A New Smear Article: Interpreter Targets Givens and Hauglid

[Kishkumen]

If we don't know if a spiritual experience is outside of ourselves or not, then that'd be one of the points I've raised here. We couldn't validate any claimed experience to be anything other than a person imagining or hoping or dreaming or many other things occurring in our brains. But, as an obvious sounding example for us, if Joseph S thought his dreaming of God and Jesus really was God has a real special work for him to do and then he in time takes advantage and practices polygamy among the many other exploitations he practiced, then that is the type of risk I'm alluding to. It doesn't always result in good if one imagines God has a special message that we can't find other than inside us in "spirituality".

In other words, being a materialist who might be open to the divine but is waiting for it to be demonstrated according to materialist methods and standards, you downgrade the importance of human imagination, hopes, and dreams. It is all just the flotsam and jetsam of the brain, so nothing to be overly concerned about, and certainly something dangerous to take seriously. So, I completely disagree with you, and I find your ideology to be anti-human. I don’t mean that as a knock on you, or anyone else who shares your opinion. I just find the total reliance on material tools and methods to be astoundingly narrow given the incredibly narrow lens these things provide to the totality of existence. If an ideology rejects much of what makes us human, then it is insufficient to account for our condition and guide us to a better place.

Moreover, it just seems odd to me to say that, given our human limitations, we should distrust much of what we experience in the world and narrow down our sense of reality to a razor-thin slice of phenomena.

But that seems to be where our intellectual history has landed us for the moment. We are all there, even many of the so-called religious. I think it is a substandard place to be, but I would be arrogant to say that I have a lot better to offer. I don’t.

Calling it spirituality is another part of the problem. We have no verification of a spirit realm. Its simply assumed...because we want it to be there. And treating it other than "this makes me feel good every so often" seems to be a problem. For the most part, such a mindset might not do any damage...but as we let it persist eventually it'll burn us. The problem here is this isn't limited to religion, at least not to religion as conventionally seen. I think we're all much better off in sticking to what is rational rather than pretending slight moves into the superstitious isn't going to matter.

Again, we don’t have a materialist verification of the spiritual realm. My magnifying glass is doing a crap job of detecting radio waves too. What I think is going on here is that the totality of things is much more vast than we are capable of understanding with our finite minds and methods. We get little glimpses of something more, and people who look hard can get stronger intimations of other things going on, but, yes, I don’t know that we will harness spirituality as effectively as we can harness the energy of the atom, or what have you. That does not make it pointless, stupid, or bad either.

A spiritual mindset will eventually burn us? Our materialist mindset is in fact burning us right now. It is called global warning, and it is almost exclusively due to our lopsided materialist way of approaching the world. We demand more things, and we will ruin the planet to get them. That is not a gift of Christianity or Hinduism. It is a gift of capitalism and materialism.

But as you suggest it's a steep and unending uphill battle. It'll never end because people really really want something more. They want a better place than others in the end. They want to be made to feel special. And we have to wonder if any amount of reasoning will ever bring the majority around.

You make that all sound so bad. Maybe it is just misdirected but not inherently bad.

[Kishkumen]

Pivotal moments like McVeigh and 9/11 played a part in the so called new atheists rise. However , Mormonism's decline seems to be rooted in historical claims being uncovered. And as usual it wasn't the crime it was the coverup.

So, yes, there are lots of factors involved, and I appreciate you bringing up more. But when I am talking about a new religio-phobia, I don’t think that Google can take much of the credit. Simply finding out that you were given a carefully curated set of facts does not make you allergic to religion in the way stem’s thinking manifests. So, we are talking about separate but related things. You are talking about what makes people disillusioned with one church, while I am talking about what makes people reject an entire way of looking at the world down to things like personal epistemology.

[Rivendale]

Pivotal moments like McVeigh and 9/11 played a part in the so called new atheists rise. However , Mormonism's decline seems to be rooted in historical claims being uncovered. And as usual it wasn't the crime it was the coverup.

So, yes, there are lots of factors involved, and I appreciate you bringing up more. But when I am talking about a new religio-phobia, I don’t think that Google can take much of the credit. Simply finding out that you were given a carefully curated set of facts does not make you allergic to religion in the way stem’s thinking manifests. So, we are talking about separate but related things. You are talking about what makes people disillusioned with one church, while I am talking about what makes people reject an entire way of looking at the world down to things like personal epistemology.

I see. Thank you for the clarification. The winds of the soul that one thinks comes from an external source competing against a naturalistic framework that claims it is merely subterranean mind vat of possible ideas. Stating that the brain merely provides the reservoir and nature provides the darwinian survival of ideas must be a real pebble in the shoe for believers.

[Philo Sofee]

If I may, I think there is a seed herein with what you say which was developed in the Jewish Zohar. It's antiquity is truly and quite literally irrelevant to its having a sensational manner of breaking us out of a box of thinking, and almost, as it were, forcing us to view what scripture says from an entirely foreign yet productive perspective, one that is, quite frankly, seriously uncomfortable at first. It's almost ludicrous how they do it completely disregarding the context, historically, spiritually, and psychologically, almost against all reason. There is simply no reality to it. And yet... and yet, it grows on you and it really does speak in a manner you haven't experienced ever before. All the sudden they say something truly just idiotic and outrageous, and that triggers a memory of a scripture which you look up, and now you will never see it as you did before. It has grown and changed and developed in a way it never, ever, ever would have had you not been jarred out of your comfortable experience with the scripture. And now, you really are a different (perhaps new) kind of thinker! Now you recognize hey, that scripture I used to link with one of those in Isaiah, I wonder what the Isaiah scripture looks like now. You read it in light of the jarring lightning bolt comment in the Zohar and all the sudden you see a connection that just YELLS at you HEY!

Now... now you ask just why did the rabbi make such a warped interpretation of the original scripture? It absolutely has no reality in textual criticism or biblical archaeology or Mormon spirituality or what-have-you. It surely changed now how I grasp this Isaiah scripture. You do some gematria and all the sudden another word that there is no bloody way in all get out you would ever imagine having anything at all to do with the scripture you just read, but the gematria (which was the outrageously silly thing the Zohar began all this with) matches so you pursue the lead a bit just for fun. And weirdly enough, some word Jesus spoke in the New Testament comes to mind in a different way, and it just continues to unfold, expand, and get you all worked up. So you keep track by writing down the new "scripture chase" connections with the Zohar commentary, and pretty soon you are reading entire dozens of scriptures in ways that you never ever even could have done so as a Mormon or as a Christian or as a Muslim, or even as a Jewish person, and the scriptures, oddly enough, begins to come alive for you.

And the totally loony thing is, you cannot tell anyone else what this is like. You experience this sensation or you don't. You take the time to explore and be rewarded with a real gem and jewel of ideas or meaning that others simply cannot have in relation to what you are having right at this moment. And yet it means nothing to others. Ironically, that is exactly as it is supposed to be. To me, that is the beginning of a kind of spirituality from the text.

And, ridiculous as it sounds, I actually do know this happens. I have done so multiple times. And I have no reason to try and explain it since it cannot be the same for another even if they go through that exact same process beginning at the same place in the Zohar and take off with any intellectual suggestions their mind tells them. And that has nothing to do with it being fake or unreal. Each and every single person is individual and simply do not have to have the same kind of experience or thought in order for it to uplift, enhance, and enrich our life. And that, I would propose is spirituality. It is letting the everyday drab and mundane things, including boring and worthless meanings in any scripture all the sudden take a drastic left turn and spring a wickedly weird surprise on you in your thoughts. You mull that over while all the sudden a Magpie dang near flies into you when you round a corner in the city and that experience too enhances your experience and wonder of it all. Why worry about explaining it all? That isn't where the meaning and joy is for an individual. Getting others to agree is entirely, fundamentally irrelevant and is entirely the wrong headed way to go about it. Which, I seem to sense is the sense of your own post.

And I do believe this ties into your wonderful post here! Thanks man.

It seems what Philo has described here is precisely what I'm talking about as well. I hate to poo poo personal meanings we all find and get excited about. I just don't think it's a great source of reality thinking. And I don't think the "spiritual" if thought of as something from outside us imposed upon us has much meaning. We often want these excitable, or thoughtful moments to mean much more than they do. We want our personal to be better than others. Or more important...or more insightful...or whatever. Nah...I'm much more into collaboration and the purposes we get out of it instead. The spiritual starts to sound more and more shallow to me the more I think about it.

Yeah, I get that. But I don't see how its shallow, perhaps I am just short sighted is all. But I do know when I feel better I AM able to make more exciting videos, so there is that...

[Kishkumen]

I see. Thank you for the clarification. The winds of the soul that one thinks comes from an external source competing against a naturalistic framework that claims it is merely subterranean mind vat of possible ideas. Stating that the brain merely provides the reservoir and nature provides the darwinian survival of ideas must be a real pebble in the shoe for believers.

So, the more I have learned about the sophistication of ancient thought regarding the nature of existence, and here I am mostly thinking of Neoplatonic thought, the more I see that today most of us are playing in a conceptual two-dimensional sandbox. When you say “external source” and “naturalistic framework,” all I can say is that is a limiting and simplistic framework. Left with that narrow range of possibilities, I see why we get trapped in this unproductive dichotomy, but I can tell you that the people who are familiar with a richer concept of the full range of possibilities don’t find the naturalistic model to be a “pebble in the shoe” so much as a stunning oversimplification.

[Philo Sofee]

Kishkumen
In other words, being a materialist who might be open to the divine but is waiting for it to be demonstrated according to materialist methods and standards, you downgrade the importance of human imagination, hopes, and dreams.

After all, eliminate imagination and we get absolutely *nothing.* Ever. Everything we have ever created began in the pure power of imagining it FIRST, then we created it. Imagination is the slighted part of humanity that gives the gift of spirituality, but as you so eloquently have pointed out, materialism won't let imagination in. So much the worse for it. It is a very very very VERY gosh dang VERY GREAT thing Einstein FIRST imagined what it would be like to ride on a photon, and only then grasped Relativity and light speed, etc. Without imagination, we would have no science, no philosophy, no mathematics, not to mention automobiles, computers or rockets and space stations and space telescopes, and surely this very best of our humanity ought not to be slighted simply because we can't point to it like we do trees, clouds, and mountain lakes with its flowers and wildlife, and therefore "imagine" it is unreal.

[Kishkumen]

After all, eliminate imagination and we get absolutely *nothing.* Ever. Everything we have ever created began in the pure power of imagining it FIRST, then we created it. Imagination is the slighted part of humanity that gives the gift of spirituality, but as you so eloquently have pointed out, materialism won't let imagination in. So much the worse for it. It is a very very very VERY gosh dang VERY GREAT thing Einstein FIRST imagined what it would be like to ride on a photon, and only then grasped Relativity and light speed, etc. Without imagination, we would have no science, no philosophy, no mathematics, not to mention automobiles, computers or rockets and space stations and space telescopes, and surely this very best of our humanity ought not to be slighted simply because we can't point to it like we do trees, clouds, and mountain lakes with its flowers and wildlife, and therefore "imagine" it is unreal.

Excellent point, Philo. I am continually impressed by your wisdom.

[Philo Sofee]

Kishkumen
Again, we don’t have a materialist verification of the spiritual realm. My magnifying glass is doing a crap job of detecting radio waves too. What I think is going on here is that the totality of things is much more vast than we are capable of understanding with our finite minds and methods. We get little glimpses of something more, and people who look hard can get stronger intimations of other things going on, but, yes, I don’t know that we will harness spirituality as effectively as we can harness the energy of the atom, or what have you. That does not make it pointless, stupid, or bad either.

This is, seriously, the strongest point I have ever read when it comes to spirituality and why it is so hard to grasp. We can't grasp the infinite as finite beings, but to outright deny the infinite is ludicrous. The finite presupposes the infinite or there simply could not be a coherent understand of what it means to be finite! Yet we do grasp it and its meaning. But we can't see any actual physical infinite it is screamed! Therefore it doesn't exist they say. Lol! I am reminded of the ancient Egyptian priest telling Plato you Greeks are like children playing on the beach enjoying a few colorful conch shells, star fish and bric-a-brac, but cannot fathom the magnificent total ocean! To deny that ocean is the height of idiotic arrogance. The only reason we today can say that absolutely is because we have a small measure of comprehension now of that outrageously gorgeous humongous ocean on our planet! Yet the real ocean is the one above our heads, of which is is conceded we have no more than a mere few single percentage points of grasping it... to deny the remaining 96% as being irrelevant or unreal is positively just ridiculous. A boatload of humility is the only way we will continue our learning. Once we humans get to the point that we think we really know, we stop learning. I can do no better than point to testimony owning Mormons as the obvious example of the problem of such inane and unrealistic certainty in what we both know, and can know, the "can know" being so overly vastly beyond our current ability to comprehend it is usually just turned off by a materialistic bent of thinking, "Eh, it ain't real anyways." After all, our actual, real, and positively ONLY actual reality is our over 99% ignorance of everything, not how adroitly knowledgable we are. We haven't even learned yet how to take care of the only planet we have to live on, and we think we are the clever ones?!

[Kishkumen]

After all, our actual, real, and positively ONLY actual reality is our over 99% ignorance of everything, not how adroitly knowledgable we are. We haven't even learned yet how to take care of the only planet we have to live on, and we think we are the clever ones?!

So true, Philo! With such a tiny glimpse of the whole, it takes real arrogance to be so confident about what s and isn’t. Our limitations should be glaringly obvious, but we crow about our amazing accomplishments. I am amazed by what humankind has achieved, but there are so many things that are beyond our grasp. We have so far to go before we gain even the slightest grasp of the whole.

[Physics Guy]

Magnifying glasses not affecting radio waves is a nice example of how some real things aren't accessible to some instruments. Some real things, like neutrinos and gravitational waves, are so elusive that large purpose-built devices are needed to detect them at all.

An analogy that captures some of how science can be disappointing is to consider what science would be like if reality was replaced by the game of chess.

Science would be all about pawn moves. It would exhaustively determine that individual pawns can move ahead by one square, and not backwards or sideways. It would have a huge controversy about whether pawns can really ever move two squares or whether those observations were errors. An advanced and exotic subject would be how pawns can sometimes capture other pieces by moving diagonally, though still only forwards. The en passant rule is going to be a really tough problem, and what happens to pawns that advance to the far end of the board will be the subject of after-hours speculation at conferences.

All the other pieces than pawns would be considered too complicated for science, except that a few scientists would study the king. These king specialists would be smug about how important their topic was, but they would never study anything except the fact that kings can move one square in each direction. The concept of check would be ignored as vague and untestable. And checkmate? Something that supposedly only happens once in a whole game, for some reason, and sometimes never at all, for reasons that no-one can explain? Stuff for philosophers, obviously. Let them deal with such questions of ultimate purpose or whatever. Science will focus on moves, thank you very much. Moves are clear, except for that awful first pawn move.

Nothing about strategy in chess would be part of this chess science, and nothing even about tactics. Pins, forks, gambits, sacrifices—nope. So is this chess science an adequate description of chess? Hardly. Most of what makes chess interesting is missing entirely.

Obviously actual science copes with things a lot more complex than pawn moves, but actual reality is also a lot more complex than chess. In the proportion of the analogy, restricting science to pawn moves is reasonable, I think. Science focuses on the simplest aspects of reality, because they are simple enough to understand very thoroughly. That's it.

It's great to understand anything thoroughly. And it's silly to fail to understand something well, when it actually is simple enough that we could understand it, if we tried. But to suppose that only things simple enough to be understood by humans scientifically can be real is to ignore too much of reality.