(February 4, 2012 at 2:10 pm)Abracadabra Wrote: What I see is extreme paranoia toward anything that might even remotely suggest that there might be a spiritual essence to reality.
In part, I understand this paranoia in light of the history of the Abrahamic Religions and specifically Chrisitanity which is indeed a highly proselytizing religion. It so highly proselytizing they they basically accuse everyone who fails to climb on board their religious bigotry wagon of being an evil person who has knowingly and willfully chosen to reject all that is good and instead support and side with an evil demon who is at war with their perfectly benevolent God.
It's no wonder that so many people are so disgusted with the idea of a spiritual essence to reality if it's ultimately going to evolve into something as mercilessly hateful as Christianity.
I can truly understand that. Hell's bells, a secular view of life is far more inviting and righteous than the vision of the hateful jealous Christian God.
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But here's something to think about,...
What if you could choose the true nature of reality?
Forget about reason, knowledge, scientific evidence, proofs, or anything like that. Just ask yourself what you would personally like reality to ultimately be like if you actually could choose.
Well, like I say, if your only choices were either a pure secular existence that simply ends in 'lights out' when your physical body dies, versus, an existence where some hateful egotistical demonic God had created you and demands that you either agree with his ignorance or suffer in an eternal hell fire, you'd probably choose secular atheism as the more inviting picture. I know I would. Secular atheism is absolutely beautiful in comparison with something as hateful as Christianity.
If those were the only two choices I too would chose secular atheism.
Fortunately they aren't the only two choices. And that's where a lot of secular atheists seem to lose it.
People often make fun of me because in a very real sense I have "made-up" my own religion. Sure, my spiritual ideas have been influenced by various eastern mystical philosophies, and more recently by the freedom of artistic creativity offered by an extremely liberal approach to various fanciful ideas associated with modern esoteric traditions that have been labeled "Wicca".
But in truth, my spiritual paradigm is indeed quite unique. It is without a doubt my very own cerebral creation save for the fact that I have made use of various concepts of human who have come before me. And in all honesty, there are MANY 'Wiccans" who would argue that my spiritual ideas are so far 'removed' from what they consider to be "Wicca" that they wouldn't give their support to my spiritual paradigm.
So in truth, to actually call it 'Wicca' is a bit of a misrepresentation. None the less I have incorporated many ideas that I have found interesting by studying various Wicca concepts.
So you may ask. Big deal, you created your own religion? What's the probability that you got it "right"? But if you're asking that question then you truly don't understand at all.
You don't "get it right" that's not the point to spirituality in the first place.
Spirituality isn't a scientific investigation that is attempting to establish the "physics" of spiritual essence. That's not the point to it. If that were the point to it, then it would be science.
Spirituality is the ability to imagine beyond the restrictions of reason.
Let's go back to my original question:
If you could truly choose the true nature of reality without bound (not being limited to just a either a pure secular existence or one created by a jealous egotistical human-like godhead) what could you come up with in your imagination?
Do you have a mind that is capable of imagining a spiritual essence of reality that goes far beyond what apparently most human can imagine?
I most certainly do. And I also have "logical" reasons to support my cerebral ponderings.
For example, let's start with some premises:
If a spiritual essence of reality truly exists what it would we expect that essence to be like?
Well the standards picture is as follows:
The divine spirits (whatever it may be is most often said to have the following properties)
1. It's eternal. It is not stuck in the spacetime we see around us.
2. It's infinite - It's unbounded in every imaginable way.
3. With spirit all things are possible.
Ok, so these premises themselves may seem a bit whimsical. And it's most certainly true that just because humanity imagined that these are the traits of spiritual essence, it doesn't make them real or prove that they must exist.
But that's scientific reasoning limited by the physics of spacetime, etc.
If we're going to consider these premises we must free ourselves from the limitations of spacetime (see premise #1) and realize that anything that can be imagined is possible (see premises #2 and #3)
If we're going to consider a spiritual essence to reality we must consider it based on what we claim it should be. We can't limit it by the physics of spacetime. To do so violates the very ideal of what spirituality should be.
So if your doing to even consider a spiritual essence to reality you most certainly can't do it in with a scientific approach. Especially not by using a scientific approach that is rooted in the limitations of the physics of spacetime.
So the very arguments that "spirituality is not scientific" are totally ignorant arguments. Of course it isn't. The whole premise of spirituality is that it goes far beyond the limitations of spacetime.
So even discussing whether spirituality is "scientific" is a totally misplaced discussion. All such discussions do is display a total ignorance of what spirituality is supposed to be.
So if you're going to seriously consider the possibility of a spiritual essence to reality you really need to start with the three premises that I've listed. Otherwise you'll get nowhere.
And you really need to take #2 and #3 seriously. That means to let your imagination run wild. Absolutely!
And that's precisely what I've done in creating my spiritual paradigm. If I can imagine it, then surely "spirit" can even do better! And if I am ultimately spirit, then I should be able to imagine anything. And actually I'm pretty good at doing that.
I can imagine a loophole for every possible scientific objection to a spiritual essence of reality. In other words, I (a mere mortal being) can imagine a spiritual essence to reality that is indeed plausible even in the face of currently understood physics of spacetime, etc.
To say that science has "ruled out a spiritual essence of reality" is indeed an outright lie. It's simply untrue. In fact, any person who actually believes that is only displaying their own lack of cerebral creativity to be able to imagine a loophole around whatever it is they believe would limit spirit.
Gee whiz, even with our feeble and truly infantile spacetime-based science of physics we have opened up far more doors for a spiritual world than we have closed.
I've heard geneticists and biologists say things like, "Information requires form, without a physical form, there can be no information. Therefore there cannot exist a spiritual world outside of a physical world because there would be no way for that information to exist".
That actually already wrong even if the face of physics. Quantum Mechanics requires that information mysteriously exists in non-physical potentiality in the form of 'quantum fields' already. Thus the statements of geneticists and biologists who claim that information must have a physical form (like in DNA) is simply false.
Sure, physical forms are information, no doubt about that, but it's simply false to proclaim that information necessarily requires the physics of spacetime to exist. Even the Inflation theory of the Big Bang presumes that this mysterious quantum information preexisted that event. So science has far from ruled out that 'information' can exist outside of 'spacetime' as we think of it physically.
So it's wrong to proclaim that there is no "place" for a spiritual world to exist. It's wrong to even proclaim that science requires that all information has physical form in terms of spacetime. Spacetime itself may very well be supported by information beneath it for all we know. Our scientific theories certainly assume this to be the case anyway.
And then there's even the scientific speculation of multiple universes, etc. In fact Inflation theory predicts them. String theory predicts undetected physical dimensions where information can exist. Sure String Theory is currently nothing more than a fabric of mankind imagination. But lookie there! Even that is considered to be "scientific" and give respect as being a reasonable use of imagination.
Well, I don't know about other people. But I can very easily imagine a spiritual essence to reality even when considering every possible scientific limitation you can think of. To tell me that science has ruled out a spiritual essence to reality is truly laughable. That's just down right ignorant. And most certainly untrue.
Am I saying that a spiritual world then must necessarily exist?
No, not at all. Nor am I trying to sell anyone on that idea (save perhaps as an artistic expression in my signature line). But gee whiz shouldn't we all have the freedom of artistic expression even if the artwork is of a philosophical nature?
The only point I would like to get across to people is that a belief in a spiritual essence of reality is not unreasonable, and it most certainly hasn't been ruled out by our extremely limited understanding of the physics of spacetime.
Beings in a parallel universe may be watching us on their gravity TVs and laughing at us in thinking that we have 'ruled out' certain things. They are probably thinking to themselves, "You silly humans. I could reach into your universe anytime I want to and totally violate everything that you cherish as being a physical law. But fortunately for you I'm not going to do that because it would scare the hell out of you and disrupt your entire solar system as well, you cute little fragile things."
The critical error in your argument is that your spirituality should be the result of reality, not a way to fake it.
What you are arguing is that if a person can imagine the world in a particular way, then it is not unreasonable for him to believe in it under the guise of spirituality. Even if that world cannot be shown to be true, even if the very possible existence of that world contradicts what we know, it is still okay to believe in it.
The mistake is, here you are telling someone that it is okay to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. That it is okay to believe that the world he imagined exists and at the same time, believe that its existence is impossible. Or even worse, that it is okay to let of of belief in the real world in favor of an imaginary one.
That is not spirituality. That is religion and there can be no more efficient way to murder a man's spirit than that.
