Steve Taylor, On Scientism, Spirituality and Going Softly |500|

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Steve Taylor, On Scientism, Spirituality and Going Softly |500|
by Alex Tsakiris | May 11 | Spirituality
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Dr. Steve Taylor thinks science needs spirituality.
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Just a comment on the Qanon theory of music that started to break out on this show. Most great musicians cannot read or write music. This would also apply to almost all jazz, blues, and rap music. I listed a number of them in my book on musical inspiration called Tuned-In: The Paranormal World of Music. I also have two appendix section that list dream song and song that came in under 10 minutes. Paul McCartney would be the most famous in the class. Jackie Gleason had his own orchestra and 20 record albums. He could not read or write. Here is Chris Martin from Coldplay (who has sold a few albums in his day) describing the process.


Here is Conner Stevens who has just released his first album at 18. You will see I quickly ask him if he can read music and where does the music come from? Where does the music come from? Where does the thought of a sunset come from? Where do the words come from that we speak?

https://anchor.fm/grant-cameron5/ep...th-18-year-old-musician-Conner-Stevens-evl15r
 
I'm starting to feel like materialism vs. consciousness as base reality is a "stuck on stupid" false dichotomy.

Almost all spirituality, profundity, ontology etc IS JUST (and yes I said "IS JUST") a re-drawing of boundaries in a way that is pleasing or more suitable to your purposes. Anytime you hear "IS JUST" or "what that really means", that is what is happening.

We can get out of this "stuck on stupid" issue if we realize that all boundaries are just a choice. A boundary IS a choice. If you have no goal, the boundary is arbitrary. If you have a goal, the boundary is set in such a way as to fulfill the goal. This is how purpose and meaning enters the system.

We have found the process of reduction to be useful so we continue the process of dissolving boundaries until we arrive at ONE thing and say: "all reality has a base reality, a fundamental reality, a singular source of substance." But you can't talk about One Thing because words have definitions which are boundaries. If you start saying the One Thing is material or the One Thing is consciousness you start twisting the pretzel. When you get the idea that everything is One Thing and you are this One Thing, then you can decide whether to draw your boundary infinitely large and say the One thing is Love and Light or infinitely small and say the One Thing is nothing and silence. And since even this boundary is seen to be arbitrary you often see the One Thing as a dazzling darkness, a shimmering stillness. Resolution and contradiction are therefore at the heart of the One Thing.

Since we can't talk about the One Thing it is more useful to split it up. Cartesian duality is of limited use and contains the many pitfalls discussed exhaustively elsewhere.

If we have to say the ground reality is One Thing, then let's say that the One Thing is "Pattern" because pattern contains the Trinity and the Trinity is the smallest useful pattern: Thing 1, Thing 2, and Boundary (which is Thing 3 and is also choice).

So to sum up my statement of faith: All is pattern. Pattern is a Trinity. One member of the fundamental Trinity is the boundary between the Two. Boundary is Choice. Choice is the result of will. Will is the result of a goal. A goal only exists if it is not yet attained therefore frustration is inherent in the system. To make a choice excludes others thereby creating limitations which create frustrations which propel towards the attainment of a goal which forces us to make a choice and round and round goes the wheel of Karma. You can choose to get off at any time by dissolving all boundaries which is eliminating all desire and all choice which lands you back on Square One (literally) which is the empty fullness, the contradictory resolution, the infinite smallness, the dazzling darkness, the shimmering stillness, the pregnant silence, the presence of God, etc. But since this is the One Thing it is both ecstatic and boring to be there so we go on making choices and creating boundaries that limit choices which drive more choices and more boundaries in this flow of emotion and spirit.

Since the ultimate reality is pattern we find the same pattern repeating at various scales. Just as we create an AI agent and train it with obstacles in a simulated environment running millions of iterations, your individual life is but one iteration of an "agent" (a.k.a. a soul) which is a network that is being trained in an environment in order to become better at attaining some set of goals. Your soul has goals and your soul is part of a group that has goals and everybody is taking a stab at achieving their goals to get better at them and those that fail are destroyed (addition by subtraction). You get a life review to juxtapose goals with outcomes and figure out where you could have done better. This feedback loop is essential for improvement towards goal attainment.

"Jesus" represents a particular soul group striving towards a certain set of goals and those that succeed are saved and those that fail are deleted. That makes Jesus sound rather small and arbitrary, but not exactly because Jesus vs Satan represents a fundamental issue arising from the Trinity which is: how do you deal with the frustration that motivates and arises from choice? You can choose to give up power to help another or you can choose to expand your power at the expense of others.

This issue of the power struggle is embedded in the fundamental Trinity but it really came to a head with mammals and especially humans. The young need so much care and attention that empathy and cooperation are necessities and these qualities are antithetical to the predatory practices that propelled the mammals to the top of the food chain. And now we don't know how to balance and resolve these two opposing natures so the world is full of Vegans and Epsteins and everything in between. The goal is to resolve these two opposing natures and so we will run this simulation until we get better at managing it but part of the process is to have two competing agents which are totally devoted to each of the opposing goals, thus: Jesus vs Satan... good vs. evil... the Generative Adversarial Network.

Sheldrake's morphogenetic field studies show that the soul's "neural network" is constantly being improved by the experiences of its instances.

Physical reality is the product of something like a GAN (Generative Adversarial Neural network). That is why there is a semantic component (Plato's realm of perfect forms) and results are probabilistic. A synchronicity is a confluence of symbols. Type in "cat" and a network can generate a cat. You can't predict exactly what will be generated but it will be something cat-like. Similarly, you can't predict where the photon will go, but it will behave photon-like. There is someone running the simulation and they can put some Easter eggs in there and they can say "insert meaningful symbol here" and a confluence of improbable coincidences produce the manifested symbol.

Alright, if you read this, thank you for your time and please join my religion of Patternism. :)
 
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Perhaps scientists are waking up to consciousness one funeral at a time - the lies and control are go back eons and our rulers have had a massive head start - my own journey has been a singular one and I haven’t been able to bring too many along. It doesn’t surprise or shock me that there is an invisible college, I just wish I could audit some courses!
 
Alex, isn't 13 minutes of golf bumf at the start a bit too much!

I think he is right that science needs spirituality, but at the moment it doesn't have very much - which is why it isn't working very well right now.

David
 
Alex, isn't 13 minutes of golf bumf at the start a bit too much!

I enjoyed that bit of textual criticism... if we can't figure out the real story behind Kim's miraculous golf game which happened in our lifetimes and with our communication technologies, how are we going to have any faith in the gospels?

I think he is right that science needs spirituality, but at the moment it doesn't have very much - which is why it isn't working very well right now.

I think this is an unproductive framing of the problem. See my post above (sorry it is a bit long, but shorter than most religious texts) and join my religion of Patternism.
 
Just a comment on the Qanon theory of music that started to break out on this show. Most great musicians cannot read or write music. This would also apply to almost all jazz, blues, and rap music. I listed a number of them in my book on musical inspiration called Tuned-In: The Paranormal World of Music. I also have two appendix section that list dream song and song that came in under 10 minutes. Paul McCartney would be the most famous in the class. Jackie Gleason had his own orchestra and 20 record albums. He could not read or write. Here is Chris Martin from Coldplay (who has sold a few albums in his day) describing the process.


Here is Conner Stevens who has just released his first album at 18. You will see I quickly ask him if he can read music and where does the music come from? Where does the music come from? Where does the thought of a sunset come from? Where do the words come from that we speak?

https://anchor.fm/grant-cameron5/ep...th-18-year-old-musician-Conner-Stevens-evl15r
hey Grant... thx for this info. I hear you and accept that this is sometimes the case, but there are reasons to suspect this isn't what happened with Jim Morrison.... Frank Zappa or other Laurel Canyon military intel insta-stars.
 
Alex, isn't 13 minutes of golf bumf at the start a bit too much!

I loved every minute. If I'm being honest, I didn't follow the point, but I'm sure I will when I go back for the inevitable second listen.

500 episodes is amazing! And what an awesome forum.
I hope some day the Plandemic can loosen up and Alex could have a meetup (cough cough Orange County cough cough) and I could get my introvert on and stand around looking and feeling awkward while dropping eves on conversations of the socially adept intellectuals, and then follow up next day with a bunch of forum posts like "what i shoulda said was.."
 
Perhaps scientists are waking up to consciousness one funeral at a time - the lies and control are go back eons and our rulers have had a massive head start - my own journey has been a singular one and I haven’t been able to bring too many along. It doesn’t surprise or shock me that there is an invisible college, I just wish I could audit some courses!
haha... I definitely think it's a both/and situation. one funeral at a time is certainly at play :)
 
I loved every minute. If I'm being honest, I didn't follow the point, but I'm sure I will when I go back for the inevitable second listen.
the point was just that it's pretty easy to get thrown of the data trail. I didn't want to hammer on this too much because I was pretty direct with Steve about (IMO) not being able to follow the data :)
 
I hope some day the Plandemic can loosen up and Alex could have a meetup (cough cough Orange County cough cough) and I could get my introvert on and stand around looking and feeling awkward while dropping eves on conversations of the socially adept intellectuals, and then follow up next day with a bunch of forum posts like "what i shoulda said was.."

It really would be great if one day the truth comes out in all its raw intensity.

David
 
I'm starting to feel like materialism vs. consciousness as base reality is a "stuck on stupid" false dichotomy.

Almost all spirituality, profundity, ontology etc IS JUST (and yes I said "IS JUST") a re-drawing of boundaries in a way that is pleasing or more suitable to your purposes. Anytime you hear "IS JUST" or "what that really means", that is what is happening.

We can get out of this "stuck on stupid" issue if we realize that all boundaries are just a choice. A boundary IS a choice. If you have no goal, the boundary is arbitrary. If you have a goal, the boundary is set in such a way as to fulfill the goal. This is how purpose and meaning enters the system.

We have found the process of reduction to be useful so we continue the process of dissolving boundaries until we arrive at ONE thing and say: "all reality has a base reality, a fundamental reality, a singular source of substance." But you can't talk about One Thing because words have definitions which are boundaries. If you start saying the One Thing is material or the One Thing is consciousness you start twisting the pretzel. When you get the idea that everything is One Thing and you are this One Thing, then you can decide whether to draw your boundary infinitely large and say the One thing is Love and Light or infinitely small and say the One Thing is nothing and silence. And since even this boundary is seen to be arbitrary you often see the One Thing as a dazzling darkness, a shimmering stillness. Resolution and contradiction are therefore at the heart of the One Thing.

Since we can't talk about the One Thing it is more useful to split it up. Cartesian duality is of limited use and contains the many pitfalls discussed exhaustively elsewhere.

If we have to say the ground reality is One Thing, then let's say that the One Thing is "Pattern" because pattern contains the Trinity and the Trinity is the smallest useful pattern: Thing 1, Thing 2, and Boundary (which is Thing 3 and is also choice).

So to sum up my statement of faith: All is pattern. Pattern is a Trinity. One member of the fundamental Trinity is the boundary between the Two. Boundary is Choice. Choice is the result of will. Will is the result of a goal. A goal only exists if it is not yet attained therefore frustration is inherent in the system. To make a choice excludes others thereby creating limitations which create frustrations which propel towards the attainment of a goal which forces us to make a choice and round and round goes the wheel of Karma. You can choose to get off at any time by dissolving all boundaries which is eliminating all desire and all choice which lands you back on Square One (literally) which is the empty fullness, the contradictory resolution, the infinite smallness, the dazzling darkness, the shimmering stillness, the pregnant silence, the presence of God, etc. But since this is the One Thing it is both ecstatic and boring to be there so we go on making choices and creating boundaries that limit choices which drive more choices and more boundaries in this flow of emotion and spirit.

Since the ultimate reality is pattern we find the same pattern repeating at various scales. Just as we create an AI agent and train it with obstacles in a simulated environment running millions of iterations, your individual life is but one iteration of an "agent" (a.k.a. a soul) which is a network that is being trained in an environment in order to become better at attaining some set of goals. Your soul has goals and your soul is part of a group that has goals and everybody is taking a stab at achieving their goals to get better at them and those that fail are destroyed (addition by subtraction). You get a life review to juxtapose goals with outcomes and figure out where you could have done better. This feedback loop is essential for improvement towards goal attainment.

"Jesus" represents a particular soul group striving towards a certain set of goals and those that succeed are saved and those that fail are deleted. That makes Jesus sound rather small and arbitrary, but not exactly because Jesus vs Satan represents a fundamental issue arising from the Trinity which is: how do you deal with the frustration that motivates and arises from choice? You can choose to give up power to help another or you can choose to expand your power at the expense of others.

This issue of the power struggle is embedded in the fundamental Trinity but it really came to a head with mammals and especially humans. The young need so much care and attention that empathy and cooperation are necessities and these qualities are antithetical to the predatory practices that propelled the mammals to the top of the food chain. And now we don't know how to balance and resolve these two opposing natures so the world is full of Vegans and Epsteins and everything in between. The goal is to resolve these two opposing natures and so we will run this simulation until we get better at managing it but part of the process is to have two competing agents which are totally devoted to each of the opposing goals, thus: Jesus vs Satan... good vs. evil... the Generative Adversarial Network.

Sheldrake's morphogenetic field studies show that the soul's "neural network" is constantly being improved by the experiences of its instances.

Physical reality is the product of something like a GAN (Generative Adversarial Neural network). That is why there is a semantic component (Plato's realm of perfect forms) and results are probabilistic. A synchronicity is a confluence of symbols. Type in "cat" and a network can generate a cat. You can't predict exactly what will be generated but it will be something cat-like. Similarly, you can't predict where the photon will go, but it will behave photon-like. There is someone running the simulation and they can put some Easter eggs in there and they can say "insert meaningful symbol here" and a confluence of improbable coincidences produce the manifested symbol.

Alright, if you read this, thank you for your time and please join my religion of Patternism. :)

No one is going to critique this? Come on, man! It literally explains everything!
 
No one is going to critique this? Come on, man! It literally explains everything!

What's to critique?
It's boundaries all the way down.
It sounds like you have a heightened sense of the framework of reality as it relates to cause and effect.

Rather than critique, I'll fling my perspective at it and see if it sticks or slides. Here it goes:

You've described the framework. The computer program in which all experience follows patterns.
In such, you've identified what I believe to be a restriction (I'll call "the veil") which prohibits us from seeing past this program. Any attempt to see past it can be explained away by patterns, cause, and effect.

I believe the higher self(ve's), God, and Heaven all exist outside of that program entirely and outside of what we call consciousness. I believe the Patterns you've so eloquently portrayed, speak to us in a way that hints/points us toward the outside realm and God, and that we mistake the Feeling for being God-consciousness and some sort of paraphysical connection to God.

So i guess it is a simple critique. I think you're portrayal tries to tie infinity to the finite. and I don't believe that tie exists in a way that it can be simplified; attempts at which, I believe to be the cause of the boundaries all the way down conundrum.

I hope this makes any sense whatsoever. If not, at least I tried and had fun. Great post by the way.
 
What's to critique?

I'm glad you see the perfection in it... ;0)

Thanks for your excellent response!

It's boundaries all the way down.

Lateral patterns are uncontroversial (we see a million trees, a trillion cells, etc); vertical patterns (Russian nesting dolls - As Above, So Below) require a bit more imagination to perceive, but they are there. Whether it's turtles all the way down, patterns all the way down, simulations all the way down, consciousness all the way down, etc... we can see that reality has this nested pattern structure or as some have said, a fractal holographic structure and I believe it is. The human being contains a representation of the whole. Is reality an infinite regress (x,y,z all the way down)? Or is there some "rock" bottom foundation? My contention is that the "rock" bottom is Oneness which we can't talk about, so the first level up that we can talk about is the Holy Trinity: Similarity, Difference, Boundary. This is the "game of life" initialization pattern and so if we understand this we understand everything.

It sounds like you have a heightened sense of the framework of reality as it relates to cause and effect.

There is a prime cause which is free-choice and that originates out of the Abyss of Oneness to become the boundary. When there is no goal, the choice is arbitrary and an arbitrary expression of the Prime Cause we call randomness. When the choice is made to attain a goal, it is an expression of the Prime Cause.

You've described the framework. The computer program in which all experience follows patterns.
In such, you've identified what I believe to be a restriction (I'll call "the veil") which prohibits us from seeing past this program. Any attempt to see past it can be explained away by patterns, cause, and effect.

The veil is the boundary which is choice. You can't see past your own choices because they are an expression of the Prime Cause and if they were computable (secondary causes) then they would have already been computed and there would be no need for you to make them. We exist on the edge (or boundary) of computable and non-computable space. In the Trinity, Similarity extrapolates out to identity - who you are, and Difference extrapolates out to what you are not and that which separates is the boundary which is the Veil as you call it which is the choice you cannot see past.

I believe the higher self(ve's), God, and Heaven all exist outside of that program entirely and outside of what we call consciousness.

You used the words "outside of" indicating you've drawn a boundary between the realm we live in and the realm of God, Higher Self, Heaven. Is there any interaction between the two realms? If none, then we might as well consider the other to not exist at all, but if there is interaction across this boundary then that interaction between the two makes a system which we might consider One. Is this boundary you posit permeable, fuzzy, movable?

And if God, Higher Self, Heaven, etc, are totally "outside of" the system of patterns I have described, please answer these questions: in this other realm is anything similar to anything else? Is anything different than anything else? Does anything happen? Are there free agents with free choice?

So i guess it is a simple critique. I think you're portrayal tries to tie infinity to the finite. and I don't believe that tie exists in a way that it can be simplified; attempts at which, I believe to be the cause of the boundaries all the way down conundrum.

But that is precisely what we are and what consciousness is: the place where the infinite and finite meet... the boundary, if you will, between them.

I hope this makes any sense whatsoever. If not, at least I tried and had fun. Great post by the way.

Yes, thank you. :)
 
Um.......I think if you had said less, it might have made more sense.

Maybe it felt right while you were under the influence of whatever you were experimenting with.

David

David, I'll have you know I was completely sober as I wrote that! I don't do drugs and except for a special occasion last week I don't drink either. I just happen to think that thoughts will ring closer to the Ultimate Truth if they are not meticulously curated and sort of tumble out of you with a bit of whimsy as if you were slightly drunk when you said them.
 
I'm glad you see the perfection in it... ;0)
And if God, Higher Self, Heaven, etc, are totally "outside of" the system of patterns I have described, please answer these questions: in this other realm is anything similar to anything else? Is anything different than anything else? Does anything happen? Are there free agents with free choice?

In my speculation, Humans trying to speculate on this is far more ridiculous than an ant speculating quantum mechanics. I say this because there's a very likely possibility 100billion years of chance evolution could lead to an ant capable of that science. Whereas I have a feeling that our realm is unimaginably physically-independent from the "higher realm".
 
In my speculation, Humans trying to speculate on this is far more ridiculous than an ant speculating quantum mechanics. I say this because there's a very likely possibility 100billion years of chance evolution could lead to an ant capable of that science. Whereas I have a feeling that our realm is unimaginably physically-independent from the "higher realm".

So on the other side of this boundary in the heavenly realms, is anything there similar to anything here? Is anything here a metaphor for anything there or vice versa? If the two realms are so different that there is no similarity, no correspondence, no communication between the two then that other realm may as well not exist, right? But if there is similarity, correspondence, communication between the two realms it must operate on the function of this Trinity: Similarity, Difference, Boundary/Choice.

I don't think the analogy of the ant speculating on quantum physics applies. Quantum physics is a very specific set of symbolic representations of the world which even most people don't understand. My ontology is the description of a general universal pattern which appears everywhere and from which all stuff and action proceeds. Another name for this Trinity of pattern is: Logos, Abyss, and Spirit. "And the Spirit moved over the surface of the deep (Abyss) ...and there was light (Logos)." This is a symbolic representation of the this Trinity. The Spirit moves along the boundary between the Abyss and the Logos/Light and from this movement we have the primary act of creation. Jesus (Logos) walked (motion = pneuma = spirit) upon the surface of the water (Abyss) and calmed the storm (brought order out of chaos). By faith (will choice intent) we explore the boundary between order and chaos, light and dark, and as we move along the boundary we pull things out of the Abyss, the realm of non-existence into the realm of existence, the Logos/Light in a creative act which is the primary ongoing act of creation.

Furthermore, if there is a recursive, pattern within pattern, fractal holographic nature to all existence, and I think there is, then it does make sense for life to eventually evolve to the point where the recursion makes a complete circle and we understand our understanding.
 
So on the other side of this boundary in the heavenly realms, is anything there similar to anything here? Is anything here a metaphor for anything there or vice versa? If the two realms are so different that there is no similarity, no correspondence, no communication between the two then that other realm may as well not exist, right? But if there is similarity, correspondence, communication between the two realms it must operate on the function of this Trinity: Similarity, Difference, Boundary/Choice.

I don't think the analogy of the ant speculating on quantum physics applies. Quantum physics is a very specific set of symbolic representations of the world which even most people don't understand. My ontology is the description of a general universal pattern which appears everywhere and from which all stuff and action proceeds. Another name for this Trinity of pattern is: Logos, Abyss, and Spirit. "And the Spirit moved over the surface of the deep (Abyss) ...and there was light (Logos)." This is a symbolic representation of the this Trinity. The Spirit moves along the boundary between the Abyss and the Logos/Light and from this movement we have the primary act of creation. Jesus (Logos) walked (motion = pneuma = spirit) upon the surface of the water (Abyss) and calmed the storm (brought order out of chaos). By faith (will choice intent) we explore the boundary between order and chaos, light and dark, and as we move along the boundary we pull things out of the Abyss, the realm of non-existence into the realm of existence, the Logos/Light in a creative act which is the primary ongoing act of creation.

Furthermore, if there is a recursive, pattern within pattern, fractal holographic nature to all existence, and I think there is, then it does make sense for life to eventually evolve to the point where the recursion makes a complete circle and we understand our understanding.

Right. I understand you now. Not saying I agree, just that I grok what you tried to say earlier. I'd add that this recension was rather poetic and it's for that I gave your post a like. In my opinion, you should continue to strive for brevity*; it brings out the best in your writing.

*According to one definition of poetry I read, it's the shortest way to say something.
 
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