What to believe......

I'm glad I am amusing you, Ifen. I like to amuse people.

I find your ideas interesting, but I don't understand them. I must confess I am a little impatient with what seems to me, perhaps in my ignorance, as incoherence. God really does exist, but on the other hand there is a sense in which he doesn't exist--that sort of thing.My literalism is a habit of mind.abe: I could probably identify where this "literalism" of mine came from, if it was any interest.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-25-2006 04:18 AM

Well, existence is very mysterious and the more it's explored the harder it is to understand. I keep repeating a few observations that have been key to me as access to the notion that existence is not what it appears to be. Heraclitus's metaphor of the river where he says, "You can't step in the same river twice." That is a paradox which makes sense but is challenging.I haven't discovered yet who then said that if Heraclitus was correct you can't even step in the same river once. In this universe of flux how do we grasp the notion of identity? What is a thing? Are there even things? I tend to try and remember that there are only processes that we isolate segments of and in effect "freeze" with our language by naming. Recall Buckminister Fuller saying, "I seem to be a verb"?So when is an apple? When it's budding? blooming? ripening? rotting? seeding? sprouting? When are you? Thus the Zen koan "Show me your original face before your mother and father were born". Apples seems to me to be a "name" that is a word we call a segment of a process that our process can interact with in "eating".Nouns give us the comfort that THINGS exist and yet when we examine the universe all we find are processes, a great kaliedoscope that shifts sometimes on the scale of microseconds all the way to millions of years.We are entranced by our language into believing that THINGS exist. The power of nominalization. Korzbiski or Wittgenstein among others examine these notions in the more familiar western analytic model. The East used a different approach dealing with the same insights.Got to go started on my day. Second day in a row I've burnt my cereal my getting too involved in replying on this forum. Guess I'll have to stop checking my email or checking in here while my cereal is cooking.I'd like to hear your thoughts on your literalism.lfen

I can see where one might have a problem pinning down when we call a thing an apple and when we call it whatever comes before the apple. I suppose the same would apply to a human embryo or anything else. Stability, I suppose. So we won't get dizzy. My "literalism," I think, may have something to do with the way I write or rather try to write. I think it dates back to my days in graduate school when I had to read a lot of what seemed to me extremely pretentious, allusive, and obscure essays by these academic literary critics that were so praised. I didn't like them, and I vowed I would never write like that if I could overcome the influence. I wanted to write as plainly and as clearly as I possibly could. If I had what I thought was a clever idea in my mind, in the old days I would wrap it in allusive circumlocution to make it sound impressive. It took me a while to get it through my head that this circumlocution really meant I didn't really understand what I thought I wanted to say. So I kept working on the plainness and the clarity. It could be that my prose style influenced my ideas.abe: It could be, that in what almost amounts to an emotional need to be very, very clear, I over-simplify.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-25-2006 03:01 PMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-25-2006 03:31 PM

No Probs,Infinity and the mind was the other text I was thinking about.If you can get your hands on a copy of white light do so and read it...then read it again... great book, a little whimsical, but at its heart it's about the search for god.

Clarity is good. What I keep doing is stressing that the map is not the territory. A good clear map is a very useful tool but don't confuse the map with what you are mapping. I still think you might find Korzybski or one of the other general semanticists of interest.That your model or map within it's system leads to conclusion of nihilism doesn't mean that nihilism is real. What I'm saying is that nihilism is an artifact of your mapping system. Think of Zeno's paradoxes. He demonstrated that nothing can move. Yet clearly things did move. It wasn't until the development of the calculus that the model developed enough sophistication to represent movement without paradox.Good models, maps, etc. are very very important but my claim is we run into troubles when we do what Korzybski calls confusion of levels of abstraction. Clarity also entails keeping those levels of abstraction delineated clearly.lfen

My own desire to move something with my mind has yielded (so far) nothing at all.
Instead of keeping this thread going, I'll stop posting the lack of results (so far) here, and will continue doing so at home.As far as my question, 'what do I believe', that may take a lifetime to sort out. After lurking here for some time, I have pretty much determined that I am probably an atheist that feels a strong connection to the beliefs in paganism, yet not on any spiritual level.May change in awhile, who knows.

Maybe, it isn't so much as the belief as the journey. In the mean time, in honor of your indecision, I will post a poem by Ogdan Nash.

quote:

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The Seven Spiritual Ages of Mrs. Marmaduke Moore
by Ogden Nash

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Mrs. Marmaduke Moore, at the age of ten

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(Her name was Jemima Jevons then),

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Was the quaintest of little country maids.

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Her pigtails slapped on her shoulderblades ;

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She fed the chickens, and told the truth

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And could spit like a boy through a broken tooth.

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She could climb a tree to the topmost perch,

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And she used to pray in the Methodist church.

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At the age of twenty her heart was pure,

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And she caught the fancy of Mr. Moore.

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He broke his troth (to a girl named Alice),

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And carried her off to his city palace,

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Where she soon forgot her childhood piety

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And joined the orgies of high society.

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Her voice grew English, or , say, Australian,

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And she studied to be an Episcopalian.

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At thirty our lives are still before us,

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But Mr. Moore had a friend in the chorus.

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Connubial bliss was overthrown

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And Mrs. Moore now slumbered alone.

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Hers was a nature that craved affection;

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She gave herself up to introspection;

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Then finding theosophy rather dry,

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Found peace in the sweet Bahai and Bahai.

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Forty! and still an abandoned wife,

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She felt old urges stirring to life,

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She dipped her locks in a bowl of henna

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And booked a passage through to Vienna.

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She paid a professor a huge emolument

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To demonstrate what his ponderous volumes meant.

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Returning she preached to the unemployed

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The gospel according to St. Freud.

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Fifty! she haunted museums and galleries,

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And pleased young men by augmenting their salaries .

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Oh, it shouldn't occur, but it does occur,

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That poets are made by fools like her.

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Her salon was full of frangipani,

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Roumanian, Russian and Hindustani,

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And she conquered par as well as bogey

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By reading a book and going Yogi.

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Sixty! and time was on her hands----

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Maybe remorse and maybe glands.

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She felt a need for free confession

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To publish each youthful indiscretion,

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And before she was gathered to her mothers,

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To compare her sinlets with those of others,

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Mrs. Moore gave a joyous whoop,

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And immersed herself in the Oxford group.

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That is the story of Mrs. Moore,

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As far as it goes. But of this I'm sure ---

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When seventy stares her in the face

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She'll have found some other state of grace.

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Mohammed may be her lord and master,

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Or Zeus, or Mithros, or Zoroaster,

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For when a lady is badly sexed

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God knows what God is coming next.

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Nice poem; very insightful.
In the words of the immortal Rush:"The point of the journey is not to arrive" - Prime Mover