All throughout my childhood I heard random sayings, like, "the lord never gives us more than we can handle." That's comforting to some people, but to me, it's not. It always made me feel as if I had no control and bad things would continuously happen, no matter what. Then, it made me feel even worse that this 'God' wanted to do these bad things to me, as sort of a test! Why would this thing, this god, want to put me through cruel tests in order to make sure I had full faith that someday he would save me? It makes no sense to me.

It seems that in life, there are the ups and the downs. I really don't know which is better. It's simply the roller coaster ride and it's an odd thing, but sometimes it's good to be on top, and other times it's actually nice to be on bottom.

I came to this mindset after realizing that there are some things, actually most things, that are completely out of our control. That's a hard realization for a control freak like me. How do I deal, then?

I wanted to know the truth and this is what I found to be my truth.

Life is life. Good things happen. Bad things happen. When good things happen, celebrate if you can, but don't think it's 'happily ever after'. When bad things happen, cry. Or if its the small things in life, go ahead and laugh at it. Good or bad, it reminds you that you're not only alive, but truly living!

What you do is what will happen to you. You can't expect to control your fate. You can't expect for prayers and pleads to change the situation. You can only know that if you think the way that feels most right and you follow that with your actions, then you will get the life you want the most. Don't get me wrong, it's not going to be the life you have planned out in your mind, but it could still be just as enjoyable, if not even more so, than that one you planned all out.

Know that there is more. You may already have in your mind what that is. It could be God, or the Great Spirit, or any of the numerous names given to that which we don't know. Some claim to have been touched already, some have faith that death will bring them there. Either way, I know that for each thing we do know, there are increasingly more things that we don't. And that includes, how and why we got here in this place on this Earth. And also, where we will journey to afterwards.

Take the time to remember. We all get caught up. Caught up in the lives we're living, the emotions we're feeling, the people we love. But don't forget that the world is larger, much larger, than us. People are out there that need us. People are better off and worse off than us. Even those trapped in cells have fleeting moments of happiness, and those with everything in the world still feel sad from time to time. Don't forget that you're not alone. If you need to help someone else, do it. And if you need help for yourself, get it. You'd be surprised to find out that the person you hate most in the world, might have something in common with you. Take the time to think about that.

I found myself at a point where i can see a bright future, where I can pick up and move forward.  Further my education and move on. I always have hope of "now". But for once I was looking forward. The hope of being an impact.

Every morning opens with
With hopeful new day shine
But the Darkness of the day before
is never far behind.

Then I remembered. I been at this point before. I've done this before. At the cusp of moving forward with my life... I fell down. repeatedly. And I am haunted mistakes that will never go away. i can't change the past.

The new day would be blinded by
The hope of rays that are cast
life is shaped with out lines
with dark colors of our past

But I'm realizing that repeating past mistakes only comes...
with not recognizing past mistakes.
Wisdom come  "with falling down" in our past. The past does not have to be an obstacle. Successes and failures that we perceive make us who we are. Our experiences let us handle our decisions. They shouldn't hamper our decision making.
I am going to Start taking more classes again. And set the goal of obtaining a bachelors degree in the Future.
This post will be my reminder.

Leave me alone

Don’t you get it

I don’t want you

Go away

Stop reaching to me

Don’t you sense it

I don’t need you

Go away

Release the last tie

Don’t you feel it

I don’t love you

Good bye no more

Forgiveness past

Done behind me

Too long let go

I don’t hear you

Eyes averted

Heart with another

Just go, please go

maybe the best that we can yearn for
is to die in bed
with our boots off
and at peace
or with them on, as slumbering drunkards

no....alone
that's the best way to die
if there is a best way
or laughing, in the company of friends
the biggest best laugh of all - for them

never in hospital though
that's really no way to go
surrounded by machinery
and used bedpans
devoid of all dignity

I have tasted death
the experience was bitter
the bus queue to heaven
or the train station to hell
we all bought a platform ticket years ago

when all's well that ends well
maybe the best that we can hope for
is to have lived
and loved
just a little and for a little while

Finally, I have created my bl©g, chosen the diplay theme and even given a title to my first post.

"Doodling on the envelope of life"

Yes, this is it. For a dreamer like me doodling and scribbling are important activities. I haven't opened the envelope of life yet. It sits there on my wooden table, untouched and fresh in its straw-fawn colour, yet to be opened. In it lies "the secret of my life". It has just one statement written in it, reading and realizing that scanty cluster of words will give a totally new dimension to my life. It has the secret about the very purpose of my life. Just one statement telling me what is my "call" in life.

I want to know what I am here for? Wading thorugh the ocean of life, learning facts, swimming through myriad emotions, breathing, eating, drinking and sleeping...just existing... There must be something more to it. I want to "become" someone, someone who I recognize from the keyhole of my consciousness. Someone whom I respect love and am happy with .

I want to know my mission in life, Once known I would jump into the pool with all my tools of mind and heart and start off to bringng out that "familiar me" out of me.

It is strange, that this envelope lies here on my desk, still I am unable to open it! I need a special code to open it. The code of right moment, right emotions, right situation unravelled by a cauldron of intuitions, impulses and reasons.

Till then I am doodling and scribbling patterns on this envelope of life. zig zags, lines, curves, stipples, ...

                                                                                                                                        everything...

That happened at least twice during the political rally.  The first time it happened was when McCain responded to a new father who expressed his fear of an Obama presidency.  McCain said:

"First of all, I want to be president of the United States and obviously do not want Senator Obama to be.  But I have to tell you -- I have to tell you -- he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared [of] as president of the United States."

That's the reasonable statement on McCain's part that first got him booed.

The question I have is whether the folks who booed McCain were merely unwilling or actually incapable of listening to reason?

The question interests me because I have for some time concerned myself with the human tendency to arbitrarily disregard truths.  It puzzles me why our species is not more truthful -- more realistic -- than it is.  As I see it, McCain was telling the crowd a simple truth -- that Obama is a decent person who need not be irrationally feared.  Apparently, some of the crowd could accept that truth and move on.  But many couldn't and felt a need to deny it by booing.  Why is that?

Were they merely unwilling to accept the truth when it was presented to them?  Or were they mentally or emotionally incapable of accepting it?  I'd like to know the answer to those questions.  The answer might help me understand why our species is not more realistic than it is.

If the people who booed McCain were merely unwilling to accept the truth, then they have a moral problem.  They lack honesty -- specifically, intellectual honesty -- which is a virtue.  That solves the mystery.  For to say someone is merely unwilling implies they have a choice in the matter, and must take moral responsibility for their choices.

On the other hand, if the people who booed McCain were mentally or emotionally incapable of accepting the truth, then perhaps we should ask how that could be the case?  What causes, or at least explains, their disability?

This afternoon, I can think of only three factors which might explain how someone could lack the intellectual discipline to accept a truth.

The first, and most obvious, factor is simple confusion.  People become confused for all sorts of reasons.  Perhaps many of the people booing McCain have been so propagandized in recent weeks they honestly believe Barack Obama is a dire threat to them, their country, or their way of life.   "Garbage in, garbage out".

That one might not only be the most obvious factor, but also the most likely factor.  The one weakness in proposing it as an explanation for someone's behavior might be it doesn't explain how someone could be so non-discriminating as to believe the "garbage in" in the first place.

The second factor requires a moment's explanation.  It happens that the human brain is born scarce half made up, and that we spend our early years developing our brains to their full adult abilities.  That is, our brains are not completely developed until around the age of 22 or so.  But what happens if something goes wrong with some part of our development and, consequently, some of our abilities are disabled?

If I can recall, people are born with an ability to see the world only in black and white, either/or terms.  It's typically around the ages of 13 to 15 that our brains develop an ability to see the world in more complex, nuanced, and realistic terms.  So, for instance, an 11 year old usually lacks an ability to think or feel that other people are a mix of both good and bad traits.  Instead, an 11 year old usually can only think or feel that other people are essentially only good or only bad.

A few years later, however, most people's brains have developed the mental and emotional capacity to see other people more realistically -- as, perhaps, a mix of virtues and vices.  Yet, suppose someone is afflicted with one or another disorders -- such as a Borderline Personality Disorder -- and thus their brain never fully develops an ability to see the world in complex, nuanced terms?  Or suppose someone is raised in an environment where the message the world is black and white, either/or, gets heavily reinforced, and the person is never challenged to grow their brain around the concept the world is more complex and nuanced than that?  Wouldn't such people -- even as adults -- struggle to grasp the otherwise simple notion that Barack Obama is a decent person who nevertheless ought not, for whatever reasons, to be president?

I think it's quite possible some of the folks who booed McCain's suggestion Obama is a decent person were people mentally and emotionally incapable of grasping the concept someone can be both a decent person and a person they nevertheless oppose for reasons having nothing to do with that person's decency.

The third and last factor also requires a moment's explanation.  The other day, I was reading an article, written from a conservative point of view, on the alleged across the board decline in morals in our society.  For the most part, I disagreed with the author, but he did say at least one thing that struck me as profoundly true.

At some point, he noted that people who lack a sense of purpose in their lives quite often substitute dramas for the missing purpose.  (I apologize I'm unable to cite the article -- I foolishly neglected to bookmark it.)  Now, he left it open whether such people willingly choose to create and maintain dramas, or are in some way compelled to create dramas by the absence in their lives of genuine purpose and meaning.  I tend to think the latter is the more likely explanation because I have seen how widespread and apparently spontaneous that behavior is. In my opinion, too many people do it for it to be something that's entirely a matter of choice.

Yet, whatever the cause -- choice or something deeper -- the fact remains many people thrive on creating and maintaining dramas in their life.  Moreover, it requires no great effort to see how such people would flock to a battle royale between "the forces of good and the forces of evil"; nor does it require much effort to see how such people might interpret the political battle between McCain and Obama in those dramatic terms for the sake of heightening and intensifying the drama they crave as a substitute for genuine purpose and meaning.

If the above happens to be true, then I suppose when McCain reminded the crowd that Obama was a decent person, he threatened some of them with the destruction of their ersatz sense of purpose or meaning.  Consequently, they refused to accept the truth of McCain's statements and instead booed him.

Those, then, are the few paltry ideas I can come up with this lazy afternoon to explain how some of the crowd McCain spoke to the other day booed him for speaking the truth.  Regardless of whether I've hit any nails on the head today, the larger question remains: Why does our species have such a strong tendency to arbitrarily and irrationally disregard truths?  For me, that question is one of pure fascination.

Technology is a broad concept that a species' use of the vessel and equipment and with knowledge of the deals, and how a species' ability to control and optimize your environment influences. Human use of technology in simple tools for the transformation of natural resources began. The ability to fire from the prehistoric discovery and invention of the wheel, sources of food available in the increase in travel to help the man and his environment control. The recent technological development, including the printing press, telephone, Internet, communication, physical barriers on a global scale, and the men may talk. However, not all technology for peaceful purposes, developing weapons of ever - increasing destructive power in history, from clubs to nuclear weapons is achieved.

A number of methods, technology and society around him have influenced. In many societies, technology (including the contemporary world economy, development of more advanced economy) and has contributed to the emergence of a class of vacation is allowed. Unwanted by many technical processes - products, known as pollution, produce and natural resource depletion, soil and the environment. The impact of technology and new values of a society of different technology implementations often new ethical questions. For example, a term that originally only for the machines, and the challenge of traditional norms apply in the case of human productivity, the emergence of the concept of efficiency are included.

Philosophical debate in the society with its current and future technology to use, but differences with the technology to improve the human condition deteriorates or it is generated. Neo-Luddism, anarcho-primitivism, and similar movements in the modern world, that it harms the environment and alienates people claiming criticism ubiquity of technology, transhumanism and technical ideologies, as the proponents-progressivism viewed as beneficial for society and Continued technical progress the human condition. In fact, until recently, is that the technology only to human development, but was limited in recent scientific study is that other primates and some simple equipment Dolfin communities have developed and passed on his knowledge to other generations, you can send a signal was considered.

Speaking about the supposed gap of interest between the humanities and science...

"...But even if there be, in present fact, any such inferiority as is supposed in the educational value of science, this is, I believe, not the fault of science itself, but the fault of the spirit in which science is taught. If its full possibilities were realised by those who teach it, I believe that its capacity of producing those habits of mind which constitute the highest mental excellence would be at least as great as that of literature"

Bertrand Russell

You are my friend who has been reading me from around the world, often so silently. Yet you are my partner in this. What I put inside the bottle to throw into the sea from my little island, is but a piece of paper with some ink on it. Only after you read it does it become a message. A real message. Do I write all that you read in my words? What I write only triggers what you really read; what I write goes inside you, awakening things that have been sleeping in your memory, or releasing an idea that has been trapped behind a door inside your mind, making people think my words gave rise to that idea, but I only helped you release it. If I give you the key to a door you still don't have in the palace of your mind, how would you open it?

Sometimes I would read something I have read often before, and yet understand it for the first time, or understand aspects of it I did not realize before. Other times, I respond to a writer, and they would discover in their own words things they did not realize before I talked with them. And this and that clearly tell me that the words themselves, as written on a page, do not really carry meaning. They are keys to meanings, but not carriers of meanings, except the meanings "open the door for this idea", "wake up that one", or "put that one to sleep".

So how do you read it? How does it reach you? What does it remind you of? What really makes you feel it, it is not my words and feelings that I put in it; but the words you hear and your feelings that respond to what I told you. You are therefore my partner in all that you read from me.

Xeper

If you haven't already laughed or rolled your eyes, then perhaps you don't yet realize what a ridiculous position this is. The person making this argument is essentially saying there is no truth. Clearly if believing something makes it true, then truth is dependent on our belief in it. This property would, of course, contradict the objectivity of truth as we normally understand it. Further, this view creates an equality in validity to any position "truly believed," thereby eviscerating any sense of right or wrong.

The error here is the person holding this position is confusing the objective state of things with what they believe to be the objective state of things. Some call this the "subjective" view; I prefer to call it epistemology. There is a difference between what we believe and what is really true, not in the sense that we are wrong - though we could be - but rather in the sense that our belief does not constitute real truth.

When I say I believe something is true, am really saying, "This belief of mine agrees with the objective state of the universe," that is, what is true and what I think is true are in agreement. Nevertheless, I could be wrong.

The point is this: the truth exists, objectively or not at all. None of us will ever be absolutely certain of what is really true, but there is one thing we can be certain of: each of our beliefs are either right or wrong.

************************************************

We have all done the following when we were younger:  Imagining what we would like to be when we grow up, or where we would like to be living, or what kind of person we would like to be married to, or how big a family we wanted to have.  Now, when you look at it - you would probably see that many of your "dreams" from long ago are now reality.  How did this happen?  My view is that you have intentionally driven yourself to this reality.  You have made this happen.  Sure, some of it is due to luck or being given the right opportunities but I believe that most of it is due to your own sheer determination.

Now,... what if you did the reverse.  What if you were to imagine yourself in a future place in time, looking back to this very period in your life AND seeing what you wanted to be seeing.  [If you are anything like me, you would probably want to be seeing yourself as either in the midst of working towards a goal, experiencing something new or making a new personal life discovery of some form.]  Do you think that with this in mind, you would be living your life differently? 

Sounds too complicated?  Let me put it another way......  Say it is the year 2018, and you are looking back to the last quarter of 2008 (which is now).  What do you think you will be saying to yourself?  Would this period be just another missing gap in your life?  Or,.. would it actually have some special significance to you?  And, if it was just another 'missing gap', ...... given a choice, would you have liked the opportunity to 'make something of it'? 

Well.... that opportunity is RIGHT NOW!  The question is... are you making the most of it?  :)

"Dear Friend,

I am on a quest for the truth. In this quest, I am trying to do my best to be honest with myself and those I speak with, without hurting anyone’s feelings or being rude. It is hard, when the topic is religion, because religion and morality are, for most of us, directly tied to the ‘meaning of life’ , as we know it. Please know that any opinion I have is simply a product of my experiences and study, and definitely only my best theory thus far. I’m just trying to figure it out, and have noticed some things that don’t sit well with me about the religious truth. That’s all. I’m not angry or anything. I just want the truth.

As far as religions go, your church's stance on where you CAN find God is as open minded as they come. But the your dogma still does two things. 1. It presupposes that there MUST be a God, and does not allow for any of the beauty of life to come from anything other than THE Creator. 2. It still holds that the best truth, the most clear picture, is found within the pages of your doctrine, and not elsewhere.

You are correct, my friend, that there IS a crying need for Meaning & Purpose in life. Definitely. I make no argument there. And for someone to actively take their best understanding out to meet those who are looking to find purpose, is noble, I think. If they are searching (ever heard The Seeker, by The Who?) that is great. My only point is that just because people are seeking the truth, doesn’t mean that we should justify calling something THE truth. I think we’re on the same page there, although I think I’m seeing things presented that way (dogmatically), that possibly you don’t consider problematic.

I get that God is real, for you, even in a ‘sensory’ way. I don’t intend to disprove anyone’s personal belief in a God. I don’t think I could. A disproof of any supposed supernatural thing is impossible to do. The only intent I have is to get folks to talk about the ideas presented in their books (any religion) as ideas, and not as Truth. The concept of sin, salvation, the nature of Heaven and Hell, the nature of God, and specific historical things about the Doctrine are all areas where an Religious teacher or minister or parent has to make a decision. Do I present this information as the Truth, or do I allow for the possibility that this is not validated information, and may be false, or partially false. If a person is willing to allow for said possibility, then it seems that the action of UTMOST importance in ANY religion, would be the validation of the claims that are being made on its behalf, based on the doctrinal teachings. Would you agree with that last bit?

In your words, "Religion, has clearly created monstrous atrocities but so has atheism - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pot. They were clearly and explicity atheist.” Hitler’s atheism is questionable. One could make a very good case that he was a Catholic. Stalin, Mao, Pot were atheists. But you’ll notice that they never did anything they did in the NAME OF atheism. That’s the key difference. The religious fundamentalists nearly trip over themselves in assigning their horrible actions to their brand of faith!

I’m advocating a process by which intellectual honesty, at all turns, is championed. The goal is to Reason with one another, so as to find out what is really going on. No one ever accused Mao & Co. of being TOO reasonable. They had some bad ideas about the way things should be done, and they had too much power. A terrible combination, it turns out. And our response? Well, the only response to their bad ideas is GOOD ideas replacing them through the process of reasonable discussion and study, and the clear validation of the new ideas.

To advocate a belief, without equally advocating the individual, active, validation of such belief, CAN (given the extremity of the belief) lead to atrocious things, at worst. At best, it will lead to a benign belief being held without the individual knowing why (which may be worse than ignorance alone). You asked “If I can offer someone who is hurting a view of truth that has worked for me and it clearly aligns with compassion - how am I hurting them?”. I’d say you are not intentionally hurting them. You are sharing your experience and your love. Nothing wrong with that, as long as the information isn’t shared as if any of it is Truth. Just ideas. If we get into sharing the Truth (even something as simple as, “Jesus said…” – cause we do NOT know what he said, or if he really existed the way the Bible claims. That’s just the facts. We don’t know.) then we are limiting someone else’s intellectual freedom.

I’d say this usually happens by accident, from a lack of knowledge, so I would disagree with anyone that says ministers are shallow or manipulative by default. But in looking at the facts, the same cannot be said for MANY types of ministers you might see on TV on Sunday mornings.

As for ministers being accused of being uneducated, I would say that we’re all uneducated. There are some things that every person just hasn’t looked into, right? I’d say that the ‘proofs’ of God that I hear thrown around by many preists, rabbis and ministers are often full of logical holes, and therefore SHOULD be called into question. The idea that they’re doing HARM with these proofs isn’t necessary (although in some cases they may be), only that the ideas are questionable, and should be questioned. Why not actively validate or unvalidate all the claims we can? Wouldn’t the validation process only strengthen our ability to do good works?

The key question in your latest note was "how would the world be a better place if skepticism replaced religious faith, from your perspective. Would there be more compassion, hope and love - more humanity?”

It depends on what we mean by compassion, hope, love and humanity. To answer your question generally though, yes, I think all of those things would be increased. I can think of no way in which promoting the validation of supposed truth claims could be a bad thing. What’s the worst that could happen? We find out what is actually the closest thing to the Truth? We realize that some our dearest beliefs are non-factual? (something that humans deal with almost daily anyhow)

The scientific process is a self-correcting one. If your first study provides an answer, it is checked. And checked. And checked. And if it isn’t predicitive and accurate, then new studies are done, new arguments are made, new debates, new ideas posited, new theories proposed. And the theories are checked, and checked, etc., etc. Nothing about the validation of the truth claims in a given religion means that you cannot be compassionate or loving or hopeful or human. The process may alter what you see as compassionate (for instance, there are those who, because of their faith, think it is compassionate to remove the clitoris of women), or loving (there are those, because of their faith, think ‘honor killings’ are a sign of familial love), or hopeful (hope springs eternal, and I don’t think hope, overall, would be decreased, although we may put our hope in new aspects of reality) or human (humanity is completely defined by what we know about humanity), but it certainly doesn’t limit the beauty & possibility of these things. Might the process of validation through doubt actually CLARIFY what those words actually mean? I think that it would. In fact, I can think of no way to argue that validation makes something less valuable.

Love,

Ben"

Anyhow, thought I'd share that with you. As always thoughtful debate is welcomed. Have at it.

CCD,

Ben

"Dear Friend,

I am on a quest for the truth. In this quest, I am trying to do my best to be honest with myself and those I speak with, without hurting anyone’s feelings or being rude. It is hard, when the topic is religion, because religion and morality are, for most of us, directly tied to the ‘meaning of life’ , as we know it. Please know that any opinion I have is simply a product of my experiences and study, and definitely only my best theory thus far. I’m just trying to figure it out, and have noticed some things that don’t sit well with me about the religious truth. That’s all. I’m not angry or anything. I just want the truth.

As far as religions go, your church's stance on where you CAN find God is as open minded as they come. But the your dogma still does two things. 1. It presupposes that there MUST be a God, and does not allow for any of the beauty of life to come from anything other than THE Creator. 2. It still holds that the best truth, the most clear picture, is found within the pages of your doctrine, and not elsewhere.

You are correct, my friend, that there IS a crying need for Meaning & Purpose in life. Definitely. I make no argument there. And for someone to actively take their best understanding out to meet those who are looking to find purpose, is noble, I think. If they are searching (ever heard The Seeker, by The Who?) that is great. My only point is that just because people are seeking the truth, doesn’t mean that we should justify calling something THE truth. I think we’re on the same page there, although I think I’m seeing things presented that way (dogmatically), that possibly you don’t consider problematic.

I get that God is real, for you, even in a ‘sensory’ way. I don’t intend to disprove anyone’s personal belief in a God. I don’t think I could. A disproof of any supposed supernatural thing is impossible to do. The only intent I have is to get folks to talk about the ideas presented in their books (any religion) as ideas, and not as Truth. The concept of sin, salvation, the nature of Heaven and Hell, the nature of God, and specific historical things about the Doctrine are all areas where an Religious teacher or minister or parent has to make a decision. Do I present this information as the Truth, or do I allow for the possibility that this is not validated information, and may be false, or partially false. If a person is willing to allow for said possibility, then it seems that the action of UTMOST importance in ANY religion, would be the validation of the claims that are being made on its behalf, based on the doctrinal teachings. Would you agree with that last bit?

In your words, "Religion, has clearly created monstrous atrocities but so has atheism - Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pot. They were clearly and explicity atheist.” Hitler’s atheism is questionable. One could make a very good case that he was a Catholic. Stalin, Mao, Pot were atheists. But you’ll notice that they never did anything they did in the NAME OF atheism. That’s the key difference. The religious fundamentalists nearly trip over themselves in assigning their horrible actions to their brand of faith!

I’m advocating a process by which intellectual honesty, at all turns, is championed. The goal is to Reason with one another, so as to find out what is really going on. No one ever accused Mao & Co. of being TOO reasonable. They had some bad ideas about the way things should be done, and they had too much power. A terrible combination, it turns out. And our response? Well, the only response to their bad ideas is GOOD ideas replacing them through the process of reasonable discussion and study, and the clear validation of the new ideas.

To advocate a belief, without equally advocating the individual, active, validation of such belief, CAN (given the extremity of the belief) lead to atrocious things, at worst. At best, it will lead to a benign belief being held without the individual knowing why (which may be worse than ignorance alone). You asked “If I can offer someone who is hurting a view of truth that has worked for me and it clearly aligns with compassion - how am I hurting them?”. I’d say you are not intentionally hurting them. You are sharing your experience and your love. Nothing wrong with that, as long as the information isn’t shared as if any of it is Truth. Just ideas. If we get into sharing the Truth (even something as simple as, “Jesus said…” – cause we do NOT know what he said, or if he really existed the way the Bible claims. That’s just the facts. We don’t know.) then we are limiting someone else’s intellectual freedom.

I’d say this usually happens by accident, from a lack of knowledge, so I would disagree with anyone that says ministers are shallow or manipulative by default. But in looking at the facts, the same cannot be said for MANY types of ministers you might see on TV on Sunday mornings.

As for ministers being accused of being uneducated, I would say that we’re all uneducated. There are some things that every person just hasn’t looked into, right? I’d say that the ‘proofs’ of God that I hear thrown around by many preists, rabbis and ministers are often full of logical holes, and therefore SHOULD be called into question. The idea that they’re doing HARM with these proofs isn’t necessary (although in some cases they may be), only that the ideas are questionable, and should be questioned. Why not actively validate or unvalidate all the claims we can? Wouldn’t the validation process only strengthen our ability to do good works?

The key question in your latest note was "how would the world be a better place if skepticism replaced religious faith, from your perspective. Would there be more compassion, hope and love - more humanity?”

It depends on what we mean by compassion, hope, love and humanity. To answer your question generally though, yes, I think all of those things would be increased. I can think of no way in which promoting the validation of supposed truth claims could be a bad thing. What’s the worst that could happen? We find out what is actually the closest thing to the Truth? We realize that some our dearest beliefs are non-factual? (something that humans deal with almost daily anyhow)

The scientific process is a self-correcting one. If your first study provides an answer, it is checked. And checked. And checked. And if it isn’t predicitive and accurate, then new studies are done, new arguments are made, new debates, new ideas posited, new theories proposed. And the theories are checked, and checked, etc., etc. Nothing about the validation of the truth claims in a given religion means that you cannot be compassionate or loving or hopeful or human. The process may alter what you see as compassionate (for instance, there are those who, because of their faith, think it is compassionate to remove the clitoris of women), or loving (there are those, because of their faith, think ‘honor killings’ are a sign of familial love), or hopeful (hope springs eternal, and I don’t think hope, overall, would be decreased, although we may put our hope in new aspects of reality) or human (humanity is completely defined by what we know about humanity), but it certainly doesn’t limit the beauty & possibility of these things. Might the process of validation through doubt actually CLARIFY what those words actually mean? I think that it would. In fact, I can think of no way to argue that validation makes something less valuable.

Love,

Ben"

Anyhow, thought I'd share that with you. As always thoughtful debate is welcomed. Have at it.

CCD,

Ben

My response would have two be in two parts: one rational, the other emotional.

On the philosophical side, I have to side with Jean-Paul Sartre, who argues in Existentialism is a Humanism that the existential project of human existence is to define oneself, and that such definitions must take society (and, more generally, humanity) into account. Moreover, we are defined through our actions, which we put forward as visible normative standards of how we think people should behave in general (i.e., we must act as we would want all people to act, as a form of lived categorical imperative). On a different tack, I also agree with both Confucius (who suggests that we are defined through our relationships with others) and Douglas Hofstadter (who argues that the only type of immortality available to human beings is continued existence in the minds of others). I want to live out my relationships (being a son, being a brother, being a friend, etc.) as well as I possibly can (given that these relationships are a fundamental part of me), and I want to be remembered with love - an emotion that can only be earned through genuine interest, care, support and respect.

The implicit premise of the initial question is that religions are the only (or at least better) sources of meaning/morality, a position that can likely be derived from their classical association with purported metaphysical truths and divinely-sanctioned moral axioms. I dispute this position. In my opinion, the metaphysical certainties and the moral claims made by religions are often precariously balanced upon a superstructure of myth, superstition and out-dated cultural values (including intolerance, xenophobia, mono-culturalism, misogyny, self-abnegation, and chronic undervaluing of the material world) - all of which, in my opinion, contradicts their potential utility as sources of moral truths. This is not to say that religion cannot be a foundation for moral action, but that it certainly should not be seen as analogous to it.

Alan Dershowitz, the famed lawyer, summarizes these points well in his essay "Why Be a Good Person?":

[I]n deciding what course of action is moral, you should act as if there were no God. You should also act as if there were no threat of earthly punishment or reward. You should be a person of good character because it is right to be such a person.

I am reminded of the cartoon depicting an older married man marooned on a deserted island with a younger woman. He asks her to have sex, arguing, "no one would ever know." The woman responds, "I would know." The "I would know" test of good character is a useful one.

What then is the content of good character in a world without the threat of divine or earthly punishment and without the promise of divine or earthly reward? In such a world every good act would be done simply because it was deemed by the actor to be good. Good character in such a world would involve striking an appropriate balance among often competing interests, such as the interests of oneself and of others, of the present and of the future, of one's family (tribe, race, gender, religion, nation, and so forth) and of strangers.

As for the emotional case, suffice it simply to say that my experiences with religious observance have been suboptimal. Various beliefs implanted into me by religious education have made my life considerably more difficult, and, even though I've been out of the church for over a decade, I'm still working through some of the damage that these teachings had (/have) wrought upon me. The move away from religion has been a move away from guilt, shame and anxiety, and move towards joy, acceptance, love and affirmation (of life, of relationships, and of embodied existence). For me, the existential quest to find meaning in life actually necessitated my abandonment of religion.

In graduate school, I realized that it wasn't a simple reminder, but the expression of a theoretical viewpoint. This was his rebellion against Derridean uncertainty, his way of shoring up language against the onslaught of Freshman carelessness, and his plea for stability. If words have meaning, inherently, it matters how we use them; they are, however loosely, tied to truth. If words don't have meaning, but rather make it or twist it or empty it, they have no relationship to truth. They can't be trusted, can't be used as the foundation for anything. They can still be used, but much less reliably. If words have meaning, language is a revolver: you cock it, aim carefully, and fire precisely. If words don't have inherent meaning, language is a fully automatic rifle: a vague, deadly, scattershot sort of thing.

Lately, the New York Times' Opinion page has resembled Dr. Madsen's emphatic plea for inherent meaning. Several of the Times's standard columnists have written articles in which language and its relationship to truth receive a rare kind of attention. Most of these have been in the "Most Emailed" lists lately, which I treat as a snapshot of the current anxieties and hopes of Times readers.

In this time of meaningless babble, crashing stocks, and terrifying uncertainty, this strikes me as a strangely natural response: those of us who are lettered, who are educated, who were taught that words matter, cling to words. We pick up our pencils, our computers, our pens and our voices, and we write, in all capital letters, WORDS HAVE MEANING. WORDS HAVE MEANING. WORDS MATTER. WORDS HAVE MEANING AND THAT MATTERS.

Because if they don't, we simply don't know what to do about it. If they don't, we are impotent. If they don't, we have to completely rethink how we use them.

It is so important to transcend duality, though, in understanding these things, or anything: we should try not to think in black and white or, if that is impossible, remember that we think in black and white. The great redemptive hope was not simply my belief, solid and unchanging, but something I saw a certain amount of sense in, yet sometimes doubted. Now, it is not a false view that I have rejected, but a theory that I strongly suspect is false. Similarly, I need to keep taking on that worldview again, doubting its negation, in order to check my reasoning and my intuitive feelings or imagination (call it what you will): the alternative is to be closed-minded.

But what is it I'm trying to work out? The word 'mystical' keeps coming to me, dragging a set of curious associations. I described myself on a forum yesterday as a 'recovering mystic', but this morning awoke to a train of thought that it would have been easy to label as a mystical observation, at least in the absence of a dictionary and before my first cup of coffee.

It was interesting but not immediately productive for me to look up 'mysticism' at Wikipedia just now. Firstly it reminded me how much I like to write and how little I have read. It scared me a bit to remember just how complicated philosophy is, and that somewhere out there are REAL philosophers (sic joke?) who could actually tell you what Kant or Heidegger or Plato said and how the different systems all fit together, or don't.

Then I thought about it differently. There are several advantages to not having read what everyone else said about a subject. I knew this even as a youngster, and have had an ambivalent attitude to learning ever since. It is a great treasure, personal discovery, whether phenomenal or philosophical, and occupies a large part of childhood learning. It is in the nature of things, however, that if we gain knowledge of something first symbolically - being taught it in a classroom, for instance - it has the effect of biasing the field of our imagination thereafter, sometimes so strongly that we cannot think anything to the contrary.

I perhaps became a little too cautious, and am now trying to catch up with my education, but nevertheless I do feel that I have gained something quite important from my intuitive decision - long before I dropped out of college - to avoid specialising too much, to keep daydreaming, using my imagination and working things out myself. I wanted to take every theory that came my way with a pinch of salt - not fill my field of view with it, but store it on a shelf, as it were, to take down and ponder, compare and contrast with others.

But that is an impossible ideal. It could be thought that science biased my mind and then I found mysticism made more sense. It could be thought that I held on to mysticism mostly through my adult life and now I am overcoming that bias. Yes, I think that may be it: where my central beliefs about life and death were concerned, I failed to keep a democratic mental library, with the competing philosophies stored as resources, but felt compelled to pin the charts to my staff ("...of comfort still..."), and wave them at other people like flags.

Just coping with life demands a religion. My childhood religion, transmitted down echoing corridors full of the incense of blackboard chalk, glowed and buzzed with little particles, orbiting in electric dervish dances, the great wild-haired guru Einstein smiling down from the cloister wall. To the Old God we paid lip service on Monday mornings to avoid offence to His doddering ministers, but we knew that everything was made of bits, and we had a pretty good idea how those bits spontaneously became pieces, and those pieces replicated because they could, and, a long way up the chain of self-organising patterns of material objects, here we were, humans, inventing God in our own image.

I began to read about yoga at some point, I forget when and it's not important enough to check my diary - we're talking mid '70s, I'd guess. My mother took up Hatha Yoga, a relatively new fad in Britain, with virtually no thought of its mystical dimensions, and, having found great health benefits from it, decided to train to be a teacher with the British Wheel of Yoga, which required her reading more theoretical works, and I picked up Ernest Wood's book, simply called Yoga, among others, and began reading about a different world from the one I was still learning about at school, a world involving direct perception of Reality (it took capital letter) through meditation and purification. With practice, this direct perception or 'insight' would reveal to the adept yogi such strange 'truths' as different spiritual dimensions, personal acquisition of supernatural powers, the reality of reincarnation and a state of being in communion with God and/or liberated from suffering, etc.

To describe this condition precisely, it was pointed out clearly, was impossible, since it involved subjective experience - it was the nature of subjective experience itself. Reality was to be found in that empty space where words and thoughts have stopped. Words and thoughts were ephemera, ripples on the surface of Reality that distract us from Reality. Furthermore, the external objects we took for granted, I read, were also, in a sense, illusions: the whole conceptual world was an illusion, called in Sanskrit, maya. It is not to say that there was nothing there at all, only that what existed was in truth One (again with the capitals), sort of projected by 'our' deluded 'human' minds.

The single quotes above are to indicate an immediate objection that arises: if all is One and no object is really itself, who is having a delusion? This is, of course, a paradox, and what a useful word 'paradox' is! 'Paradox' allows questions to be left unanswered, yet with the subtle implication (at least in mystical circles) that they have somehow been dealt with. As Douglas R. Hofstadter says of the word, mu, allegedly used by Zen masters in response to paradoxical questions, 'Now there's a paradox!' has the magical ability to unask the question. This is, of course, a serious concern about mystical systems and religions, but hey, what can I do about it? Paradoxes arise.

Lest anyone think that that's an end to the matter and rationalism wins, it should be noted that paradox arises pretty well everywhere. Physics and mathematics are riddled with paradox: all matter and space and time exploding out of a singularity ('nowhen') is perhaps vastly more paradoxical than the real you being an unreality suffering from a delusion! In mathematics, in the simplest mathematics of counting, it is not long before we consider zero or infinity, and those concepts involve all sorts of paradoxes. Then there's the question of what a number is: we can count objects and it seems we're doing something physical concerning the real world, but no-one has ever seen 'five' alone, only five somethings.

The kind of worldview we might feel more comfortable with, where solid, three-dimensional objects inhabit three dimensions of space and float predictably along in one dimension of time, the one I grew up with in the '60s and '70s, actually seems quite untenable. At least, science must store what seems like an increasing number of puzzles on library shelves to solve later, since it does not allow the unasking of paradoxical questions, but must clear them up one way or another. My sense of it - admittedly as a layman - is that the cosmologists and nuclear scientists are scribbling equations, doing experiments to test their theories, scribbling some more (as they have always done), but not actually getting any nearer to offering an explanation of the world that would satisfy the original intention. Science developed to see if we could find out what the reality of the world actually was, if not the plaything of some self-explanatory deity. Its answers have always been in terms of new questions and still are so. Scientists seem to avoid the idea of reality, go the other way and pontificate about being engaged in discovering the Mind of God, or bite your head off if you point this out.

At the base of all this rationalism, on which science is founded, is the simple set of ideas we call logic, and one of the simplest of those is the dualism of true-false, or yes-no, proven-disproven. While things are not proven, they may inhabit the reaches of scientific thought, but are awaiting clarification, and their clarification depends on the binary resolution of other questions. We will know whether the moon is made of green cheese (yes-no) when we've brought some back and spread it on a cracker. Until something is proven or disproven we have only theories - usually, a number of competing theories - and can't say which is true.

Of course, mature scientists who haven't gone completely insane do acknowledge that the quest hasn't quite led where it was supposed to, that they are as far from discovering the mind of god (which one would intuitively understand as revealing the meaning of the universe, as opposed to its constitution) as they ever were, or will say that science never should be thought of in those 'human' terms ('meaning' is a human judgement, an invented concept, which may not be part of the real universe). Yet here another central problem arises: if investigating nature is not meant to reveal its meaning, then what is it meant to do? We might add, why do scientists get so upset when people say they do know what the meaning is, if that's not their bag anyway?

The answer to the first of these is something like this: science is describing observable phenomena in terms that allow the reliable prediction of other observable phenomena. Another way to put it is that it explains effects by discovering their true causes (a powerful thing), but can only trace this chain of causality back so far; it has not discovered, and perhaps cannot discover, any 'first cause' (and if we say that our universe began with the Big Bang, any fool can see that that is not a first cause, and ask the simple question, "What caused the Big Bang?"). Some scientists, I feel confident, would say that the idea of a first cause is nonsensical or not the remit of science, but I cannot help thinking that just supposing it were possible to explain EVERYTHING to people perfectly, they'd not hesitate to do so, claim that they had finished the great project of the Enlightenment once and for all, as they had set out to do just that very morning.

Another way to answer is to say that science deals with 'how' questions, not 'why' questions. Is there a difference between the two? If I ask why the Moon orbits the Earth, gravitational formulas would seem to suffice as an answer just as well as if I had asked how it does, except perhaps in two very closely related respects: how answers can be utterly impersonal and don't have to be at all final, whereas why answers convey at least the faint suggestion of personal causality and have a very strong suggestion of finality. An adult would not expect personal causality where the Moon's orbit is concerned, you might think, but of course, some adults do: God causes it, like everything else.

At a human level, if I ask 'Where has my wallet gone?' (deliberately avoiding either interrogative), "It is in a jacket pocket travelling west on the High Street," demands another question, whereas "Someone stole it while you weren't looking!" resolves the mystery - even if I would naturally want a name or description of the culprit. If someone gave the first answer, I would even unconsciously assume the missing 'fact' that the jacket is being worn by a person, even though it might not. 'Someone did it' is, to the human mind, a full, meaningful explanation, because, on our social level of thinking, the existence of human beings is taken for granted, and, for the most part, their possession of choice and agency is natural. We do not have to ask what caused the thief to steal my wallet; we can just assume that he decided to.

Clearly then, one of the challenges to religion is that 'God did it' is just a human-scale, convenient answer to everything, and it is a very powerful challenge. It suggests a deep and embarrassing flaw in the thinking of the religious person, an almost infantile requirement to answer difficult questions with an easy, final answer, the way a child is satisfied in the relating of fairytales and, indeed, the way primitive people satisfy themselves about the existence of holes in mountains by making up myths about giants taking pieces to throw at their enemies long, long ago.

There may be philosophically mature responses to this challenge, and perhaps I have indicated something of the flavour of one of them already, i.e. to propose that all the questions of matter and energy - which, as we have seen are not by any means resolved - are insoluble because they are illusory, and the foolishness is to be taken in by maya. The primacy of human meaning and consciousness can be elicited as reasons to 'look again'. If human beings are still unable to understand the world in a full and meaninful way, and cannot even say what meaning is, yet seem everywhere to thirst for it and explain smaller problems with recourse to it, perhaps we are missing something. How, after all, could meaning, if it belongs just to the crazy mixed up delusions of human beings, have evolved out of a meaningless universe, from fiery stuff exploding into a void? If one considers this long enough, it is not hard to concede that it does require an incredible stretch of the imagination on the face of it!

So, where have I got to with all this, after writing about it all day? It may take another day to answer, but I'll try to summarise for now. First of all, that incredible stretch between blind particles careening around in space and all the human consciousness with its rich symbols and emotion is, I have to say, not all that incredible. If we liken it to a river, then certainly there are stepping stones that traverse some of the distance. It seems undeniable that life, for instance, can get started, given a suitable chemical environment, and that stellar chemistry leads quite naturally to such an environment; so too, is it quite clear to anyone who investigates biology that evolution by natural selection is perfectly automatic, inevitable and true.

For those who are already materialists, that's about all we need, with the addition of the most difficult, but penetrable, route from reactive animal functioning to a fully self-conscious human mind, thence human culture, agriculture, civilisation and Celebrity Big Brother ...

...but...

In the course of this blog, I will approach some of those stepping-stones as I learn more about them. The '...but...' indicates something else, however, two things, which are that I have my own set of questions about this crossing (which I probably need to discuss with wiser heads first), and that, as far as I know, it is accepted that there are still rather large gaps in the stones, or at least some very slippery surfaces.

In the meantime, to close somewhere near where I began, while consciousness is still a mystery to me, the steps in the river-crossing that I know about, combined with some of my psychological knowledge about self-deception, convince me that the mystical union, the direct intuition of reality, is not the divine connection I read about. It seems difficult to imagine any reason why the human mind would be capable of such intimate knowledge of its deep, ancient cause. It was honed to separate bees from honey and chip pieces off flint and estimate the motives of its fellow human animals by their expressions.

Vanish

Nothing left

No destination

None to cleave to

This battle lost

Soul exhausted

No joy, no desire

No future plan

Lost all hope

Void and empty 

What remains

When desire dies

One thought only

In this moment

Dissolve

Done

Nothing left

Tried to fix me

Mend me; change me 

Find some way

To be worthy 

Discover meaning

Make it work

Be suitable

And just fit in

Illusion broken

No reason save

Need to quit now

Simply fade away

Finished

Ended

Nothing left

TODAY’S MESSAGE
I can understand God’s purpose for Michael the Archangel. I understand when God chooses a Moses, Abraham or David to do His will. I can comprehend Jesus picking twelve disciples to follow Him and God choosing Paul to be a great missionary. What completely mystifies me however, is that God has a purpose for me! Not only does God have a purpose for me, His purpose is to fulfill that purpose. Now you try. Read today’s passage and put yourself in the picture. God will fulfill His purpose for you! Can you get a sense of what that means? Perhaps you are thinking, “I’m nobody special.”  Sorry but God thinks you are! “I don’t have special skills.” You have exactly what God wants you to have. “I have done too many wrong things.” God’s grace is greater than all your wrong doing. “I can’t do anything out of the ordinary.” All God asks you to do is show up and be willing to live for Him. He will do the rest. Stop and hear God saying to you, “I am so glad I created you! I am so excited about you living out your purpose.” Today, cry out to God surrender yourself to Him. Purpose in your heart to live out the purpose He has for you.

TODAY’S PRAYER
Father, I surrender my life to You. Use me, live through me. Guide me and help me fulfill Your purpose for my life.
AMEN

______________________________________________________________

CLICK HERE to send this to a friend

 CLICK HERE to go to our BLOG Walking the Talk, and find out ways to help others.  

 Do You Know What Your Spiritual Gifts Are?
Now You Can. CLICK HERE to Get your FREE Spiritual GIfts Test and Workbook   CLICK HERE to join our NEW Spiritual Gifts Social Network
Do you want to know how to be a Child of God? CLICK HERE to find out how.

Yesterday, my friend was bugged by some sort of laziness (peace, murat!) but didn't want to succumb to it. Instead, she texted me if i want to go out and shoot our "negativities" away. She gave me two options: the mountain or the park. I told her we'll decide when we meet but i had already chose where i want to go. I wanted the mountain because i wanted to see a bigger and a wider perspective of everything. (now, I don't make sense.) I just want some sort of meaning or answer or whatever there is to make sense of everything because it feels like I am standing too close to the problem that i can't even stretch my arm to make way for me to punch it in the gut.

So there we were heading to the jeepney stop anticipating the trip with the sceneries we will be able to see. We got there in 30 minutes, focused on appreciating nature and soaked ourselves with our own sweat. We were triumphant, i may say, because nature itself is pure of beauty and we were forced to exercise because we didn't have any choice.

Going home took us one hour because the jeepney driver was being careful going down. There were school children and two teachers and I was sure the driver didn't want to endanger anyone of us. Anyway, my friend and I seated ourselves separately by the window to appreciate again the scenery. I had the chance to think and look out at the horizon. I was given the chance to ask and plead with God that I am His daughter and being that I deserve to be happy too. I don't want meanings anymore. I just want to feel overwhelmed by blessings that I will kneel down again and say that I am grateful for everything because, after all and again, I am His daughter. He must have smiled from above because He gave me a beautiful and dramatic horizon. The pictures I took are not even enough to describe how beautiful it is (well, for the lack of better skills also in taking photos). They seem to scream peace, love, apathy, benevolence, contentment, pride, anticipation, kindness, significance.... I can name everything that enveloped me right that moment because it felt like the horizon was designed to come out just for me.