The Most Astounding Fact (Neil DeGrasse Tyson)

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Originally saw this here: theChive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9D05ej8u-gU

I agree: If this this doesn't resonate on some small level then you're broken....
[youtube=425,350]9D05ej8u-gU[/youtube]

_{(I put this in spirituality because I think it is... kinda)}

[pieces o nine]

 

Serendipitous; I watched one of his interviews every night last week.
Good find!

[Opsa]

You're talking my kind of spirituality, my friend.

We are all related, whether we know it or not. We are all important. We all matter. We are family with everything.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

We all matter.

In fact, we're all matter...

[pieces o nine]

We all matter.

In fact, we're all matter...

...and waves.

Some of us are more standing waves, some more sitting down waves, and some more recumbent upon the sofa waves...

[Roland Deschain]

Some are pure energy, and some are inert. Great video there. As Carl Sagan says in Cosmos, "We are made of star stuff." Those who deny it are afraid; afraid of the consequences of that revelation. We are all connected; to each other; to the universe.

[Aggie]

The weak anthropic principle gives me the warm fuzzies. 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I like to put it this way:

We are the descendants of the very stars themselves.

[Aggie]

I like the fact that I'm breathing the same air as the dinosaurs. Part of me was probably once part of a T-Rex.  I also like the fact that we are ultimately all a variant of the first (or perhaps the first handful of) life form(s) on this planet. We've all found a slightly different way of doing it. Which, to me, is a good reason to find your own best way of doing it all.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I like the fact that I'm breathing the same air as the dinosaurs. Part of me was probably once part of a T-Rex.  I also like the fact that we are ultimately all a variant of the first (or perhaps the first handful of) life form(s) on this planet. We've all found a slightly different way of doing it. Which, to me, is a good reason to find your own best way of doing it all.

I quite like that sentiment:

"find your own best way"

In fact?

You really ought to put that on a T-shirt!

Seriously.

I think I'll repeat it, just because:

Find Your Own Best Way

Kinda says it all, don't it just?

[Aggie]

I lost a post in response to the thread you posted featuring Fiona Wallace's essay on why she is an atheist (mostly in agreeance).

On the end of the post, I had a little riff on why I'm no longer an atheist.  To condense it somewhat, I find the current atheistic obsession denying and 'disproving' the culturally dominant image of an Abrahamic, OOO god to be just as absurd as denying the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the FSM. That image of god makes no sense to me in context of human observations (scientific and personal) of how the world works. That particular image isn't even a solid historical fact; what we have left of it today has been twisted into knots, patched and re-painted continuously to make it fit with new insights and observations (even more than the Big Bang theory has ).

Personally, I'd rather used my innate, evolved human intelligence and imagination to contemplate a god that doesn't contradict the observations.  My image of god is very fluid, and changes as I learn new things about the world - it's a working model, that best fits what I understand at the time _{and at this point is comfortably synonymous with nothing}. I don't presume that such a god cares about us, is directing the show in any way, shape or form, or for any practical purpose is even aware of us. In conceiving a Possible God, one must be willing to let go of some of the cherished but intensely problematic attributes of our best-known model of a Traditional God.

To this nearly attributeless model, one can intentionally add one attribute - goodness. I say intentionally because there's little evidence to support that attribute, but if we're just making this shit up anyways _{(and basically we are  )} I think that's one attribute we are going to want in there. After all, what I'm trying to conceive of is the Best Possible God; by possible I mean a god that doesn't contradict empirical observations. If goodness makes attributes like omnipotence and omniscience impossible, so much the better.

I've never been able to grasp the central doctrine of christianity...  that god-as-man went through the birth-and-death cycle to save us (I don't really get the concept of sin, which might be part of the problem). However, I do like exploring the thought-experiment of what god would be like in human form. According to your own personal ideals of the Best Possible God, what would you expect of god if god were living as a human, with all the constraints of human physiology and no goddish powers to bend rules? How would that person live each moment of their life? How would such a person contribute to the greater good? IOW, what would the Best Possible Human be like?

Now, I'm faaaar from the Best Possible Human, but I really do like holding that concept as North on my moral compass, and hope that over the course of my life I can move a little closer to that Best Possible Human ideal. That's why I am driven to keep striving towards the divine. Instead of rejecting god, I will use the most uniquely human parts of my being to allow the idea of God to keep evolving towards the form that is fittest for practically achieving good, and use that reclaimed idea of god to drive both my spiritual growth and the everyday expression of my humanistic values.

Forget Heaven and Hell...  just try to be as much like your ideal of god as you can, as often as you can. In some small way, the world will be better for it.

[Roland Deschain]

Aggie, interesting thoughts there. The nearest I ever come to an acceptance of any form of deity has to be as hinted at near the end of Cosmos by Carl Sagan. A god that created the universe we live in, left some evidence hidden so deep in the mathematics that we'd have to be advanced to find it, then left, but which evolved in much the same way as we did, and gained the knowledge and power to create universes. The idea of a personal god, as i've said before, just doesn't figure in my own view of the cosmos.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Aggie--

-- I rather like (and agree) with your notion that since (as far as anyone can prove or actually know) it's all made up anyway?

Why not go with a god (meme) that is worthy.

And you hinted at this a bit-- what is worthy to one person may well not make the cut for another-- we must each find our own respective best way, realizing that no one way will work for all or even a majority I'd wager.

Sure, we humans have many, many things in common-- this is true.  And the literature and poetry covering that topic is endless.

But, we each also have many things not held in common-- ideas or abilities or ways-of-seeing that are unique.  It has to be thus, as we are the sum of our memories, are we not?

And we each possess a unique pathway through time-- even identical twins don't share the exact same memories-- and they become less and less "identical" as time/memories go forward.

So this unique memory-trip we each have, makes it needful we must each fit the Best Way meme within each of our unique paths. 

For some, the Best Way will involve honing a skill or talent or artistic finesse into something the follow-on generations will remember for years.

For others?  It matters not what the subsequent children may or may not think-- it only matters to the self-- that an urge or craving is satisfied within the internal dialog we each maintain with ourselves.

I do not see either way as better-- nor other deviations from these.

I think we must each find our own respective Best Way, whatever that turns out to be for ourselves.

In the end?  What does it matter, if you fail to satisfy your own inner self?   

As for god(s) being good?  Perhaps so-- it's a nice sentiment, I'll certainly agree with that.   

Alas, I've not seen evidence for either good deities or evil ones-- but indifferent, uncaring-- unaware deities?  Sure.  I could buy that one.

Of course-- there would be no point to paying attention such beings, would there?  Apart from possibly getting out of it's way, if detected.   Not unlike an old Jewish sentiment:  "Lord, I pray that I can remain unnoticed by your Graces".   Notice from a deity usually meant... trouble... followed by a mandatory Epic Journey with An Adventure.   

[Aggie]

Aggie, interesting thoughts there. The nearest I ever come to an acceptance of any form of deity has to be as hinted at near the end of Cosmos by Carl Sagan. A god that created the universe we live in, left some evidence hidden so deep in the mathematics that we'd have to be advanced to find it, then left, but which evolved in much the same way as we did, and gained the knowledge and power to create universes.

Perhaps we were created so that we could, in turn, create God?  I'll get back to that eventually.

For a long time, I'd pretty much completely written off any connection between god and creation. I tend to work from a panentheist viewpoint which makes me comfortable with the philosophical concept of the physical universe being the natural manifestation of something more fundamental, but uncomfortable with the concept of a Creator. That is, god is Nothing, but gives rise to the reality we know without any intent, will or effort (these attributes don't make sense to me in context of my concept of god - as I conceive it, god is Being, but God isn't a being).  I'd been picking away at what causes that manifestation for quite a while, but wasn't making any progress with it, and had shoved the question to the back burner _{the specific phrasing I used was 'Find the grain of sand in the universal oyster that caused the pearl of the world'} .

Then I heard Lawrence Krauss on the radio, and subsequently watched this lecture (still waiting for the book):

[youtube=425,350]7ImvlS8PLIo[/youtube]

Now, my first reaction was that it was the best argument for atheism that I'd ever heard, which I found somewhat disconcerting. However, after mulling it over a bit, Dr. Krauss would be chagrined to hear that according to my peculiar concept of god it's the best argument for a Creator god that I'd ever heard, not in terms of the big guy in the sky that intentionally designed and executed the Universe, but as a constant creative force that is a fundamental part of the fabric of the physical universe. If god is Nothing, and Nothing is Creative, it would indicate a creative attribute that I'd need to accommodate in my concept of god.

That angered me a little, to be honest. I don't wanna believe in a Creator  . However, it does cheer me to see scientific theory delving at the roots of reality this way. If god is more than a nice idea and in some way has an effect on material reality, I have no doubts that science will eventually find ways to describe and measure this effect.  In principle, it should be possible to build a working theometer; the difficulty is that in a godless universe it's impossible to distinguish between a working and non-working theometer. On the other hand, I don't feel much of a need to address the question of whether god and/or spiritual experience are genuine supernatural phenomena or simply a natural byproduct of human physiology. Actually, I think the latter - that the ability to perceive the divine or attain transcendental experiences is innately human and has nothing to do with an outside Thing - makes us pretty freakin' special as a species.  Where's God? Inside us, and nowhere else. Wow.


-----

The idea of a personal god, as i've said before, just doesn't figure in my own view of the cosmos.

Nor mine. I suppose my previous post could count as a relating to 'personal god'. To be clear, what I was describing above is primarily a thought exercise to help one strive for moral excellence without the need for religiously derived rules or the threat of a Big Judge who will punish you for setting a foot wrong with those rules. Imagine the best possible god you can think of, and then try to live up to the standards of how you would have that god act if it were placed in your exact circumstances. It's apparently an entirely different application of the idea of god than the metaphysical cosmology I'm blathering about earlier in this post, although I don't see a contradiction between the two if taken in the context of Atman and Brahman.

_{Incidentally, I agree with Bob that there's no indication or reason to expect goodness from a hypothetical deity, and would actually protest quite strongly against applying any inherent 'goodness' to my cosmological understanding of god. I certainly don't believe in evil. 'Good' (in the form of altruism) appears to be a natural phenomenon, and crops up in some surprising places in the natural world. Of course, one could strip out the whole God nonsense from this argument and just pursue good for the sake of good; there's little difference between stand-alone good and a god whose only attribute is goodness. I think it's humans that are responsible bringing good into the picture, and of course all our little weaknesses that lead to the bad behaviour which we call evil.}

However... there's room to play with that idea. I didn't explicitly allude to it, but if you take as a starting point the notion that god doesn't wilfully interfere with physical reality (i.e. there's no miracles, and no direction of events), then the only method by which a hypothetical best possible god could act in the world is via free-willed humans that are trying to do their best according to their understanding of God. Our historical track record on that particular part of the deal hasn't been so good on that, though.  

Although I believe that the roots of the atrocities committed in the name of religion are the same as all other atrocities (desire for power and/or the abuse of power to express secondary desires, if you boil it down far enough), it's not too much of a stretch to say that the concept of God in Abrahamic religious systems doesn't exactly preclude committing atrocities up to and including military aggression and genocide. If you ask the question "What would God do in my place?" while holding the ideal of a vengeful, judgmental and punishing God, it's not much of a stretch to include violence in the answer. If you want to righteously justify being a horrible person, it helps to subscribe to the notion of a horrible God. However, if we have the freedom to create god in the image of our ideals, we can strip out this built-in justification for doing horrible things in the name of God. If one's concept of god is entirely benevolent (but effectively powerless), one cannot be righteously committing horrible acts in the name of god. An entirely benevolent god would not carry atrocities in the name of the greater good.

Returning to the starting assumptions that a possible god which doesn't contradict the natural laws of the universe is inherently non-interfering, and that a non-interfering god can only influence the world via human actions, there ceases to be any practical distinction between an independent supernatural God and a human-created idea of god. Hypothetically, it's possible that the dominant cultural conceptions of God could change over time, and shift towards one that discourages atrocities and promotes altruism. I'm certainly not expecting anything of the sort to happen any time soon, but I like the notion that if enough people were willing to work towards being godly to whatever degree they could, even while openly acknowledging that their concept of god was nothing more than an idea, 'god' could have a genuine positive effect on the world. Literally, we have the potential to create God as a force of good in the world, and this is something that is apparently natural to our species.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Interesting.

And kinda Japanese, if I understand Japanese culture at all-- an online friend has lived there for years, and has commented on the Japanese notions of spirituality/deities.  It's odd from a Western perspective, in that few Japanese households lack a shrine to some household god or other, but few believe it is a real thing-- it's just What You Do, without any real understanding of the Ritual.  (again, according to my friend's understanding).

So a god that isn't a book-god, but is acknowledged as an Idea God, one which we strive to emulate to find a Better Way?  Yeah.. I can easily see that idea having merit.  Very Ghandi-esque, I would say-- he rarely spoke of his deep and strong faith in the gods of his culture, but he clearly lived as if he strove to uphold peaceful and altruistic ways.   He was often confused as "christian", even though he never claimed to be-- and indeed, denied being one.  But he felt zero need to proselytize his personal deities, rather he proselytized his Ideas instead:  the ideas of peaceful and altruistic life.

And why not?

Some folk seem to need to point to something and say, "that is [a/my] God" in order to be Satisfied.   So why not give them one that is not a monstrous concept?

Not unlike giving a smoker a Nicotine patch, I think.