The Futility of Reason

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Burning ghost
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Burning ghost »

Nick_A -

You've highlighted my critic of your presentation. You bring religious attitudes into the discussion when there is no need to.

If you present emotions as part of the human spiritual attitude I can accept that only if we are not using the term "spirit" with religious bias.

Yes, if you speak to people who love logic they will view emotions in a mechanical way. They will maybe refer to evolutionary processes and such. That does not make them subjectively oblivious to actual subjective emotional thoughts and feelings. People use methods because they produce results and are not biased. The people may well be biased, will always be really to a degree, but the method of logic does a fine job of countering such a position in regard to physicalistic views.

The crux being about the stark difference of attitudes and application of method towards unearthing the whole dualistic mess of objectivity and subjectivity.

This is the philosophical area involved. Religion and religious attitudes are no more important than science or scientific attitudes because the process of investigating objective and subjective logically seems to require some form of transcendentalism and it is here that the greatest misunderstanding occur and the religious turn to "god" and the scientists turn to "logical limitations".

Either way we are in a very strange and alien landscape and "fantasy" is an undeniable trap. What fantasy is tells us more about the innate human being we are and our attitudes and how our attitudes can and will be shaped by such "fantasy". It then becomes more of a question, in regard to fantasy, to distinguish the use of psychology and physicalism as appropiate or not towards dispelling and defining "fantasy". Not to mention the added problem of framing all of this and many othrr points in both common and technical parse.

Plato's Cave Analogy was set out mainly to show how plastic the terms belief, knowledge and opinion are.

Nick + Fool -

I was referring to The Republic in how "wise" is presented not Apology. My mistake, was just talking about a wise leader.
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Nick_A
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Nick_A »

Burning ghost wrote:
If you present emotions as part of the human spiritual attitude I can accept that only if we are not using the term "spirit" with religious bias.
Einstein wrote:
Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
The Spirit is a part of Christian theology. Are you against Einstein’s observation?
Yes, if you speak to people who love logic they will view emotions in a mechanical way. They will maybe refer to evolutionary processes and such. That does not make them subjectively oblivious to actual subjective emotional thoughts and feelings. People use methods because they produce results and are not biased. The people may well be biased, will always be really to a degree, but the method of logic does a fine job of countering such a position in regard to physicalistic views..
I agree. Logic is good for revealing emotional fantasy disguising itself a truth. A person can join a cult for emotional reasons and it is often through guiding logic that a person can come to question the cult. But logic is limited to the facts or imagined facts it analyses. Let me use chess as an example..

I have a U.S.C.F rating of 1942. this means I am a class A player. I could graduate to expert if I wanted to put the logical work into become better skilled in endings and opening traps. But I can look at a game being played by two 1400 players and know that even though their moves are legal and logical, they don’t see the totality of the board. They are fixated on parts which soon reveal their futility over the board so someone looking at the game knows it is nonsense. It isn’t that logic is faulty but without a feeling for the wholeness of the position either in life or over the board, logic only results in confusion and hypocrisy. Logic is a wonderful but limited tool for the lover of the wholeness of wisdom or the motivating force for philosophy.
The crux being about the stark difference of attitudes and application of method towards unearthing the whole dualistic mess of objectivity and subjectivity.

This is the philosophical area involved. Religion and religious attitudes are no more important than science or scientific attitudes because the process of investigating objective and subjective logically seems to require some form of transcendentalism and it is here that the greatest misunderstanding occur and the religious turn to "god" and the scientists turn to "logical limitations".
We are capable of it but only a few either want or need to develop the capacity for conscious attention to reconcile the objective with the subjective.

Julia Haslett, a film maker, was going through a very difficult time in her life. When she was really down, she came upon a simple sentence written by Simone Weil that she felt explained everything and needed to understand it more so created her documentary on Simone as a method to deepen the question and better feel its value

Here is the trailer for the documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOCE_d2R5lw
."Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. It is given to very few minds to notice that things and beings exist. Since my childhood I have not wanted anything else but to receive the complete revelation of this before dying." ~Simone Weil
The capacity for conscious attention as a tool for the pursuit of philosophical and religious truth has atrophied for the great majority much like a muscle would atrophy for lack of use. The idea is that if we were capable as a society of conscious attention the truth of the world and the hypocrisy of our own being would be obvious and serve as the logical foundation for logic to support. It is an intellectually simple idea but all the habits we have acquired to support our ego’s need to adapt to the world struggles against it. So IMO it is left to a minority with the need for truth as an expression of the “good” to have a sufficient influence in the world to at least lessen the cyclical atrocities having become the norm for our species.
Either way we are in a very strange and alien landscape and "fantasy" is an undeniable trap. What fantasy is tells us more about the innate human being we are and our attitudes and how our attitudes can and will be shaped by such "fantasy". It then becomes more of a question, in regard to fantasy, to distinguish the use of psychology and physicalism as appropiate or not towards dispelling and defining "fantasy". Not to mention the added problem of framing all of this and many othrr points in both common and technical parse.
Conscious attention and fantasy are mutually exclusive. A person is incapable of conscious attention when they are in the power of fantasy. If a person is willing to make the efforts necessary for conscious attention, the rest will take care of itself. Unfortunately usually a person suffering from psychological pre-conceptions doesn’t really want to “know thyself.” They prefer to “imagine oneself.” So it is frightening and difficult to begin efforts for conscious attention.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Fooloso4
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Fooloso4 »

Einstein also wrote:
“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”

Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy, and Religion, A 1934 Symposium published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941; from Einstein's Out of My Later Years, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1970, pp. 29-30.
“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

Albert Einstein, in a letter March 24, 1954; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 43.
“The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.”

Albert Einstein, letter to a Rabbi in Chicago; from Albert Einstein the Human Side, Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, eds., Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 69-70.
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Burning ghost
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Burning ghost »

As a final comment the strictly scientific view of the religious is skewed because to frame religion within scientific method is plain silly. Strictly religiously viewed science is skewed because to frame scientific method as a religion is plain silly.

Silly as it is all too often the religious person tends to view the scientist as religious, and the scuentist tends to view the religious person as a scientist. I am talking in generalities here. It is a simple case of fixatedness.
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Nick_A
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Nick_A »

Fooloso4 and Blind ghost, IMO you both are unwilling to consider that the objective quality of both science and religion is relative as is the relativity of conscious understanding for human beings. If Einstein can distinguish between the spirit and a personal god and not be fixated on conditioned meanings for terms, why can't others? Perhaps it has something to do with the futility of reason and the lack of a need for truth.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Vijaydevani
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Vijaydevani »

Nick_A:

I asked you a few question which you seem to either have missed or ignored. I am reproducing them below:

What are these universal needs? Also how does anyone know of all this? How do these people who say all this know of the politics of creation? Who told them about it?

What are these levels of consciousness? How many are there? Why do the higher aid the lower in their evolution? What do lower consciousnesses evolve into? Why do they need to evolve? Are they unwanted? If so, why were they created in the first place?

Why didn't only acceptable levels of higher consciousness come into existence? Does that mean that the Source had no real control over creation and even unwanted things were created?

What does that mean for the limitless power of the Source? Does that mean it has limited powers and has no real control over its creation? Does it mean that this universe is in the hands of the highest level of consciousness which is just below the Source?

You seem to be suggesting that the Source is not concerned with its creation since it is impersonal. So if the universe is in the hands of the highest level of consciousness just below the Source, shouldn't we really be focusing our attention on identifying this final level of consciousness since it is the only one which has a vested interest in us?


If all of them are overwhelming, you might take them a few at a time.

-- Updated September 29th, 2016, 12:56 pm to add the following --
Nick_A wrote:Fooloso4 and Blind ghost, IMO you both are unwilling to consider that the objective quality of both science and religion is relative as is the relativity of conscious understanding for human beings. If Einstein can distinguish between the spirit and a personal god and not be fixated on conditioned meanings for terms, why can't others? Perhaps it has something to do with the futility of reason and the lack of a need for truth.
Even if it is Einstein, how does any human being perceive and comprehend a God of a scale that cannot be comprehended and have full confidence of the fact that an incomprehensible God exists? Even if a human mind is capable of transcending space and time, how does it convey that message to the lower level of consciousness since the lower level of consciousness simply cannot comprehend it?
A little knowledge is a religious thing.
Fooloso4
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
Fooloso4 and Blind ghost, IMO you both are unwilling to consider that the objective quality of both science and religion is relative as is the relativity of conscious understanding for human beings.
In order to consider it I would first have to understand what it means. What is the objective quality of science relative to? What is the objective quality of religion? You have not shown the objective quality of religion.
If Einstein can distinguish between the spirit and a personal god …
He is not talking about “the spirit” as if it were something like the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. He is using it in the sense it is used when speaking of Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. It is the human, cultural, historical spirit of an age, not a transcendent, supernatural spirit. It is a an attitude, a way of thinking, an orientation, a way of looking, a feeling.
… and not be fixated on conditioned meanings for terms, why can't others?
But that is exactly what you are doing. You take a term that is used in one way and use it in another way that changes its meaning.
Perhaps it has something to do with the futility of reason and the lack of a need for truth.
No, it has everything to do with you wanting others to say what you want them to say rather than what they actually say. Someone who believed in the futility of reason would not say as Einstein did in the quotes above: “through striving after rational knowledge”, “the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it”, “the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations”, “a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe”, “There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being”.

The last quote should be kept in mind when trying to understand what he means by spirit in the quote you posted. The spirit manifest in the laws of the universe is not a transcendent will, it is not a spirit that does anything. It is, rather, a manifestation of something greater than the spirit of man. But the spirit of man is not the soul. Einstein flatly rejected the notion of an immortal soul.
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Nick_A »

Fooloso4 wrote:
In order to consider it I would first have to understand what it means. What is the objective quality of science relative to? What is the objective quality of religion? You have not shown the objective quality of religion.
The objective quality of science refers to its goal. The lowest quality refers to the manipulation of selective facts to further a political or social goal. The highest quality of science refers to the impartial search for truth through the pursuit of the provable interactions of universal laws.

The objective quality of religion refers to its ability to serve as the means for a non-illusory psychological connection between the exoteric level a person lives on and the transcendent origin from which the essence of the religion devolved.
He is not talking about “the spirit” as if it were something like the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. He is using it in the sense it is used when speaking of Zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. It is the human, cultural, historical spirit of an age, not a transcendent, supernatural spirit. It is a an attitude, a way of thinking, an orientation, a way of looking, a feeling.
Are you seriously suggesting that the Einstein quote should read:
Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the human, cultural, historical spirit of an age is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.

-- Updated Thu Sep 29, 2016 1:24 pm to add the following --

Vijay wrote:
What are these universal needs? Also how does anyone know of all this? How do these people who say all this know of the politics of creation? Who told them about it?
I believe in the concept of perennial traditions. This means that somehow universal truths have always been known by certain naturally evolved people and they transmitted it to others capable of comprehending such knowledge.

Plato described the two different ways of approaching truth as mythos and logos. Mythos is a more silent, intuitive way of looking at reality and logos is more of a scientific, discursive, logical way, and we need both. If you are open to this idea you can begin to understand how perennial knowledge is communicated.
Why didn't only acceptable levels of higher consciousness come into existence? Does that mean that the Source had no real control over creation and even unwanted things were created?
The concept of acceptable has to do with man made interpretations of contents of consciousness. Consciousness refers to levels of inclusion. Think of the old expression “he can’t see the forest for the trees.” The trees represent a lower level of conscious inclusion as compared to the wholeness of a forest. The process of existence requires levels of inclusion to connect wholeness and all its potential fragments.

The universe is a machine made up of matter and spirit within matter. The greater the level of consciousness the more spirit is within the matter within each level of reality.
What does that mean for the limitless power of the Source? Does that mean it has limited powers and has no real control over its creation? Does it mean that this universe is in the hands of the highest level of consciousness which is just below the Source?
The ONE IS. It is not limited by time and space. Existence is a process that takes place within Isness. The process doesn’t create energy. Its source is the Isness within which the process takes place.


You seem to be suggesting that the Source is not concerned with its creation since it is impersonal. So if the universe is in the hands of the highest level of consciousness just below the Source, shouldn't we really be focusing our attention on identifying this final level of consciousness since it is the only one which has a vested interest in us?

No. All we can do is admit like Einstein that there is a quality of reality that far exceeds what Man on earth is capable of so all true efforts at higher understanding will come from efforts to “Know Thyself.” This isn’t introspection for social considerations but rather having the impartial experience of oneself without judgment; what a person is.
Even if it is Einstein, how does any human being perceive and comprehend a God of a scale that cannot be comprehended and have full confidence of the fact that an incomprehensible God exists? Even if a human mind is capable of transcending space and time, how does it convey that message to the lower level of consciousness since the lower level of consciousness simply cannot comprehend it?
That is the big question. I believe that we are dual natured. The human organism has a lower animal part and a higher part that is capable of conscious self awareness and receiving conscious influences supporting our ability for mythos. The basis of the fallen human condition is that as we are the lower rules the higher which is contrary to our natural state of existence where the higher rules the lower. The animal part should serve the needs of our parts capable of objective human conscious potential. There are all sorts of spiritual practices with the aim of becoming normal. However they are difficult in practice because our habits offer strong resistance and society offers hundreds of reasons to stick with the status quo.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Fooloso4
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Fooloso4 »

Nick_A:

… the transcendent origin …

What transcendent origin? How does a cave dweller know of this transcendent origin?
Are you seriously suggesting that the Einstein quote should read…
I see I gave you too much credit. ‘Geist’ and ‘Zeitgeist’ are not the same. The point was to show that the term ‘spirit’ is used in various ways and does not mean for Einstein what it means for Christian theology, which he called “childish”. Some other examples: the spirit of the law, team spirit, a spirited conversation. It can mean something essential, something fundamental. Do I need to add the caveat that none of these examples can be used as a word for word substitution for what Einstein said? Must it be pointed out that the meaning of a term is not usually sufficiently covered by another term?
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Nick_A »

Fooloso4 wrote
: … the transcendent origin …

What transcendent origin? How does a cave dweller know of this transcendent origin?
Most cave dwellers limited to supporting cave life are unaware of the transcendent origin. Some human beings are spiritually open to experience enlightenment as distinct from emotional fantasy. Then they experience that there is something more real than cave life and are drawn to it.

I see I gave you too much credit. ‘Geist’ and ‘Zeitgeist’ are not the same. The point was to show that the term ‘spirit’ is used in various ways and does not mean for Einstein what it means for Christian theology, which he called “childish”. Some other examples: the spirit of the law, team spirit, a spirited conversation. It can mean something essential, something fundamental. Do I need to add the caveat that none of these examples can be used as a word for word substitution for what Einstein said? Must it be pointed out that the meaning of a term is not usually sufficiently covered by another term?
Granted the word spirit has several connotations but the way Einstein wrote it can have only one meaning unless you insist that it had a superior societal meaning.
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Vijaydevani
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Vijaydevani »

Nick_A wrote: Vijay wrote:
What are these universal needs? Also how does anyone know of all this? How do these people who say all this know of the politics of creation? Who told them about it?
I believe in the concept of perennial traditions. This means that somehow universal truths have always been known by certain naturally evolved people and they transmitted it to others capable of comprehending such knowledge.

Plato described the two different ways of approaching truth as mythos and logos. Mythos is a more silent, intuitive way of looking at reality and logos is more of a scientific, discursive, logical way, and we need both. If you are open to this idea you can begin to understand how perennial knowledge is communicated.
You said: "Man’s conscious potential is to serve universal needs." Now you are talking about universal truths. What are the universal needs?

Then you say: "somehow universal truths have always been known by certain naturally evolved people and they transmitted it to others capable of comprehending such knowledge." What is this somehow? How do you know that some people understand these universal truths? If these are universal truths, which are necessary for everyone to know, who are only some people capable of knowing it? Since we are not talking about God anymore, What is the proof that some people are capable of knowing these truths? Why have they never ever clarified what these truths are, whether people understand it or not? What is the reason that these some people are bestowed with the ability to know these truths and others are not and need to be told ? Why are only some people capable of comprehending this truth if these truths are necessary? Why are others not?

Does that mean that those who are not capable of understanding this truth are not serving their true human purpose and only serve their animal purpose? If so, we are back to the question if God wanted humans to serve their true purpose which is based on knowing universal truths, why did he not give all humans the capacity to know it? It is again God's loss, isn't it? Unless it is not necessary to fulfill that purpose. In which case, what is the need to know these universal truths?
A little knowledge is a religious thing.
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
Some human beings are spiritually open to experience enlightenment as distinct from emotional fantasy. Then they experience that there is something more real than cave life and are drawn to it.
Are you aware of your equivocation? Either one experiences enlightenment, in which case he is no longer in the cave, or he is of the opinion that there is “an objective transcendent origin” that can be experienced. Since he has not experienced it he has no objective knowledge of it.
Granted the word spirit has several connotations but the way Einstein wrote it can have only one meaning …
He clearly stated he rejects the notion of a personal God and so he must reject all three of the persons of the Trinity. So, it is clear that he does not mean Christianity’s Holy Spirit. Or perhaps you think of it as a power? But how does this square with Einstein’s claim that: “There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must …”. It is not a spirit that acts on or changes anything. Nor is it something that is revealed though transcendent psychological experience: “If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” If the term religious is to be applied to him it is not a religion about something transcendent but rather: “a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe”. When he talks about mankind’s spiritual evolution, he says is accomplished “through striving after rational knowledge.”
… unless you insist that it had a superior societal meaning.
It is not a question of a “superior meaning” whatever that is supposed to mean, but rather it is a question of what he meant when he used the term ‘spirit’.

It should be clear to anyone reading his statements that he does not support your claim about the futility of reason. Let’s look again at the quote you opened this topic with and see how it compares to what Einstein said.
IN a recent work, Henri Nouwen emphasizes the essence of spirituality in a most succinct fashion: “To whom do we belong? This is the core question of the spiritual life. Do we belong to the world, its worries, its people and its endless chain of urgencies and emergencies, or do we belong to God and God’s people.”
Clearly for Einstein the essence of spirituality is not belonging to God since he rejects the idea of God. On the contrary, he belongs completely to this world.
1 Corinthians 2: 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
He does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God because he does accept the existence of God. He does not use the word foolish but rather childish. What he discerns is not through the Spirit but rather through rational knowledge, through science.
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Nick_A »

"To restore to science as a whole, for mathematics as well as psychology and sociology, the sense of its origin and veritable destiny as a bridge leading toward God---not by diminishing, but by increasing precision in demonstration, verification and supposition---that would indeed be a task worth accomplishing." Simone Weil

Fooloso4 wrote:
Are you aware of your equivocation? Either one experiences enlightenment, in which case he is no longer in the cave, or he is of the opinion that there is “an objective transcendent origin” that can be experienced. Since he has not experienced it he has no objective knowledge of it.
No. The first stage of enlightenment is the realization of the human condition. We are still dual natured and the struggle it produces initially keeps one in the cave. Freedom is a gradual process.
IN a recent work, Henri Nouwen emphasizes the essence of spirituality in a most succinct fashion: “To whom do we belong? This is the core question of the spiritual life. Do we belong to the world, its worries, its people and its endless chain of urgencies and emergencies, or do we belong to God and God’s people.”


Clearly for Einstein the essence of spirituality is not belonging to God since he rejects the idea of God. On the contrary, he belongs completely to this world.


1 Corinthians 2: 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.


He does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God because he does accept the existence of God. He does not use the word foolish but rather childish. What he discerns is not through the Spirit but rather through rational knowledge, through science.
OK, let’s see what he did write:
"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that , compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."
What is this intelligence, this superior spirit, producing the intelligent design that Einstein calls his God? It isn’t a personal God but rather a quality of consciousness which completely dwarfs our binary logic or dualistic reason.
"A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels."

"The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking that we have done so far, has created problems we cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them . . . . We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive."
There is nothing wrong with dualistic reason. Where it is appropriate it is of great value. However it is insufficient for understanding universal laws and their significance for the being of Man. As Einstein wrote, we need a new quality of reason that Simone Weil alludes to moving towards a higher level of consciousness – a quality of reason that will unite science with the source of our universe and in the process, make intellectually evident the objective purpose of human existence which science can become able to serve. Isn't the struggle to acquire freedom from cave life and a higher level of reason serving his God?

-- Updated Fri Sep 30, 2016 12:02 am to add the following --

Vijay wrote: You said:
"Man’s conscious potential is to serve universal needs." Now you are talking about universal truths. What are the universal needs?

Then you say: "somehow universal truths have always been known by certain naturally evolved people and they transmitted it to others capable of comprehending such knowledge." What is this somehow? How do you know that some people understand these universal truths? If these are universal truths, which are necessary for everyone to know, who are only some people capable of knowing it? Since we are not talking about God anymore, What is the proof that some people are capable of knowing these truths? Why have they never ever clarified what these truths are, whether people understand it or not? What is the reason that these some people are bestowed with the ability to know these truths and others are not and need to be told ? Why are only some people capable of comprehending this truth if these truths are necessary? Why are others not?

Does that mean that those who are not capable of understanding this truth are not serving their true human purpose and only serve their animal purpose? If so, we are back to the question if God wanted humans to serve their true purpose which is based on knowing universal truths, why did he not give all humans the capacity to know it? It is again God's loss, isn't it? Unless it is not necessary to fulfill that purpose. In which case, what is the need to know these universal truths?
How could anyone serve a conscious universal purpose without first appreciating universal truths? Consider these questions from a Buddhist perspective. When the Buddha awakened was he the only awakened being in the universe? If not it means conscious humanity existed before man on earth. As you know Buddhism asserts that people are born with different potentials. Take a person born as a hungry ghost whose life is caught up in greed, envy, and power. What chance do they have for opening to higher truths? They are caught up in the world. I know it sounds elitist but I believe some are born who easily are attracted to conscious human potential. Others are born who could go either way, and others who deny it. This is acquired karma.

Man on earth is serving its true animal purpose. Anything else is just a potential a person can open to. There is no personal god poking his head out of the clouds telling you what to do. Influences from higher consciousness are always present. This is why many practice meditation and conscious contemplation so as to open to these influences. The machine or life on earth is being served by our animal nature. Most are content with this. Some need more.
“How can we be so willfully blind as to look for causes in nature when nature herself is an effect?” – Maistre
As we are we are just a part of an effect as is the rest of animal life with the potential of becoming a conscious cause
Man would like to be an egoist and cannot. This is the most striking characteristic of his wretchedness and the source of his greatness." Simone Weil....Gravity and Grace
Vijaydevani
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Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Vijaydevani »

Nick_A wrote:
How could anyone serve a conscious universal purpose without first appreciating universal truths? [/quote]
You are avoiding the real issue. Why would the purpose giver give a purpose which could only be served by knowing universal truths and then make the universal truths so tough to find?

-- Updated September 30th, 2016, 11:58 am to add the following --

Why are these precious universal truths hidden? If they are so important for humans to know, why are they not easily found?
A little knowledge is a religious thing.
Fooloso4
Posts: 3601
Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm

Re: The Futility of Reason

Post by Fooloso4 »

Nick_A:
No. The first stage of enlightenment is the realization of the human condition. We are still dual natured and the struggle it produces initially keeps one in the cave. Freedom is a gradual process.
In other words you do not know of anything outside the cave. In other words you have no knowledge of an objective transcendent origin. In other words you have an opinion based on what others have said.
What is this intelligence, this superior spirit, producing the intelligent design that Einstein calls his God? It isn’t a personal God but rather a quality of consciousness which completely dwarfs our binary logic or dualistic reason.
The universe itself. Nothing outside of it. Nothing that transcends it. Nothing that designs and creates it. You have read into it the idea of intelligent design and quality of consciousness. You have read into it binary logic. You have overlooked what he said about rational knowledge and science.
"A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels."

"The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking that we have done so far, has created problems we cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them . . . . We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive."
It is important to cite sources so that words can be read in context. The context of these quotes is the crisis of war and atomic weapons. He is talking about changing our ways of thinking about war and peace.
As Einstein wrote, we need a new quality of reason …
Where did he say anything about a “quality of reason?
… a quality of reason that will unite science with the source of our universe
Where does he talk about a source of the universe that is outside the universe?
… make intellectually evident the objective purpose of human existence
You insert Weil into what Einstein said as if they are talking about the same things and are in agreement. They are not.
As already quoted:
It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.
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