Any defender of the materialist narrative here?

[MarkusSweden]

Isn't it funny how dominating the materialist narrative is in the world, probably more then 99% have this worldview! 

Du you think it's completely false, or do you defend some aspects of the materialist narrative?

I seem to have a worldview that is 80 % spiritual and 20% scientific. ( I know, that's schizophrenic    )

I tend to think that some aspects of science, like Biology, Evolution, Astronomy, and Metabolism cover some part of reality that spirituality alone doesn't cover. 

But I am still somewhat of a hardcore spiritual person.

However.

Biology is all about survival of the fittest, concurrence, sexual selection, hierarchy, status etcetera. 

Astronomy tells us that space, time and matter do exists with a lot of cool features to them, such as black holes, anti-matter, curvature of space/time etcetera. 

Spirituality disqualify those disciplines in some sense I think.

Reality according to the spiritual  paradigm is more like a non dual singularity point of infinite consciousness with no such thing as space and time.

And no such thing as ego that biology suggest, Spirituality is just unconditional love and other airy fairy platitudes. 

Caveat, I'm not critical of spirituality here. I just elaborate if we need some hardcore materialist science into our picture of reality. Not a huge amount, just a tiny proportion, like 10%, just as a spice of dark into our bright spiritual worldview.  

People are so fully into either narrative, shouldn't there be an optimal mix? Like 90/10 or 80/20 in favour to the spiritual narrative.  

 

 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2018 by MarkusSweden

[Prabhaker]

25 minutes ago, MarkusSweden said:

do you defend some aspects of the materialist narrative?

My whole effort is to bring Zorba and Buddha closer and closer -- so close that both can exist in one human being without any contradiction, as complementaries, helping each other, not fighting with each other.

Separately, both are missing much. Buddha is absolutely bloodless, just a skeleton, because he has denied everything that life is. Life is love, life is laughter. Buddha has denied everything. He is just a skeleton. Zorba is full of life, love, laughter. Eat, drink, and be merry is his whole religion. He does not know anything beyond eat, drink, and be merry. He does not know ... he has no question or curiosity about something that is higher -- higher than the alcohol, higher than the woman or man, higher than this world, the visible world, the tangible world.

Zorba has no quest; he is perfectly happy drinking, dancing, enjoying. Buddha is missing the blood, the life, the love, the joy, the celebration. Buddha cannot dance. It will be simply inconceivable, Buddha dancing. Zorba cannot sit silently

and meditate. That, too, is as inconceivable as Buddha dancing. Zorba is dancing, singing, drinking. He is making love to any woman, who by chance meets him.

Zorba represents the materialist in its best form. Buddha represents the spiritualist in its best form. but you are both, spirit and body. Existence is both, matter and consciousness.

Therefore I say that spiritualists have been denying the very base of the temple.

They accept the temple but they deny the foundation of the temple, and without the foundation, no temple can stand. That's why religions have failed.

 Osho ~ The Last Testament Volume 1

http://oshosearch.net/Convert/Articles_Osho/The_Last_Testament_Volume_1/Osho-The-Last-Testament-Volume-1-00000022.html

[MarkusSweden]

11 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

 

Zorba represents the materialist in its best form. Buddha represents the spiritualist in its best form. but you are both, spirit and body. Existence is both, matter and consciousness.

Therefore I say that spiritualists have been denying the very base of the temple.

They accept the temple but they deny the foundation of the temple, and without the foundation, no temple can stand. That's why religions have failed.

 Osho ~ The Last Testament Volume 1

http://oshosearch.net/Convert/Articles_Osho/The_Last_Testament_Volume_1/Osho-The-Last-Testament-Volume-1-00000022.html

Very good! 

Resonates with me.

Thank you.

[Monkey-man]

13 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Buddha is absolutely bloodless, just a skeleton, because he has denied everything that life is. Life is love, life is laughter. Buddha has denied everything. He is just a skeleton. Buddha is missing the blood, the life, the love, the joy, the celebration. Buddha cannot dance. It will be simply inconceivable, Buddha dancing.

OMG OSHO said something very wise. Thats probs the only thing I don't understand about Buddha, he was fully enlightened yet so close-minded and just wanted to escape life instead of reconciling spirit and body.

[Prabhaker]

Just now, Monkey-man said:

only thing I don't understand about Buddha, he was fully enlightened yet so close-minded and just wanted to escape life instead of reconciling spirit and body

In Buddha's time, few people were rich but most of the society was poor, wealth has been created after industrialization. He had to preach a path which could be understood and followed by poor masses.

[snowleopard]

@MarkusSweden  Science works just as well under an ontological model of idealism, and the primacy of consciousness. Only without the problem of having to explain how consciousness emerges from non-conscious stuff 'out there.'

[tsuki]

Depending on what you take reality to be, different methods of inquiry resonate with you.
You then apply these methods to see an answer to what reality is.

All of them have one thing in common - they take their answers to say what reality is without seeing what they all have in common.
They all are the Gateless Gate.

Edited February 20, 2018 by tsuki

[Leo Gura]

6 hours ago, MarkusSweden said:

Biology is all about survival of the fittest, concurrence, sexual selection, hierarchy, status etcetera. 

Astronomy tells us that space, time and matter do exists with a lot of cool features to them, such as black holes, anti-matter, curvature of space/time etcetera. 

Spirituality disqualify those disciplines in some sense I think.

Reality according to the spiritual  paradigm is more like a non dual singularity point of infinite consciousness with no such thing as space and time.

And no such thing as ego that biology suggest, Spirituality is just unconditional love and other airy fairy platitudes. 

Be very careful here. Your understanding of science is lacking and your perspective has many factual inaccuracies. Here are some corrections for you:

• Science has conclusively disproven the existence of matter, absolute time, and absolute space over 100 years ago.
• Black holes, anti-matter, curvature of space-time says nothing about the ontology of such things. You are confusing phenomena with substance.
• Spirituality doesn't disqualify proper science, nor vice-versa.
• Reality according to quantum mechanics is an infinite quantum wave function (nondual singularity) with no such thing as space, time, particles, or a physical world.
• Quantum mechanics has shown that the process of observation necessarily affects all knowledge of the world because subject/object are entangled.
• Most of the fathers of quantum mechanics were in fact mystics. They did not believe in materialism.
• Biology has never proven the existence of an ego.
• Science has never proven the existence of a physical world.
• Science has never proven the existence of any boundaries between objects.
• The best cosmological theories seem to show that the universe arose from nothing.
• The latest evidence from biology is showing that evolutionary mutations are non-random.

All of the above inaccuracies come from mainstream cultural notions of science, which are 300 years out of date and totally backwards. Real science is not what people think it is. And the most modern science fully supports and is compatible with nonduality. Obviously, because the universe is nondual.

There is a big difference between strict scientific observations (which are valid) and science as a materialist religion (which is invalid). The place where popular science gets into trouble is when it tries cast the world as a clockwork universe. But this has been clearly disproven for over 100 years. The worldview of Aristotle and Newton is dead. The only problem is, 99% of people still don't realize it. Because their understanding of modern science is a woefully inadequate cartoon caricature.

[MarkusSweden]

@Leo Gura Quite informative and very interesting, thanks!

But I have to say I miss those lovely rants agains society and science I use to hear from you!  

@tsuki Good point! 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2018 by MarkusSweden

[Leo Gura]

@MarkusSweden A) I never really ranted against science. People misunderstand my position on science. I am more pro-science than most scientists. That's why I criticize them. Not because I dislike science, but because they a corrupting science with unscientific metaphysical assumptions (materialism). I am an advocate for the most hardcore and rigorous science. Which means, it must be open to absolutely all phenomena. Nothing can be excluded a priori.

B) There will be a lot more ranting against science to come. I could make a whole channel about the improper philosophical foundations of science. I don't talk about it much because it's a very nuanced subject and goes over people's heads and it's tricky to talk about.

[snowleopard]

@MarkusSweden  Transcending materialism doesn't mean the end of science, but will open it up to a much broader spectrum of phenomenal  exploration, once freed from the confines of its materialist prison. It can then start to investigate all the metaphysical phenomena that it has for so long ignored and dismissed as impossible under materialism, and thus not worthy of investigation. 

[MarkusSweden]

28 minutes ago, snowleopard said:

@MarkusSweden  Transcending materialism doesn't mean the end of science, but will open it up to a much broader spectrum of phenomenal  exploration, once freed from the confines of its materialist prison. It can then start to investigate all the metaphysical phenomena that it has for so long ignored and dismissed as impossible under materialism, and thus not worthy of investigation. 

Valid point! 

[Nahm]

@MarkusSweden You can describe your dream from last night. Doesn’t make it “material”. You can touch & feel your surroundings right now. Doesn’t make you “physical”. Science is just describing the dream. 

There are scientists claiming reality is ultimately material?  Who are they? 

 

 

 

You.

[MarkusSweden]

@Nahm I need to catch up with modern science, I thought they were still stucked in the materialist paradigm. But as you indicate and as Leo said, modern science admits they can't find anything such as "matter" 

And from a non dual perspective it really doesn't matter, because if everything was matter, the reality would still be non dual. Matter can't create duality, that goes without saying. 

Edited February 20, 2018 by MarkusSweden

[Nahm]

@MarkusSweden Modern science is about sales and continuation of funding. 

Look at science from 80, 90 years ago. 

Have you looked into why Einstein is readily named as the smartest human (arguably)? Have you looked into the profundity of what relativity points at? 

 

[MarkusSweden]

10 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@MarkusSweden

Have you looked into why Einstein is readily named as the smartest human (arguably)? Have you looked into the profundity of what relativity points at? 

 

Not really, I only know that Einstein was highly intuitive, he wasn't that much of an academic skilled mathematician. He also seem to have a spiritual side, he crediting the universe to God, didn't he?

He said something along the line that "God doesn't play dice", I guess he saw some structure and beauty in the universe. 

Although he had a trouble life regarding to people. He said something like "universe and human stupidity are infinite, at least human stupidity"

 

I don't know much about relativity other then it proves that time and space are relative entities.

Since nothing can travel faster then the speed of light in relation to something else, that results in some wired consequences regarding how we normally perceive time and space. 

Please, update me. Would love to know more about what we can learn from Einstein.  

Edited February 20, 2018 by MarkusSweden

[Pramit]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

they a corrupting science with unscientific metaphysical assumptions (materialism)

The problem is that most scientist aren't taught philosophy as part of an essential curriculum. And the people who control funding, mostly politicians, aren't enlightened people themselves. The target is to get the quickest result in the shortest time possible, and this selection pressure gives us a certain breed of scientist. 

I used to look up a lot of information, and my primary way to gain information was self learning. Only after having a course called 'philosophy of mind' do I understand just how much information and work people have done on the paradigm of reality and what science should represent. You can explore everything by yourself, but having a teacher just makes it so much easier to find information. Want to be a hardcore believe in materialism? There is a theory for that. Want to be a soft believer in materialism? there is a theory for that. Want to abandon it all together? There is not one, but a few theories for that. It's like picking ice cream where you get to choose the flavors. Personally, I am in favor of what alan watts understood a long time ago - that symbols do not represent reality adequately, there is no division between the physical and mental, reality is constructed in the human mind. Maybe I'll try to formalize these beliefs once I have some free time. The issue is that you can't really 'prove' anything in philosophy, you can only disprove using arguments and rational statements, which is sort of like mathematics. And just like mathematics, without real experiments, no matter how beautiful your theory is, it must go to the trash (according to current scientific paradigm). Nothing is falsifiable at this point. The science we are at may be 'new' with regard to techniques and all, but in philosophy it is at least 300 years old. There is nothing 'modern' about science. Its an old tradition that still works because we haven't hit the wall on technological progress and groundbreaking discovering..yet. 

[snowleopard]

@MarkusSweden  Much of modern science is still stuck in the materialist paradigm, but has simply conveniently ignored the findings of physicists that 'matter' is a phenomenal experience dependent upon consciousness. Even many physicists still hold that consciousness is an emergent property of some objective substrate, thus contradicting their own evidence to the contrary. Such is the power of indoctrination into a collective worldview.

[MiracleMan]

Science is the ultimate search for truth when it's procedure is strictly followed.  Spirituality is ultimately a science of the first person observer, whereby the scientist investigates his own experience and makes a conclusion based on fact.

Maybe this is why enlightenment is even possible, because direct experience cannot be denied, it's maybe even more scientific than that of a third person observation, for example, matter seems to be an appearance of reality but it cannot be verified by experience, I can never find something here called matter.  On the other hand, I am aware that I am aware, it's verifiable from my own experience, and while no one else has the authority to say whether I'm aware or not, it's a 100% undeniable fact for me.

The issue with the entire matter phenomenon is the current science "believes" it's something outside consciousness, that first there was matter, then the universe, then the planets and stars, then the biological organisms, then the brain, then the mind, and finally consciousness is produced in the mind.  This is totally backwards from our actual experience, so it's good to ask yourself if you believe the model given by present society, or your own raw experience.

This really blew my mind the first time I gave it some attention.  Nothing exists outside consciousness, no one has ever found anything outside consciousness, but our entire society believes that there exists a world outside of themselves, myself included, it's just a deep rooted belief that seems automatic, even though I can verify my direct experience tells me that nothing can exist outside consciousness, I'm still in autopilot, it still feels to me like there is a barrier between me and the other. 

Edited February 20, 2018 by MiracleMan

[MarkusSweden]

@snowleopard Sad, isn't it?  

I have a master of science degree, but I remember going to a philosopher class just for fun.

To enjoy the pinnacle of open-mindedness. That's what I thought. I was disappointed, my free thoughts and mind wasn't forbidden maybe, but at least not as welcomed as I expected. 

Still a structure "How to think" 

It's something about the hierarchal order in academia that collapses if you think "too" freely. 

It's better to be here. Decentralised and every thought is allowed(at least as long Key Elements isn't here)  

Nah, just joking. (Please Key, don't punish me for a joke)