Can we agree on truth if Science explains is?

[Lunitik]

such an attitude seems to be a rather serious impediment to conversation and the raison d'etre of the forum.

I am interested in experience, what use are views and ideas? I am attempting to share my experience with others. If your statements aren't factual, if they do not align with truth, they are just noise. It is an utter waste of time reading rambles related to a given view.

 

[A Cup Of Tea]

I am interested in experience, what use are views and ideas? I am attempting to share my experience with others. If your statements aren't factual, if they do not align with truth, they are just noise. It is an utter waste of time reading rambles related to a given view.

Yes, in my opinion you are very negative, you aren't interested in anything that doesn't fit into what you believe. You are closed of and are no longer susceptible to new things, you have stagnated and are beyond growth.
I do not believe anything I say will change you and I understand that you believe you have perfect understanding of what is relevant and not. I am, once again, only sharing my opinion for your benefit.
I am still young and have a very limited understanding of the world, but I think this can be positive in a way. I listen to most, even when their views don't match my own. Like with you, in my experience there is no such thing as enlightenment and nothing points to there being a single truth, only perspectives of truth. But some of the things you say can still be relevant to my point of view, and I wish to understand you and people in general. I wish to build bridges and create understanding.

Do you understand my definition of negative in this instance?

 

[radarmark]

A Cup of Tea --

Wow! You use negative and experience quite well. I believe that AN Whitehead, who built a who philosophy on experience would agree with you. See, his use oif experience was both limited (there being close a an infinate number of experiences ocurring at once) and eternal (there being not but experiences). I reject the notion of ideas not being experiences (how do I a single idea without experiencing it). I also reject the notion that there exists some Truth or Fact laying around that we can compare everything to (just look at the many contradictory statements by eye-witnesses to crimes). It is all a matter of possibilities or probabilities with greater or lesser experiences to support them.

P.S. sometimes bridges are not possible, two individuals can speak past each other.

 

[luecy7]

Yes, every cell has the most sublime orgasm you can imagine, this is what I have termed "ecstasy" in that statement. Most materialists chase sex because of its quality of ecstasy, but it cannot compare to that felt on the spiritual pursuits culmination. Mocking is very easy, but it only displays your ignorance of the experience. There is nothing wrong with that, but to mock what you do not understand is very closed minded.

Many will tell you that enlightenment utilizes the life energy, this is actually the sex energy. In its lowest form it is very centralized when it explodes, but at its highest quality it cannot be imagined.

Nope, I am not mocking. I am drawing a comparison to your motive, and to your results. I have been referring to the pursuit as mental masturbation for a good reason.

I have meditated. I am content being ignorant of many forms of ecstasy, especially the drug induced ones, and I have zero shame in that. If your pursuit were with what you could experience using heroin, I would be saying the same thing, and you could more accurately accuse me of being ignorant. You are clearly devoted to the personal pursuit of what you view is a good experience.

If the lizard on the wall can sense you and read your thoughts, and you can sense the lizard and read its thoughts, then it seems you have achieved something of a step towards oneness with a lizard.

 

[A Cup Of Tea]

A Cup of Tea --

Wow! You use negative and experience quite well. I believe that AN Whitehead, who built a who philosophy on experience would agree with you. See, his use oif experience was both limited (there being close a an infinate number of experiences ocurring at once) and eternal (there being not but experiences). I reject the notion of ideas not being experiences (how do I a single idea without experiencing it). I also reject the notion that there exists some Truth or Fact laying around that we can compare everything to (just look at the many contradictory statements by eye-witnesses to crimes). It is all a matter of possibilities or probabilities with greater or lesser experiences to support them.

P.S. sometimes bridges are not possible, two individuals can speak past each other.

Thank you, and thank you for Whitehead, I wikied him and he seems interesting at first glance so I will look into it more in the morning.
And I agree with you on the bridging, I think that happens a lot in this place. But it's still a win when you succeed.

 

[Lunitik]

Yes, in my opinion you are very negative, you aren't interested in anything that doesn't fit into what you believe. You are closed of and are no longer susceptible to new things, you have stagnated and are beyond growth.
I do not believe anything I say will change you and I understand that you believe you have perfect understanding of what is relevant and not. I am, once again, only sharing my opinion for your benefit.
I am still young and have a very limited understanding of the world, but I think this can be positive in a way. I listen to most, even when their views don't match my own. Like with you, in my experience there is no such thing as enlightenment and nothing points to there being a single truth, only perspectives of truth. But some of the things you say can still be relevant to my point of view, and I wish to understand you and people in general. I wish to build bridges and create understanding.

Do you understand my definition of negative in this instance?

Again, I do not believe anything, my statements correlate to truth. Would you be interested in hearing how the sky consists of yellow and purple polka dots when you can see clearly it is blue? It simply isn't interesting, no matter how convincing the rationale for the polka dots.

Do you think I would want to believe that everything I have ever done for myself is utterly wrong? That fundamentally, I am not an individual at all, this is quite a disheartening realization at first. Truth does not care about your opinion, though, it simply is.

 

[Lunitik]

Nope, I am not mocking. I am drawing a comparison to your motive, and to your results. I have been referring to the pursuit as mental masturbation for a good reason.

I have meditated. I am content being ignorant of many forms of ecstasy, especially the drug induced ones, and I have zero shame in that. If your pursuit were with what you could experience using heroin, I would be saying the same thing, and you could more accurately accuse me of being ignorant. You are clearly devoted to the personal pursuit of what you view is a good experience.

If the lizard on the wall can sense you and read your thoughts, and you can sense the lizard and read its thoughts, then it seems you have achieved something of a step towards oneness with a lizard.

Everything beneficial in this life feels good, I did not choose this, it simply is the case. Drugs are popular because they induce an aspect of realization, but it is quite false. Still, the soul is contented briefly because it recognizes what has happened instinctively.

You seem to be apposed to things which feel good, you seem to be of the opinion that if it feels good it must be a sin. You will die though, so why not experience as many good feelings as you can during your time here?

We are on this plain to experience what it has to offer, not to see how much we can avoid.

 

[Vajradhara]

I am interested in experience, what use are views and ideas? I am attempting to share my experience with others. If your statements aren't factual, if they do not align with truth, they are just noise. It is an utter waste of time reading rambles related to a given view.

views and ideas are how humans communicate. such seems self evident and so i'm really perplexed at the seeming need to make it explicit.

you've not defined your idea of truth and without having done so it is, as you so astutely observe, just noise.

i cannot imagine why you conflate the ideas of "fact" and "truth" since they are not the same...yet... your continued use of those terms interchangeably seems to indicate that your understand of the term "truth" is "that which is factual." you can, you know, just state that is so and thus a conversation could develop.

yes, i understand, you are not interested in conversations or exchanging ideas or information with others. you are, by the way, not the first self professed prophet or enlightened being that has frequented the forum and found their pontificating not well received.

it is, naturally, up to you.

not to be pedantic about it however this is a discussion forum.

metta,

~v

 

[luecy7]

Everything beneficial in this life feels good, I did not choose this, it simply is the case.

Interesting belief. Does your experience back up your claim? Everything beneficial feels good?

Drugs are popular because they induce an aspect of realization, but it is quite false. Still, the soul is contented briefly because it recognizes what has happened instinctively.

So drugs feel good, but they are not beneficial. Yet, you say everything beneficial feels good. No other possibilities with the Venn diagram?

You seem to be apposed to things which feel good, you seem to be of the opinion that if it feels good it must be a sin.

Your measure of my opinion appears fabricated.

You will die though, so why not experience as many good feelings as you can during your time here?

You advise that I store up pleasures and treasures here to live it up? Is that what you do?

We are on this plain to experience what it has to offer, not to see how much we can avoid.

That is a purpose that you ascribe to your life. Why do you pretend to ascribe it to others?

 

[Paladin]

views and ideas are how humans communicate. such seems self evident and so i'm really perplexed at the seeming need to make it explicit.

you've not defined your idea of truth and without having done so it is, as you so astutely observe, just noise.

i cannot imagine why you conflate the ideas of "fact" and "truth" since they are not the same...yet... your continued use of those terms interchangeably seems to indicate that your understand of the term "truth" is "that which is factual." you can, you know, just state that is so and thus a conversation could develop.

yes, i understand, you are not interested in conversations or exchanging ideas or information with others. you are, by the way, not the first self professed prophet or enlightened being that has frequented the forum and found their pontificating not well received.

it is, naturally, up to you.

not to be pedantic about it however this is a discussion forum.

metta,

~v

Boy ain't that the truth, we sure have seen our share over the last few years haven't we?

 

[radarmark]

Vajradhara and Luecy7,

Brava, you are entitled to your own opinions. I believe what you two and I consider the meaning of "truth" and "fact" and "experience" and "beneficial" as something quite different from Lunitik. Some people just have to put blinkers on.

Consider this, I just read something by someone named Maitreya Ishwara (if I were enlightened I certainly would not choose something so pretentious--look up Theosophy and Krisnamurti and the Sanskirt). God is all-knowing, all pervasive, and there is no choice because it wirtes our tale. Dig, if the Universe is 14 billion years old and the number of particles is 10E+87, that is 10 to the power of 10 with 86 zeroes behind it (see Hitchikers Guide, "DON'T PANIC! Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is.") and each particles can transition every Planck time unit (10E-47 seconds... ditto DON'T PANIC, just know it is really, really small), then there are 8.0 E +118 (or there abouts-all it a Purvi, an archane Jain term for the age of the universe, my number is acually a little smaller) quantum events God would have had to preordian. That's if the standard model of QM is true. If the "many-worlds" theory of QM (or any of several technically related approaches), that becomes that many universes created from just this universe--which increases Gods planning to something like 1E 14000 preordained events.

The real simple choice is that Einstein was wrong, God does play dice,and those events are just that, events (interminate and indeterminable), like QM hypothesizes.

The point of all of this is that scientific method and logic and experience can be used to bound problems of metaphysics (and belief and spirituality, the topic of this forum) to lay bare the problems that unlie unsupported claim of subjective opinions. Now, the problem is do you believe one approach more than another, and do you hava ample justification for that?

For instance, the Greek translation of the Old Testament truely is flawed, and includes books which the Jews never accepted as canon. The Eastern Orthodox (and other groups like Ethiopeans and Oriental Orthodox) get around this by saying "the Lord made spoke directly to the 70 sages" (something attributed to a couple of non-Hebrew Jews, Philo and Jospephus). It is a matter of faith that the text is perfect. Fine, our Orthodox friends and I can define the terms so that out discussion is based on a knowledge of that each believe. No right, no wrong, just of difference of beliefs.

 

[Dream]

(see Hitchikers Guide, "DON'T PANIC! Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is.")

Its super big. Really, really big.

The real simple choice is that Einstein was wrong, God does play dice,and those events are just that, events (interminate and indeterminable), like QM hypothesizes.

Quantum mechanics is about building probability models, and Hitchhiker's Guide loves to make fun of that with its Improbability Drive and random strange events. Just want to comment that statistics and probabilities are used to model quantum events for lack of a better method. Probabilities depend upon the concept we call randomness. We don't know what randomness is, except that a sequence is random because we don't understand its order. The problem with randomness is that all things actually could be related. We define them to be unrelated by calling them random.

Hitchhiker's Guide loves to play with that. The narrator constantly goes off on explorations of this subject. For example: an apartment phone number Arthur uses just happens to correspond to the improbability that Ford and Arthur will be rescued from a particular sector of space at a particular time.

 

[Lunitik]

views and ideas are how humans communicate. such seems self evident and so i'm really perplexed at the seeming need to make it explicit.

Weird, I thought humans communicated with language. Views and ideas are only a small part of communication, most of the time, we actually avoid views and ideas because they complicate matters - people prefer something much less serious.

you've not defined your idea of truth and without having done so it is, as you so astutely observe, just noise.

I have, you have merely not noticed. I have said all is ultimately one, and duality is merely the manifest gross aspect of the oneness. It is not correct to say this is an illusion, but it is not the highest reality either.

i cannot imagine why you conflate the ideas of "fact" and "truth" since they are not the same...yet... your continued use of those terms interchangeably seems to indicate that your understand of the term "truth" is "that which is factual." you can, you know, just state that is so and thus a conversation could develop.

Please elaborate how fact and truth differ, please state something which is truth but not fact.

yes, i understand, you are not interested in conversations or exchanging ideas or information with others. you are, by the way, not the first self professed prophet or enlightened being that has frequented the forum and found their pontificating not well received.

I have said I am a prophet? A prophet is merely a delusional witness of the light. They believe themselves special, but it is because they do not realize this is possible for all people. I intend to show people the light, for what use is discussion about it when the other does not comprehend? If I can manage to show, I do not have to talk about it. There is only a necessity to discuss when the other refuses to allow the condition to manifest in themselves.

You put down my reluctance to hold meaningless conversation, yet you have not attempted the methods I have highlighted for discovery of this condition in yourself. I have expressed the very method that has brought me to the light in this thread, yet you insist on continuing pointless discussion and trying to make my out to be high and mighty.

To be clear, I have experienced enlightenment, and I am saying you can as well. I am not saying I am special, I am one of the most ordinary people you could meet - yet it has happened to me because I have been open to its occurrence.

 

[Lunitik]

Interesting belief. Does your experience back up your claim? Everything beneficial feels good?

Sex brings life, "mental masturbation" brings direct experience of reality.

So drugs feel good, but they are not beneficial. Yet, you say everything beneficial feels good. No other possibilities with the Venn diagram?

I have said nothing about drugs not being beneficial, they are neither good or bad, I have only said that they bring a hint of something higher while paling in comparison.

Your measure of my opinion appears fabricated.

My statements about your opinions are based on what you have expressed to me, if your genuine opinions differ from that which you have presented to me then you are a hypocrite or lack communication skills.

You advise that I store up pleasures and treasures here to live it up? Is that what you do?

Do you think it is saintly to run from pleasures?

Treasures are worthless, I have not raised this topic. Treasures are merely a representation of materialism. They represent one extreme, just as asceticism and renunciation represent another. We must accept all aspects of life, but placing emphasis on such as this is flawed.

That is a purpose that you ascribe to your life. Why do you pretend to ascribe it to others?

This is not a life, this is a character playing a part. Difference between you and I is I understand I am playing a role. This probably seems against my last statement, but it is not. We are here to enjoy what is available, we can enjoy more if we understand it is all a game.

 

[radarmark]

Dream --

I understand your point. However there is an alternative to "The problem with randomness is that all things actually could be related. We define them to be unrelated by calling them random". The alternative is a literal reading of the Bell inequality and the Aspect (and others') experiments -- they are not related.

This is, again as with most metaphysical topics, a matter of personal belief (what we think is so with the caveat that we have sufficent grounds). Most physicists believe in many-worlds theory (or some variant thereof), a few believe in a deterministic hidden-variables theory (Bohmian approach), the remainder for the most part just say (like I) the experiments are straightforward and therefore random QM events are just that, random.

I personally have never liked the many-worlds approach (block universes and the co-existence of all times conflict with my experiences). The other two I have toyed with.... I kinda favor the non-Bohmian at the present time. Closure of this obscure debate is probably awaiting a grand unified field theory that is validated as well as verified (is testable in the universe as well as consistent). Strings versus Quantum Gravity is where I think the answer will come from.

Does that make sense? I am not disagreeing with you on facts, only which side of the deeper issue we are on.

Pax et amor vincunt omnia, radarmark

 

[Vajradhara]

Boy ain't that the truth, we sure have seen our share over the last few years haven't we?

indeed we certainly have!

i'll give lunitik credit for his/her tenacity however

metta,

~v

 

[Vajradhara]

Vajradhara and Luecy7,

Brava, you are entitled to your own opinions. I believe what you two and I consider the meaning of "truth" and "fact" and "experience" and "beneficial" as something quite different from Lunitik. Some people just have to put blinkers on.

i would say that you are correct in this view. as near as i can tell lunitik is advocating monolithic wholeness of reality which simply isn't so and both science and my religious view inform me of this.

i fully accept that new information may change my view within both fields regarding the nature of reality however it is my view that learning new things is actually beneficial.

That's if the standard model of QM is true. If the "many-worlds" theory of QM (or any of several technically related approaches), that becomes that many universes created from just this universe--which increases Gods planning to something like 1E 14000 preordained events.

i favor the Copenhagen interpretation of QM and, naturally, don't hold a belief in a creator deity.

The point of all of this is that scientific method and logic and experience can be used to bound problems of metaphysics (and belief and spirituality, the topic of this forum) to lay bare the problems that unlie unsupported claim of subjective opinions. Now, the problem is do you believe one approach more than another, and do you hava ample justification for that?

i think so but then i imagine that what qualifies for "ample justification" would significantly vary from being to being. i prefer the many-worlds view since that echos the Buddhist teachings on the subject. i readily concede that my view would be different if my view were different

within relation to my tradition, whilst not every Buddhist follows His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he made the point that if science were to demonstrate that some aspect of the Buddha's teachings were incorrect, Buddhism would have to change to incorporate the information. it is interesting to contemplate how many other religious traditions are so directly open to have having their teachings altered by the facts of the universe which science lays bare.

metta,

~v

 

[Dream]

Radarmark, that was interesting. I'm going enjoy finding out what the Bell inequality and Aspect experiments are. The rest of your post was understood, though not in depth. I don't feel comfy with the infinite universes either. I heard a rumor that string theory had been mostly abandoned or altered, and that's all I know about it. Quantum Gravity -- why not?

 

[Vajradhara]

Weird, I thought humans communicated with language. Views and ideas are only a small part of communication, most of the time, we actually avoid views and ideas because they complicate matters - people prefer something much less serious.

language is used to communicate ideas.

I have, you have merely not noticed. I have said all is ultimately one, and duality is merely the manifest gross aspect of the oneness. It is not correct to say this is an illusion, but it is not the highest reality either.

this is your definition of truth?

i wonder if you would be able to demonstrate this to be so? i can demonstrate that what you say is not so in a variety of manners both scientific and Buddhist. why, for instance, would any being need to do anything if, as you assert, all is one? since *you* have attained what you claim ipso facto we are all participating in your experience as well and we should all equally claim to be enlightened and to feel this enlightenment as well.

Please elaborate how fact and truth differ, please state something which is truth but not fact.

it is a fact that some beings claim to be enlightened.

it is true that enlightened beings do not claim to be enlightened.

I have said I am a prophet? A prophet is merely a delusional witness of the light. They believe themselves special, but it is because they do not realize this is possible for all people. I intend to show people the light, for what use is discussion about it when the other does not comprehend? If I can manage to show, I do not have to talk about it. There is only a necessity to discuss when the other refuses to allow the condition to manifest in themselves.

i think you missed the forest for the trees there.

You put down my reluctance to hold meaningless conversation, yet you have not attempted the methods I have highlighted for discovery of this condition in yourself. I have expressed the very method that has brought me to the light in this thread, yet you insist on continuing pointless discussion and trying to make my out to be high and mighty.

i think you do not need my help for this. further, i'm unclear how you have access to my privileged mental states and, in my view, more apropos is that i'm not interested in enlightenment in the least bit. i'm a Buddhist so i'm keen on what the Buddha taught which, though commonly glossed in the West as "enlightenment" is nothing of the sort. the Buddha taught how to become Awake and attain Liberation and i hope you don't think less of me for choosing to follow the Buddha's own teachings on this rather than yours.

To be clear, I have experienced enlightenment, and I am saying you can as well. I am not saying I am special, I am one of the most ordinary people you could meet - yet it has happened to me because I have been open to its occurrence.

i have no interest in such endeavors, thank you.

metta,

~v

 

[radarmark]

Dream, kudus for you acctance. Bell's inequality refers to a paper by John Bell circa mid-century looking at the EPR paradox (Einstien's last serious effort to defeat the anti-Einsteinian monster his quanta had given rise to) and stating what would have to be true if non-locality ("spooky-action-at-a-distance") were true. In the early 80s Alain Aspect tested the inequality and validated it (to some extent).

A short trip to "Bell's Theorem" and "Bell test experiments" at wiki should suffice. I like Quantum Entanglement -- or Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness which I find a very good popularized read (not too "out there" and not incorrect) and most libraries have it.

Pax et amor vincunt omnia radarmark