A Tale of Two Cosmologies
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I laugh at atheists using words like moral or good. The concept of good and evil, right and wrong and morality are all either based on divine laws or human hubris. If there is no God then there are no long term consequences to anything you do or don’t do.
Study hard, help others, raise the next generation, cure cancer or comfort orphans has no point when it all ends anyway. May as well kill the teacher, kill others, kill babies and rape the orphans because it doesn’t matter. If you say it does matter then you have cognitive dissonance if you are an atheist. But for a thiest is does matter because of any number of reasons, you love God, or you fear God or you want to do what God commands or you just want a good ledger when Judgement Day comes.Memory and Truth are mutually exclusive.
(Truth is readily available; it doesn’t require storage. Doubtful things require constant scrutiny: memory is the realm of illusion.)I have problems with the universe.
The main problem is that it can’t exist – it can never have started. The next problem is that it can’t not exist! There must be SOMETHING to occupy space.
One solution is that it came from something external. The last thing I read was about sheets of energy called branes, and a new universe is created whenever they touch. This helps to explain the ‘Goldilocks’ nature of the universe which is ‘just right’. There are many parameters which if they were slightly different would mean the universe would die quickly or would mean life would be impossible. If there are a large number of universes then statistically one like ours will appear.
That makes it worse. What created these branes? How did they come into existence. Also, logically, outside our universe must be literally infinite, which is impossible.
The idea of god or gods is useful as it means you don’t to wonder about the nature of reality too much – it’s just the way it was made. It saves brain damage!
Appreciating the on-going conversation. Your contributions are genuine and insightful. Am grateful to Ilargi for giving this conversation focused space and time (in the fertile gardens of TAE).
In my world: there is a single > force/LIGHT/energy/ Source/Self/Sound (OM)/LOVE/GOD > that is LIFE giving/sustaining/destroying > to/for/in > ALL. Nothing is separate or outside. ALL are ONE.
I am aware of this through direct experience. The “main event” happened when I was a young girl in the 8th grade – during English class. It started as a single epiphany, and over the years has blossomed into many awakenings.
My life has been dedicated to exploring/discovering/interpreting/understanding what happened. The young girl Susan did not understand that this was a death experience (death of ego/self), with the added gift of a deep inner vision/wisdom about the reality of ALL creation (showing answers to questions I had not yet asked). Or that this vision/wisdom came from within.
@Dr D: “we have the delusion or illusion of separation, which is why the system was built like this and what you were incarnated for. It’s SUPPOSED to have the separation. That’s its PURPOSE.” Yes. The mind/body complex has limitations. It is an insider’s invitation to question its grip, and to go beyond. Most are hung up in the duality. This is life.
@zerosum: GOD is. No beginning and no end.I have found that the SCIENCE of Yoga (yes, it is a science: the concepts are available to directly prove/experience for yourSELF) accurately explains the gifts I have been given and my successes and or failures in the act of daily living.
LOVE to SEEKERS.
“GOD is. No beginning and no end.”
Exactly, when being in/inhabiting/inside spacetime. It always is. It is everywhere.
I am again “a Day late”…
Thanks TAE Summary (I dug it the first time, too.)Thanks Polemos for deeply grappled content. It calls for deep-grappling from thereader.
Thanks DBS: For lots of consideration.
Thanks Susmarie 108 for letting your Ego die in 8th grade and posting the TracyChapman link.
Thanks for all of the “what IS ‘reality'” questions, including “Love” and “God” versions, All-Y’all.
Thanks Dr D for guessing my take, so now I have to write something different.For those who are moral and considerate without conceptualizing “God” [ ]
For all who don’t elieve in gravity, how can you jump off that second step and know how to land?
For all who are stuck within time concepts, even though there are probably at least 7 dimensions, but we only grok 3 in both directions and the fourth (time) unidirectionally, I know that I don’t know…“Knowing”, “Love” and “God” are hard to even conceptualize, and can be “seen” differently by many “blind men”. I find it easier to just admit that I’m “stuck” on “time” (unlike Billy Pilgrim, who Kurt Vonnegut explained was “unstuck in time”). “Which came first” paradoxes ade dependent upon a unidirectional experience of time, and would not apply to beings with the kind of experience of time which we havve of the spatial dimensions.
Glad we can do this. Hi Oxymoron in Oz.
Science has been abandoned in this thread; many of those condemning the Covid vaccine are now celebrating a God that cannot be proved by science; the believers accept God, but not Covid, which makes you wonder what differentiates the two? Maybe the people behind them; pedos versus Pfizer execs?
Without the rigor of proof, people come up with all sorts of shit as “facts”. They see it in their head, they proclaim it as fact, they know they cannot be expected to produce proof. Reminds me of AFKTT, and of the woke telling us that men can be women, in fact, this discussion has revealed the similarilty between the post modernist movements and the good old fashioned, reomantic religionists.
If you want to believe it, I am totally behind you, regardless of what it is, madness can be your choice; I will not guarantee to also believe it, but I will defend your right to believe whatever you want, regardless of how crazy it may appear when outside your head. Good to see the hypocrisy of those crying out for facts, then claiming God as fact; maybe they are switching between different worlds in their heads.
I am satisfied that this thread has certainly revealed what I wanted it to reveal.
I should mention that although I consider spirituality to be very personal – garbage to me, gold to you – I do enjoy religion, especially the Jewish religions adopted by the anglo saxons. A lot of culture has gone into religion and I appreciate it, enjoy it, go to church to participate in it, but I do not believe in God.
@Aspnaz: Have you ever had any kind of ESP experience?
@ Michael Reid: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali would be a good starting point.
I have found that it helps to reference/work with several translations simultaneously. The Sutras were recorded by Patanjali in Sanskrit and need to be translated into English; each author has slight variation in interpretation.
A must-have version is the one translated/with commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali – Book 1 by Baba Hari Dass (my Teacher). Translation and commentary.
The Science of Yoga: The Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali in Sanskrit with Transliteration in Roman, Translation and Commentary in English by I.K. Taimni.
Any commentary by Eknath Easwaran is enlightening (including his stunning commentary on the Bhagavad Gita).
Happy that you asked.
JohnDay asked
@Aspnaz: Have you ever had any kind of ESP experience?
Not that I am aware of. Why do you ask?
I’m sadly late to this party. I’ll give it a go.
TAE Summary does a good job laying out where the fault lines lie between traditional understandings of religion vs atheism.
But I think they are inaccurate, obsolete division lines.
I’m an atheist, I envisioned myself as attempting to be brave enough to be honest, no matter how undesirable the truth. I imagined a moral human being must therefore be inside a kind of protective bubble, their reason. New ideas must pass through the bubble to enter the mind, bear the burden of proof. Whatever the truth is, whatever the best current working model is, we must face up to it or be lying cowards.
,,,and then for many years I allowed postmodernist deconstructionism in with NO skepticism on the assumption that it was synonymous with atheism, I greatly regret this.
Ayn Rand will of course kick the crap out of eastern mysticism, marxism, postmodernism, and deconstructionsim (in 1000x the words a decent author would use….) and then build up a whole system of morals based around a few basic philosophical principles linked to facing up to reality. Stop making Ayn Rand right. Please. We all hate when that happens, so stop it.
I was jumping back and forth during the lockdowns between reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain. Thomas Merton gave a summary of a Catholic text explaining God as being existence – the act OF existence, not the STUFF of existence. God literally is existing
What was said above- there’s a problem with existence – it’s impossible – and a problem with non existence – it’s impossible. Wtf is all this existence when it would be easier for nothing to be. And how do I explain, if nothing else, MYSELF, that I am a consciousness. Scientists will explain everything, including consciousness, but not THEMSELVES, that they are a conscious being apprehending the universe. What then is reality for such a being, a joke, the jokiest accident ever? DOES NOT MATTER, ACTUALLY. Doesn’t matter.
The fracture point is no longer between theists and atheists.
Ayn Rand admonishes us – at way, way too much length – A = A. First, decide that reality is real. Then decide to live or die.
As Jordan Peterson will say far more succinctly and eloquently – and compassionately – than Rand, you have to establish the ability to value things as better or worse or YOU WILL DIE. You have to establish a hierarchy of these valuations OR YOU WILL DIE.
Meaning is an emergent property of context.
SIck, awful people such as Cluster B’s, Malignant Narcissists, have trouble with context, therefore with meaning. Meaning is necessary for life. You will die without forthrightly discriminating based on values. Your first decision after saying reality exists is to live. ie decide that life is good. Since proper valuation and discrimination within a value hierarchy is necessary to life, it is good. That which labors to destroy or disrupt this is therefore evil- as illustrated by people with cases of Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder, for instance
So say God is existence – as Thomas Merton, and essentially Ayn Rand – Christian mystic and staunch atheist – both tell you. Not the stuff of existence, but existence the verb, God is existing
It follows the stuff that does exist could be called Creation, if you will.
Ayn Rand, uber-atheist, says the first 2 things are accept reality is real and decide to live ie EXIST.
The opposing sides are NOT theist vs atheist
It is those that accept existence and reality vs those who do not. Call it God and Creation if you are theist, Call it A=A and the decision to live if you are atheist. Either way, everything follows from that.
On the other side are those who REJECT reality, reject existence.
It is a very real gnostic, hermetic, postmodernist, deconstructionist, satanic-ish movement observably penetrating into – dominating, really – many aspects of mainstream culture today. Drill down on any of the various issues and at the bottom you will find this same thing.
It is corrosive to meaning, continually attempting to corrode all distinctions, hierarchies, and boundaries, seeking to invert everything compulsively, relentlessly.
People in THIS camp will SAY they are atheists, certainly go out of their way to sneer at religion. But if you spin out that conversation, you will find they have dabbled in cheap shallow versions of eastern mysticism, ouija, tarot, The Secret, palm reading, pyramid power, paganism, satanism, ufo’s, every damn superstition and mystic claptrap under the sun.
My experience with these people was that when they realized I was ACTUALLY an Atheist – did not believe in any of that mystic claptrap, they’d begin a campaign lasting sometimes for YEARS scolding me for not being “spiritual” and giving me crass, shallow lectures on chakras and maintaining “balance” and how I should do yoga or meditation – these “atheists” who sneered at christianity.
When I realized these assholes try to murder anything they come across, skin it, put the skin on, and then come towards you saying “I am that thing you love,” while being its antithesis, the spell was broken. I became FAR happier the moment I realized their weird anti reality anti life anti meaning gnostic mystery religion was NOT AT ALL in line with atheism.
It’s one weird trick. We are/own atheism now. We are/own psychology now. Education, civil rights, star wars, whatever.
I might, as an atheist, argue that since religions all say that all OTHER religions are wrong, and many societies around the globe have all made murder and theft illegal, valued justice and mercy, on and on, that these must, perforce, ALL be atheist values, since they exist throughout humanity, through ALL of these societies in which all of their religions say they are the only real one. Surely, if civilizational values came from YOUR religion, which is the correct one, then all those other societies with other religions would NOT have honor, justice, mercy, etc. But they do. So these things are ATHEIST values.
Then again, A=A and the decision to live are the SAME DECISION as believing in God and Creation.
Love the lord your god with all your heart and all your soul, yes? God is existence, existing. Your 2nd decision to make after acknowledging that reality is real is to live (or not) So ACTUALLY decide to live. Fully. With all your heart and all your soul embrace existence – and for you to exist is to LIVE. THAT is the way and the life, is it not? And isn’t existence – the act OF existence -scary? Only a fool thinks otherwise. So… Yes. If God is Exsistence, then are you not properly god-fearing?
One one side is everyone who believes in A=A and decided to live – God fearing who value Creation, if you must have it put to you that way. Atheists, Christians, worshippers of The Great Lizard King, whoever.
On the other side are those who reject A=A and reject valuation ie meaning ie the thing necessary to life. Put another way, they defy God and all his works, all creation.
THAT is the real dividing line now.
I’ll add that in the 2020’s we have found that Science is NOT the bedrock of understanding.
Scientists and science lied to us over and over and over. Academics, research scientists, medical professionals, all injured and killed millions – with delayed reaction, we have yet to see if this becomes billions.
And that was just an injection. They have only barely begun to, terrify, make miserable, and kill large swathes of humanity over tHe cLiMaTe sCiEnZ.
Underlying other values, they had to value the TRUTH. And TELLING the truth.
They went along with – became or perhaps had been all along – the type of people who say, in the tone of voice that says they think you ought to believe they are a genius “Perception is reality”
They would have had to have morals to value the truth. Since proper science depends on truth, the underlying bedrock of science is morality
And a whole lot of people claiming to be atheists, claiming to “believe” the “science” say there ARE no values.
And so their destiny – well, the destiny of those who survive them – is naked in the jungle, worshipping idols, praying to the sky and sun, believing diseases are caused by evil spirits – all this after reaching an equilibrium through the unintended-(totally intended) murder of billions. Thanks so-called enlightened “atheists” who were never atheists.
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