Science & Religion

[Honey]

Yeah, I'm not a trancendentalist by the definition above, and I'm certainly not a materialist, yet I still have aspects of both of those in my "emergence-based spirituality". I've got trouble identifying with the "magical paradigm" though -- some baggage on my part.

Hehehe. Just remember "Magic" in the sense used here has nothing to do with throwing fireballs or seeing the future or levitating

I don't think I've ever gotten a straightforward definition of magic without all the jargon.

Magic is the Art of Consciousness Change
Magic is a lockpicking set for your BiP.

Magic is a set of concepts and principles which interact with the psychology of the human mind. Magical systems are all based on similar memetic groups, a given system defines a set of specific practices, particularly how they're implemented, what dogma they use and the general aim of the practitioner.  So one magical system will use High Ritual with complex traditions and specific symbols that have been passed down for generations, while another system will use chaos rituals, or paratheatrics which is nothing like High ritual... but the underlying psychological mechanisms will likely be similar. It could be like a difference between classical art and modern art in some sense.

Magic is a set of tools that have instruction books with them, if you want to modify your BiP. Some of the tools are made in Taiwan out of pig iron and the instructions are translated by someone who learned Taiwanese by watching bad anime with the subtitles on. Some of the tools are very nice quality and have instructions that are less confusing. Some of the tools are like erector sets with instructions that read more like "General Principles of Erector Sets" and end with 'Good Luck'.  

Magic is a broad and generic word that covers a number of different ways in which people have experienced changes in their consciousness. Here is an example:

Crowley points to the similarities between Buddha, Christ and Mohammad as well as Moses and Paul. They all were leading one life, then they all went away, something happened (often they see a bright shinning Angel/Deity and speak with it. It tells them what they will do, they came back and led a religious revolution... in most cases, something that would never have seemed likely given their former life.

If we compare those experiences with the experiences Abremlin the Mage had  (Conversing with the Holy Guardian Angel), it is very similar. If we compare that to Crowley's experiences after doing these rituals (His conversations with AWISS), it is again very similar. Just different masks, different labels, different dogmas.

In this day and age, we can further compare those experiences to RAW's "Cosmic Trigger". He figured out the above bit after reading Crowley and decided to try the rituals himself. He experienced communications from aliens on the planet Sirius for a year after getting involved with the rituals as an intentional experiment, as did Phillip K Dick.

The larger problem here, is that almost anyone can get results. If a person follows the directions from 'Magic System X', it is likely that they will get some result (assuming they can chain up disbelief for a little bit). Unfortunately, they often confuse the result with reality, that makes it easy for groups like the Mystic Wicks to pop up. There are enough books available that cover the necessary mechanics for various experiences, that lots of practitioners do experience something. However, often many of them believe whatever dogmatic crap was on top of the practice. Rather than experiencing a phenomena which took the mask of the goddess Kali/Aphrodite/whoever is cool in their head/ they think they experienced Kali/Aphrodite/whoever is cool in their head.

I was very glad that I had some basis of skepticism when I had my first experiences with Magic. Even today, I can't look you in the eye and say I 100% believe that I didn't have some interaction with something amazing. I think it is far more likely that I experienced an interaction within my head, but it felt amazing.

Fortunately, my second amazing experience was with Eris herself and since she acted like the hippy hottie and showed up in a carriage that looked like a bong... I felt far more comfortable with a "Oh this is obviously a set of labels/symbols/masks from my head" explanation.  

Wow, that was a lot longer than I meant to write...

So, basically I've been doing magic all this time, just without all the mumbo-jumbo language...

?

According to Crowley, any act of Will qualifies as magic because its all you consciously impacting the world around you.

From what I've gathered from discussions about it here, it's the ability to think hard enough and change your own mind!
[cue eerie music]

Its a large group of tools which are helpful in making large changes in the way you behave/think/react/perceive. The ability is within any human, as far as I can tell... Magic just covers 'maps' and 'models' that other people have documented that make use of the ability.

According to Crowley, any act of Will qualifies as magic because its all you consciously impacting the world around you.

So all of Life is Magic?  ok I can deal with that.

& your own writing about this stuff?  Well now!  That is so much better than that other lifeless writing! 

& Kai has some of the best writings about Science both here & out there!  (Many thanks & much respect Kai!) 

What first attracted me to Discordian thought was the phrase "Think for yourself, Schmuck."  For me, that was the difference between Religion (as I understood it) & Science (as I understood it).  A Religion that encouraged one to think?  & experiment & listen to different views & observe & keep on moving?  People who weren't control freaks or OCD about their views?   

Out in the wild (& perhaps this is needless to say?) I was not overly impressed with those who appeared (to me) to want to transform Science into Religion.

The One True Path^TM & now it's Science?  If you clarify what that means – which (as I understand it) means to continue to question, experiment & observe the constantly changing world.  That also means (to me) to encourage people to question your findings, that is, not to be threatened when one is questioned – that is the part  where experiencing Science as Religion (still) ticks me off. 

[Honey]

oh & just to clarify:  my interchanging of the words people & peoples?

This goes back to when I got *snagged* into goin' to a Shinnecock celebration by a SNAG (= sensitive new age guy) who was tryin' (albeit feebly) to get in my pants.  Yeah well & I went with him & so what?  As soon as we got there I proceeded to mingle with the old folk & little kids (as is my way, iz more fun for me) while the SNAG proceeded to get into anthropological debates & so on.  One of the old guys saw me playing with the little kids & called me over.  We chatted for a bit & then he told me something that stuck with me.  He said, all those different tribal names?  Y'know how they are all translated?  THE PEOPLE.  We, the people.  Allows you to do whatever the fuck you want to those you don't consider people.  It stayed with me.

[Kai]

Honey, I do just fine with joining science and religion, just letting you know.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Newton was religious (apparently) I've also heard Einstein was similarly inclined. Strikes me a religious scientist is working out how god did it. No cause for conflict.

Literal interpretation of biblical allegory is another story. I'd say that and science are kinda mutually exclusive fields of exploration. Don't believe me? Just ask a creationist. 

[Kai]

Yeah, science allows for god as long as you can fit god to science and not the other way around.

[MMIX]

Yeah, science allows for god as long as you can fit god to science and not the other way around.

WTF - surely science doesn't disallow god because he is an historical myth and therefore totally outside its field of interest and scope of competence?

[LMNO]

No, it's a thirdish option - functionally meaningless because it doesn't fit the language.

[Kai]

No, it's a thirdish option - functionally meaningless because it doesn't fit the language.

/but/, if you can use the word god as a name for something in science (emergence, for me) /then/ it can fit the language

that's of course just my opinion; other scientists are more based in the materialist paradigm than I am, and would dissagree

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

No, it's a thirdish option - functionally meaningless because it doesn't fit the language.

/but/, if you can use the word god as a name for something in science (emergence, for me) /then/ it can fit the language

that's of course just my opinion; other scientists are more based in the materialist paradigm than I am, and would dissagree

Kai gets 5 points for the correct use of models!

[Honey]

Honey, I do just fine with joining science and religion, just letting you know.

I thought you did from your writings. 

I like what Albert Einstein said about Judaism.  People have described him as being more of a cultural Jew than a religious one.  He was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952 by Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.  He had been friends & working with its first president (a mostly symbolic role), Chaim Weizmann when he died.  He declined.  People say it was because of his age but no one really knows. 

There is, in my opinion, no Jewish view of life in the philosophic sense.  Judaism appears to me to be almost exclusively concerned with the moral attitude in and toward life.

. . . The essence of the Jewish concept of life seems to me to be the affirmation of life for all creatures.  For the life of the individual has meaning only in the service of enhancing and ennobling the life of every living thing.  Life is holy; it is the highest worth on which all other values depend . . .

Judaism is not a faith.  The Jewish God is but a negation of superstition and an imaginative result of its elimination.  He also represents an attempt to ground morality in fear-a deplorable, discreditable attempt.  Yet it seems to me that the powerful moral tradition in the Jewish people has, in great measure, released itself from this fear.  Moreover, it is clear that "to serve God" is equivalent to serving "every living thing."  It is for this that the best among the Jewish people, especially the Prophets including Jesus, ceaselessly battled.  Thus Judaism is not a transcendental religion.  It is concerned only with the tangible experiences of life, and with nothing else.  Therefore, it seems to me to be questionable whether it may termed a "religion" in the customary sense of the word, especially since no "creed" is demanded of Jews, but only the sanctification of life in its all-inclusive sense.

There remains, however, something more in the Jewish tradition, so gloriously revealed in certain of the psalms; namely a kind of drunken joy and surprise at the beauty and incomprehensibility of this world, of which man can attain but a faint intimation.  It is the feeling from which genuine research draws its intellectual strength, but which also seems to manifest itself in the song of birds. . . .

Is this, then, characteristic of Judaism?  And does it exist elsewhere under other names?  In pure form it exists nowhere, not even in Judaism where too much literalism obscures the pure doctrine.  But, nevertheless, I see in Judaism one of its most vital and pure realizations.  This is especially true of its fundamental principle of the sanctification of life.   

I also like the book of Ecclesiastes, its skepticism & pessimism speak to the breadth of the Jewish religious tradition, the wanderers & the wonderers.

Also, Baruch Spinoza, where all of nature is God.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I agree with Al's view on Judaism. It matches my research on the belief system as well. There was not really a Jewish belief for soul, outside of a living body, so it couldn't be a transcendental religion. The word translated as 'soul' in the Christian Bible's Hebrew scriptures more correctly translates to 'living being' or 'the full life of being'. God breathed into the man he created and Adam became nephesh, a living being. Ecclesiastes, as Honey points out furthers this Jewish view. Supposedly written by Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, Ecclesiastes 9 is a trip into nihilism.

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God's hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. 2 All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, [a] the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.
       As it is with the good man,
       so with the sinner;
       as it is with those who take oaths,
       so with those who are afraid to take them.

3 This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead. 4 Anyone who is among the living has hope —even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

5 For the living know that they will die,
       but the dead know nothing;
       they have no further reward,
       and even the memory of them is forgotten.

7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. 9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, [c] where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

I have seen something else under the sun:
       The race is not to the swift
       or the battle to the strong,
       nor does food come to the wise
       or wealth to the brilliant
       or favor to the learned;
       but time and chance happen to them all.

Of course, many Christians have all sorts of tortured ways to try to explain away these scriptures... 

[LMNO]

I charge Ratatosk with writing the Erissiastes.

[Kai]

Lots of parallels between what Spinoza said and what Einstein is talking about. Cool.

Bunch of talk of religious naturalism and naturalistic pantheism ITT; I like. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I charge Ratatosk with writing the Erissiastes.

Oh what an IDEA!

EDIT: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=21125.0

[Golden Applesauce]

Found a quote on my LJ from someone I consider to have a pretty good handle on the magical paradigm that really cuts down to the heart of the matter:

"NeuroLogically speaking, our nervous systems can't really tell the difference between external stimuli and internal representations of the outside world. This is equally true for both "remembered" and "creatively imagined" situations."

Psychologically speaking, this is not quite true.  While imagined or discussed events can influence memory, even forming false memories, the brain is by no means completely unable to tell the two apart.  Forming a false memory usually requires a great deal of repetition (less for modifying an existing memory, especially ambiguous ones), while one only has to experience an event once to remember it.  A person is almost always able to tell the difference between something he is imagining and something that is currently, actually happening.  The last bit is called "reality monitoring," and I'd point you to the wikipedia article except that it appears to have been deleted.