Someone once told me a story. It went something like this:
One day this man found himself floating in the middle of the ocean. He prayed to god to help him.
A few moments later, a piece of wood floated by. He disregarded it, He's waiting for god to save him.
Another few min went by, he sees an abandoned boat, it too floats by and he floats awaiting god's help.
A few more min went by, the coast guard comes in their helicopter and offers him help. He replies, "No thank you, God is going to save me."
He never was saved, he died.
When he got to heaven, he was furious. He approached god and demanded why god didn't save him.
God replied, I sent you drift wood, a boat, I even sent you people to save you. You are the one that rejected my help.
This was in response to my comment, "God has never revealed himself to me personally".
I would have to say, driftwood is simply driftwood, it floats by all the time.
Boats get pulled out into the ocean all the time.
Coast guards are out there to save people.
How is any of these things tied to a god?
The moral of the story of course is, that we shouldn't look for god in expected ways, we should simply let god reveal things in his own way.
But I have an issue with this. First off, I am not "looking for god". In fact, I assume he doesn't exist. I assume I'm stuck in the middle of the ocean with no one to save me.
I am going to swim as hard as I can. If I happen to find driftwood, a boat, or the coast guard. I will take up on the offer to assist me to getting to shore. I will NOT attribute it to a god.
If I die, at least I know I tried my best to preserve my life.
Which brings me to my final questions. Why would you look for signs of a god? Isn't it a presumption to assume there is a god? Wouldn't "looking at evidence to dictate where the answers are" be a better approach?
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The contemplation of a contemplation of a set of facts
Before I get to where this all started, I want to address how I think.
During a discussion, information absorption, fast fact show, or just a set of random occurrences. Something might give me pause, I call it "flagging". It's a stutter of thought or moment of WTF. I don't really let it affect me especially if I'm doing something of importance, like following the flow of information, otherwise I'd lose out on information that might resolve the flag.
After the set of information is given in full, I really don't dwell upon it. I know it's there, like an itch on the back of my neck. But I usually leave that to the back burner of thought... Sometimes it resolves itself. A Eureka moment if you will. Sometimes that comes about even without conscious thought, it sort of just pops out as a random thought that is the solution.
In some scenarios, there simply isn't enough information by the information set to resolve the issue. I can leave those thoughts for years, and come back to it when I am bored with life and feel like contemplating something. Or if it's a pressing flag, like my girlfriend is cheating on me flag.... Yes, that has happened. I jump on the ball and find out as much information as I can. And no, I don't do it under the bias assumption one way or another. The flag is a discrepancy in given information, logic, or previous knowledge in comparison with current observation.
As I forcefully attempt to resolve the issue in the discrepancy, other flags may come up, and again, i put them to the side if they are not directly pertinent. And yet again, some situations arise where I can't forcefully resolve the discrepancy. If it is just a major interest but nothing more, I will place it aside but ponder it frequently. If it is a pressing matter, I will confront the issue out in the open. In terms of religion, this was the resolution.
At a young age, I grew up in a household that held spiritual beliefs above structured religious belief. However, as the trend was, the household was mainly christian in general appearance due to pressures from family influences and friends. As I grew older, the christian view became more prevailing, and eventually took over my siblings and I. My parents weren't against it, they simply did not hold the belief that strongly. However, the children, including myself, believed more and more. The initial introduction raised several flags, I let it pass, my thought process as a kid wasn't as refined. As I grew older, yet again more flags.
As I grew closer to my adulthood, the flags were so overwhelming and the pressure from religion to pursue the life of preaching and the life of a clergy was expected of me; since I am quite analytical and given a few good sermons based on the flagged false pretense that the bible was true; I confronted the information given then researched information, then ultimately, since no clear resolution was at hand, I confronted every religion I can get a hold on and try to find the ultimate meaning behind it all....
I found they are all convinced of the validity of their beliefs. Normally that would make sense, except, they are mutually exclusive beliefs. The solution wasn't within the sphere of belief, but what lay outside. And from there, I found my own solution. Structured religion is a lie.
So as I go through the day, why I think the way I do? I am uncertain. However, it has saved me a lot of trouble, and gotten me into some other trouble. But it has never truly been wrong. It has always put my thought for a pause. Sometimes for good reasons, like the decision that would drastically change my life.... Or simply stupid reasons, like the chemical compound that couples with "sweet" receptors to release that information to the brain. Or, the original thought that created this thought of the process of thought:
As I was driving home from work, I remembered a few conversations I've held over the years. Somehow some of them started to come together in an odd way.
The first was when I was a senior in high school. My sister graduated the year before, and was off to College. When I went to visit her, I managed to meet some of her friends. There was a particular guy I remember not so fondly. He liked to use words like facsimile instead of copy,
epitome instead of summary, or conurbation instead of metro area.
Later I approached my sister, I wasn't quite as confrontational back then as I am now. I asked her why he had to flaunt needless vocabulary, was he expecting to try to impress me or something?
She simply answered that some people just use sophisticated words because common words just don't express what they want to say.... I retorted with, "Right... because 'My paper was a epitome of a book' totally explains more than 'My paper was a summary of a book.'". To which, she had no response.
Fast forward 6 years. I'm talking with two of my friends at a bar. We're talking about the usual. Entangled photons and the uncertainty principle and the like. The thought shifted to the uncertainty principle effecting the results of the observation in the direction of the desire of the experimenter and the eventual influence that will lead to outside quantum mechanics and into the manifestation of desires in the non-subatomic world, mind over matter so to speak.
I was starting to explain something.... "Well from a interpersonal perspective, and human subjectivity, it causes us..... "
At this time, one of my friends stopped me, his exact words were, "Whoa, whoa... Dark, you don't need to impress any of us with fancy words, we're all intelligent here, and we know how intelligent each other are." (And yes this is verbatim, he didn't call me by my real name, he called me Dark)
Of course, that gave me pause... But I let it pass. My friend who knows me better, stepped in and responded with, "He's not trying to impress anyone, he always talks like that."
I continued harshly, "AND HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY...."
But the two thought swirled in my head, and the thought about thought somehow got mixed in there... (see above section)
But the resulting thought was, Am I just like the distasteful friend of my sister? The resulting answer was NO.
The reason was simple. I really wasn't using that complex of words, in my opinion. And the words I was using were indeed not exactly replaceable when his were with more common use terms. Also, I was mindful of the audience. I assumed that my friends were of high enough intellect to understand what I was saying before I said it. Otherwise I probably would have strung out the sentence a little more, but used common use words. Of course I doubt quantum physics jargon would have been simplified any further.
My sister's friend was indeed not mindful at all. If I had not studied as much as I had, I would have been completely lost in the conversation. Heck, my sister was lost half the time. But I kept to myself, he was flaunting his feathers, I wasn't as confrontational at the time and wasn't going to ruffle them anyways even if I was.
Apparently he "normally speaks like that". I think it was more of, he "normally speaks that way......around her".
There are people who use complicated words within the right context and audience, knowing they understand the condensed meaning because they feel more at home communicating a lot of information at a different level.
Then there are people who simply substitute simple words with complex words in an attempt to sound more intelligent than they really are and are completely oblivious to the audience and how stupid they actually sound to someone who is intelligent enough to grasp a greater extent of the language than them.
Note: To my audience,
If at any point you did not understand a word I've written, other than those obvious "common word replacement", look them up and a few other thousand words while you are at it; YOU are not my targeted audience until you can read without stopping. I tend to rant as it is.
I would rather say "human subjectivity" as opposed to:
"human viewpoint that may contain unsupported judgments and/or beliefs"
..... : >> End rant.
During a discussion, information absorption, fast fact show, or just a set of random occurrences. Something might give me pause, I call it "flagging". It's a stutter of thought or moment of WTF. I don't really let it affect me especially if I'm doing something of importance, like following the flow of information, otherwise I'd lose out on information that might resolve the flag.
After the set of information is given in full, I really don't dwell upon it. I know it's there, like an itch on the back of my neck. But I usually leave that to the back burner of thought... Sometimes it resolves itself. A Eureka moment if you will. Sometimes that comes about even without conscious thought, it sort of just pops out as a random thought that is the solution.
In some scenarios, there simply isn't enough information by the information set to resolve the issue. I can leave those thoughts for years, and come back to it when I am bored with life and feel like contemplating something. Or if it's a pressing flag, like my girlfriend is cheating on me flag.... Yes, that has happened. I jump on the ball and find out as much information as I can. And no, I don't do it under the bias assumption one way or another. The flag is a discrepancy in given information, logic, or previous knowledge in comparison with current observation.
As I forcefully attempt to resolve the issue in the discrepancy, other flags may come up, and again, i put them to the side if they are not directly pertinent. And yet again, some situations arise where I can't forcefully resolve the discrepancy. If it is just a major interest but nothing more, I will place it aside but ponder it frequently. If it is a pressing matter, I will confront the issue out in the open. In terms of religion, this was the resolution.
At a young age, I grew up in a household that held spiritual beliefs above structured religious belief. However, as the trend was, the household was mainly christian in general appearance due to pressures from family influences and friends. As I grew older, the christian view became more prevailing, and eventually took over my siblings and I. My parents weren't against it, they simply did not hold the belief that strongly. However, the children, including myself, believed more and more. The initial introduction raised several flags, I let it pass, my thought process as a kid wasn't as refined. As I grew older, yet again more flags.
As I grew closer to my adulthood, the flags were so overwhelming and the pressure from religion to pursue the life of preaching and the life of a clergy was expected of me; since I am quite analytical and given a few good sermons based on the flagged false pretense that the bible was true; I confronted the information given then researched information, then ultimately, since no clear resolution was at hand, I confronted every religion I can get a hold on and try to find the ultimate meaning behind it all....
I found they are all convinced of the validity of their beliefs. Normally that would make sense, except, they are mutually exclusive beliefs. The solution wasn't within the sphere of belief, but what lay outside. And from there, I found my own solution. Structured religion is a lie.
So as I go through the day, why I think the way I do? I am uncertain. However, it has saved me a lot of trouble, and gotten me into some other trouble. But it has never truly been wrong. It has always put my thought for a pause. Sometimes for good reasons, like the decision that would drastically change my life.... Or simply stupid reasons, like the chemical compound that couples with "sweet" receptors to release that information to the brain. Or, the original thought that created this thought of the process of thought:
As I was driving home from work, I remembered a few conversations I've held over the years. Somehow some of them started to come together in an odd way.
The first was when I was a senior in high school. My sister graduated the year before, and was off to College. When I went to visit her, I managed to meet some of her friends. There was a particular guy I remember not so fondly. He liked to use words like facsimile instead of copy,
epitome instead of summary, or conurbation instead of metro area.
Later I approached my sister, I wasn't quite as confrontational back then as I am now. I asked her why he had to flaunt needless vocabulary, was he expecting to try to impress me or something?
She simply answered that some people just use sophisticated words because common words just don't express what they want to say.... I retorted with, "Right... because 'My paper was a epitome of a book' totally explains more than 'My paper was a summary of a book.'". To which, she had no response.
Fast forward 6 years. I'm talking with two of my friends at a bar. We're talking about the usual. Entangled photons and the uncertainty principle and the like. The thought shifted to the uncertainty principle effecting the results of the observation in the direction of the desire of the experimenter and the eventual influence that will lead to outside quantum mechanics and into the manifestation of desires in the non-subatomic world, mind over matter so to speak.
I was starting to explain something.... "Well from a interpersonal perspective, and human subjectivity, it causes us..... "
At this time, one of my friends stopped me, his exact words were, "Whoa, whoa... Dark, you don't need to impress any of us with fancy words, we're all intelligent here, and we know how intelligent each other are." (And yes this is verbatim, he didn't call me by my real name, he called me Dark)
Of course, that gave me pause... But I let it pass. My friend who knows me better, stepped in and responded with, "He's not trying to impress anyone, he always talks like that."
I continued harshly, "AND HUMAN SUBJECTIVITY...."
But the two thought swirled in my head, and the thought about thought somehow got mixed in there... (see above section)
But the resulting thought was, Am I just like the distasteful friend of my sister? The resulting answer was NO.
The reason was simple. I really wasn't using that complex of words, in my opinion. And the words I was using were indeed not exactly replaceable when his were with more common use terms. Also, I was mindful of the audience. I assumed that my friends were of high enough intellect to understand what I was saying before I said it. Otherwise I probably would have strung out the sentence a little more, but used common use words. Of course I doubt quantum physics jargon would have been simplified any further.
My sister's friend was indeed not mindful at all. If I had not studied as much as I had, I would have been completely lost in the conversation. Heck, my sister was lost half the time. But I kept to myself, he was flaunting his feathers, I wasn't as confrontational at the time and wasn't going to ruffle them anyways even if I was.
Apparently he "normally speaks like that". I think it was more of, he "normally speaks that way......around her".
There are people who use complicated words within the right context and audience, knowing they understand the condensed meaning because they feel more at home communicating a lot of information at a different level.
Then there are people who simply substitute simple words with complex words in an attempt to sound more intelligent than they really are and are completely oblivious to the audience and how stupid they actually sound to someone who is intelligent enough to grasp a greater extent of the language than them.
Note: To my audience,
If at any point you did not understand a word I've written, other than those obvious "common word replacement", look them up and a few other thousand words while you are at it; YOU are not my targeted audience until you can read without stopping. I tend to rant as it is.
I would rather say "human subjectivity" as opposed to:
"human viewpoint that may contain unsupported judgments and/or beliefs"
..... : >> End rant.
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