To be an atheist, but not a materialist, is completely reasonable
I am a true atheist (as well as humanist and capitalist); someone who does not believe in or give legitimacy to the traditional concepts of gods. At the same time, I am not a materialist. Because I observe there is a happy medium between these two absolute extremes. Somewhere "a something", which is closer to the highest truths, can be unearthed, studied, understood and applied.
More simply, reality is mind/mental. Which, if true, implies (among other things) that occult studies and supernatural phenomena are (however often suppressed, dismissed and misunderstood) quite normal, natural and decent. Generally speaking.
From my perspective this philosophical intersection is completely reasonable, stable and wise; there is indeed a great deal of value to be found here. With more than enough for everyone.
Extra Context
It seems to me that both materialist atheists and every religious person on the planet, are at some degree of two ends of the same spectrum. I like to think that I am as close to the center of that polarity as I can discover. Because I have concluded it is rational to take seriously the experiences and expressions of both parties. As well as my own. And to then synthesize the truth out of that fusion of worldviews and qualia.
If my benchmark for truth and wisdom actually is "efficacy", then I'm on the correct course. Pragmatism is not unreasonable.
More simply, reality is mind/mental. Which, if true, implies (among other things) that occult studies and supernatural phenomena are (however often suppressed, dismissed and misunderstood) quite normal, natural and decent. Generally speaking.
From my perspective this philosophical intersection is completely reasonable, stable and wise; there is indeed a great deal of value to be found here. With more than enough for everyone.
Extra Context
It seems to me that both materialist atheists and every religious person on the planet, are at some degree of two ends of the same spectrum. I like to think that I am as close to the center of that polarity as I can discover. Because I have concluded it is rational to take seriously the experiences and expressions of both parties. As well as my own. And to then synthesize the truth out of that fusion of worldviews and qualia.
If my benchmark for truth and wisdom actually is "efficacy", then I'm on the correct course. Pragmatism is not unreasonable.
Comments (129)
We can assume some phenomenon is beyond what is naturally possible, but we cannot know that is is.
I completely agree with you. The word "supernatural" is vacuous. And misleading. But it is how the unfamiliar is labeled. So it is a useful label to use here, I think.
Btw, back in the day, my atheism had preceded my naturalism.
Do you think this is all a dream?
More no, than yes. We certainly dream or hallucinate our realities to some extent. But freewill is real. So the ability to create change (anywhere, at will) is ultimately a matter of one's karma, awareness, discipline, desire and ability to "take the leap".
Anything is possible, and you're both The Architect and Neo from The Matrix trilogy.
We're inside of overlapping quasi-subliminal lucid dreams. Both collectively and individually.
I'm an idealist too, but I don't think it works as an explanation unless there is an overarching mind/minds keeping all this from being absolute chaos. How do two minds every agree on an aspect of reality unless there's some coordination of their thoughts going on? Why am I limited in what I can do in this reality? When I occasionally lucid dream, sometimes I can fly, but I can't when I'm awake. Some limiting factor that I'm not aware of prevents this. I think a lot is going on behind the scenes and whether it's our higher selves or we're part of a collective of minds or aspects of a powerful one-mind, whatever is pulling the strings might as well be god.
In this context of failure of metaphysics, mirrors and logic, I think a better context is renouncing to proceed with metaphysics and using instead just humble attempts of interpretations. Interpretation is very similar to metaphysics, but it contains a better ability to remind us the subjectivity of what we think.
Thinking about supernatural things, however we conceive them, contains a metaphisical mentality, that has not the humbleness of interpretation.
I don't see direct relation between Atheist/Theist and materialist/non-materialist.
Of course superficially they seem directly depended on each other but they are not.
At this point not believing the image of god created by organized religions is a sign of a healthy unconditioned mind.
Being materialist or non-materialist seems to me beyond the point of traditional religion.
It starts at a deeper point in your inquiry into reality.
Myself, I never believed in a god and never have been a materialist so when I read your post I was surprised that there was an argument needed to be made for it.
As a side note there can be and have been Christian materialists, and I believe Peter van Inwagen is an example of one.
I too, am an Atheist -- or technically an Agnostic -- but due to my philosophical explorations of "something" like Plato/Aristotle's First Cause/Prime Mover, I am often labelled a woo-monger. As you implied, Atheism & Theism are typically viewed in terms of polar opposites, with no in between. But I find plenty of room in the middle ground for philosophical probing without falling into the trap of Tribal Faith or Sophistic Scientism.
Clarify what you mean by "reasonable" in this context. Thanks.
In this context, the word "reasonable" means "sound" or "obvious".
So being an atheists and not a materialist is a perfectly reasonable position. It better be, since it is the the position adopted by the Perennial philosophy and widely endorsed. .
George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form.
Why? It seems not only natural but beneficial that people would do that - on the condition that they do it in a moderate and unzealous way. I think disagreements beyond the frontier of current science might, in some ways, literally be a driving force for the frontier of science moving forward.
Einstein was way more confident in relativity that a lot of people think he had a right to be, for example, especially given that most of the experiments that would later confirm relativistic ideas hadn't been performed or even thought up yet. Einstein was very willing to lay bets on his view which was beyond that event horizon.
Perhaps Einstein is an exception, or perhaps we ought to allow this arrogant confidence, in moderation, to the experts who deserve it.
Absolutely! Hurrah for moderation and un-zealotry!
Quoting flannel jesus
Well I would certainly hesitate to condemn Einstein in these terms, with as much hindsight as I have. Are there many Einsteins on this site? but I think Einstein was in any case very much concerned with explanations for what we could see already, rather than what was beyond the horizon. Perhaps the 'God does not play dice' comment was a little rash?
Is it anybody with a strong intuition one way or the other about materialism?
You might enjoy The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. It is mind-blowing to me that we are still materialists. Everything is energy. Logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe makes matter possible.
Western thinking since Rome has been very materialistic, but not so much the East. Without India we would not have a concept of zero and without zero we could not have the maths we have today. The materialism we have is a cultural problem and :lol: leaves the believers of the God of Abraham, that is Jews, Christians, and Muslims with a big problem! How do we explain the existence of God and the Holy Spirit when every is made of matter?
Back to math, if we all learned quantum physics we might not be able to maintain our notion of separate material and spiritual realities.
I dont think it is reasonable because it involves the same activity: holding out for something better than the world. Theism is idealism run amok. Its an exercise in slandering or dismissing the world, and holding oneself (ones ideas, consciousness, mind) over and above it.
The problem with seeking the middle and not leaning one way or the other is that you never get to help decide where the center is.
In modern talk, the domain of the mental is a very hard nut to crack, being that outside some narrow fields of insight, such as a bit from neuroscience, some from linguistics and a bit from psychology, we know so very little of it.
And it makes sense too, given that we are analyzing our most unique gift from nature: thought. So, it's not surprising.
And while being an atheist is perfectly fine (I suppose I am one too), not much is gained by attempting to argue that the mental is opposed to the physical is some obscure manner. Otherwise, we are repeating the mistakes of the 17th century. Saying the universe is mental or physical does not highlight much about it, in my opinion.
1. The offensive: My ism is clearly correct, and anyone who disagrees with me is clearly wrong and probably stupid.
2. The defensive: My ism is at least *not clearly incorrect* and it would be unjustified to rule it out based on current evidence.
When we're dealing with topics on or beyond the frontier of science, 1 is probably, usually unjustified for almost all people, with the exception of the occasional Einstein. How do you feel about 2 though? The defensive position, for ideas that are beyond the frontier.
I think 2 can be reasonable at times. There's a lot of people saying "this idea is clearly impossible and ruled out for this reason or that", and *maybe* there can be value in pushing back against that kind of rhetoric at times, no?
Thank you for the recommendation. I have added it to my list of books to consider buying in the near-future. I am a big fan of literature that seeks to fuse seemingly incompatible paradigms, into a new coherent understanding of the universe.
I can see what you're saying; that I might be playing the same game as theism, by looking to "a beyond" for something better. And that it is difficult to know where the middle truly is, without taking one side or the other. These are good points.
In my observations, the paranormal and metaphysical are part of this materialist world. There is no need for overlap of distinct realms or faith in anything to validate/explain such a reality. It is rather the state of science, measurement and a desire to earnestly look that prevents our species from legitimizing the existence of what is presently designated as "woo woo".
I'm not one to use Quantum Physics as a means to explain spiritual principles. Instead, I rely heavily on the work of pioneers such as Jeffrey Mishlove in the field of Parapsychology, to help explore these phenomena. As well as the words and wisdom of different religions, found throughout human history.
I conclude that by trusting my own experiences, studying the extremes of this spectrum and remaining mindful, that it seems possible to deduct where the middle is, or somewhere nearby. And to live in the now moment without a desire for inter-dimensional transcendence. My perspective isn't to escape an earthly life for a heaven or hell; it is to enrich my life in the domains that I already exist within.
"Everything" which causes changes is material, ergo "energy" is material, no?
Quoting Bret Bernhoft
How can "a beyond" the here and now provide "something better" to us within the here and now?
Quoting Bret Bernhoft
As a non-"materialist", what is it (ontically? epistemically?) about the material that you oppose?
What do you mean by "reality"?
This is the second time in my life that I've seen someone suggest materialists don't believe in energy lmao. How is that supposed to work? All materialists believe that matter moves around, right? And matter requires energy to move and interact and change directions and so forth, right?
I've never met a materialist who doesn't believe in energy. I have, however, met non-materialists who say materialists believe that. THAT'S what's truly mind blowing.
:100: :fire:
NB: ... "yinyang" ... "atoms swirling swerving in the void" ... "E=mc²" ... "fermions & bosons", wtf are woo-ologists talking about? :sweat:
The book "Great Thinkers of the Eastern World" is easier to read than Fritjof Capra and prepares us to understand Tao which is great for reading Greek philosophy and thinking of things such as Democrituss ideas of changing physical phenomena. :wink: All the sources of knowledge we have to choose from make living a wonderful thing. It appears you want to enjoy it all as I do.
No matter does not move around. If my computer desk decides to move itself to the other side of the room, I will scream and run out of the door. Not many materialists are in agreement with Native Americans about the sacred land and the wrong of exploiting it. Matter constantly changes but the leaves do so much faster than rocks and neither the leaf nor a stone has the power of moving. So exactly how do you understand the energy of which you speak?
Materialists do not see reality like this...
Quoting Thomas Berry
I am not sure but I think the big divide between materials and the spiritualist is disagreement about the source of the energy that makes life possible.
You have done nothing but insult. Good reasoning requires following some laws of logic and your post is not a good example of that. Name-calling such as "woo-ologist" is destructive to the communication process that I expect of people in the philosophy forum.
https://grove.ccsd59.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/03/1.-Matter-Vs.-Energy-.pdf
find me a materialist who would agree and you might have something there lol.
I personally wouldn't word it as "energy is material", but I'm not prepared to say that's explicitly wrong either. In any case, it's clear that a contemporary "materialist" world view includes energy.
Disembodied or incorporeal would be my least favorite here. If someone talks about "the text of War and Peace, but not the books it is printed on or the hard drives it is saved on," that seems like something that is "disembodied," but very different from the "magical." Economic recessions would be another example; they lack a body, but can be an object of scientific inquiry and we can attribute causes to them (e.g. "layoffs picked up in 2009 because of the recession.")
I think a process/computational/complex systems view works quite well to recover our intuition about some incorporeal entities, e.g. "the Japanese language," existing, even if there can be no well defined superveniance relationship between them and a discrete set of physical components.
Interestingly enough, I'm starting to think that this proposition is what is at stake as the sciences, particularly physics, try to define and define a place for the concept of information. The question of: "can what is not there be causally important," or can "properties that a system lacks," be essential for explaining phenomena. The range of possibilities seems essential for explaining things like the heat carrying capabilities of metals, or life, even though this range is not actual.
I think the thinking around it gets dicey, and very muddy, because there is a tendency to want to reduce relations to objects, whereas it seems like the process view is more relevant here. In the context of a process, what doesn't occur is important. It's like how you can't encode a message in just 1s, you need the possibility of 0s in a medium.
Sounds like you're just talking about emergence
Sounds rather Stoic and, therefore, preferable as such things go, to me at least. All that acts or can be acted upon are "bodies" and therefore part of Nature, or the Universe. There are different kinds of bodies, though.
The significance of the Stoic view is that it posits immanence; there ain't no supernatural or transcendent (I admit the Stoics may not have used the word "ain't"). We don't need no stinkin' supernatural or transcendent, in fact (they may not have used the word "stinkin'" either). Being part of Nature (the Universe), inextricably, all we can know is part of it.
The concept of energy and even what we know of the quantum world fits in rather well with Stoicism, I think, though not with its view that the pneuma (of which they would be a part, I think) is the intelligent, rational as well as generative guiding principle of the Universe.
It depends on how you define emergence I suppose. I do not mean classical emergence, where combinations of different substances somehow generate new terms that did not exist before. I think Jaegeon Kim dealt classic, substance based emergence a virtual death blow.
Prehaps emergence in the "more is different," sense you see at work in cellular automata. But then it's not really clear to me if this warrants the name emergence, or if it just obviates the idea of emergence, consigning it to the dust bin of history.
After all, it doesn't make sense to think of computations as being "composed of" smaller computations. To be sure, we have a step-wise element in computation (although steps can run in parallel), but this is necessarily change, a process occuring over a timelike dimension. ?81 doesn't "emerge" from smaller units of composition, it is its own process.
Examples from cellular automata, like the ol classic Glider, are just plain ol emergence in my book. I'm not really sure how that differs from "classical emergence" - I googled that term but couldn't find anything like a definition.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Ever?
I mean, I can think of plenty of situations where you can actually think of computations as being composed of smaller computations. Multiplication is composed of addition. Exponentiation is composed of multiplication. In software, functions call other functions that do tiny bits of the overall job. And literally everything in software is composed of assembly instructions / machine code, right? I guess I don't see why it doesn't make sense, it seems on the surface to make perfect sense.
Both leaf and stone are spinning on the surface of a giant sphere at a thousand miles per hour. They don't fly off of the earth because its mass is so great that it pulls them towards it. The earth is spinning around a star. The solar system is spinning in a galaxy. The galaxy is expanding with the universe... Going the other way, there's a bunch of atomic and quantum movement too, so I'm told.
Silly projection.
Quoting Athena
Fermions and bosons. Nothing 'immaterial'. :roll:
Quoting Ciceronianus
:fire: Yes! Also sounds Democritean-Epicurean (& Lucretian).
Bickhart and Deacon have some good explanations of this I will try to find. The SEP article is rather lacking.
Nested functions are part of code, static instructions on how to run a computation. Of course you can concatenate functions, and in this sense it is quite possible to decompose more complex functions. But the relationship between nested functions is not analogous to the way superveniance relations work in metaphysics (what I was trying to get at, which perhaps wasn't clear). Computation is substrate independent. If we change out the tape in a Turing Machine for some other brand of tape with a different chemical composition the computations it runs remain the same.
In any event, the "computation" is the actual process of transforming the input into the output. To say nested functions are the computation is a bit like saying thought is neurons, rather than what the neurons do, or that the computation in a Turing Machine is the symbols on the tape plus the state instructions in the head (why run the machine then?) Now, could we say the computation is all the states the computer transitions through from input -> output? Maybe. But this is a process, prior states dictating future ones.
- Laws of physics seem to be pretty universal. Reliable and boring. They seem to sum up all the stuff about matter and energy pretty well and boring and just the fact that those laws seem so stable is the only thing at least I see as philosophical interesting about it.
- Our individual thinking seem, on the contrary to be pretty peculiar. Quite singular, both in terms of isolation from the outer world, and in the fact that its perceived as lack of parallelism. I think what i think right now, I cannot think two things at the same time.
- At the same time our collective thinking seem to be a realisation of a multi-processor computing thing. Weve kind of invented materialism together. And well, the Gods too.
- But few will allow our individual thinking to be a strictly materialist stuff, just a lot of little electrons running around in the brain. There some mystical thing about the self that remains.
I agree with you (emphatically) in questioning whether "a beyond" can provide anything of value for the here and now. That sort of statement is at the core of my conclusions about reality.
What I oppose about materialism is that it is exclusively the domain of what is real; of reality. There are obviously other aspects of our existence that transcend the physical. But none of which are unscientific.
By "reality" I mean that which we encounter and can verify or measure.
A great story that nicely illustrates this all is "The Celestine Prophecy".
Yes. Absolutely. In my mind there is little reason to exclude the thinking, intuition and conclusions of others outright; especially if the work being done is about balance and hybridizing extremes. Being able to challenge myself with diverse sources of knowledge does indeed make living a wondrous thing. This is a hallmark of a good life, in my observations.
Can you give some examples?
"Transcend the physical" could be interpreted in at least 2 ways. You could be talking about stuff that is completely not physical in any sense, or you could be talking about stuff that is emergent from physical stuff. I'd like to clarify which of those two senses you think obviously exists.
For example, when two (or more) people meet, their heart rhythms and brainwaves entrain with each other. These are energetic experiences that cannot be accounted for simply by assuming everything is materialistic.
Or remote viewing. That's another parapsychological phenomena that transpersonal and nonlocal.
Energy gets generated from matter's movement (e.g. fall), gravity, chemical process etc. Energy is a physical entity. Energy is not material. Matter is just stationery mass.
Really? Why not?
Great question. Because that's not what the measurements indicate. Good science shows that these phenomena are part of the material world, but energetic in nature; immaterial.
What's really exciting about all of this, is that the immaterial aspects of this world are present, just waiting to be rediscovered. That is what entices me, as an individual.
Energy is, believe it or not, considered part of the material world. Materialists believe in physics. Physics is all about how matter is moved around and changed by energy. So saying these things can't be accounted for in materialism, and then saying "that's because it requires energy to happen", seems to be a misunderstanding of materialism.
Of course materialists believe in energy! How else could matter move and change momentum!?
Quoting Bret Bernhoft
In other words, you believe that reality is also "immaterial"? If so, how does the immaterial affect the material and vice versa?
Give a couple of examples of how "we encounter and ... verify or measure" the immaterial. Thanks, Bret.
The first thing to stress would be that composition in computation doesn't work like composition in superveniance metaphysics. Salt is salt because of how Na and Cl interact. 20 grains of salt is salt in the very same way that 1,000,000 grains of salt is salt. The output comes from the causal properties of fundamental units, which may arguably be unpredictable from the properties of these units themselves (classical emergence).
But 5 * 10 is not an output of 50 in the way that Na + Cl = NaCL. You can add grains of salt to salt and it remains salt. If you add multiples of 5 or 10 to 50 you get a different number.More importantly, there are limitless ways to write an arithmetical function that will output 50 and so the output cannot be uniquely defined by the inputs in the way NaCl is defined by its component particles.
Against this view, we can consider that, if all of physics was unified into one thing, if the fundamental forces and space-time itself were unified, and we could say: "yes, there is one undifferentiated substance that forms all these building blocks from different processes," then the difference elucidated above looks to be in trouble. However, if this was the case, "substance" as a concept now fails to do any explanatory lifting at all. All phenomena are generated from a term that applies equally to all things, and so it is only the processes that actually have causal power.
Emergence was developed by a number of British philosophers in the 19th century with old-style materialism in mind. Substrate independent emergence, the example of material formed into a wheel, is a later innovation, and I would argue that it is better explained via a process metaphysics. From this start, "emergence" largely developed up to the 1990s in line with popular ideas of superveniance physicalist metaphysics. "Classical emergence," is just emergence that accepts substance metaphysics.
Thus, one of the big arguments in emergence tended to be if "strong emergence," or "true emergence" is even possible, or if emergence just represents opportunities for what is essentially data compression. If the latter holds, then all phenomena can still be fully (and often, most accurately) described by simply ignoring the emergence and instead fully describing any physical system via the sum of its fundamental components. Or, at least this idea is believed to be true, "in theory;" however, plenty of people accept that, barring the advent of some Le Placean Demon capable of almost supernatural computations, emergence might still make sense as a concept to use from a pragmatic perspective.
More recently, it has been common to argue that "strong emergence," appears to be impossible within a substance metaphysics, but, so the argument goes, this is simply more evidence that that we must move to a process based metaphysics.
But there is a powerful argument against mereological substance metaphysics: such discrete parts only appear at the quantum scale through large scale statistical smoothing. In many cases, fundamental parts with static properties don't seem to exist and even those that are put forth can form into new, fundamental entities (e.g., Humphrey's notion of fusion).
I have posted relevant parts of some of Bickhard's analysis here in an earlier post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/826619
But since, in examples like the Game of Life you mentioned, "more is different," I don't even know if the concept of emergence can even be fundamental under a process view. To be sure, it's useful for higher level fields where speaking of substance is a fine stand-in for describing long term stabilities in process. However, the only thing it makes sense to decompose computations - the transformation of output into input - into is the intervening states between S1 and SF. But if you're defining composition by transitions of states over time, you aren't talking substance anymore, that's process, and so the "emergence" part is redundant since a different process is a different process. We can have morphisms between processes, but it doesn't make sense to say a F(x) = 100 is somehow emergent, in the same way it isn't really useful to say "lines are emergent from points," or "planes are emergent from dimensions."
But, if information because essential for explaining cause in a way that people do not think is somehow an epistemic artifact, I imagine we'd see widespread acceptance of information as physical (it's already a majority opinion I would think).
The problem with, "if it has causal powers it is physical," is that it would simply mean that if ghosts and magic are real, we just need to accept the physical reality of ectoplasm, djinns, etc. (Hemple's Dilemma). I think in general physicalists would like to go further, but that's where the interesting problems come up.
Is saying that there is no intentionality behind the behavior of the universe writ large necessary for physicalism? Is saying that mind is not essential to being necessary for physicalism? Can we say some things about the nature of the physical beyond the scope of scientific realism or simple naturalism?
In general, I think ontic structural realism, the idea that the mathematical structures of physics are themselves the ontological basement, the constituents on which all cause depends and from which all being emerges, doesn't sound like physicalism. We don't tend to think of mathematical entities and processes as physical, rather they are abstractions. But I'm also not sure if it's necessarily disallowed. Certainly there are theories that do advance structural realism as physicalism.
But it's not like idealism, in its broadest form, is that much different in this respect. In some ways it's defined largely by what it says "no," too. So, say what you will about dualism, but when you have two distinct types of being, there is a lot more you can say of them, since there is at least some comparison to define them through. (I am not a dualist BTW, a theory being more interesting, less "flat," doesn't make it necessarily more true lol).
Doesn't seem to follow though, does it? That "spiritual dimension" sneaks into the picture. Is that "spiritual dimension" a part of Nature? If so, a Naturalist may accept it as a part of reality, like everything else, including energy. The question would then seem to be whether if it's part of the Universe it is corporeal.
This thread seems to have diverged into a debate on Physics (energy, matter) instead of Metaphysics (abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space). But the OP seems to be implying a metaphysical (philosophical) distinction : Theism postulates non-physical (metaphysical) causes, while Materialism denies anything non-physical. Yet even Materialists must accept the existence of causal Energy, even though scientists don't know what it is (ontology) -- only what it does (epistemology)*1.
My position on the OP is somewhere in between mundane Materialism and spooky Theism. And it's based on a "wonky" concept (the role of information in reality) that is fiercely challenged on this forum. It is definitely eccentric, in the sense that it is not aligned with the mainstream Materialism of modern Physics. That's because generic Information as Causation is on the cutting-edge of science, not in the dusty textbooks. For example, In computation, Energy is lost as Entropy only upon erasure of Information*2*3. As you implied : Information is physical in the same sense that Energy is physical.
I won't go into the abstruse details of the Information = Energy equation here. But I will note that, for those to whom Mind is just as real as Brain, the notion that Information = Energy + Relationship = Mind*4 may make sense. Of course, a materialist/chemist will find that assertion absurd. But a Physicalist, who deals mostly with Change (causation) instead of focusing on the inert Material substrate, may be quicker to grasp that invisible intangible Energy is the cause of all changes in Form : i.e. en-form-action. Which opens up a whole new range of possibilities for the sciences of Physics & Computation. And, perhaps novel ways to define Theism & Metaphysics. :smile:
*1. Physics of Energy :
Energy is defined as the ability to do work, which is the ability to exert a force causing displacement of an object. Despite this confusing definition, its meaning is very simple: energy is just the force that causes things to move. Energy is divided into two types: potential and kinetic.
https://ingeniumcanada.org/scitech/education/tell-me-about/physics-of-energy#:~:text=Energy%20is%20defined%20as%20the,two%20types%3A%20potential%20and%20kinetic.
Note --- "Ability" is not a material thing, but merely the immaterial Potential for change. Kinetic energy is the causal process of change in a material substrate. What I call "en-form-action".
*2. INFORMATION IS PHYSICAL : Rolf Landauer,
[i]Earlier centuries gave us clockwork models of the
universe. A similar, but more modern, orientation leads
to the position of Zuse and Fredkin that the universe is a
computer. Without going quite that far, I do suggest that
there is a strong [b]two-way relationship between physics
and information handling[/b][/i]
https://www.w2agz.com/Library/Limits%20of%20Computation/Landauer%20Article,%20Physics%20Today%2044,%205,%2023%20(1991).pdf
*3. Rolf Landauer . . . . Award in Quantum Computing :
This award recognizes recent outstanding contributions in quantum information science, especially using quantum effects to perform computational and information-management tasks that would be impossible or infeasible by purely classical means.
https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/landauer-bennet.cfm
*4. How is information related to energy in physics? :
Energy is the relationship between information regimes. That is, energy is manifested, at any level, between structures, processes and systems
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/22084/how-is-information-related-to-energy-in-physics
Good Point! For all practical purposes, and within the here & now world, I am essentially an Atheist, but I prefer the more modest & philosophical label Agnostic. Even so, the physicalistic/materialistic Big Bang theory, was formulated with the unprovable assumption (axiom) that Energy & Natural Laws pre-existed the Bang.
So, my philosophical curiosity naturally wonders about the original Source of that all-important creative & animating power. I don't imagine the origin of the world as a biblical Genesis, but Plato/Aristotle's abstract notion of LOGOS & Prime Mover suits me for philosophical purposes. That gives me a point from which to reason about our temporary sojourn in a habitat suitable for matter-transcending living & thinking creatures. :smile:
Note --- Energy provided the push, and Laws limit the direction of this guided missile cosmos. And here we are, 14 billion earth-years later, trying to remember the birth moment of this thrill-ride of ups & downs, while plaintively asking WHY? So far, the Logical Laborer remains mum (punny) :joke:
Quoting Gnomon
Well, I find Spinoza's non-transcendent substance, or natura naturans, much more parsimonious and elegant (as do e.g. Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche ... Einstein, Bohm, Wheeler, Everett ... David Deutsch, Seth Lloyd et al). Btw, Epicureans & Stoics are also immanentists, to wit: "the source of energy" is existence itself (à la the vacuum); thus, "creationism" by any other name, whether biblical or onto-theological multiplying (transcendent) entities is both philosophically and scientifically unnecessary. :smirk:
Might it be possible that our understanding of energy and matter is culturally biased and also lacks more recent information about quantum physics and the center of the universe?
The existence of dark energy is still in question and a materialist would have a hard time accepting an unknown energy but we can see, balance is essential, and it seems quite obvious to me, if the only energy that mattered was gravity then the whole universe would be sucked back together.
That sounds like a familiar explanation. What are the forces that cause the motion? What is gravity?
If nothing counterbalances gravity why doesn't the whole universe get sucked back together? Why is the universe expanding?
That is what Thomas Jefferson, and Cicero before him, meant when they spoke of the pursuit of happiness.
Before we focused education on the advancement of technology for military and Industrial purposes, we had education for conceptualizing, and being overly materialistic was deemed inferior. Learning a technology is for the working class, not the ruling class.
Concepts are not matter and yet they can be very powerful. Some concepts are very spiritual in nature and this can improve our health. Clearly, there is more to reality than matter.
Yes. Materialists, for doctrinal reasons, typically lump Energy into the same ontological category as Matter. Admittedly, Energy is essential to Physics & Chemistry --- and I mean that literally. The common definition of Energy is "ability", but I think "potential" is more accurate : Energy is the potential to cause change in matter. And Potential (not-yet-actual) is by definition, immaterial and unreal --- although its effects on matter are immanent. Energy is indeed a Phenomenon, in the sense of an interpretation of sensory impressions. But the thing being interpreted is itself a Noumenon.
is offended by the notion of anything transcendent of temporal reality, or Immaterial, in the sense of unreal (or not yet actual). He points to Spinoza as an authority on the immanence of all substance. Yet Baruch imagined God or Nature as eternal. And that was centuries before modern science discovered --- to the surprise of Einstein --- that the material universe had a beginning --- not in time, but of Time. Spinoza's active "Natura naturans" would be what we now call Energy, and passive "natura naturata" would be Matter*1. Hence, assuming the Big Bang theory is as close to an accurate description of a scientific creation act as possible, then Energy would necessarily "transcend" the existence of the material world*2. However, since immaterial Energy is an attribute of Spinoza's Nature/God, it is not super-natural. :smile:
*1. Spinoza on Substance :
There are, Spinoza insists, two sides of Nature. First, there is the active, productive aspect of the universeGod and his attributes, from which all else follows. This is what Spinoza, employing the same terms he used in the Short Treatise, calls Natura naturans, naturing Nature. Strictly speaking, this is identical with God. The other aspect of the universe is that which is produced and sustained by the active aspect, Natura naturata, natured Nature.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/
Note --- You could interpret "the productive aspect of the universe" as Energy. And "that which is produced and sustained" as Matter. In that case, Energy is the eternal power of "God/Nature" to produce & sustain the temporal stuff of the universe ("things which are in God").
*2. What is natura naturans and natura naturata for spinoza? :
[i]Before going any further, I wish here to explain, what we should understand by nature viewed as active (natura natarans), and nature viewed as passive (natura naturata). I say to explain, or rather call attention to it, for I think that, from what has been said, it is sufficiently clear, that by nature viewed as active we should understand that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself, or those attributes of substance, which express eternal and infinite essence, in other words (Prop. xiv., Coroll. i., and Prop. xvii., Coroll. ii.) God, in so far as he is considered as a free cause.
By nature viewed as passive I understand all that which follows from the necessity of the nature of God, or of any of the attributes of God, that is, all the modes of the attributes of God, in so far as they are considered as things which are in God, and which without God cannot exist or be conceived.[/i]
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/10arl5f/what_is_natura_naturans_and_natura_naturata_for/
Note --- Nature in the modern, non-Spinozan, sense is a "mode" of God. Likewise, Matter is a "mode" of Energy, in the sense of E=MC^2.
Why would a materialist have a hard time accepting an unknown energy? I'm quite certain that every materialist I know is completely comfortable with the idea that we haven't discovered all that's true about the universe.
I fear you've built up this very narrow idea of what materialists think, that isn't actually what materialists think.
:up:
Oh my, what a delicious field of exploration you have opened for us. Our mental state has a lot to do with our physical state. Being spiritual can literally extend our lives. Prays work because our thoughts can affect our physical being.
Religions shape cultures and that is not matter but is conceptual. Our concepts have power. That power can lead to us sacrificing human hearts to a god, or giving charity to people in need. It is as we make it. There is more to life than matter. :smile: Cicero said our failure to do well was a matter of ignorance because we would do right if we knew the right thing to do. That requires an education that is about good citizenship and good moral judgment and education for technology does not do that. I repeat there is more to life than matter.
Thank you so much! I think our discussions would be much improved the the notions of logos and prime mover. And from there, even the gods were subject to logos.
Stories of a god and angels having favorite people and violating the laws of nature and a Satan and demons are a problem and we might change the discussions we have by asking if this or that story is a valid explanation of reality, rather than the very old and stale arguments about the existence of a god who can be manipulated by our behaviors. Going to war, invading another country because a god wants us to fight the war is totally wrong and should never happen. Presidents manipulating citizens with words like "evil" and "power and glory" is wrong! Religion should not be used to support oil companies and maintain our economy.
A religion that is about a kingdom, is not good for democracy.
You do know we are talking about how we use this planet, right? Indigenous people held a spiritual relationship with the land, and our lives and the planet would be very different if we all had a spiritual relationship with our home in the universe. Many people lived with the idea that it was their duty to take care of the earth and our oldest civilizations used math to keep things in order. Kings were replaced when natural phenomena destroyed crops because that was seen as a failure to please the gods. :lol: The extreme weather events we have had and increasing water shortages could be understood as a failure to please the gods, or a failure to understand science. Either way, our failure to live in harmony with nature does seem to threaten us.
The prediction of end times predates Christianity because human populations kept increasing and the people could see in time there would be more people than the earth could support. Thinking a god causes this or a god can protect us from the destruction of our planet seems problematic to me. Thinking we can do whatever we want, seems problematic to me. The materialists have impressed me as being out of touch with reality.
Can we have an economy based on oil and not run into trouble? No.
I don't know, but do you want to discuss sacred math? Perhaps we can discover why a materialist has a hard time accepting an unknown energy.
I know that was one thing one person brought up in the conversation once. I didn't realize that was the central focus. Is it?
Quoting Athena
Not particularly.
You are right. We are not focused on how what we believe relates to how we behave and that is a problem because we are not developing self-awareness as we plunder the earth and kill plants and animals and each other.
The best way to discover the problem with being a materialist is to discuss sacred math because then we can see how what people believe about sacred things, limits what they can know.
Considering how drastically you've misunderstood materialism up to this point in the conversation, I think it would be more appropriate for you to show more curiosity about what materialism is, rather than claiming to know why materialism is a problem. If you don't know what a particular belief is, you don't generally stand a good chance of being able to prove why it's a problem.
I'm sure there are many fantastic arguments in the world against materialism, but I suspect they mostly come from people who know what materialists think.
Unfortunately, Logos and Prime Mover might be rejected by Materialists*1 as unprovable Transcendent beings or forces. For me that's not a problem, because they are merely hypothetical philosophical conjectures (thought experiments) or Axioms*2, with no need for empirical proof, only logical consistency. And, since they have no "favorite people", they provide no reason for slavish religious worship. They also have no need to "violate" natural laws, since they are essentially the LawMakers. :smile:
*1. Materialism :
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
Note --- My disagreement with classical mechanical Materialism (Newton) is that Quantum physics has undermined its basic assumption of Atomism. My disagreement with philosophical Materialism is that it ignores or trivializes the immaterial power that allows homo sapiens to post on forums like this. Their rejection of any Transcendent forces, forces them to postulate such unprovable conjectures as infinite Multiverses or Many Worlds, which are themselves transcendent of the only knowable Real world. I don't necessarily disagree with Materialism in its rejection of ancient Spiritualism (ghosts, angels, body-hopping souls, etc).
*2. Is materialism an axiom or a metaphysical belief? :
https://www.quora.com/Is-materialism-an-axiom-or-a-metaphysical-belief
No, significantly it is what religious leaders make it. Religious followers can only follow.
Quoting Athena
The purpose of religion is to bind groups with a shared narrative, values, etc., not to teach ethics. In fact, religion limits moral development.
There is more to life than antiquated concepts and beliefs.
:clap: :up:
Quoting praxis
:100:
Before we go any further, I think it is important for you to define how you understand "energy" and "materialism". There are obviously forms of energy that strict materialists don't embrace.
Thomas Jefferson is a favorite American hero of mine. His time on the planet was a special period of human history. So it's interesting that you would mention his definition of pursuing happiness in relationship to the non-material.
In terms of a more robust historical type of education, I'm aware that medieval universities taught something known as the "quadrivium". Which was the effort to create well-rounded and balanced thinkers by focusing on arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music; cosmic languages. Today, as you point out, we are limited in our learning; at least when compared to the past.
So it is indeed the responsibility of the individual to seek out knowledge and wisdom, in order to find this sacred middle space.
Such as? :chin:
Have you ever heard of a story titled, "The Celestine Prophecy"?
Most people regard the novel (and associated movie) as being metaphorical. But I think that James Redfield was onto something more important than an abstraction.
Here is a sample:
In other words, "Most strict materialists do not support the existence of Kundalini energy, or awakenings."
I would go so far as to say that the super majority of humanity does.
:sparkle: Oh....
I revised my comment, and made the larger point that the majority of humanity does support the existence of Kundalini energy. It is not "woo woo", not in the least. "It" is a philosophical powerhouse.
The amount, and quality of wisdom that can be sussed out from Hindu traditions is mind boggling. And is, in my opinion, more important and relevant to this conversation than one might think.
Yeah, I agree, especially (for me) the C?rv?ka, Advaita Vedanta & (heretical) Therav?da traditions. :up:
Quoting Bret Bernhoft
Are those forms of energy something physicists know about and study?
Yes, these energies are known of by science. In terms of whether physicists study them, that depends on the individual scientist.
Would you care to get more specific? Which energies do you believe are known by science but materialists all reject?
In a previous portion of this thread, the energy was referred to as "Kundalini" from ancient Hindu traditions. Which is most certainly known of by science. But would be rejected as "woo woo" by most materialists.
I don't think that you're participating in this conversation with good intentions. So I'm done. If you want to do your own research, feel free.
I will tentatively assume that there's no material you can point me to to demonstrate how this energy is known of by science, but I will remain open to that material in the future.
I'm confident, Bret, it's rejected as woo woo by most (almost all) scientists. :mask:
:lol: That is preposterous that an evolved species would think itself the ultimate ruler of the universe and so they make a god in their own image.
Quoting Gnomon
Exactly, however, it might help if we resist using human pronouns when referring to logos or a prime mover. As I see it, humans imaged gods in their own image as she's and his's being happy or mad. With the Greek gods and goddesses, we can be aware of helpful concepts and reasoning, which may not be as true for some of the imagined beings in other cultures. I think the Sumerian story of our creation is about an extremely long drought and the return of climatic conditions that made returning to the valley possible. There is geological evidence of this. So we might not want to relate to the spirit of the river that was humanized in the story. Our ancient past is full of such imagined beings because it appears to be our nature to humanize what we experience, such as calling logos and the prime mover "they". Doing that makes what we are saying easier to understand than say, an explanation of quantum physics.
We are not naturally mathematically literate and many of us have a problem remembering complicated equations, whereas we easily remember the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. There is a survival element in the stories of rocks that used to be beings and now mark the spot where water can be found. But how about this, even materialists have stories to explain our existence. We might want to believe these stories are true because they can be validated, but it is not uncommon for a scientific explanation to be proven wrong and it is prudent to keep our minds open and that possibility. That is why I like what you said, "hypothetical philosophical conjectures (thought experiments) or Axioms*2,".
I am sorry, I do not follow what you are saying. You are saying "no" to what? You do not think religion is a story that shapes our thinking and behavior? Even atheists are sure what a god is and it is not possible to discuss logos and the prime mover with them because they absolutely can not give up their understanding of a humanized god. They absolutely insist all discussions of god match the Christian notion of a god and therefore it is impossible to discuss a notion of god as forces of nature with no human qualities.
I agree that the materialist and the Christian prevent us from knowing truth and developing our concepts of the law. However, there is more to religion than worshipping a false god and the only way that antiquated problem will be resolved is to adjust the understanding of god and religion and therefore what we can talk about.
Democracy can be a religion. We can make truth our goal by changing the conversation about god and religion. Coming out of the Age of Enlightenment, that is what was happening and how we came to have a democracy. No one saw the principles of democracy in the Bible until there was literacy in the Greek and Roman classics and literacy in the classics unleashed human potential. In the Capitol Building of the US, there is a mural of the gods that make a democratic republic great. At that time in history, no one literally believed in those gods, but they were understood as concepts.
What is wrong today, is the 1958 National Defense Education Act prepared the young to be very literal and uncompromising. The materialism of some of them is as bad as interpreting the Bible literally. Democracy does not work today because we stopped teaching with the Conceptual Method and it is almost impossible to have open and meaningful discussions than advance our awareness of logos. Anyone who does not hold our understanding of truth is an idiot, right? And the way to deal with those idiots is to tell them their faults as flannel jesus did in his reply to my post.
I interpreted our exchange in exactly the opposite way. I never told you there's all these obvious problems with whatever your world view is. You said that about materialism. I don't think someone is an idiot for not being a materialist. I don't think you're an idiot at all.
I love you. :love: And our democracy will continue to self-destruct until we all know what you said.
Fortunately, someone was wise enough to introduce convicts to the classics and it was discovered these classics could be life-changing. Unfortunately, the Christian understanding of humans and God keeps us in the dark ages before the Renaissance brought back the knowledge of the Greek and Roman documents. People who study only the Bible are not literate enough to protect and defend democracy. They are waiting for a kingdom. :grimace:
To be clear, the "immaterial power" I was referring to is Logical Reasoning (including mathematics), which seems to have reached its pinnacle of evolution (to date) in the homo species. When we begin to allow non-human posters on this forum, I might need to be more circumspect in my language. :smile:
Quoting Athena
Plato & Aristotle apparently used abstract non-anthro-morphic notions of "Logos & Prime Mover" intentionally, to avoid implications of the humanoid deities of their day. Similarly, when I occasionally use the term "G*D" when referring to an unknown & unknowable creative/causal power behind the Big Bang, I often use un-gendered pronouns, such as "he/r" and "s/he". But I do so with tongue in cheek, imagining the "huh?" question mark above the head of the reader. :joke:
I pointed out that a religion is not "as we make it". It's highly dogmatic by nature, in other words, and when revisions are made it's by religious leaders. Followers are not free to make up their own beliefs and promote them within a religion. That would be considered heretical.
Quoting Athena
I'm aware of various of conceptions of God, some very unlike the one depicted in the Bible. I see no reason why an atheist would be unable to consider an inhuman God. Indeed, the God depicted in the Bible strikes me as extremely inhuman.
Also, religions don't all agree on logos and the prime mover. There is no prime mover in Buddhism, for instance, and they'd consider the dualism inherent in logos an expression of ignorance.
Quoting Athena
It doesn't make any sense to me why an atheist would be unable to discuss the notion of god as a force of nature with no human qualities. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, I was responding to your claim about a religion. Of course, individuals can have their own spiritual experiences and beliefs.
Quoting Athena
No, that would be a Theocracy.
Quoting Athena
Within religion, anyone who does not hold the "understanding" of Truth is considered to have no faith. I use scare quotes because no religion has understandable truths, by design. Ultimate truth requires ultimate authority, ensuring a hierarchy of leaders (who have special access to ultimate truth) and followers.
Your post is one of the most mentally stimulating posts I have read this year. I am going to say a lot and I am not sure how correct these new to me, ideas, are.
When I say it is as we make it, I mean our whole experience of life is as we make it. I don't mean we have manifested the earth, but what we do with it is what we, not a god, does with it. We have manifested New York and international enemies and friends. A religion is what we make it, because this is all about what we think and how we behave. Humans with words and the power of reason manifest their own reality. Their private perception of reality may have very little to do with facts. We all make up our own life story and we share some of our stories in common with others. That is called culture.
Even atheists are sure what a god is and it is not possible to discuss logos and the prime mover with them because they absolutely can not give up their understanding of a humanized god.
Athena
God is a manifestation of thought- meaning we think it and it becomes a shared notion. Atheists can not argue against the existence of God without sharing the same notion of a God that they argue does not exist.
By a nonhuman god, I mean the prime mover and logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe. The gods that are worshipped are made in the image of man. That is not so for the prime mover or logos. I do not mean a jealous, revengeful, punishing God is an inhuman God. :lol: Sometimes we can really get tripped up on our words. I am saying the power and glory is not a being with human traits.
Abrahamic religions most certainly do not have a concept that would lead to scientific thinking. they do not have a concept of a Prime Mover or logos. Their brains have zero thought patterns for thinking in such terms. I am not sure that is true of Hinduism or Buddhism. Buddhism can be very different from place to place. Some regions are more superstitious than others. And of course, some understanding of Hinduism is very superstitious and the highest level of thinking is patterned for logic and abstract thinking and therefore philosophical, the Siamese twin of science.
They absolutely insist all discussions of god match the Christian notion of a god and therefore it is impossible to discuss a notion of god as forces of nature with no human qualities.
Athena
I had no intention of saying an atheist can not think in scientific terms. But God is not science. Now if we say God is not any of the gods made in the image of humans, but God is the Prime Mover and logos, or nature, then we can use science to understand God. However, atheists refuse to do that!!! They shot themselves in the foot by refusing to use the word "God". That just proves all the religious people right because the Bible says there will be people who reject God and they are "evil" and reality is a fight of good over evil, and we are on the damn merry-go-round of arguing about God and no one can get off it.
The way to apply science to superstitious notions is to think in terms of a prime mover, logos, universal laws, and nature.
Democracy can be a religion.
Athena
Huh?
That is not true of a democracy because the damn God is the prime mover, logos, the laws of nature. Excuse my pagan emotive language but there we go with the merry-go-round. Who gets to define God? You just threw the prime mover and logos out the window and destroyed the reasoning of democracy. Can we discover the laws of the universe and base our laws on such knowledge? Isn't that fundamental to democracy?
God's law is 'right reason.' When perfectly understood it is called 'wisdom.' When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called 'justice. Cicero
The word God comes from Germany after the fall of Rome. I am sure Cicero did not use that word, but our Christian understanding is so ingrained in our culture that we are forced to think of God in a very limited understanding of God. I read Cicero to say Logos, not the Christian God.
Anyone who does not hold our understanding of truth is an idiot, right?
Athena
Within religion, anyone who does not hold the "understanding" of Truth is considered to have no faith. I use scare quotes because no religion has understandable truths, by design. Ultimate truth requires ultimate authority, ensuring a hierarchy of leaders (who have special access to ultimate truth) and followers.[/quote]
The basic difference is that believers are 'bonded' in their shared belief system, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Atheists may be somewhat bonded in their shared beliefs but it barely compares with religious adherence. There may be authority figures for atheists, such as Dawkins or whoever, but they're not regarded as ultimate authorities who have special insight into the nature of reality. What they know anyone can know. Nothing needs to be taken on faith. This is a significant difference. There are other important differences that I won't bother to go into at this point.
Quoting Athena
I know what you meant. I just couldn't resist the irony. Nature is infinitely more cruel than any human could be. :smirk:
Quoting Athena
You're quite wrong about this. Most scientific and technical innovations prior to the scientific revolution were achieved by societies organized by religious traditions. Ancient pagan, Islamic, and Christian scholars pioneered individual elements of the scientific method. Historically, Christianity has been and still is a patron of sciences.
Quoting Athena
Religions deliberatly use heratics (e.g., "the Bible says there will be people who reject God and they are evil") to shore up group identity by defining what they are not. It is a very effective tactic and that's why it is so widely used. Indeed, it's such an effective tactic that no one can get off it.
Quoting Athena
I have no idea of what you're talking about here.
I suggest that you seriously consider what the actual purpose of religion is and why it exists. Also, consider if there's a difference between spirituality and religion.
I appreciate the love. That was a nice surprise.
The rock that rolls down a mountain and crushes a man is being cruel? Your wording is intellectually stimulating. Old age can be very cruel but that is getting too close to creating an evil being/force don't you think? Nature does not intend to be cruel, but that is a human perception of some physical changes. We may be tempted to appease the gods when we think of nature being cruel. This is really being nit picky but it is also an exploration of how nature became unnatural in our minds.
Please give me something from the Bible that demonstrates how this word of God brought us to science.
That is true however we don't need to prove them right. I say there is a God, it is logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe and it does not have human qualities. As Cicero said, it does not give us what we want when we burn candles and say prayers. Nature does not care- it just is. Now the argument is not about the existence of God. The argument is about the definition of God. I do not make the Christian right by denying there is a god.
A Greek argument is everything has a purpose. Horses run. Birds fly. Humans reason. It is because we reason that is possible to argue until we have a consensus on the best reasoning and can therefore govern ourselves with reason. This is opposed to being ruled by kings or the Church, which maintains power by killing the opposition to their power. The Kingdom of the Bible is not compatible with democracy and I will again say, the Bible is not a book for math and science.
'
Well, let's see. It seems to me the most common purpose for Christians to be religious is fear! Next in importance is social acceptance and belonging. I remain silent as I care for older people who tell me how great God is. They need their belief as they face death. I have my belief about immortality too. I am not sure we are not reincarnated. I like to be open-minded about that.
For others, religion is about controlling the people. For many, when there were few desirable jobs, entering the church hierarchy was an excellent way to have a good standard of living especially when after the Protestant Reformation allowed preachers to have sex. I don't think the US would elect an atheist for president and for sure the winners use religion to get the votes. The presidents of the US have used Christianity to engage in wars. Billy Graham was behind uniting us against the communists by aligning us with God on our money and pledge of allegiance.
In some communities, Christians have greater control of education than in other communities. Teachers had to go to the Supreme Court to stop Texas from forcing teachers to teach creationism as equal to science. I am sure those Christians mean well and we do need to talk about being human and the agreements we should have. Right now both atheists and Christians are being a huge problem because they are both preventing us from having the discussion we need to have.
I am very passionate about education and democracy and I seriously do love it when someone is supportive of education and democracy. That is very rare today. It does require some literacy in Greek and Roman classics and it seems they have been replaced with German philosophers.
:love: In harmony with the subject an atheist but not a materialist, "The pen is stronger than the sword". The US forefathers risked everything for democracy and obviously, life is about more than matter.
There isn't a way to apply science to superstitious notions because, if for no other reason, they cannot be measured in any way. Ghosts cannot be measured, for instance. I suppose that neural pathways could be measured and that could prove the existence of such notions, but no one is denying that such notions exist.
Anyway, there's something that bothers me about your idea of God. You seem to basically be saying that God is order (logos) and nature. The thing that doesn't make sense to me is that nature is order AND chaos, so if God is nature then God is both order and chaos. To put it in Nietzschean terms, God is both the Apollonian (similar to logos) and the Dionysian (similar to pathos). If God is only logos then what is pathos? The devil? :naughty:
:100: e.g. atoms & void / natura naturata & natura naturans. :fire:
100%. The entirety of what you have said here is important.
If the stories of the US forefathers are true, they lived exceptionally vivid and important lives. If the stories are true, they were masters and practitioners of a sacred science.
If the stories about the US founding fathers (and mothers) are true, then I have only caught fleeting glimpses, despite my best efforts, of what they knew to be true. If the stories are true, those individuals are true Saints.
Truly Blessed, those people and us; regardless. I still hope the stories are true. I truly do.
Ghost events are measured and mediums have been studied but I don't want to get into that. Science isn't knowing everything but is a method for learning about what is. Also, the first step to wisdom is "I don't know". We should never be too sure of what we think we know.
God is both logos and pathos, or rather, order and chaos then? When you have time.
Not all the stories are true because there was a deliberate attempt to write the American mythology as the Greeks wrote mythology. I do not know about them being practitioners of sacred science but there is a lot of mysticism tied to them. Principally sacred math is an important element of Masonry and I consider my copy of a book about sacred math as one of my most important books. This part of the Masons is responsible for the dome in the Capitol Building having a mural of gods including the Spirit of America which is one of 3 aspects of Athena, goddess of Liberty and Justice, and Defender of those who defend Liberty and Justice. There is also an Egyptian obelisk built in Washington DC. The layout of Washington DC is astrologically aligned.
Quoting Callum McKelvie, Tom Garlinghouse
They were not saints but they were passionate and some still are today, believing they are very important in the global fight for Liberty and Justice. However, their exclusion of women makes them humans and nothing more.
:chin: The pothos is not exactly chaos but can lead to chaos. :heart: Golly gee, it is fun thinking about what you said! Excitingly you speak of the rhetorical triangle.
The following triangle is valuable to our understanding of reality.
That is different from the trinity of the Christian God, Father. Son, Holy Ghost, something Romans had a terrible time accepting because the concepts and language for accepting the trinity of God was Greek, not Roman. This concept/language problem led to a lot of killing because some saw the trinity as separate gods and the worship of 3 gods was not acceptable!!!
Notice how you defer to religious authority. That's being religious. That's not being spiritual.
Please explain. Which religion do I authorize to be the authority?
Exactly what is spirituality? For me, it is a feeling. What is for you? Is spirituality a feeling?
I think all social animals have a hierarchy. I think it is important to honor our elders. I think it is foolish for the working hands on a ship to mutiny unless they have someone who knows as much as the captain.
How good are you at thinking paradoxically? :wink:
The only thinking Im good at is not thinking.
This is a recent example of what I was referring to regarding the synchronization of heart beats and brainwaves among audience members of the same musical experience.
Phase locking is not energy. It is something which occurs in physical processes.
Are you sure it relates to what you were discussing earlier?
That's not entirely true. Brainwaves are energy, and hearts produce electrical atmospheres that others can detect.
Brainwaves are patterns in measured voltage. The voltage is not energy and it is the pattern of voltages that sync to the music.
Phase locking may not happen apart from dissipation of energy, but that is a somewhat different matter.
However, you said prior in the conversation that this couldn't be accounted for in materialism. Why not? Everything involved in this process interacts with each other materially. There's no fundamental reason why the cause of synchronised heart beats couldn't be physical. Sure, there's energy involved, but like, just normal energy that physicists talk about right?
:up:
A Youtube video presenting various sorts of natural synchronization.
I've seen quite a lot of veritasium, he's great at making all sorts of math and science things more interesting. Brilliant presenter.