Posted on 7th March 2010 by Jack in philosophy
Critical thinking, philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Physics, reality, Spacetime, Time and Timelessness
Image by © ahmosher via Flickr
There are those people who fall asleep as soon as the plane is in the air and sleep through the entire flight.
These are believers. They ignore the process in favor of the results. They propose a conclusion, even proclaim it to be the only conclusion that’s acceptable, before submitting that conclusion to the same critical thought process most people apply to other aspects of their lives.
Then there are those of us who stay awake the entire flight, staring out the windows and watching the other passengers.
We are those to whom the process is the most fascinating part of reality. The end game, being inevitable, is uninteresting. It will unfold in its own way and time. No one knows for certain which philosophy will win out after we die. So we see little value on placing too much importance on that. Since we are alive now, in this time and place, in the body we inhabit, we might as well focus on the here-and-now. The present moment is the ultimate reality. We are only truly alive at the point in space-time when the future becomes the past. We can’t even measure that period of time it’s so short. We can only experience it. That’s what non-believers can enjoy, the experience of the moment. We find it because we are looking for it. When your focus is 500 feet down the trail you miss the universe under your feet.
Posted on 12th October 2009 by Jack in philosophy
freedom, Ingersoll, natural
Image via Wikipedia
“When I became convinced that the universe is natural—that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom.
The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf or a slave. There was for me no master in all the world—not even infinite space.
I was free. Free to think, to express my thoughts. Free to live my own ideal. Free to live for myself and those I loved. Free to use all my faculties, all my senses. Free to spread imagination’s wings. Free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope. Free to judge and determine for myself. Free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the “inspired” books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past. Free from popes and priests. Free from all the “called” and “set apart.” Free from sanctified mistakes and “holy” lies. Free from the winged monsters of the night. Free from devils, ghosts and gods.
For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought, no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings, no claims for my limbs, no lashes for my back, no fires for my flesh, no following another’s steps, no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.
And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers, who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain, for the freedom of labor and thought, to those who fell on the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains, to those who proudly mounted scaffold’s stairs, to those by fire consumed, to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons and daughters of men and women. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they have held, and hold it high, that light may conquer darkness still.”
—Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899)
Posted on 23rd July 2008 by Jack in humanism | philosophy
Theists are no more tolerant of those in disagreement with their perceptions than anyone else.
Theists may think they’re something special, beyond human. The rest of us see people as people. I’m a humanist atheist. I like my species. I think on average we’re fairly decent mammals. No matter how fancy you dress us up, we’re still all humans. If we could base our social behavior on the fact of our common humanity, there would be fewer things to be intolerant about.
Intolerance arises when one group of humans wants to be accepted as superior and separate from another group of humans. Religion is one of the many human belief systems that try to impose a false hierarchy on society.
Religions seek to artificially classify some people as blessed and the rest as heathens, and expect society to reflect their arbitrary classification system based on nothing more than their insistence that their interpretation of the wants and needs of the invisible and all powerful “Divine Whatever” are the most right.
Intolerance need not be tolerated. It need not be legislated against or deposed by force. Intolerance will decrease as humanity increases. The more of us there are, the greater the need to be tolerant.
Religions stand in our way. They need to be exposed as ancient, irrelevant attitudes that have outlived their usefulness and certainly don’t contribute anything of value to society that can’t be provided without all the supernatural and superstitious trappings. Once religion has passed into irrelevance humans will still be capable of acts of extreme compassion as well as acts of extreme cruelty. The only difference will be that acts of compassion will stem from our realization of our common humanity and acts of cruelty will have fewer reasons to occur.
Posted on 17th June 2008 by Jack in philosophy | science
god, nature, universe
…it’s the god of nature. Whatever gives life is god.”
That’s just watering down the characteristics of the god you believe in until it means nothing. “Whatever it is that gives life”?
I, too, am immensely grateful to whatever it is that gives life. I don’t care what that is: it could be a one-off, totally blind bit of pure chance. It could be your god, or your god ,or your god <pointing around>. I will always and for as long as I’m aware be grateful to whatever it is that gave me this chance to live. That’s a debt no one can repay.
So on that we agree. I just don’t see any need to personify whatever that thing is.
Considering our place in the overall scheme of things in the universe, it should be obvious we don’t rate very high in “important impact”. A comet has more significance to the universe than we do. For that reason a human-like god is unlikely to the point of absurdity. No less silly than believing that the ultimate creator and god is a tree, a wombat. Life as we understand it is so rare in the known universe that our influence on reality is less than minuscule. It’s the height of pride to think that anything we do, anything we say, anything we believe, matters one iota beyond the bounds of this one single planet. Prove me wrong.
Show me the influence of humankind anywhere in the universe beyond this planet, what impact have we had on anything anywhere else in the universe.
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