create them, result from 'hard work', or genetics or hormones. It is sheer ignorance and lack of necessary thought and consideration. Complete lack of familiarity.

It is asserted on the basis of reductionism that 'the real world' is seen. And seen more truly. I suggest this is a false claim. A reduced scope of vision is a form of training, and one has to be subject to that training and to interiorise it, in order to then 'practice' it in the 'real world'. But this style of seeing, this reductionist way of seeing, is filled with intention and also ideology. It is a set of ideological constructs that informs it. I suppose that here, on this forum now peopled by droolers of various sorts, by knuckle-draggers and 'philosophers', these assertions of mine would have to be amplified though they shouldn't require it. But were it amplified and explained 10 times, a thousand times, it would make no difference.

Because ...

• Speech with the nomads is impossible. They do not know our language; indeed they hardly have a language of their own. They communicate with each other much as jackdaws do. A screeching of jackdaws is always in our ears. Our way of living and our institutions they neither understand nor care to understand. And so they are unwilling to make sense even out of our sign language. You can gesture at them till you dislocate your jaws and your wrists and still they will not have understood you and will never understand. They often make grimaces; then the whites of their eyes turn up and foam gathers on their lips, but they do not mean anything by that, not even a threat; they do it because it is their nature to do it. Whatever they need, they take. You cannot call it taking by force. They grab at something and you simply stand aside and leave them to it.

That's from a 'prophetic' story by Franz Kafka - I mean it in acid sarcasm and also for puposes of bitter ridicule, but lovingly too - which seems to describe a stance taken in the face of a new barbarism. See Lacewing: this is judgment in operation, this is use of creative assessment, and there is no doubt that it is a tough medicine. And this is what will happen when one comes to define one's values and comes to describe them, to make them known. This is what our life here is all about. The question of course is 'getting down to the wellsprings of life' to be able really to draw nourishment from its sources. We do this or we don't. You don't. As a matter of fact you must stand mute. You have no basis on which to make any declaration at all.

It is all pretty interesting no? The effort to see into and extract predicates and then to talk about them.

Y'all are perfect for all this ...

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: Reading your post I find that the core of it is here: an emotional appeal.

Not really I am just trying to address your delusion that humans are noble because they are made in the image of God. They are not.

But this 'argument' has no relationship to the questions being considered yet it is designed to appeal, emotionally, to a group of emotions and emoted thoughts about humans and humankind. Bad, eveil, destructive.

Again, not really. I am simply addressing your basic belief that God is love. If It were, we would not be like this.

Numerous here have assigned to religion and to religiousness the blame for the evil of human beings and the argument itself is emotional and also psychologically manipulative.

Not at all. Not even one bit. You give religion too much importance. Religion or belief in God does nothing to the true nature of man. Like all other creatures born, man is simply trying to survive and do whatever it takes to succeed.

Yet overall it pulls the argument into a territory of conflict or false-conflict and polemic.

That is just because you have no answer for why God made us this way.

It could be argued that it is Christian ethics is one of the foundation stones of ecological theory and the desire to extend equal rights to animals, to prairies, forests, etc.

Does that include pedophile priests?

In Occidental culture this is in fact the case, and this is no mere unsubstantiated assertion.

Agreed. And it still does not explain pedophile priests in Occidental cultures.

But in order to hold this as a value, one has to be able to value.

Can you value the thought process of an athiest?

What is the value being asserted here? Preservation of nature? Preservation of natural beauty? Preservation of natural ecological systems in a pristine state? Human kindness and toleration? Protection from irrational hatred and senseless killing? Good, sound systems of law with legal protection?

I am just saying that your God can try Its best, It will not succeed in this.

But in a 'world' where (according to Sthita and what seems a half-baked grasp of philosophy) the base of such value can only be defined through 'genetics' and 'hormones', or when value is seen as an expression of the determination of genetics and hormones, the argument looks - and really is - completely absurd.

That is called denial of the fact that you are just an animal controlled by your genetics and hormones. Nothing more and nothing less. You might like to believe that you are not. But you are. For that you need to embrace the Occidental cultures and let your ego go. Only then will you understand your own true nature.

There has to be a valuating, sensitive, aware, feeling, conscious, and imaginative man there in order to see his world and make decisions in that world.

Now that is an appeal. "has to be". hehehe. You might wish it, but that is not the case.

Similarly, the core of Sthita's notion of love is in genetics and hormones

I wish it were not. But I accept that it is. I let my ego go. Try it sometime. You might grow out of religion.

Meaning, that human value is determined through biological process, and that there is no example or instance cited but morover understood to occur or to arise out of a higher dimension in human possibility.

This is probably the only thing worth something that you have written. Unfortunately, I don't think you believe it. That is again denial of your true nature.

In this way scientism is enormously reductive.

This is the way denial works. By using "reductive". The magic word. Unfortunately, it is true and you simply cannot accept it. Denial. Fear of accepting yourself for what you are.

It does seem to resolve back into 'imagined world' and 'metaphysical dream of the world'. If the world you IMAGINE is so limited, and if the imaginative parameters of the world you imagine are so limited and limiting, then you will certainly reap the consequences of your asserted ideas. Ideas therefor have consequences.

Maybe you are imagining God. Ever considered that?

Sthita reduces the inspiration of art. poetry, music, and theatre - and of course with it the religious imagination which has played and still plays a role - to 'more hard work'.

Not really. You just left the important word out. I also said ABILITY. Something you do not have in the quantity you wish you did. The same as me. Ability and hard work. These are TOGETHER the key words.

So, anyone who 'works hard' will achieve great works of art (as one very concrete example which most understand).

Again, anyone with ABILITY who works hard will achieve great works of art. We are not one of them, you and I. We are mediocre, living our lives writing and fighting on philosophy forums, trying desperately to hide our lack of achievement, by showing up the other guy. Accept it.

This seems to be mind-bogglingly witless as an assertion.

Just the truth which you refuse to accept because your ego would not allow it. It would destroy you.

Try to get your dog to write Bach partidas. Or train a chimpanzee to play Mozart sonatas.

I cannot. It lacks the ABILITY. The same as you and me. Could you write a Bach partidas or a Mozart sonata? See? My dog, you and I are all in the same boat. We lack the ABILITY.

It is really something less than stupidity that would allow a person to state that these attainments, and the eleveated and spiritual consciousness ncessary to create them, result from 'hard work', or genetics or hormones.

Again, you forgot the key word. ABILITY. Which you, me and my dog all lack.

It is sheer ignorance and lack of necessary thought and consideration. Complete lack of familiarity.

Not really. It is just lack of ability. We are mediocre. Deal with it.

It is asserted on the basis of reductionism that 'the real world' is seen. And seen more truly. I suggest this is a false claim.

Nope. It is just lack of ABILITY. Which you me and my dog all suffer from.

A reduced scope of vision is a form of training, and one has to be subject to that training and to interiorise it, in order to then 'practice' it in the 'real world'.

This is a great definition of religion. Thank you. Pretty brilliant actually.

You might as well put a bullet in your brain for all the good it's doing you, sthitapragya. There is in your post only the despair of an unbelieving materialist.

• To the unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man’s only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.