The materialist position is innately self-limiting, for negative is never provable in any strict sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nice to define the intellectual maturity as an ability to juggle the lenses we look to the world through! Reminds of Aristotle’s entertaining a thought without accepting it, or Fitzgerald’s holding two opposed ideas in mind at the same time. And we’d better take seriously the unmissable happy resonance when aunt Mary smiles at us from heavens 😇
The options of ‘to be or not to be’ question are not on equal footing in a conceptual space of what you can prove. Ie prove directly/conclusively, a key qualifier should be added. Bayesian reasoning trucks in probabilities forever, no endpoint in certainty ☺
Meet the fabled black sheep.
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician were on a train heading north, and had just crossed the border into Scotland.
• The engineer looked out of the window and said "Look! Scottish sheep are black!"
• The physicist said, "No, no. Some Scottish sheep are black."
• The mathematician looked irritated. "There is at least one field, containing at least one sheep, of which at least one side is black."
No one could longer insist black sheep (ok, ½ sheep) don’t exist, in Scotland or the world for that matter. While non-existence is just that, an a priori stance however likely. Nonetheless, works like a charm in mundane heuristics and well beyond. Cue Russell’s teapot 😉
I think that in 2023 America it is no longer reasonable to say that a belief in the afterlife makes one a compliant follower as it could, reasonably be said say 120 years ago. We have enough perspective on the matter now that I think that we must say that compliant followers follow whatever the dominant philosophy/ideology around them is whereas the small number of independent minds make their own choices. You cannot determine the truth/falsehood or likelihood/unlikelihood of a position by what unthinking people do.
So, as the second half of your post suggests, belief in an afterlife, leads to a higher personal integrity life, one more concerned with coherence and inner conformity to values(whatever the values may be) than the materialist position does. But perhaps we can say that The Science is fully into its religious phase since it is using the fear of death to drive conformity as it accuses other religions of doing?
Great writing once again! Makes me think and focus on developing a better understanding of Spirit and better ways of communication to and from the spirit world.
The materialist position is innately self-limiting, for negative is never provable in any strict sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Nice to define the intellectual maturity as an ability to juggle the lenses we look to the world through! Reminds of Aristotle’s entertaining a thought without accepting it, or Fitzgerald’s holding two opposed ideas in mind at the same time. And we’d better take seriously the unmissable happy resonance when aunt Mary smiles at us from heavens 😇
The options of ‘to be or not to be’ question are not on equal footing in a conceptual space of what you can prove. Ie prove directly/conclusively, a key qualifier should be added. Bayesian reasoning trucks in probabilities forever, no endpoint in certainty ☺
Meet the fabled black sheep.
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician were on a train heading north, and had just crossed the border into Scotland.
• The engineer looked out of the window and said "Look! Scottish sheep are black!"
• The physicist said, "No, no. Some Scottish sheep are black."
• The mathematician looked irritated. "There is at least one field, containing at least one sheep, of which at least one side is black."
No one could longer insist black sheep (ok, ½ sheep) don’t exist, in Scotland or the world for that matter. While non-existence is just that, an a priori stance however likely. Nonetheless, works like a charm in mundane heuristics and well beyond. Cue Russell’s teapot 😉
PS You may want to substitute EEG for EKG ☻
I think that in 2023 America it is no longer reasonable to say that a belief in the afterlife makes one a compliant follower as it could, reasonably be said say 120 years ago. We have enough perspective on the matter now that I think that we must say that compliant followers follow whatever the dominant philosophy/ideology around them is whereas the small number of independent minds make their own choices. You cannot determine the truth/falsehood or likelihood/unlikelihood of a position by what unthinking people do.
So, as the second half of your post suggests, belief in an afterlife, leads to a higher personal integrity life, one more concerned with coherence and inner conformity to values(whatever the values may be) than the materialist position does. But perhaps we can say that The Science is fully into its religious phase since it is using the fear of death to drive conformity as it accuses other religions of doing?
A few of my thoughts on the afterlife and the Resurrection(I know a very different idea but connected): https://comfortwithtruth.substack.com/p/the-children-get-up-and-reign-anotherhtml
Great writing once again! Makes me think and focus on developing a better understanding of Spirit and better ways of communication to and from the spirit world.