Comments on: The materialist worldview (3 of 5)

By: Frank Chilelli

Frank Chilelli — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 18:45:21 +0000

More of a question. Where or how did the notion or concept of numbers derive from throughout human history? Is it related to our material world or is math innate in the human mind?

By: Gerry

Gerry — Thu, 24 Jul 2003 00:23:34 +0000

Haven’t been back in a while. Not a saint, just a crazy tech head. For me, HTML is a very simple language. And yes, I’ll eventually get some blog software, but frankly I haven’t had the time to do the research, and my current hosting is pretty primative. If I don’t, I’ll have to HTMLize my wife’s blog entries too if I get her to start blogging.

Maybe slashcode or a derivative. Was just reading about Indy Media and their content management stuff.

By: chutney

chutney — Fri, 18 Jul 2003 16:28:55 +0000

I think http://www.guardian.co.uk had a copy too, most of a month ago now. You’re a saint, Gerry, for blogging without a blog engine. Ever think about moving to Blogger or MorableType?

By: Gerry

Gerry — Fri, 18 Jul 2003 15:51:39 +0000

Interesting about the neurological studies of spiritual practices. “Altered states” of consciousness is the core of spiritual experience. I’ve read a fair amount in this area. I particularly liked John Lilly’s The Center of the Cyclone : An Autobiography of Inner Space, and a couple of books by Leary. The blanket supression of all psyco-active drugs can be viewed as both an intrusion on religion and spiritual practice, and a usurpation of the authority of physicians in determining the theraputic uses of these substances.

Just another aspect of the culture wars as the AG goes after medical marijuana by any means available. Cheating the legal and political processes is ok if you have God on your side.

By: Gerry

Gerry — Fri, 18 Jul 2003 15:34:56 +0000

Thanks for the “brights” link, although I didn’t read the NYT piece because I didn’t want to bother with the login.

I disagree with automatically connecting it with atheism, but it is compatible with atheism. Perhaps it is inclusive of religions that accept atheists and all other “compatible” religions as having more or less equal truth status. It is the admission that none of us as mortal beings has access to ultimate truth, and there is a vast space of acceptable belief systems. This is a stance that grants authority to the individual to choose an ethical system, whether informed by spiritual practice or a more objective philosophy. The limits of what is acceptable is defined by the point at which you try to impose your beliefs on me by force.

By: chutney

chutney — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 15:27:10 +0000

By the way, the "Brights" meme is floating around again. Seems this worldview is the Bright worldview.

By: chutney

chutney — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 02:19:26 +0000

Gerry,

The last article I ran across (a couple or three years ago now) said that different mystical practices activate different parts of the brain. Some just reproduced regular brain patterns, others were more unique. Not being much of a neuroscientist, I won’t speculate what that means. But it’s gotta mean something, right?

Like you said over at Wealth Bondage, the doctrine of the Incarnation seems a negation of the flesh/spirit distinction, or in the least places that negation as the ideal. I can’t vouch for the unique historicity of that Incarnation, but I take the point all the same. Flesh/spirit distinction don’t hold in the end, and those who advance the distinction are suspect.

I want to know what they purveyors of scientism get from their worldview — besides feeling superior to fundamentalists and rubes. Does it help them in any way that others might describe as spiritual? Or is it just the only available worldview they’ve found?

I was raised into the ancient worldview, and I saw and experienced things that showed the materialist worldview to be false. I stayed in the worldview longer than I might have if I’d just known of a third alternative. Perhaps the same is true of materialists?

By: Gerry

Gerry — Thu, 17 Jul 2003 01:17:14 +0000

Do you really think that “virtually identified with the scientific point of view, even though the new physics has moved beyond materialism into a reenchanted universe.”

This is close to my view, but I really doubt it is held by a majority of scientists or physicists. In my view, it originates in the failure of the positivists program to deductively work out a complete mathematical picture of the world. First, there is the physical uncertainty at small scales, then there is the intractability of the mathematics of dynamic systems (chaos, etc.). If the “spiritual world” is to have any actuality about it, then it must be connected with the physical universe, and if it is connected, then there is an unnecessary dualism in creating a seperation between heaven and earth. What you are left with is a unified universe that contains mysteries, and perhaps paradoxes and multiple “true” interpretations. The only way out is to appeal to an omniscient position that we as mortals have no access to.

Speculatively, there may be ways to transcend our physical limitations and contact deeper substrates of reality through “mystical practices”. I’m no expert, but there is enough consistency in the reports of spiritual sojourners of diverse traditions to suggest the existence of “ways to knowledge” beyond what is available to objective scientific practice. There are difficulties with this approach, but they are not insurmountable. Even scientific knowledge is grounded ultimately in the subjective observations grounded in the work practices of a community of investigators. If you can find commonalities in the reports from diverse spiritual traditions it seems to me that this is even better verification of the findings (independently ariving at the same results from different perspectives is a good measure of truth).

On the other hand, we may just be looking at the reflections of the deepest levels of our psyche, and the results may just be mapping our minds and psychology, but I don’t think it is such a great leap to postulate immaterial structures of greater complexity, scope and intellegence than our human minds.