tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4866132102596655836.post7315600192125562816..comments2023-08-21T01:20:49.199-07:00Comments on Meaning Without God: Why I Don't Believe - The Great Chain Part 3Jeffrey A. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03932419322314950738noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4866132102596655836.post-32787212451207292532011-06-13T07:57:00.884-07:002011-06-13T07:57:00.884-07:00Modern philosophers and consciousness experts have...Modern philosophers and consciousness experts have no problem admitting that consciousness itself cannot be measured other than by the unique and complex electro-magnetic brainwave activity (for example as measurable by EEG). Yet if that is the most intimate measure of consciousness, we might want to look at the electro-magnetic activity of the Sun, which shows similar complexity and scope. So if that is the measure, then why is not the Sun itself a candidate for consciousness? It is after all the CENTRAL reason we can even exist, yet we consider it dumb and lifeless, and just a set of chemical reactions. Yet what do you think we look like from afar? Even with all our inventions, we look like a mass of matter generating other forms of matter, it is just because we are stuck on the ego-idea that we think and feel this to be different. Or rather, we feel comfortable dedicating the most noble of human emotion and notions to your own achievements and beings, but do not want to extend these to the grand realities of the Sun, Planets, and the Cosmos at large. They are not smaller than us, they are bigger. Not just in size, but in the very being-ness of which we would so callously strip them. <br /><br />We think love a quaintly human thing, that does not exist in the cold cosmos outside of us. But isn't this notion, so valiantly put forth as Atheism, really a highly reactionary mental condition that is actually in greatest part caused by Christianity's woeful history? The arrogance of 'only this, only here' stemming from the Church's constant unwilling acceptance of every new scientific discovery in the time of Galileo (and before and after)? Atheism as belief system is no different in NATURE than the Christian or any other belief system. It also seems to -- at times as tactlessly as the other religions -- seek to invalidate the mystical experience of people from ancient times til now. Religions are always the weak extract and organizational mimicry of the mystical/universal experiences of the individual(s). Without understanding this Atheists often get no further than their other religious brothers. <br /><br />And you cannot knock what you yourself also do, and it doesn't matter if you realize it or not. Belief is belief, it is not knowing. Yet you have not given your all to experience the universe and yourself directly and deeply. It is the hardest things you'd ever do, and not for the faint of heart. But the universe and you are greater than an impotent belief system, it can speak to you and you to it, and you can feel its life running through your veins.tralanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4866132102596655836.post-42823967179445144412011-06-13T07:56:20.637-07:002011-06-13T07:56:20.637-07:00I find it a bit interesting that you would base yo...I find it a bit interesting that you would base your scientific facts on the findings of astro-physicist experts, and yet you base your religious notion on childish notions of God having to have picked our little earth and its solar system, galaxy, local cluster, etc... As if it could not occur to you that if there is a supreme Being, it would not somehow apply to ALL that is, and would be integral to the entire universe, not just one tiny part of it...<br /><br />So yes, I don't subscribe to the quaint religious ideas of most religious movements either, but then again those institutions are not exactly expert in these fields either (even if they think they are). At the basis of spiritual and religious movement of worth have always been visionary type figures, mystics, and it is not even mentioned what their world of experience might have touched upon.<br /><br />Atheism is as much a belief system as any other, and subscribing to it just means that you have locked out the possibility that there is such a thing as true, direct experience of the universe, not merely by means of the intellect and the senses. Not merely reflective experience but direct experience. So yes, if you subscribe to Atheism you would feel (much like the religious people) that you would need to address the other belief systems as fraudulent or unreal. But you are really functioning on the exact same level as they are, namely from the reflective, belief-based mindset that negates direct, mystical experience of the universe is impossible.<br /><br />'Mystical' doesn't mean "whoooooo, it is mysterious....". Mystical at its core means that which touches everything but is untouched by anything. That which stands on its own but from which everything is effected. We have no trouble talking about quantum fields and underlaying levels of energy and reality, but somehow cannot believe it ties into consciousness in any way. But it may very well be that consciousness is not some sort of freak accident of certain life-forms, but is actually fundamental to the universe itself. And that the generation of life-forms able to carry self-consciousness, as well as being inextricably linked to the universal consciousness, is part of the natural unfolding of the universe.tralanoreply@blogger.com