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Hi Mark
I've excerpted something you wrote a few weeks ago in case anyone will discuss it further
(and my two cents)
At http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/27186.shtml
Mark wrote:
"Have you ever read a line in a book or poem and as you proclaimed, "Wow! This is some deep sh!*," you were forced to set the book or poem down and mentally elaborate more deeply on what you just read?
I do it all the time with science books, I did it even more with Dante's Divine Comedy, but I must say I did it every couple of minutes or so with The Bible
I agree the Bible has some topnotch thoughts about science of mind, and your observations seem to answer some of the pessimistic musings
which you mention. Some of the Bible reminds me of a Mark Twain joke where in St. Peter realizes what is not going on is not a joke but "sober good judgment." It's a hilarious joke about Mark Twain switching his credentials with the Archbishop of Canterbury while waiting in line at the Pearly Gates ( he picks the Archbishop's pocket and slips his own pass to "the lower place" but of course returns the item in time
to let the Archbishop claim his reward).
at http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/27186.shtml
Mark wrote:
But maybe the universe is a cold, uncaring, unbiased, unconscious (on the grand scale, not on the level of human), mathematical machine...
This reminds me of Olaf Stapledon's book StarMaker. Have you read it?
at http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/27186.shtml
Mark wrote:
If there were a universal concept of good and evil, then why are the restrictions and boundaries from culture to culture so muddied and ambiguous? It's OK to be homosexual in America, but in such n such country you'd get stoned to death, or it's OK to have five wives in one culture, but that's "bad" in ours. We have Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, etc., and different concepts of "right and wrong" throughout each
I agree it's okay to be homosexual and I think the folks who think otherwise should be much more polite -- since their anti-rights arguments are normally dripping with negative emotion rather than brimming with the best information or logic.
at http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/27186.shtml
Mark wrote:
So perhaps all your options are false. There is no half empty/full in the universe unless you want to see it that way. In fact, the universe IS whatever you want it to be: perfect, flawed, good, evil, balanced ... all of these are literary constructs; you're free to use your imagination as you wish. It seems the only thing we can't argue is the presence of mathematical order in the universe. Other than that, there is no good or evil, and God does not interfere except when authors and storytellers so wish him to...
Science of Mind is more complex than the mechanical universe. That is why the brain needs to be able to perform multi-variable calculus even though most of us don't learn the
archaic form of it which earns PhDs -- since it
is mostly needed to compute trajectories for missiles. Lower, iterative and story-algebraic math is sufficient for most other operations.
I can't do your post justice right now. It is one
of the very best posts I've seen on this forum
in the depth of the issues it raised and its agreement with some of the farthest horizons I've been watching too.
But you can do better....don't strain yourself though. This forum doesn't reward genius very well.(:
Mike |
