I have taken much offense at any number of things you have said to me as well.Originally Posted by Eric the Green
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I have taken much offense at any number of things you have said to me as well.
Ah, but Rani, *I* am fair game. I am all things in one that Eric wants to see annihilated. Because apparently I alone, just all by myself, have totally caused the downfall of America, I am ground zero of the decay that has become the 4T.
Gen X
A Christian.
Tea Party Republican
Southern, that's a biggie
Veteran
I don't fit the stereotype of miserable due to crushing blinding obese poverty like all the stats say I should because I am in Mississippi. Also not a doped out junkie.
Oh, and I stand up for myself.
I own guns.
Did I forget any reasons why? I might have missed some, there have been so many hurled at me, I tend to blur them all together. Was it Eric that called me a whore or was that someone else? Maybe it was racist whore, I forget, like I said there have been so many of them.
We need to rise above traditional religion on the one hand (as Danilynn exemplifies, for example), and no religion on the other (as Vandal exemplifies, and The Rani?-- cynicism is her religion?). That means spiritual awakening. It started in the 2T and continues among some people.
Otherwise, we continue to live in a society in which thought and imagination is limited by authority (either by those in frocks, or those in lab coats). Real authority comes from within each of us.
Spiritual awakening means we discover how connected we are to all. In other words, in our core, we are God. Whether there is hope for the human race or not, asked Erich Fromm in the 60s, I don't know. But there is hope for individual members of it; he said.
On Being God
Ah, I peaked at The Rani's post: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" (where have I heard that before?)
Last edited by Eric the Green; 07-18-2014 at 01:58 AM.
Or we could just live and let live. No one should be brow-beaten into new age spirituality, traditional religion, atheism, or whatever. Judge people on their actions, not what they say they believe in.
Nomad Female
"Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere." --Mae West
Nomad INFP
"Sunday morning is every day for all I care, and I'm not scared...Now my candle's in a daze 'cause I've found God." --Kurt Cobain
Right. Although, it does matter what people believe. It influences their actions. Living includes sharing what you know and/or is meaningful to you; it's natural. But like Jesus, some people get browbeaten for sharing what they know. Oh well, that's life here in the good ol USA.
Your martyr complex is just as boring as other's. You are not browbeaten for sharing "what you know." You are criticized for claiming to know things that are actually just expressions of what you wish was true. More importantly you misrepresent the work of real scientists as well as your own actual level of knowledge concerning their work. Browbeating dishonest people is no vice.
Oh well, that's life here in the good ol USA.
I'll vote for that.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
The Rani wants me to read her posts.lol
What, you have some "intellectual" content in them? Something I can't "handle"? (dare I say, ho ho ho)
It's probably why I'll very rarely post in this thread (even though I got mentioned in it!), but I agree with this. I've been an atheist my whole life, and so has almost my entire family up to the GI grandparent level. But I have little animosity toward other people's religious and spiritual beliefs--the only time I'll likely react is if it somehow impacts my own life.
There's a lot to discover in this field, if you go beyond "beliefs" and seek the knowledge it offers. Some people like Vandal or Danilynn may have animosity toward those of us who pursue this knowledge, but the quest itself is fun and transforming. And quite useful and necessary for a better world, and "life impacting" indeed; as much so as any political or economic policy or technological invention. So, well worth exploring
Again I refer you to this link to answer all issues alluded to in the past one or two dozen posts:
On Being God
My teachers tell me that "only the ego is offended." So I need to take that into account with regard to Danilynn. Nevertheless, a dialogue seems quite impossible between me and her, so as people are saying, live and let live (and in her case, ignore).
Last edited by Eric the Green; 07-18-2014 at 11:52 AM.
The only time I even deign notice your ramblings is when you choose to lie about actual science or try to pretend that you understand the science well enough to "teach" others. If all you did was blather on about your peculiar set of philosophical/spiritual beliefs I would ignore you like most of society does. It's your attempts to co-opt something that you don't understand (science) in order to create a false image of legitimacy for your beliefs that draws my "animosity."
And quite useful and necessary for a better world, and "life impacting" indeed; as much so as any political or economic policy or technological invention. So, well worth exploring
Again I refer you to this link to answer all issues alluded to in the past one or two dozen posts:
On Being God
My teachers tell me that "only the ego is offended." So I need to take that into account with regard to Danilynn. Nevertheless, a dialogue seems quite impossible between me and her, so as people are saying, live and let live (and in her case, ignore).
I have no animosity to you Eric, in all honesty I pity you. You have no spouse, no kids, no grandkids, nothing, not even a pet for company like most of your cohorts do for support. You are even lacking a surrogate family that could be had through church fellowship.
It's sad, and depressing to see elderly people all alone like that. Truly, what a lonely and bleak world it must be to realize you have alienated an entire generation that might have taken you into their tribe and hearts, but instead have become old and alone. You truly have my pity. It's not a future I would seek.
Well said!
Oh, and Vandal, Eric is not lying. He sincerely believes in what he believes.
Last edited by TimWalker; 07-18-2014 at 01:47 PM.
How can you know this based on an internet message board? Personally I find Eric writes things of interest at times, he reminds me of another Eric I encountered on the longwaves board 14 years ago. Other than their postings I know nothing about either Eric.
Looks like I will be in the same boat as Eric.
If you fail to attract a spouse-to-be, that certainly eliminates possibilities-children, grandchildren.....
Last edited by TimWalker; 07-18-2014 at 01:58 PM.
Don't worry Tim, Danilynn doesn't know anything about you, or me. And your choice or condition is not a less-fortune one than mine or Danilynn's. Personal conditions and traits are irrelevant anyway to the kind of policies we need to support. But the latter are what are worthy of discussion, not the former; at least, not making political/economic issues into personal issues and taking them personally, as Danilynn does. And what I feel from her is indeed animosity. But so be it. She's welcome to her feelings, and to her never-ending false charges against me. No-one with any sense believes anything she says, or feels sorry for her. As she maintains, she can take care of herself; with guns drawn if necessary. And I am welcome to my feelings too.
I have a church fellowship; it's just not the kind of church Danilynn would belong to. And not large enough, I don't think. Once again, she is just wrong, as usual.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 07-18-2014 at 02:37 PM.
Glad you have a church family, regardless of denomination. Senior citizens should have a reliable support system. No one should be alone. After all, elderly people do sometimes need help getting to doctor appointments and eventually end of life care. We provided it for my mother in law last year. She was an early boomer like you. So it is important for seniors to have people to care for them.
I have never asked anyone, much less you to feel sorry for me.
But it really is good to know you arent destitute for real life interaction with people.
Last edited by Danilynn; 07-18-2014 at 02:48 PM.
I recall something S&H wrote about-the importance of reaching out and networking. This was in the context of a 4T, but I think that is not only important in the context of other turnings, but in life in general.
My basic outlook is communitarian. I seem to have a yearning for community. If we aging single people have a future, it is in building a larger community.
Last edited by TimWalker; 07-18-2014 at 03:00 PM.
You are so correct Tim, connecting to others is important. So is community and that truly isn't a nursing home. No one deserves to be locked away in old people prison. It's bleak in a lot of the medicare type ones, and even in the expensive privately run ones too.
You hear on the news these terrible things being done to senior citizens in them, abuse, neglect. It's awful and degrading that seniors are treated like that.
Interesting that Danilynn attributes to me the power to alienate an entire generation, and also joins forces with a rabid materialist atheist to attack a new ager. Fundamentalist feathers flock together. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, sorta
Nice article on the real frontier of scientific thought:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/sc...and-space.html
Beyond Energy, Matter, Time and Space
Though he probably didn’t intend anything so jarring, Nicolaus Copernicus, in a 16th-century treatise, gave rise to the idea that human beings do not occupy a special place in the heavens. Nearly 500 years after replacing the Earth with the sun as the center of the cosmic swirl, we’ve come to see ourselves as just another species on a planet orbiting a star in the boondocks of a galaxy in the universe we call home. And this may be just one of many universes — what cosmologists, some more skeptically than others, have named the multiverse.
Despite the long string of demotions, we remain confident, out here on the edge of nowhere, that our band of primates has what it takes to figure out the cosmos — what the writer Timothy Ferris called “the whole shebang.” New particles may yet be discovered, and even new laws. But it is almost taken for granted that everything from physics to biology, including the mind, ultimately comes down to four fundamental concepts: matter and energy interacting in an arena of space and time.
There are skeptics who suspect we may be missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. Recently, I’ve been struck by two books exploring that possibility in very different ways. There is no reason why, in this particular century, Homo sapiens should have gathered all the pieces needed for a theory of everything. In displacing humanity from a privileged position, the Copernican principle applies not just to where we are in space but to when we are in time.
Since it was published in 2012, “Mind and Cosmos,” by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, is the book that has caused the most consternation. With his taunting subtitle — “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False” — Dr. Nagel was rejecting the idea that there was nothing more to the universe than matter and physical forces. He also doubted that the laws of evolution, as currently conceived, could have produced something as remarkable as sentient life. That idea borders on anathema, and the book quickly met with a blistering counterattack. Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, denounced it as “the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker.”
What makes “Mind and Cosmos” worth reading is that Dr. Nagel is an atheist, who rejects the creationist idea of an intelligent designer. The answers, he believes, may still be found through science, but only by expanding it further than it may be willing to go.
“Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning,” he wrote, “but intellectual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that the tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to understand the universe as a whole.”
Dr. Nagel finds it astonishing that the human brain — this biological organ that evolved on the third rock from the sun — has developed a science and a mathematics so in tune with the cosmos that it can predict and explain so many things.
Neuroscientists assume that these mental powers somehow emerge from the electrical signaling of neurons — the circuitry of the brain. But no one has come close to explaining how that occurs.
That, Dr. Nagel proposes, might require another revolution: showing that mind, along with matter and energy, is “a fundamental principle of nature” — and that we live in a universe primed “to generate beings capable of comprehending it.” Rather than being a blind series of random mutations and adaptations, evolution would have a direction, maybe even a purpose.
“Above all,” he wrote, “I would like to extend the boundaries of what is not regarded as unthinkable, in light of how little we really understand about the world.”
Dr. Nagel is not alone in entertaining such ideas. While rejecting anything mystical, the biologist Stuart Kauffman has suggested that Darwinian theory must somehow be expanded to explain the emergence of complex, intelligent creatures. And David J. Chalmers, a philosopher, has called on scientists to seriously consider “panpsychism” — the idea that some kind of consciousness, however rudimentary, pervades the stuff of the universe.
Some of this is a matter of scientific taste. It can be just as exhilarating, as Stephen Jay Gould proposed in “Wonderful Life,” to consider the conscious mind as simply a fluke, no more inevitable than the human appendix or a starfish’s five legs. But it doesn’t seem so crazy to consider alternate explanations.
Heading off in another direction, a new book by the physicist Max Tegmark suggests that a different ingredient — mathematics — needs to be admitted into science as one of nature’s irreducible parts. In fact, he believes, it may be the most fundamental of all.
In a well-known 1960 essay, the physicist Eugene Wigner marveled at “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in explaining the world. It is “something bordering on the mysterious,” he wrote, for which “there is no rational explanation.”
The best he could offer was that mathematics is “a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”
Dr. Tegmark, in his new book, “Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality,” turns the idea on its head: The reason mathematics serves as such a forceful tool is that the universe is a mathematical structure. Going beyond Pythagoras and Plato, he sets out to show how matter, energy, space and time might emerge from numbers.
But is mathematics, for all its power, really the root of reality? Or is it a product of the human mind? Reviewing Dr. Tegmark’s book in The New York Times Book Review, the mathematician Edward Frenkel noted that only a small part of the vast ocean of mathematics appears to describe the real world. The rest seems to be about nothing other than itself. That purity is part of its appeal.
I came away from these books pulled in opposite directions. Here on this planet during the 5,000 orbits since people began leaving marks on papyrus or clay, we’ve come far in describing the vast beyond. Or at least it seems that way. But maybe decades or millenniums from now — here or someplace yet to be imagined — science on Earth, circa 2014, will look like nothing more than a good start.
Thomas Nagel? That's what you've got?
How about reviews of Nagel's "work" by actual biologists and other philosophers?
H. Allen Orr
Summary of other reviews that are no longer available online.
In short, Nagel is critical of biology while apparently not understanding most of it. The author of your article seems to have failed in doing any of his homework. He, like you, simply liked what he heard and ran with it. No critical thinking required. The last bit is too bad. George Johnson is usually pretty good at writing about science.
Boy, here's a conference guaranteed to give Vandal fits and tantrums!
I might see if I can go; it's near my neighborhood!
http://www.scienceandnonduality.com/...ram-sand14-us/
http://www.scienceandnonduality.com/...ers-sand14-us/
I reposted my response to in the "Least Understoood Archetypes" thread to give a better answer, and to move the discussion to a more appropriate thread.
Here is the original post:
Thanks. Unfortuantely every time I try to write more about it, the further I get from what I want to say. So my initial words will have to suffice.Thanks, Time Mage for your words of wisdom
The "One is All, and All is One" mantra reminds me of when I was researching through the "The Kybalion by Three Initiates". I couldn't help but notice some of the same references in one of the segments of Jim Henson's "The Cube". And no, my attempted description of the Divine is not the product of that book or any specific ritual or process. Rather my investigations were a part of a research project about the origins and modern impact of Hermetic-Metaphysical orders, including Rosicrucianism, Gnosticism, Christain Science,Kabbalism, etc. My investigations have also focused on finding hints to a particular illusive school-society (with limited success), as well as comparisons to Pentacostalism (in a way Protestant Kabbalism), as well as today's increasing field of Evangelical Gnostic eschatology.
Here comes the sun~Unfinished
I found a rather terrible bastardization of Eric's philosophy wheel on Reddit.
Holy God in Heaven it is horrible.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism