Cause i know some of you are curious

[roomjello]

Magnetism.

We can't sense it. But now that we know it and can harness it, we use it and it helps us understand a lot.

 

Ethereal substance..................

-next

-next

-next

 

As Nat pointed out, a leap of faith is required in all exploration, science included.

Why is it that people are so quick to want to disregard the 'fact' that what drives science can also drive thoughts on existence and social design?

To be concerned with only what is presented to one as factual is nothing short of common.

Not only because it is useless to the cause but because one must in that case be assuming the facts they are waiting on are eternal facts, if stated as empirical, even though as mentioned this does NOT mean they will always be so.

I wonder why the desperation for such certainty.

And yet , still no answers for the real cause( what the hell are we doing here)have been given on this path to date.

 

So, what are we discussing, which methods are the most hip, or getting to the bottom of making this thing work?

Cause if that is the focus we don't have anywhere to go, it's all been laid out for us for centuries.

Not what happens after death, that's still up for discussion, but how to deal with right here and now, you and me and him and her.

Why are we avoiding that as a race and all worked up over string theory?

 

Look at these forums or any other, and ask yourself how many times you've put your head in your hands and just thought wtf is with people.

Yet, we have string theory, pending at least.

[Surrealistic]

I think I see what you're getting at now Mr Jello. If you're talking about how we all get along and make this world a better place then, sure, I don't think science has the answers to those kinds of questions - or if it does I suspect we'd consider those answers to be pretty horrific.

 

Trouble is, we already know how we could all get along better and make this world a better place. We've had philosphies (in the "philosophy of life" meaning of that) expressed countless times that seem to make sense and seem to be the answer. If everyone was more like Martin Luther King, the Buddha, Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, Jesus et al then everything would be much better wouldn't it? But as you say yourself,

ask yourself how many times you've put your head in your hands and just thought wtf is with people

Well, there you have it. For better or worse, people are the way they are and I don't think we can expect that to change in the forseeable future. Now if the nice ones (like all of us here of course) could just wipe out the bad ones ... hmm, no I don't there's a good end to this sentence

[Lee Flier]

Science doesn't have a 'problem' with literature -- unless someone is insisting something is literally true but not offering any evidence. For instance, I think it's fair to say science doesn't have a problem with Moby Dick when it's understood as literature. But if Melville had insisted it was true , there might well have been some early marine zoologists who wanted to hear more about that white whale.

 

Well that's just it: I think there's a lot more ground between "myth" and "fact" than we in the modern age are willing to consider. I think most people understand this intuitively, but being forced into one camp or the other causes people to adopt some awfully strange worldviews.

 

Of course science by definition limits itself to what is provable and repeatable, and that's fine. But the trouble is that what's repeatable and controllable only makes up a pretty small portion of our total experience of the world, and yet because we have come to "worship" science as our savior over the past century, we now tend to dismiss anything that doesn't fit into that box (unless it's safely in the "fiction" category i.e. literature/movies/songs, and even those seem to have been devalued of late).

 

I'm not saying we should ask science to become something it's not; only that it be put in a larger context, which I think would benefit scientists AND creative and/or religious folks. Some scientists already are of that mind, but too many are not because it's not usually taught that way and is not much in popular consciousness.

 

nat's post gets to the heart of this pretty well.

[roomjello]

 

I think For better or worse, people are the way they are and I don't think we can expect that to change in the forseeable future.

 

See, people don't have to change. They need to learn, they need to be led into learning by example.

I say this because it is all there, but people aren't that interested in it on their own. There is no disputing this.

Yet everyone wants peace and a happy, healthy planet and to be happy and get along etc.

So human nature is not going to change.

And there are people with enormous power over our world right now who understand all this very clearly.

And they are hurting us and the planet horribly with their nonsense.

 

So, again, the only answer, is that the people start getting some examples of real character INTO their media or personal lives to learn from them.

 

 

Where are these characters do you think?

[blue2blue]

 

Lemme get this straight. The pursuit of knowledge should be driven and shaped by a desire for psychic comfort and an escape from fear of death? I've often wondered why it is that so many people who profess absolute belief in a 'heavenly reward' I run into seem to be obsessed with fear of death, while many rationalists, humanists, pagans, Taoists, Buddhists, etc, seem to shrug it off... For me, I could never really appreciate Jesus' teachings until I deyoked them from the pie-in-the-sky promises of heaven that the early church yoked them to, presumably as a marketing strategy. Of course, the Church could make life a living hell for those that crossed it (so to speak), so, for the believers, a threat of eternal punishment, Church-style, must have truly been a fearsome thing. (Although it would appear that at least some of the church hierarchy took a decidedly perverse pleasure in the 'pornography of hell.') This notion that knowledge must be withheld from the masses and that reason -- clear thinking -- is dangerous is a strain that has run through most forms of authoritarianism, from the reign of the Church through the dark ages up through Fascism and Stalinism and even finding expression in recent times in the authoritarian neo-Aristotelian 'philosophies' of people like Leo Strauss.

I couldn't help but think back to the comments on how "knowledge" is not for everybody and the implication that people should surrender their critical faculties to supposed religious authorities, who authoritarians apparently want us to trust to give dumbed down, supposedly easy-to-understand answers to their naive followers.

 

 

From the NY Daily News...

 

As May 21 came and went without the world coming to an end, Harold Camping has yet to offer up a reason for why he was wrong... again. In fact, the 89-year-old preacher is keeping out of sight in the wake of his failed prediction. The website to his Family Radio ministry hasn't even been updated, and still proclaims Judgment Day to be May 21, 2011. "It's going to happen," Camping insisted repeatedly leading up to the fateful day. Meanwhile, those who believed in his much-hyped prognostication -- many of whom gave up their homes and money to Camping -- are left wondering what to do next. "I do not understand," said Robert Fitzpatrick , a 60-year-old MTA worker from Staten Island , said after the Rapture never arrived. "I do not understand why nothing has happened." "I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God," said Keith Bauer , who drove his family across the country from Maryland to California for the supposed Rapture to visit Camping's Oakland headquarters of Family Radio International .

 

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/05/22/2011-05-22_may_21_was_not_the_rapture_what_will_harold_camping_and_his_followers_do_now.html#ixzz1N66IPd4a

 

From the Washington Times:

In New York's Times Square, Robert Fitzpatrick of Staten Island said he was surprised when the six o

[temnov]

We have many examples where people were led to their "bright future" destroying everything on the way:

 

Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot, Kim

[roomjello]

Blue, if you are referring to my comments re 'not all should have all knowledge', i think you should clear up your understanding of what i wrote and what you projected onto it by re reading what i wrote. I didn't specify WHAT should be kept, that that anything specific should be kept from people. My feelings are more along the line of the research should stop as a better option, as what i believe is that we are focusing several steps ahead of where we should be, like a student of an instrument for example wanting to play too fast for the technique they possess, therefore only creating worse technique and bad habits for themselves.

Do you deny that socially, even on the scale of age-children to adults- there are things that are best left until one can be mature enough to deal with them correctly? Maybe not for your self but look around you, it's there. You clearly feel insulted by the concept, that is great, but for all you know some of the things you have access to may be making your life worse.

 

It's just a topic for consideration and contemplation.

[roomjello]

 

We have many examples where people were led to their "bright future" destroying everything on the way:   Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot, Kim

[roomjello]

My line of thinking hasn't changed, i mean my target for the thought, although the more i contemplate things, i suppose and hope they do evolve to a degree. If you are looking to discredit my ideas based on contradiction, i guarantee you could , if not find it, imply it for the sake of your argument.

I do think you are trying pretty hard to discredit ideas that are already not already part of your package of beliefs.

 

My goal with this type of thought is to investigate new ideas, not justify existing or old ones.

On that front you have contributed very little, perhaps you could throw in there.

 

That is my observation.

You are a smart man with interesting input though and i like reading your posts.

[blue2blue]

roomjello, I suspect your post immediately above is responding to a post I wrote and then, a few minutes later, deleted. I checked to see if there was a response before I deleted it, but you may have been writing your post during that time. At any rate, I deleted it because it seemed dismissive and unfriendly, and I didn't really mean it to be, although I was expressing some frustration that, at times during this thread, I had felt as though I was being trolled or baited. I don't mean that as an active accusation but rather just explaining forthrightly why my patience may have seemed short, whether that sense was warranted or not. Since I felt somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing, I thought it best to delete those comments I thought might reasonably strike someone as having a harsher, less charitable tone than I had intended.

 

[temnov]

Hey, Jello, sorry if I hurt your feeling. Didn't mean to. I had just several questions (which you answered) as I was a little bit puzzled with your behavior. In one post you are smart and clearly thinking person and then in another one you are provoking people for very predictable reaction. I still think you are preaching a little bit, but that

[roomjello]

roomjello, I suspect your post immediately above is responding to a post I wrote and then, a few minutes later, deleted. I checked to see if there was a response before I deleted it, but you may have been writing your post during that time. At any rate, I deleted it because it seemed dismissive and unfriendly, and I didn't really mean it to be, although I was expressing some frustration that, at times during this thread, I had felt as though I was being trolled or baited. I don't mean that as an active accusation but rather just explaining forthrightly why my patience may have seemed short, whether that sense was warranted or not. Since I felt somewhat ambivalent about the whole thing, I thought it best to delete those comments I thought might reasonably strike someone as having a harsher, less charitable tone than I had intended.

I can only say that I am impressed and flattered by the humility you show in this post.

Deleting your thoughts isn't required though, no hard feelings or offense was taken at all.

It's heavy stuff we are talking about, not for the faint of heart, I'm just glad to have any discussion about it.

[roomjello]

Hey, Jello, sorry if I hurt your feeling. Didn't mean to. I had just several questions (which you answered) as I was a little bit puzzled with your behavior. In one post you are smart and clearly thinking person and then in another one you are provoking people for very predictable reaction. I still think you are preaching a little bit, but that

[roomjello]

And for my contribution for the night...

It's often said in great literature, that ones epiphany's come in times of solitude.

And it occurs to me that one's epiphany's are usually about either life itself or ones relations with other life.

And it occurs to me that if an epiphany strikes us, we should have great respect for the magnitude of that event relative to the minutia of the mundane.

And it occurs to me that in order to have an epiphany we must explore, we must disallow the power of fear and discomfort in order to explore.

And in order to explore truly and effectively, we must have a goal for the exploration.

and it occurs to me that the only goal worth a damn is the betterment and longevity of the race.