Science & Religion

[Honey]

The following are some of Albert Einstein's writings on Science & Religion.

Please note:  Some of his writings are what some may consider long.  Although who really gives a flying fuck about short attention spans?  Save your breath.

A child in the sixth grade in a Sunday School in New York City, with the encouragement of her teacher, wrote to Einstein in Princeton on 19 January I936 asking him whether scientists pray, and if so what they pray for. Einstein replied as follows on 24 January 1936:

I have tried to respond to your question as simply as I could. Here is my answer.

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.

However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research.

But, on the other hand, 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. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.

It is worth mentioning that this letter was written a decade after the advent of Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy and the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics with its denial of strict determinism.

The next excerpt is a letter written by Einstein in response to a 19-year-old Rutger's University student, who had written to Einstein of his despair at seeing no visible purpose to life and no help from religion.

In responding to this poignant cry for help, Einstein offered no easy solace, and this very fact must have heartened the student and lightened the lonely burden of his doubts. Here is Einstein's response. It was written in English and sent from Princeton on 3 December 1950, within days of receiving the letter:

I was impressed by the earnestness of your struggle to find a purpose for the life of the individual and of mankind as a whole. In my opinion there can be no reasonable answer if the question is put this way. If we speak of the purpose and goal of an action we mean simply the question: which kind of desire should we fulfill by the action or its consequences or which undesired consequences should be prevented? We can, of course, also speak in a clear way of the goal of an action from the standpoint of a community to which the individual belongs. In such cases the goal of the action has also to do at least indirectly with fulfillment of desires of the individuals which constitute a society.

If you ask for the purpose or goal of society as a whole or of an individual taken as a whole the question loses its meaning. This is, of course, even more so if you ask the purpose or meaning of nature in general. For in those cases it seems quite arbitrary if not unreasonable to assume somebody whose desires are connected with the happenings.

Nevertheless we all feel that it is indeed very reasonable and important to ask ourselves how we should try to conduct our lives. The answer is, in my opinion: satisfaction of the desires and needs of all, as far as this can be achieved, and achievement of harmony and beauty in the human relationships. This presupposes a good deal of conscious thought and of self-education. It is undeniable that the enlightened Greeks and the old Oriental sages had achieved a higher level in this all-important field than what is alive in our schools and universities.

[Honey]

Science and Religion

This article appears in Einstein's Ideas and Opinions, pp.41 - 49. The first section is taken from an address at Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939. It was published in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. The second section is from Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.

...One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values.

The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.

...If one were to take that goal out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.

...If one looks at the substance rather than at the form, then one can take these words as expressing also the fundamental democratic position. The true democrat can worship his nation as little as can the man who is religious, in our sense of the term.

If one holds these high principles clearly before one's eyes, and compares them with the life and spirit of our times, then it appears glaringly that civilized mankind finds itself at present in grave danger, In the totalitarian states it is the rulers themselves who strive actually to destroy that spirit of humanity. In less threatened parts it is nationalism and intolerance, as well as the oppression of the individuals by economic means, which threaten to choke these most precious traditions.

A realization of how great is the danger is spreading, however, among thinking people, and there is much search for means with which to meet the danger--means in the field of national and international politics, of legislation, or organization in general.

Such efforts are, no doubt, greatly needed. Yet the ancients knew something- which we seem to have forgotten. All means prove but a blunt instrument, if they have not behind them a living spirit. But if the longing for the achievement of the goal is powerfully alive within us, then shall we not lack the strength to find the means for reaching the goal and for translating it into deeds.

...If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts. According to this interpretation the well-known conflicts between religion and science in the past must all be ascribed to a misapprehension of the situation which has been described.

Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason.

...The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God. It is the aim of science to establish general rules which determine the reciprocal connection of objects and events in time and space. For these rules, or laws of nature, absolutely general validity is required--not proven. It is mainly a program, and faith in the possibility of its accomplishment in principle is only founded on partial successes. But hardly anyone could be found who would deny these partial successes and ascribe them to human self-deception.

To be sure, when the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large, scientific method in most cases fails us. One need only think of the weather, in which case prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Nevertheless no one doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

...The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.

But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself.

This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task. (This thought is convincingly presented in Herbert Samuel's book, Belief and Action.) After religious teachers accomplish the refining process indicated they will surely recognize with joy that true religion has been ennobled and made more profound by scientific knowledge.

If it is one of the goals of religion to liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears, scientific reasoning can aid religion in yet another sense. Although it is true that it is the goal of science to discover rules which permit the association and foretelling of facts, this is not its only aim. It also seeks to reduce the connections discovered to the smallest possible number of mutually independent conceptual elements.

It is in this striving after the rational unification of the manifold that it encounters its greatest successes, even though it is precisely this attempt which causes it to run the greatest risk of falling a prey to illusions. But whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances made in this domain is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. By way of the understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the shackles of personal hopes and desires, and thereby attains that humble attitude of mind toward the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, and which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man.

This attitude, however, appears to me to be religious, in the highest sense of the word. And so it seems to me that science not only purifies the religious impulse of the dross of its anthropomorphism but also contributes to a religious spiritualization of our understanding of life.

...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.

[LMNO]

I'd just like to point out that Einstein hated quantum physics.  He spent much of the last half of his life doing his best to refute the indeterminacy found in it.

He failed to do so.

[Soylent Green]

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/600/1241217203944.jpg

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9718/1241221359742.jpg

fairly large images so I don't want to post em here.

Quotes from Einstein on religion

[Honey]

I'd just like to point out that Einstein hated quantum physics.  He spent much of the last half of his life doing his best to refute the indeterminacy found in it.

He failed to do so.

Yup he did at that.  However at the same time (although not in the same space) I think he would be pleased with the results of people questioning his findings & evaluating his ideas.  (I'd like to add your Dad's speech here if I may?)

That guy with the crappy username?  Like those too!

If you like to think on different levels (& who doesn't?) here's another guy who (I think) has a rather interesting take on the subject of Religion & Science, or maybe more like Religion & Anthropology & Animism & ??

Our Religions: Are they the Religions of Humanity Itself?
Delivered October 18, 2000, as a Fleming Lecture in Religion, Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas

Contrary to popular opinion, Charles Darwin did not originate the idea of evolution. By the middle of the 19th century, the mere fact of evolution had been around for a long time, and most thinkers of the time were perfectly content to leave it at that. The absence of a theory to explain evolutionary change didn't trouble them, wasn't experienced as a pressure, as it was by Darwin. He knew there had to be some intelligible mechanism or dynamic that would account for it, and this is what he went looking for--with well known results. In his Origin of Species, he wasn't announcing the fact of evolution, he was trying to make sense of the fact.

... One of the virtues of tribal law is that it presupposes that people are just the way we know they are: generally wise, kind, generous, and well-intentioned but perfectly capable of being foolish, unruly, moody, cantankerous, selfish, greedy, violent, stupid, bad-tempered, sneaky, lustful, treacherous, careless, vindictive, neglectful, petty, and all sorts of other unpleasant things. Tribal law doesn't punish people for their shortcomings, as our law does. Rather, it makes the management of their shortcomings an easy and ordinary part of life.

... When you gather up a hundred tribes and expect them to work and live together, tribal law becomes inapplicable and useless. But of course the people in this amalgam are the same as they always were: capable of being foolish, moody, cantankerous, selfish, greedy, violent, stupid, bad-tempered, and all the rest. In the tribal situation, this was no problem, because tribal law was designed for people like this. But all the tribal ways of handling these ordinary human tendencies had been expunged in our burgeoning civilization. A new way of handling them had to be invented--and I stress the word invented. There was no received, tested way of handling the mischief people were capable of. Our cultural ancestors had to make something up, and what they made up were lists of prohibited behavior.

... The appearance of religions based on prophetic revelations is unique to our culture. We alone in the history of all humanity needed such religions. We still need them (and new ones are being created every day), because we still profoundly feel that we don't know how to live. Our religions are the peculiar creation of a bereft people. Yet we don't doubt for a moment that they are the religions of humanity itself.

The religion I'm talking about is, of course, animism. This name was cut to fit the general missionary impression that these childlike savages believe that things like rocks, trees, and rivers have spirits in them, and it hasn't lost this coloration since the middle of the nineteenth century.

Needless to say, I wasn't prepared to settle for this trivialization of a religion that flourished for tens of thousands of years among people exactly as smart as we are. After decades of trying to understand what these people were telling us about their lives and their vision of humanity's place in the world, I concluded that a very simple (but far from trivial) worldview was at the foundation of what they were saying: The world is a sacred place, and humanity belongs in such a world.

It's simple but also deceptively simple. This can best be seen if we contrast it with the worldview at the foundation of our own religions. In the worldview of our religions, the world is anything but a sacred place. For Christians, it's merely a place of testing and has no intrinsic value. For Buddhists it's a place where suffering is inevitable. If I oversimplify, my object is not to misrepresent but only to clarify the general difference between these two worldviews in the few minutes that are left to me.

For Christians, the world is not where humans belong; it's not our true home, it's just a sort of waiting room where we pass the time before moving on to our true home, which is heaven. For Buddhists, the world is another kind of waiting room, which we visit again and again in a repeating cycle of death and rebirth until we finally attain liberation in nirvana.

Simple ideas are not always easy to understand. The very simplest idea I've articulated in my work is probably the least understood: There is no one right way for people to live--never has been and never will be. This idea was at the foundation of tribal life everywhere. The Navajo never imagined that they had the right way to live (and that all others were [/i]iwrong)[/i]. All they had was a way that suited them. With tribal peoples on all sides of them--all living in different ways--it would have been ridiculous for them to imagine that theirs was the one right way for people to live. It would be like us imagining that there is one right way to orchestrate a Cole Porter song or one right way to make a bicycle.

In the tribal world, because there was complete agreement that no one had the right way to live, there was a staggering glory of cultural diversity, which the people of our culture have been tirelessly eradicating for 10,000 years. For us, it will be paradise when everyone on earth lives exactly the same way.

Almost no one blinks at the statement that there is no one right way for people to live. In one of his denunciations of scribes and pharisees, Jesus said, "You gag on the gnat but swallow down the camel." People find many gnats in my books to gag on, but this great hairy camel goes down as easily as a teaspoon of honey.

http://www.ishmael.org/Education/Writings/southwestern.shtml

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

That sounds very much like Pete Carroll's essay on "Paradigm Shifts and Aeonics". In one of his classes he said to keep in mind he was writing from the position of someone who believed in Magic at the time. Pete likes to believe/not believe in whatever, whenever if it suits his purposes. Overall, I like it... but I have to keep reminding myself that some of the 'madjickal' talk is a bit of a muddled model

However, with the above essay, I think there are some very complementary concepts between them. I was also reminded about Bob's discussion in Prometheus Rising where he discusses the tribal basis of religion, the weirdness of so many tribes being thrown together today (The Catholic tribe and the Methodist tribe and the Baptist tribe and the Wiccan tribe and the Hindu tribe all tossed together like a salad).

Anyway, here's the essay, the only format I found it in was flaky so I reformatted it for here:

[quote author = Pete Carroll]
All the philosophies, creeds, dogmas and beliefs that humanity has evolved are variants of three great paradigms, the Transcendental, the Materialist and the Magical. In no human culture has any one of these paradigms been completely distinct from the others. For example in our own culture at the time of writing the Transcendental and Magical pradigms are frequently confused together.

Transcendental philosophies are basically religious and manifest in a spectrum stretching from the fringes of primitive spiritism through pagan polytheism to the monotheism of the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic traditions and the theoretical non-theistic systems of Buddhism and Taoism. In each case it is believed that some form of consciousness or spirit created and maintains the universe and that humans, other living organisms, contain some fragment of this consciousness or spirit which underlies the veil or illusion of matter. The essence of Transcendentalism is belief in spiritual beings greater than oneself or states of spiritual being superior to that which currently one enjoys. Earthly life is frequently seen merely as a form of dialoque between oneself and one's deity or deities, or perhaps some impersonal form of higher force. The material world is a theatre for the spirit or soul or consciousness that created it. Spirit is the ultimate reality to the transcendentalist.

In the Materialist paradigm the universe is believed to consist fundamentally and entirely of matter. Energy is but a form of matter and together they subtend space and time within which all change occurs strictly on the basis of cause and effect. Human behaviour is reducible to biology, biology is reducible to chemistry, chemistry is reducible to physics and physics is reducible to mathematics. Mind and consciousness are thus merely electrochemical events in the brain and spirit is a word without objective content. The causes of some events are likely to remain obscure perhaps indefinitely, but there is an underlying faith that sufficient material cause must exist for any event. All human acts can be categorized as serving some biological need or as expressions of previously applied conditioning or merely as malfunction. The goal of materialist who eschews suicide is the pursuit of personal satisfaction including altruistic satisfactions if desired.

The main difficulty in recognizing and describing the pure Magical Paradigm is that of insufficient vocabulary. Magical philosophy is only recently recovering from a heavy adulteration with transcendental theory. The word aether will be used to describe the fundamental reality of the magical paradigm. It is more or less equivalent to the idea of Mana used in oceanic shamanism. Aether in materialistic descriptions is information which structures matter and which all matter is capable of emitting and receiving. In transcendental terms aether is a sort of "life force" present in some degree in all things.  It carries both knowledge about events and the ability to influence similar or sympathetic vents. Events either arise sponataneously out of themselves or are encouraged to follow certain paths by influence of patterns in the aether. As all
things have an aetheric part they can be considered to be alive in some sense. Thus all things happen by magic, the large scale features of the universe have a very strong aetheric pattern which makes them fairly predictable but difficult to influence by the aetheric patterns created by thought. Magicians see themselves as participating in nature. Transcendentalists like to think they are somehow above it. Materialists like to try and manipulate it.

Now this universe has the peculiarly accomodating property of tending to provide evidence for, and confirmation of, whatever paradigm one chooses to believe in. Presumably at some deep level there is a hidden symmetry between those things we call Matter, Aether and Spirit. Indeed, it is rare to find an individual or culture operating exclusively on a single one of these paradigms and none is ever entirely absent. Non dominant paradigms are always present as superstitions and fears. A subsequent section on Aeonics will attempt to untangle the influences of each of these great world views throughout history, to see how they have interacted with each other and to predict future trends. In the meantime an analysis of the radically differing concepts of time and self in each paradigm is offered to more fully distinguish the basic ideas.

Transcendentalists conceive of time in millennial and apocalyptic terms. Time is regareded as having a definite beginning and ending, both initiated by the activities of spiritual beings or forces. The end of time on the personal and cosmic scale is regarded not so much as a cessation of being but as a change to a state of non material being. The beginning of personal and cosmic time is similarly regarded as a creative act by spiritual agencies. Thus reproductive activity usually becomes heavily controlled and hedged about with taboo and restriction in religious cultures, as it implies an usurpation of the powers of deities. Reproduction also implies that death has in some measure been overcome. How awesome the power of creation and how  final must earthly death subconsciously loom to a celibate and sterile priesthood.

All transcendentalisms embody elements of apocalyptism. Typically these are used to provoke revivals when business is slack or attention is drifting elsewhere. Thus it is suddenly revealed that the final days are at hand or that some earthly dispute is in fact a titanic battle against evil spiritual agencies.

Materialist time is linear but unbounded. Ideally it can be extended arbitrarily far in either direction from the present. To the strict materialist it is self-evidently futile to speculate about a beginning or an end to time. Similarly the materialist is contemptuous of any speculations about any forms of personal existence before birth or after death. The materialist may well fear painful or premature death but can have no fears about being dead.

The magical view is that time is cyclic and that all processes recur. Even cycles which appear to begin or end are actually parts of larger cycles. Thus all endings are beginnings and the end of time is synonymous with the beginning of time in another universe. The magical view that everything is recycled is reflected in the doctrine of reincarnation. The attractive idea of reincarnation has often persisted into the religious paradigm and many pagan and even some monotheist traditions have retained it. However religious theories invariably contaminate the original idea with beliefs about a personal soul. From a strictly magical viewpoint we are an accretion rather than an unfolded unity. The psyche has no particular centre, we are colonial beings, a rich collage of many selves. Thus as our bodies contain fragments from countless former beings, so does our psyche. However certain magical traditions retain techniques which allow the adept to transfer quite large amounts of his psyche in one piece should he consider this more useful than dispersing himself into humanity at large.

Each of the paradigms take a different view of the self. Transcendentalists view self as spirit inserted into matter. As a fragment or figment of deity the self regards itself as somehow placed in the world in a non arbitrary manner and endowed with free will. The transcendental view of self is relatively stable and non-problematic if shared as a consensus with all significant others. However, transcendental theories about the placement and purpose of self and its relationship to deities are mutually exclusive. Conflicting transcendentalisms can rarely co-exist for they threaten to disconform the images of self. Encounters which are not decisive tend to be mutually negatory in the long run.

Of the three views of self the purely materialistic one is the most problematical. If mind is an extension of matter it must obey material laws and the resulting deterministic view conflicts with the subjective experience of free will. On the other hand if mind and consciousness are assumed to be qualitatively different from matter then the self is incomprehensible to itself in material terms. Worse still perhaps, the materialist self must regard itself as a phenomenon of only temporary duration in contradiction of the subjective expectation of continuity of consciousness. Because a purely materialist view of self is so austere few are prepared to confront such naked existentialism. Consequently materialist cultures exhibit a frantic appetite for sensation, identification and more or less disposable irrational beliefs. Anything that will make the self seem less insubstantial.

The magical view of self is that it is based on the same random capricious chaos which makes the universe exist and do what it does.
The magical self has no centre, it is not a unity but an assemblage of parts, any number of which may temorarily club together and call
themselves "I". This accords with the observation that our subjective experience consists of our various selves experiencing each other. Free will arises either as an outcome of a dispute between our various selves or as a sudden random creation of a new idea or option. In the magical view of self there is no spirit/matter or mind/body split and the paradoxes of free will and determinism disappear. Some of our acts arise from random choices between conditioned options and some from conditional choices between randomly created options. In practice most of our acts are based on rather complex hierarchical sequences of all four of these mechanisms. As soon as we have acted one of our selves proclaims "I did that!" so loudly that most of the other selves think they did it too.

Each of the three views of self has something derogatory to say about the other two. From the standpoint of the transcendental self the materialist self has become prey to pride of intellect, the demon hubris, whilst the magical view of self is considered to be entirely demonic. The material self views the transcendentalist as obsessed with assumptions having no basis in fact, and the magical self as being childlike and incoherent. From the standpoint of the magical view, the assorted selves of the transcendendatilst have ascribed a grossly exaggerated importance to one or a few of the selves which they call God or gods, whilst the materialist has attempted to make all his selves subordinate to the self that does the rational thinking. Ultimately it's a matter of faith and taste. The transcedentalist has faith in his god self, the materialist has faith in his reasoning self and the selves of the magician have faith in each other. Naturally, all these forms of faith are subject to periods of doubt.[/quote]

[Kai]

I'm having trouble seeing where I fit in the above, Rat.

[Thurnez Isa]

That sounds very much like Pete Carroll's essay on "Paradigm Shifts and Aeonics". In one of his classes he said to keep in mind he was writing from the position of someone who believed in Magic at the time.

well that's where I stopped reading

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'm having trouble seeing where I fit in the above, Rat.

In no human culture has any one of these paradigms been completely distinct from the others.

Myself, I would say that most of us fit in the Magical paradigm, that is we can perceive reality through our 'selves' in concert. Most of us don't see ONLY the materialist view, or ONLY the Transcendent or ONLY the magical... rather most people on PD seem (IMO) to:

The magical view of self is that it is based on the same random capricious chaos which makes the universe exist and do what it does.
The magical self has no centre, it is not a unity but an assemblage of parts, any number of which may temorarily club together and call
themselves "I". This accords with the observation that our subjective experience consists of our various selves experiencing each other. Free will arises either as an outcome of a dispute between our various selves or as a sudden random creation of a new idea or option. In the magical view of self there is no spirit/matter or mind/body split and the paradoxes of free will and determinism disappear. Some of our acts arise from random choices between conditioned options and some from conditional choices between randomly created options. In practice most of our acts are based on rather complex hierarchical sequences of all four of these mechanisms..

The Magical Paradigm can assert the Materialist Self or Transcendental Self, but it is not stuck in those modes.

If we look at it from a BiP perspective...
The Materialist rearranges their cell, only when provided with material proof that X is True or False.
The Transcendentalist rearranges their cell only in response to direction from their Belief System or something like Unverifiable Personal Gnosis.
The Magican rearranges their cell at will, for whatever purpose suits them.

The Materialist thinks that Objective/Material things are ALL.
The Transcendentalist thinkgs that spiritual things are ALL.
The Magician thinks that ALL is a very big place.

The Materialist has a self and it is a biochemical processing system.
The Transcendentalist has a self and it is a spirit, stuck in some temporary material cage.
The Magician has selves which may have all sorts of ideas.

I doubt anyone would consider you transcendental, Kai
I used to think you were a Materialist, but my opinion has changed greatly as I've gotten to know you.

That sounds very much like Pete Carroll's essay on "Paradigm Shifts and Aeonics". In one of his classes he said to keep in mind he was writing from the position of someone who believed in Magic at the time.

well that's where I stopped reading

Yeah, the walls of a BiP can be tough when you run into them

[Kai]

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.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Materialism - Boring
Trancedentalism - Boring
Magick - Too much baggage

I am!

Anything else is putting me in a box I don't will not fit.

Don't mind me - I'm just hung up on the whole concept of labels tonight

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

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

Materialism - Boring
Trancedentalism - Boring
Magick - Too much baggage

I am!

Anything else is putting me in a box I don't will not fit.

Don't mind me - I'm just hung up on the whole concept of labels tonight

You am... a Spagadentalist

[P3nT4gR4m]

Don't f'kin pidgeonhole me motherfucker

[Kai]

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.

[Soylent Green]

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: Wishing something and then it happens.

Magicians: People who think wishing will make everything they want to happen, happen.

Reality: When you wish that something goes away, it doesn't go away.