I didn’t say I questioned whether or not there was such a thing as reality. I said I questioned whether there was such a thing as “Objective” reality. It could be that what we call the “Objective” is a conglomeration of all the intersubjective interpretations formed into one centrally themed reality, in which case based upon your own phenomenalogical field, your central “theme” would be in a different place from mine and so on. Thus no matter what we discover it is always subjective. We cannot escape our subjectivity, and is it even desirable to do so?
They don’t work on their own, they required an initiating force, yourself, and they require a power source, that was supplied by an initiating force. So your machine is a manipulation of time and space that doesn’t necessarily require the presence of your physical body to continue to operate. That is not the same as working on their own. The machine didn’t create itself.
Edison/Tesla perceived the machine’s initiation. But…and this is integral to the way I see it, I feel that the machine that you created is part of your consciousness manipulating the functioning of the universe, and that even if you are not aware of it, a part of your consciousness remains and continues to supply functionality to that machine. It’s kind of like having a program running in the background on your computer. We might not be aware that we initiated some program on our machine any longer, but it’s still doing so. Also there are other life-forms that can experience the functionality of your machine. Here on Earth there are animals, insects, microbes, plants etc… all capable of experiencing the effects of your machine. Not in the same way as a human, but it is still awareness.
Yes, I agree that it is sad about those scientists who were persecuted. However, a key part of what you stated was the rules set down by the person who created that compiler. Now, I am going to continue on this metaphor. I do believe we are working with the system that was laid down by those before us, but all the rules, and I do mean ALL of them were set down by some consciousness. We can go to “God” if you like, and I would say that he set down basic rules, like the laws of the spectrum and binary dualities and things like that, possibly even the Assembly code, but after that, there was bestowed upon other people the rights and privileges to edit the system for better or worse. That is part of the free will thing. They of course had to work within the system laid down for them, but they were able to edit that system and manipulate it to create further complexity and other rules that they passed on down to us.
But these rules are agreed upon, they are not necessarily inherent to the system, and different subjective consciousnesses may have different interpretations. An example from my life is that I come on this board and I sound like a new age freak. I go amongst new agers and hippies, and I sound like an intellectual to them. There are definite differences between the cold hard facts crowd and the “I believe in faeries” crowd, and I am ever hesitant to buy into either one, as I believe that there is truth in both. Most people who dismiss the idea of faeries don’t even know what the metaphor of the faery is describing. There is a bit of a movement within our society to IMPOSE a certain lingual program on everyone, but the problem is that there are a lot of pieces of the puzzle that it’s not addressing, and many who are politically aligned with this imposition, would rather pretend like the missing pieces just are not there, than to address the gaps in their own coding. You can see it in western history how the western regimental empiricism crowd has pretty much run the pagan/animistic crowd into the ground, sending them into hiding and outright killing them in droves whereever they find them. I find this sort of tyranny of the consciousness to be unacceptable.
The essence of the Pagan/Animist/Spiritual belief is that everything is made of spirit, that all the souls of our ancestors literally make up the matter that we stand on.
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Now, being “Objective” about observing reality is obviously impossible. But the noble goal of the better scienitists is just to make it “as objective as humanly possible”. The problem is that politics in the scientific cumminity allows the arrogant to actually get the most power, and still receive respect from many (eg Carl Sagan)… so because of politics, we end up seeing papers that fall further from the objective tree than is actually possible by people… but most believe that time and survival will heal such errors.
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Yes, I agree that time and survival will heal such errors, but it is also important to stand up to these bullies and make sure that the healing of such errors is not a monumental task that makes it harder to move forward. One of the biggest errors I believe is the idea that because something hasn’t been addressed by science, or cannot currently be addressed by science means that it won’t ever be addressed by science. I do not believe that God is unprovable, only unprovable under current conditions of understanding. It is exactly these small little biases that I rail against on these boards. If the people on this board were actually skeptics when they claim that they are, it would be great. I wish that fighting the ignorance on this board would be more about teaching people these proper skeptical skills, because there are a lot of assumptions going around from people who are claiming to be skeptics, who are not holding to that. This is how dogma is created, but they’ve convinced themselves that they are on teh side without dogma, as though such a thing exists.
Dogma comes about when the search for knowledge becomes a political struggle. For instance, Science vs Mysticism, when it is dogmatic in the first place to think that they are opposed, they are not opposed at all, they are polarities of the same function. That’s like arguing about what is better the North Pole or the South Pole, or even worse, arguing that the South Pole doesn’t even exist. To me, such an argument is as ludicrous as people who believe the Earth is flat. But here is the rub, to someone who believes the Earth is flat the Earth IS flat. Their perception of the Earth and it’s flatness inform upon everything that they subjectively experience. Science is useful in that it gives us useful guides that we can use communely so that our various subjective spheres can interface, but the pursuit of science should not be in competition with the humanities and the creative arts. They work in tandem, and are not in conflict.
Mysticism is about discovering the truth. Whatever reveals that which is concealed is a mystical pursuit, but so many people labor under the assumption that Science is right and Mysticism is Wrong. When the correct answer is some Scientists are right and some are wrong, and some Mystics are right and some are wrong. This of course comes from the problem of labelling oneself as some kind of social identifier, such as “Scientist” or “Mystic”. Just because I hammer nails into a board sometimes doesn’t make me a “Hammerer”. We identify too much with our tools of the trade, which causes us to feel threatened when our conceptions are brought into question. This is the essence of Dogma, and the ignorance I am fighting here is the conception that Dogma is limited to one group or another, when every group engages in it, though individuals will oftentimes side with a group when the question of that group’s dogma is not in question, and then conveniently remove themselves from that group when the Dogma is being brought into question. Like “I’m a Christian/Atheist but that part of it doesn’t apply to me!” That is why I don’t self-identify as one title or another without it being tongue in cheek. If you see me saying “I am X.” then it’s a pretty good bed that I have gone sophist, as I do not generally identify with my tools. I use skepticism, I use a hammer, I use science, I use Mysticism, I use Christianity but I am not those things. I am me and my subjective little (or big depending on your measurement tools) bubble, and many of those things exist within that bubble, but they are not the makeup of the entire bubble.
Erek