Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Rajaroux]

It is a way too miserable life to believe that logically derived knowledge is the pinnacle of human evolution.
'Knowledge' of Newton's laws of Thermodynamics, for example, can very effectively predict the path of a bullet. These laws become inadequate to describe or predict the chaotic movement of air around the bullet and the resultant physical damage to it on impact. These laws then have nothing to say about effect on the life of a person it hits. You see here that a formula to describe and categorise phenomena is just a formula. Real life in the ever-changing present can only be seen or experienced without the glasses of logic, or any other glasses for that matter, including belief.
That is not to say that logic isn't essential for knowledge. We can even use logic to demonstrate that everything changes. But there is no logic that can underpin the absolute knowing of everything, since everything that knowledge describes is subject to change. Even our most previously treasured constants, like the speed of light, we now know is subject to changes with relative conditions.
As soon as we reference knowledge, we undermine direct experience.
So we, the human race, could theoretically have a vast logically derived knowledge base that superficially describes almost everything, subject to continuous change. This knowledge could be stored on computers for our reference but will still undermine our personal experience in the present. The same can be said for historical belief in a god/creator/designer undermining experience in the present.
So for a hundred billion people since the dawn of mankind to mask their present experience with borrowed stories of gods, born of fear of death and the unknown, only shows their stage of evolution, not any indication of any truth. Some have since evolved to shed light on the unknown with logically, scientifically formulated knowledge. But the present reality remains masked as long as we think those formulas, categories and names are indistinguishable from the things they describe. For example, resorting to knowledge to define a Daisy keeps the mind engaged in those past formulated references and masked from the essential (Daisy)ness in the moment. No knowledge can describe the endless detail of it's appearance.
A further evolution would be to understand knowledge to be just reference for communication and creativity and to be as unfixed and changeable as reality itself. Knowledge then is not the goal, but the successor of a dying God, and a game we play to communicate and share the indescribable richness of perception.
To go as far as to empirically identify the Higgs Boson, the God particle, or to prove a unified theory is not the end that will make us all happy and right. It will just mean we have finally killed the old God and replaced him with a benign umbrella of information (that might feel a little like a god) and we can dedicate our resources to our own identity and to dissolving fear, so making life fun again.

[Marabod]

A further evolution would be to understand knowledge to be just reference for communication and creativity and to be as unfixed and changeable as reality itself. Knowledge then is not the goal, but the successor of a dying God, and a game we play to communicate and share the indescribable richness of perception.

Please feel free choosing the course of Evolution and your personal role in it. "A further evolution would be in us elongating our tails" - how does that sound?

Imagine now, that no one plays any games with you! No one really wants to "communicate" with you or share anything with you and no one really cares if you do exist or not. Each of us lives some special personal life, and of 99.999999999999% of these personal lives you personally are not a part anyhow. Realism is first of all in understanding that each of us individually is absolutely nothing, a worm, a spark of dust in the air. None of us can individually manage evolution or anyhow affect its course.

[ChaoticMindSays]

Wow, this is getting annoying.

I don't believe anything.
Prove that it even exist another method than the logical one to express meaningful ideas.
You don't realize that the glasses are already on... Your desires and beliefs are so strong that they interfere with you capacity to see and understand correctly, that's all.

You have stated your beliefs again and again, if you are refusing to recognize this fact then you really are as blinded as I claim.

Did you make the experience yourself?
So, you believe it has been proven... Not the same thing.
Also, are you sure of the correctness of the interpretation of the results of the experiments. Were they (the experiments) reliable enough?

If you did do research the sources you found were wrong. There have been laboratory expirements done proving PK.

I can never find the relevant information online, I wish I could so I could cite you my sources.

Abiathar said,

There have been 53 studies (one of which observed, publisized, and backed by the Washington D.C. police department) wherein large groups of people would sit and meditate for long periods of the day, around the world, to manifest certain outcomes (I.E. lowering statistical crime-rate by an exact degree, changing the temperature, holding off weather, etc all of which they managed to do to a pre-specified degree, not a situation where one says "I want it to be cooler" and the temperature drops 3 degrees.)

The idea of conscious thought being able to manipulate, potentially even change, the thoughts of others and the world around us, has nearly been scientifically proven, studied, prodded, and poked and no holes have as of yet to be found.

There is also the ball drop experiment where people focus on an outcome over a series of several thousand tests. IT HAS BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN.

What do you mean by tangible?

By tangible I mean real. We have real purposes, or we do if we believe it to be so.

There are few things I consider to know. The hypotheses I make are open to debate. I have no belief is a true statement. The fact you don't believe it to be true is due to your own incapacity to don't pretend things you have no(t enough) proof/evidence for.
Tell me why do you need beliefs for?

It's not a mere opinion. I demonstrated/proved it.
Did you even read the thread in question before to claim it's an opinion?



Now, if you want to prove the opposite, feel free to do so.
Wait... You would have to use logic to do so...

Well your obviously pompous enough to believe in your own grandiosity. If you 'proved' something than you 'believe' in the thing you supposedly 'proved'. You keep contradicting yourself, 'and you don't even realize'.

Also, you're saying that the fact that they believe something is proof that this something exists.

As I said before, I never said that. Neither of the quotes you listed prove that i said that, they only prove that you have a severe misunderstanding of what I am trying to say. So much for your logic, for you seem to be able to understand mine.

I said

I think that it is more logical that our empirical evidence is flawed in some way, or that there is some piece of the equation that we are missing than, say, that a hundred billion people since the dawn of mankind have been wrong about the existence of some type of higher power.

Yes I do believe that there is some sort of higher power, but NO I do not believe that because so many people have believed in a God for so long that that proves a Gods existence. All I am claiming in this statement is that because so many people have believed for so long that there may be something besides what logic is showing us. And I even use logic to show that, as I said, Billions of people don't believe in something for hundreds of generations for no reason, despite what your logic may show. Now do you see how logic itself is a fallacy? Of course not. You can't see because you are so blinded by your devoted 'belief' to it. You speak of people letting their beliefs warp their views of reality without even realizing that this is exactly what is happening to you.

I'm done arguing over this^ point with you. You simply repeat the same things over and over expecting me to yield to your inflated ego, when you are obviously contradicting yourself at every turn and not comprehending what I am saying.

They don't have to be, they are... The quicker you realize and ACCEPT that, the better off you'll be.

You just keep believing that. I don't care what you believe, your only hurting yourself.

Again, if you have another suggestion, please share it... And at least argue it... Logically...

I don't have an answer, and never claimed to. But that does not mean that one does not exist.

Rajaroux said,

It is a way too miserable life to believe that logically derived knowledge is the pinnacle of human evolution.

Some people love to make themselves miserable.

Real life in the ever-changing present can only be seen or experienced without the glasses of logic

Exactly. To truly understand some things you need to be able to take them as they come, without personal bias, whether this be logic or some heartfelt belief, and look at them as how they really are.

That is not to say that logic isn't essential for knowledge.

Agreed, logic is important and has it's place. That place just shouldn't be overestimated.

So for a hundred billion people since the dawn of mankind to mask their present experience with borrowed stories of gods, born of fear of death and the unknown, only shows their stage of evolution, not any indication of any truth. Some have since evolved to shed light on the unknown with logically, scientifically formulated knowledge. But the present reality remains masked as long as we think those formulas, categories and names are indistinguishable from the things they describe. For example, resorting to knowledge to define a Daisy keeps the mind engaged in those past formulated references and masked from the essential (Daisy)ness in the moment. No knowledge can describe the endless detail of it's appearance.
A further evolution would be to understand knowledge to be just reference for communication and creativity and to be as unfixed and changeable as reality itself. Knowledge then is not the goal, but the successor of a dying God, and a game we play to communicate and share the indescribable richness of perception.

Hmm... Not all those stories were "borrowed". you have to take into consideration how many different cultures and religion there have been. I very much doubt that they were all based off the same thing. And if several different groups of people create religion, or belief in a God or Gods, without any contact with each other... Well, you have to admit there is something at least a little strange about such an occurrence. I'm not claiming that any of these religions or beliefs are true, only that the fact that they occurred points to something

deeper

.

Oh and @ persecrates,

I said,

There have been hundreds of records of people who have done hallucinogenic drugs and experienced the same hallucinations as the people that they were with.

LSD experiments, professor Stanislav Grof.
"Patients were also able to tap into the consciousness of their relatives and ancestors. One woman experienced what it was like to be her mother at the age of three and accurately described a frightening event that had befallen her mother at the time. The woman also gave a precise description of the house her mother had lived in as well as the white pinafore she had been wearing- all details her mother later confirmed and admitted she had never talked about before. Other patients gave equally accurate description's..."

Professor Groff- "After years of conceptual struggle and confusion, I have concluded that the data from LSD research indicate an urgent need for drastic revision of the existing paradigms for psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and possibly even science itself."

There is another story of a man with a deadly form of throat cancer. 5% chance of surviving, he was given a new kind of medicine which was supposed to be a real breakthrough and his tumors melted over night. Months later they found out that the medicine didn't actually work and the cancer immediately came back. The doctor, again, gave him the same medicine, saying that it did in fact work and that this was a extremely potent batch. He immediately recovered from the cancer again. Later they did more tests and confirmed, without a doubt, that the medicine didn't actually work. At hearing this the man almost immediately got cancer AGAIN and died a few days later.

Not to mention THE PROVEN fact of stigmata. It REALLY happens. My mother has met a stigmatist. People who have recovered from illnesses and injuries miraculously, such as people regenerating bone- "A 1962 x ray showing the degree to which Vittorio Michelli's hip bone had disintegrated as a result of his malignant sarcoma." The pictures are from a book so I can't post them, "After a series of baths in a spring a lourdes, Michelli experienced a miraculous healing. His hip bone completely regenerated over a course of several months..."

They have X-Ray photos and a doctor testimony. How is that NOT empirical evidence? Seriously... You have to be blind to not notice all the things controlled by our will power, placebo effect, documented mirales (like stigmata and such), among many, many other things.

Look up the Jansenists, Hundreds of thousands of people witnessed their miracles.
Ever heard of PK? And the ball drop experiment? EMPIRICAL evidence for psychokinesis.

The fact is that there is lots of evidence supporting lots of different things that the mainstream scientific society won't allow to be accepted. People are scared of speaking of their true beliefs and discoveries because by doing so they risk their reputations, and therefor, their careers.
The current paradigm is basically concealing tons of information from the general public because information of this type would call for a complete reform of everything science has "proven" to be "absolute".

All of the previous is documented. I don't have the sources but if you want to check them yourself you can get a copy of "The Holographic Universe."(Michael Talbot) And check for yourself.

Marabod said,

None of us can individually manage evolution or anyhow affect its course.

We all have the power to effect the course of evolution.

[Marabod]

Marabod said,
Quote:
None of us can individually manage evolution or anyhow affect its course.

We all have the power to effect the course of evolution.

You do not have any power you are claiming. This is what we call BS, or bull-dust. It settles so slowly, that it is hard to see this, but it does eventually! Could you please agree with me, OR substantiate, which exactly "powers" do you personally have over the evolution process? Evolutionary all what you personally can do is to survive yourself and leave the siblings, carrying those genes which determined your personal surviving...

[ChaoticMindSays]

Marabod,

As you said,

A. I have the decision to have children. I could have lot's and lot's of children or no children. If I have lot's of children that means I am adding more of my genes to the gene pool and therefor effecting evolution.

B. We can effect other animals and the way they evolve by interacting with them. Look at dogs, for example.

C. Genetic engineering. We all in the near future may have the ability to have our genes changed.

D. Genes are controlled by "switches" which can be turned off or on to produce different effects. There is some speculation that it may be possible for people to learn to control these "switches". (of course you will not accept this statement, but I offer it none-the-less) People have been found who can control things such as, allergies, physical wounds, bodily processes thought to be out of conscious control, ect. I believe it entirely plausible that, someday, someone may figure out how to consciously alter their own genes. People, as in almost everybody, have even been found to be able to increase their own white blood cell count through visualization.

E. We have the choice of who we want to mate with.

There are far more avenues where we can effect our own evolution and that of our descendants. Consider things such as becoming ambidextrous, to promote better brain balance, and teaching your kids to do the same. Creative visualization, so that we may learn and teach others to imagine more vividly, therefor enhancing the visualization abilities of our descendants.
Seriously... this seems like common sense to me.
If we learn to be better and pass this trait down to our children than we will be consciously effecting our own evolution.

[Marabod]

Mate, these listed are the choices which any extinct dinosaur or a sabre-tooth tiger had. The subjective desire to manage the course of the celestial bodies in no way determines the objective ability to do so!

[ChaoticMindSays]

Mate, these listed are the choices which any extinct dinosaur or a sabre-tooth tiger had. The subjective desire to manage the course of the celestial bodies in no way determines the objective ability to do so!

Hah.... You don't really make much sense. Dinosaurs had the ability to alter their own DNA? Ok.... Objectively managing evolution and objectively managing the 'celestial bodies' are very different things.

[Marabod]

Mate, these listed are the choices which any extinct dinosaur or a sabre-tooth tiger had. The subjective desire to manage the course of the celestial bodies in no way determines the objective ability to do so!

Hah.... You don't really make much sense. Dinosaurs had the ability to alter their own DNA? Ok.... Objectively managing evolution and objectively managing the 'celestial bodies' are very different things.

Are you saying that you personally have enough money to order your own otherwise useless DNA altered scientifically?

But even in the above case, and even if you manage to use your money to fertilise some statistically-noticeable number of females, you would still not be able to manage the conditions your siblings would encounter! And they may encounter some specific conditions in which specifically YOUR DNA has no chance to replicate. This was said with no shadow of a joke to it!

[Alun]

Marabod, he didn't say that any particular individual had dramatic power over our species' evolution. He just said we can actively make choices with some idea of their evolutionary consequences, however slight the effect of one individual's behavior.

[Keith Russell]

The book to read is "Hellstrom's Hive", by Frank Herbert.

Hah.... You don't really make much sense. Dinosaurs had the ability to alter their own DNA? Ok.... Objectively managing evolution and objectively managing the 'celestial bodies' are very different things.

Are you saying that you personally have enough money to order your own otherwise useless DNA altered scientifically?

But even in the above case, and even if you manage to use your money to fertilise some statistically-noticeable number of females, you would still not be able to manage the conditions your siblings would encounter! And they may encounter some specific conditions in which specifically YOUR DNA has no chance to replicate. This was said with no shadow of a joke to it!

[Marabod]

Marabod, he didn't say that any particular individual had dramatic power over our species' evolution. He just said we can actively make choices with some idea of their evolutionary consequences, however slight the effect of one individual's behavior.

As I was already explaining, rational thinking suggests no grey areas and no "hidden" meanings - it is either "yes" or "no". If I assess the statement "One can manage Evolution of the own specie" on true/false basis, the answer would be "false", as simple as that. This approach by the way was recommended by Jesus Christ, who said "your yes be yes and your no be no". Clarity is a pre-requisite of any successful 2-way communication.

[ChaoticMindSays]

I said,

Genetic engineering. We all in the near future may have the ability to have our genes changed.

..... Do you even read what I write?

Marabod,

Are you saying that you personally have enough money to order your own otherwise useless DNA altered scientifically?

But even in the above case, and even if you manage to use your money to fertilise some statistically-noticeable number of females, you would still not be able to manage the conditions your siblings would encounter! And they may encounter some specific conditions in which specifically YOUR DNA has no chance to replicate. This was said with no shadow of a joke to it

Alun,

Marabod, he didn't say that any particular individual had dramatic power over our species' evolution. He just said we can actively make choices with some idea of their evolutionary consequences, however slight the effect of one individual's behavior.

Exactly.

[Intuitiv3infid3l]

The main reason that we believe our self-made fallacies is due to being institutionalized and being brainwashed since birth. It is a rigorous cycle. Another reason is that we are afraid of not being sure of the truth so we have to believe in something in order to give purpose to our lives. This is reason for every generation thinking that the previous generation was so 'stupid/illogical' in their beliefs. What has happened with the onset of the 21st century, however, mainly due to technology that has opened up and made easier access for human interaction globally, is that people are encouraged to question the social norms/values that they have lived through their whole lives.

This is a step forward in the long term, however, it is currently disastrous. Discussion on the internet perfectly portrays this. What tends to be happening is a huge cluster**** in which people try to think about everything in life and make up their minds about what to believe. Everybody who posts here knows this; philosophizing is NOT easy. Therefore when the average person (let alone a philosophizer such as us) tries to tackle all of the questions of life, they snap. They don't know what to believe. So what tends to happen is that they end up formulating NEW short-sighted illogical conclusions which is usually to rigorously bash previous religious/social norms/values. That is why there are all these confused atheists these days who are only atheist for the sake of being atheist... with ridiculous arguments against religion which clearly displays their lack of depth in thought (i.e. they do not realize the simple fact that the major religions began LONG time ago... therefore things were much different back then and religious laws would have made sense). Another thing that happens is that because the channel of communication is so open and free, all of these people are allowed to spew their nonsense... which confuses more people. Furthermore, the difficulties of daily life give people negative emotions, and they tend to carry this handicap when philosophizing, which further helps them form inaccurate and illogical thoughts.

The final reason for illogical thought is politics. Those in power control the media and like to brainwash people by making them THINK they are free and can say/think whatever they want, but they eliminate the NEED for these people to actually say/think whatever they want because they feed them inaccurate projections.

[Marabod]

I said,

Genetic engineering. We all in the near future may have the ability to have our genes changed.

..... Do you even read what I write?

Yes, I did! You wrote

We all have the power to effect the course of evolution.

- and I said this statement was false. There is no need to swirl like an eel now - the words have been said already!

There is no intention to catch you anyhow, if you now agree with me that the quoted statement was false, you can simply confirm this.

[ChaoticMindSays]

Marabod,

- and I said this statement was false. There is no need to swirl like an eel now - the words have been said already!

There is no intention to catch you anyhow, if you now agree with me that the quoted statement was false, you can simply confirm this.

Wow, you are ridiculous.... I stand by what I said, that we do have the power to effect the course of evolution. Which, really, is common sense. And if you can't handle that obvious truth, or at least debate against it in an intelligible way, then I am done discussing the matter with you. I'm tired of the endless little loops you seem so proud to be running in.


Intuitiv3infid3l,

Enculturation is a *****. I agree with that, and am attempting to do my best to free people from this trap.

This is a step forward in the long term, however, it is currently disastrous

I disagree, it may have some negative repercussions, BUT it is very necessary, as you said, for the long term. If we don't take that step forward now, then when are we going to? It will have the same negative repercussions whenever we take it and the negatives may even become worse the longer that we wait.

The main reason that we believe our self-made fallacies is due to being institutionalized and being brainwashed since birth

The only way to live seeing the truth is to think and percieve from the outside while you survive from within.... Or you can become a hobo and have next to no effect whatsoever on the currant situation...
You just have to put EVERYTHING into perspective. never take anything as fact until you have looked at it from every angle.