Belief in Science and Belief in Nothing?

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Science is self-correcting, while religion is self-justifying.

That's why scientific beliefs of even a hundred years ago have been discarded and replaced with newer, more accurate, and more provable theories; and why religious beliefs are still drawn from the same old pit of sludge that they've been drawn from since the first scoundrel met the first fool.

Correct me if I am wrong, but can I assume you are an atheist?

I tend to think of that as the active research mindset. It's a good place to be when one is chewing over holes in various theories although personally at least I don't think I could stay there long term. Pick it up again the moment it seems called for though? Sure. For whatever reason dissonance in parts of my worldview is something that drives me up a wall more than life problems themselves even (although I'd have to admit that a lot of life problems as well as cultural problems seem to be part in parcel) but thankfully sticking to things that I know to be false is even more intolerable.


Around mid 2012 I took a pretty big leap from being in a state of reductive materialism/atheism to looking at NDE's, beginning to read up on Hermetic and Theosophic literature, read the bible through a few times for clarity, and for the past few years I've been in a couple mystic orders - one traditionally Rosicrucian, the other if of Hermetic Golden Dawn lineage - as well as reading as much as I can on the contents of the western mystery philosophies.

I still find myself oscillating between positions - ie. am I an all-in pantheistic monist of the qabalistic variety? Am I reductive materialists who just sees the value in this as potent brain software? What do I make of all the stuff I see out there from the James Randi challenge to Stuart Hameroff, Jim Al-Khalili, and the current hedging toward quantum biology? It seems like enough confusion to make most people just opt out, for me the need to iron out the worthwhile from the bunk causes me to spend a lot of my free time reading. With the esoteric material it's my desire to find out for myself what kinds of things I can experience as well as what kinds of metanarratives they offer hold true. Seems like any broad heading is mostly laden with rubbish when it comes to promo and public discourse and it's part of why I'm never comfortable with someone else deciding my positions for me.

I think we're agreeing more or less that people would be better off if they didn't just pick something and latch on to it. I can't really tell if you'd agree or disagree with me on this part but I tend to think that it's about processing different belief systems against one another, particularly once one is conversant in the purported fact sets offered by both (or by several depending on how ambitious you are).

Science tests their theories and yields results, while religion there is faith but no results to be found.

You are wrong. I am not an atheist. I just hate religion, and delight in pointing out its foolishness. Hating religion does not make me an atheist, only a heretic.

Faith and religion are not the same thing. Faith is the belief in unprovable things, while religion is the expression of that faith.

I feel the same way.

Belief in nothing is hard.

Thought, belief, in the total void.

Not thinking about the spaces between nothingness.

Alone in darkness in a deep and silent cave, what is reality?

What am I? Without perceptions I still exist.

I might be Autistic.

[My suggestion would be to] look at views in terms of their function and consequences and treat them accordingly. What is the appropriate domain for the application of a view? Where does it grow? What does it do? What kind of conceptual territory does it generate? How does it affect your perception of the world, self, others? No point of view is the best point of view for every possible purpose (except to the extent that your sense of possible purposes is bound by it), so it seems sensible to have at hand a variety to choose from.



Yes, but perhaps for different reasons. Sustained non-habitual modes of attention can reveal and loosen intuitions about the way things are. This loosening of intuitions further reveals the consequences of holding views that are unlikely to be apparent when they are held fast and without interruption. The more attached you are to a particular point of view the less likely you are to be aware of how that way of looking conditions the very experience you look to to see whether your views and that reality correspond (for those who appeal to correspondence in that sense). Seeing this is liberating, as it lessens the sense of things being in a fixed way.

There's at least a few well known groups who advocate a very clinical version of that approach as well - A.'.A.'. and it's well-known founder were very big on attacking, by first-hand experience, their own internal barriers for the sake of clearing up psychological complexes (and that line of reasoning is one that falls within certain lines of tantric philosophy). A person isn't able to broaden their perspective or realize just how many tools they have at hand until they've really explored other outlooks and really properly method-acted them. I've tried my hand at that, at least admitting that there are things that I can summon the courage to take on, others that I'm still a bit too dainty for, but it can be great for not only realizing just how many life paths have merit but also how many things that you might think your at risk of getting taken over by (or at least it's often suggested by society along those lines) and for the types of people who'd deliberately self-explore for it's own sake those taboo warnings generally don't hold true.


There's definitely something to the idea that if a person is obsessed with one or two things that part of their brain grows and the rest declines a bit. Also the secondary and tertiary behaviors of people in different belief groups can be tough to analyze or make sense of unless you've been there (a bit like knowing a language from having lived in that country). I have been trying to stretch my own comfort zones where I can, part of the game though is still keeping enough in reserve for a job, a group of friends, for both of those to the extent needed maintaining my social persona to the extent that it doesn't directly get in the way of my internal work.

For right or wrong, around a different side, I do feel like there's still something to the search for a unitary truth - even if that's sincerely exhausting the inquiry and coming to know better for certain. I suppose when I set my mind to learning about things though I rarely want to leave a thing half done and, heh I suppose it's the aspie in me, the drive for excellence in that particular area pushes me toward having an expert command of a thing before I'm usually willing to resign it. That's part of why I tend to keep the kind of experimentation you're advocating geared more toward medicinal application.

No, I don't know how that got there!

No, it wouldn't be reasonable at all. In fact it would be the opposite of reason.


Something with a mind.

Slightly OT(pls forgive): May I inquire, do you think of your religious indoctrination as a type of child abuse?...or that said indoctrination was coercive?

NB: I do not desire to cause offense to you or the other readers.

Negativism: (in its philosophical meaning) "an attitude of mind marked by skepticism especially about nearly everything affirmed by others." (Merriam-Webster)

Skepticism would be quite O.K., too,and the less extreme term, so might be more appropriate for you, as you seem to doubt mainly about the big questions. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/skepticism

I nevertheless want to express my irritation that (most) aspies need to put a name to everything. I (NT) can very well handle my beliefs without any --isms. Had to look up "negativism" because of that. I did also never bother about meta-questions like "where do I come from", "where are we going to" "what is the sense of all". Felt opposed when my religion teacher considered them as "primal questions of all human beings". Sense is for me present in social interaction, and I dont need any more sense than that, I am simply too interested in anything social and too busy with solving or getting to terms with social problems. There is nothing left for rather futile questions that dont deserve being explored, because you know (or at least an NT knows) beforehand that it wont bring you anywhere. A lot of scientific approaches would also be of no value for that reason, even if they are more promising result-wise, because I consider them as far too time-consuming and clumsy for the little benefit they could offer for my life and that of others. Just a waste of time. I got recently again aware of it when reading Erik Kandel s scientific autobigraphy, and Kandel has done still comparatively good and interesting research.

For me most scientific research is stimming and fetischist special interests of Asperger people, with potentially dangerous practical or political outcomes for other people, in particular if the researcher s anxiety level is high. For the more valid part it is basically insights worked up in a way to make autistic people understand what neurotypical people get without any study or experiment.

Last edited by Evam on 24 Mar 2016, 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

So, mr Proper N word (whatever your name is), now that you have inspired three pages of replies to your original post what do you think?