The Truth Concerning Our Ignorance

[Hans Bjelke]

The Truth Concerning Our Ignorance

October 4th, 2011

To whom it may concern,

It has taken a lifetime of amateur research and unanswered philosophical questions to finally cast off the chains of religious bondage that stifled the journey of scientific discovery I so longed to embark upon since early childhood. Albert Einstein said, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Scientists today are now discovering that the universe might after all be limitless and of course Einstein’s assessment of our folly has already been accepted as known fact. The following statements are what I now believe to be a true and incontrovertible picture of our current predicament, and if these statements are not even close to the truth about religion, politics, science, and our civilization today, then I profess to know nothing and I am as clueless as one could ever be about our place within the cosmos.

Greetings Earthlings,

Because of the current holy war in which religious peoples have proven they will never evolve and have set numerous examples of their zealotry and willingness to die because they believe god is on their side, and because of their refusal to fully embrace science, I have come to the conclusion that the human species is now in the throes of an evolutionary downslide. Narrow minded political and religious dogma have replaced good common sense, and have been accepted as normal by many in this nation and by many in other nations around the world. Mankind might have succeeded in sending astronauts to Mars and would possibly have achieved much more by now, including a technological revolution that even our brightest minds have not yet conceived, were it not for the errors of our ethically inept political leaders, the miscalculations of our greedy and corrupted corporate entities, and the self imposed ignorance of our citizenry during the past forty years.

Why would we advance our achievements to the pinnacle of walking on the moon, only to allow ourselves to once again be bogged down with worldwide ethnic cleansing, ideological bickering, and financial enslavement? This planet might nurture a race of beings that could transcend war, eliminate pestilence and disease, and grow wise beyond the limits of our arrogant self absorbed intellects. Astronomy and Mathematics have revealed to us that we are not the only intelligent life in the universe or multiverse. How long will it take before we frightened homo-sapiens cast off hope based philosophies and embrace the fact that souls, spirits, deities, promises of eternal life, heavenly rewards, eternal damnation, and retribution do not exist. Is it so hard to accept the arrow of time, that we all fall victim to entropy, and that there is no physical or spiritual reincarnation of any life form? This is it; we have one life to live; to make a difference with, to determine our future with, to breach the limits we have so often set for ourselves, to experience and explore our colossal universe, and to fully expand our human potential.

Disasters such as tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, and asteroid strikes will continue to happen. The sun will die and take the earth with it. Galaxies will collide and time will end. These are not moral judgments against us by some unseen deity. These are just naturally occurring phenomenon and irrefutable facts. The questions are; what are we willing to do to further the advancement of intelligent life on this planet, what do we do to convince people that the planet is a lifeboat, how do we salvage our remaining resources, when will people recognize that all resources and life forms that are known and are discovered might be essential to our continued existence, how responsible and intelligent will we need to be to travel to other planets and stars, are we willing to fully embrace such a challenge? We must first be willing to try and understand reality as it is presented to us by the natural world before we can achieve these and other advancements.

-Hans Bjelke

[Jorge1907]

Evolution does not go uphill or downhill - it adapts - and in any case has nothing to do with sending astronauts t Mars. Your hatred of religion and ignorance of science Certainly Islam is indeed a backward religion but it does not limit other civilizations that are not so encumbered.

[Hans Bjelke]

As a child my siblings and I watched as my father, a Nazarene minister, dragged my mother by the hair, kicking and screaming into the bathroom, and he beat her face into a bloody pulp. But, on Sunday we were the picture of a perfect christian family. This is just one example of the hypocritical faith based crap I grew up with. I don't care who you are, or what degree you carry, or how much money you make, or how much political clout you believe you may have, I have earned the right to have my opinions heard and criticised. I will post my interpretation of Norman Rockwell's america all over the internet until enough people who actually do care and understand what is important in our society have the oportunity to weigh in and reflect on thier opinions regarding ''the corruption of logic by religion".

[belovelife]

first of all, i believe in uniting faiths, and learning from eachother

 

i like the jedi phylosophy, light side, dark side, sometime both are hard to see

 

it sounds like you have some built up anger towards religion

you see, to me if you believe, then you would follow the ten commandments (cristianity)

 

else, you are a athiest

 

while people who follow religions are the majority on our planet, remember that what they believe, they consider to be right,

 

dark or not

 

but i think that if faith evolves like science, then spirituality will win vs religion

 

and on the topic of making it to mars, i think our predecessors had some uniting to do, since we all share this little rock together

[Essay]

It has taken a lifetime of amateur research....

 

We must first be willing to try and understand reality as it is presented to us by the natural world before we can achieve these and other advancements.

-Hans Bjelke

~Interpretations should be consistent with the physics of the natural world. ;)

 

 

It seems to me that religions were invented to transmit important information, but subsequent generations took them a bit too literally and now we find ourselves here today still taking them literally; and this is at a time when we now have other, better ways of transmitting information! And nowadays we can segregate the sacred from the secular, while back then the mundane and the philosophical had to be lumped together into the a single vehicle for transmitting the accumulated wisdom of the culture.

 

Important information does need to be transmitted across the generations. The "miracle of life" would be one of those tidbits to focus upon. And advocating for "life everlasting" gets to the heart of "sustainability," but it's easy to see how that would eventually be misinterpreted as "immortality" by any given individual.

 

Taking religions too personally--and seeing them subjectively--leads people to lose sight of the greater objective, the soul of our species; the continuity of our culture, which defines our humanity. But it is hard to take subjectivity out of our arbitrary understanding of definitions.

===

 

Meanwhile....

Physics shows us that our reality is a manifestation --or an artifact, like a shadow-- of some greater, or higher dimensional, reality. So our reality is created by that other "something else" --everywhere and completely (all power, or all energy and matter)-- which is always informing (all knowledge of) this reality.

 

So yes, if one has the image of a white-haired guy sitting on his throne, who is omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent, then that seems rather silly and unsophisticated; but if the attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience are ascribed to some ultimate reality "creating" this reality, then it seems to make sense.

 

So translating others' subjective definitions makes it easier to understand what they intend and where they're coming from.

===

 

Hmmmmm, so....

The intentions of religions seem to be well-placed, but the road to hell is paved with individuals' subjective interpretations of those good intentions. It's a complicated world that our lifeboat is navigating, but necessity probably still has some childbearing years left. There are still some good options out there... despite all of the insanity, if that was your point....

===

 

What areas of "amateur research" in science have you found interesting, informative, or revealing?

 

~ :)

[goliah]

There may finally be a way to light a 'fire' up the backsides of the religious, providing a very considerable incentive to change and at the same time embrace the scrutiny of scientific process as the only valid means to confirm secure knowledge! But they aren't going to like it and I'm not sure that 'science' will either?

 

The first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ is spreading on the web. Radically different from anything else we know of from history, this new 'claim' is predicated upon a precise and predefined experience, a direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power to confirm divine will, command and covenant, "correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries." So like it of no, a new religious claim testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment, evidential criteria now exists. Nothing short of a religious revolution appears to be getting under way. I'm testing the teaching now myself. More info at http://soulgineering.com/2011/05/22/the-final-freedoms/

[chilehed]

As a child my siblings and I watched as my father, a Nazarene minister, dragged my mother by the hair, kicking and screaming into the bathroom, and he beat her face into a bloody pulp. But, on Sunday we were the picture of a perfect christian family. This is just one example of the hypocritical faith based crap I grew up with. I don't care who you are, or what degree you carry, or how much money you make, or how much political clout you believe you may have, I have earned the right to have my opinions heard and criticised. I will post my interpretation of Norman Rockwell's america all over the internet until enough people who actually do care and understand what is important in our society have the oportunity to weigh in and reflect on thier opinions regarding ''the corruption of logic by religion".

I'm very sorry that your dad put your family though that. "Hypocritical" is a very charitable way to describe it.

 

But the fact that your father was a scumbag doesn't prove that theists are wrong, any more than the fact that the existance of kind and loving atheists proves that atheists are right.

 

Religion wasn't the cause of your father's behavior, the cause was irreligion. At least, it certainly wasn't adherence to the teachings of Christianity.

[dduckwessel]

I think that religion itself is the cause of ignorance. Why can't we just be as we are - evolved animal? Why this incessant need (for some) for rules and regulations, which makes its adherents pathalogical liars.

[Rade]

Question for Hans. Exactly what "ignorance" is being discussed in the OP thread title ? It was not clear to me from your OP discussion.

[Qfwfq]

Why can't we just be as we are - evolved animal?

That's exactly what we are being. One peculiar feature our species evolved is an impelling need to believe in something, even in lack of factual support. Religions are just the most common kind of thing folks believe in.

[Eclogite]

I think that religion itself is the cause of ignorance.

I have observed on this forum and others that those who distrust, dislike and even despise religion have a very particular vision of what religion is. I propose that in most instances this vision represents only a sub-set of religion and as such the distrust is incorrectly applied to religion as a whole.

 

In this specific instance while some aspects of religion may promote ignorance the original intent of religion, as a whole, was to dispel ignorance, while providing a cohesive social framework. So I would fundamentally disagree with your statement.

 

For similar reasons I would question Bjelke's impassioned appeal. I applaud his positive 'reaching for the stars' approach, the desire to stretch ourselves as individuals and as a species, but I reject his finger pointing at religion. This arises, as chilehed has pointed out, from the painful personal experiences Bjelke had when growing up. That is equivalent to condemning science because some scientists are frauds or incompetent or plagiarisers. It won't wash.

[Moontanman]

The Truth Concerning Our Ignorance

October 4th, 2011

To whom it may concern,

It has taken a lifetime of amateur research and unanswered philosophical questions to finally cast off the chains of religious bondage that stifled the journey of scientific discovery I so longed to embark upon since early childhood. Albert Einstein said, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Scientists today are now discovering that the universe might after all be limitless and of course Einstein’s assessment of our folly has already been accepted as known fact. The following statements are what I now believe to be a true and incontrovertible picture of our current predicament, and if these statements are not even close to the truth about religion, politics, science, and our civilization today, then I profess to know nothing and I am as clueless as one could ever be about our place within the cosmos.

Greetings Earthlings,

Because of the current holy war in which religious peoples have proven they will never evolve and have set numerous examples of their zealotry and willingness to die because they believe god is on their side, and because of their refusal to fully embrace science, I have come to the conclusion that the human species is now in the throes of an evolutionary downslide. Narrow minded political and religious dogma have replaced good common sense, and have been accepted as normal by many in this nation and by many in other nations around the world. Mankind might have succeeded in sending astronauts to Mars and would possibly have achieved much more by now, including a technological revolution that even our brightest minds have not yet conceived, were it not for the errors of our ethically inept political leaders, the miscalculations of our greedy and corrupted corporate entities, and the self imposed ignorance of our citizenry during the past forty years.

Why would we advance our achievements to the pinnacle of walking on the moon, only to allow ourselves to once again be bogged down with worldwide ethnic cleansing, ideological bickering, and financial enslavement? This planet might nurture a race of beings that could transcend war, eliminate pestilence and disease, and grow wise beyond the limits of our arrogant self absorbed intellects. Astronomy and Mathematics have revealed to us that we are not the only intelligent life in the universe or multiverse. How long will it take before we frightened homo-sapiens cast off hope based philosophies and embrace the fact that souls, spirits, deities, promises of eternal life, heavenly rewards, eternal damnation, and retribution do not exist. Is it so hard to accept the arrow of time, that we all fall victim to entropy, and that there is no physical or spiritual reincarnation of any life form? This is it; we have one life to live; to make a difference with, to determine our future with, to breach the limits we have so often set for ourselves, to experience and explore our colossal universe, and to fully expand our human potential.

Disasters such as tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, and asteroid strikes will continue to happen. The sun will die and take the earth with it. Galaxies will collide and time will end. These are not moral judgments against us by some unseen deity. These are just naturally occurring phenomenon and irrefutable facts. The questions are; what are we willing to do to further the advancement of intelligent life on this planet, what do we do to convince people that the planet is a lifeboat, how do we salvage our remaining resources, when will people recognize that all resources and life forms that are known and are discovered might be essential to our continued existence, how responsible and intelligent will we need to be to travel to other planets and stars, are we willing to fully embrace such a challenge? We must first be willing to try and understand reality as it is presented to us by the natural world before we can achieve these and other advancements.

-Hans Bjelke

 

 

I happen to agree with you wholeheartedly Hans, religion is the big lie, fundamentalist religions are doing their very best to drag us all back to the middle ages. Religion in some of it's milder forms does indeed do some good things in our society but religion is a parasite, it saps our society and follows rules made up by bronze age sheep herders. Religion is lies and it survives by convincing people of a false reality that is more important than the real world. This false reality is hyped as real while science and anything that disagrees with that false reality is purported as lies.

 

Religion drags us down by claiming that condoms do not prevent aids and not only claiming that the earth is 6,000 years old but by also saying that any and all evidence the earth is not 6,000 years old and anything that would falsify that is lies told by scientists to support Satan. Religion openly says that anything that disagrees with their religious world view no matter what the evidence says must not only be ignored it must be actively opposed.

 

Religion at it's heart is fundamentalist and must not only conscript everyone to it's world view, it says it's world view must be taught as science because to them no other world view has merit, and therefore has to be taught as reality. Religion seeks to drag us back to the dark ages where everything about reality is dictated by religion. Are all religions actively doing this? Yes, but some have been gelded by secular laws and as such look far more benign then they really are and they are always negotiating to get that power back, always trying to interpose their ideas and values back into secular government.

 

Religion is dragging us down and it is becoming more and more powerful, religion is a dangerous parasite that should be opposed at every turn...

 

Just look at politics in the US, fundamentalists have so much power that a republican candidate who says he thinks that evolution is real is not a viable candidate, to say the earth is not 6,000 years old that deep time is real means you cannot be a republican presidential candidate.....

[Eclogite]

I think that religion itself is the cause of ignorance.

I have observed on this forum and others that those who distrust, dislike and even despise religion have a very particular vision of what religion is. I propose that in most instances this vision represents only a sub-set of religion and as such the distrust is incorrectly applied to religion as a whole.

 

In this specific instance while some aspects of religion may promote ignorance the original intent of religion, as a whole, was to dispel ignorance, while providing a cohesive social framework. So I would fundamentally disagree with your statement.

 

For similar reasons I would question Bjelke's impassioned appeal. I applaud his positive 'reaching for the stars' approach, the desire to stretch ourselves as individuals and as a species, but I reject his finger pointing at religion. This arises, as chilehed has pointed out, from the painful personal experiences Bjelke had when growing up. That is equivalent to condemning science because some scientists are frauds or incompetent or plagiarisers. It won't wash.

[Moontanman]

I have observed on this forum and others that those who distrust, dislike and even despise religion have a very particular vision of what religion is. I propose that in most instances this vision represents only a sub-set of religion and as such the distrust is incorrectly applied to religion as a whole.

 

I disagree, i think the small subsets are beliefs that do no harm, religion as a whole is terrible influence on our civilization...

 

In this specific instance while some aspects of religion may promote ignorance the original intent of religion, as a whole, was to dispel ignorance, while providing a cohesive social framework. So I would fundamentally disagree with your statement.

 

What does religions original purpose have to do with what it is now?

 

For similar reasons I would question Bjelke's impassioned appeal. I applaud his positive 'reaching for the stars' approach, the desire to stretch ourselves as individuals and as a species, but I reject his finger pointing at religion. This arises, as chilehed has pointed out, from the painful personal experiences Bjelke had when growing up. That is equivalent to condemning science because some scientists are frauds or incompetent or plagiarisers. It won't wash.

 

 

I think it does, as you say wash, psychics might occasionally help someone but the basis of what they do is a lie and if they do nothing else they are a drain on resources by using a false representation of reality. Religion is such a false representation of reality they are far worse, Religion predisposes that not only is rationalism false but that we should use religion to understand reality, religion dictates a false reality but it goes further by trying to press that false reality on everyone else, at the threat of eternal torture if you don't go along. It is nothing but blackmail carried out on a planet wide scale but even if you discount that there is the fact that all of the abrahamic religions dictate that the bible, written by bronze age sheep herders, has to be taken as real over the observable evidence, this results in the craziness of religion.

[Little Bang]

Very good post Hans. Since it is almost impossible to guess what caused the Universe to spring into existence why wouldn't it be alright to surmise that some entity caused it? That entity would not have created the Earth or man only the possibility of an Earth or man.

[Eclogite]

I think that religion itself is the cause of ignorance.

I have observed on this forum and others that those who distrust, dislike and even despise religion have a very particular vision of what religion is. I propose that in most instances this vision represents only a sub-set of religion and as such the distrust is incorrectly applied to religion as a whole.

 

In this specific instance while some aspects of religion may promote ignorance the original intent of religion, as a whole, was to dispel ignorance, while providing a cohesive social framework. So I would fundamentally disagree with your statement.

 

For similar reasons I would question Bjelke's impassioned appeal. I applaud his positive 'reaching for the stars' approach, the desire to stretch ourselves as individuals and as a species, but I reject his finger pointing at religion. This arises, as chilehed has pointed out, from the painful personal experiences Bjelke had when growing up. That is equivalent to condemning science because some scientists are frauds or incompetent or plagiarisers. It won't wash.

[earthist]

It seems to me that religion is a set of beliefs that is taught as truth. As such, the source for religion is external to the individual who follows it. Science, as I see it, is also a set of beliefs that is taught as truth. The difference is that the scientific truths can be demonstrated by experiment (measured by machines for the most part), while the religious truths are given arbitrarily by god(s). However, as with religion, the source of scientific truth is also external to the individual who follows it.

 

 

Buried somewhere under both "isms" is the believer/follower. In other words, there is a wholly subjective and individual side to truth that is often given mere lip service. Most religions seem to say the subjective believer exists, but s/he is incompetent to originate truth. Science, on the other hand, seems to question even the existence of the subjective believer, since s/he can not be experimentally proven to exist (eg: there is nothing that can be measured to change at death except death itself). Even given a stipulation that the believer is there, science seems to say that s/he is incompetent to originate truth bringing us to the same end as religion (see note below).

 

 

I think it's likely that there is a deep-seated desire, perhaps even a need, for believers to say, "Hey, I'm here, and I matter." I think it's important to mental health to say that, and to be able to believe it as truth. Since the believer is a subjective entity, I would posit that there is also a need for the non-physical, aka the spiritual, to be true.

 

 

As I see it, both science and religion are engaged in attempts to tell believers what to believe, and, as such, they both do a disservice. Both promote, it seems to me, insanity, in the sense that responsibility, ethics, honor, duty, etc, are taught as originating outside the individual.

 

 

Furthermore, I don't see that it's necessary for either science or religion (in the sense of spiritual teaching) to continue along those lines. It's JMO, but it seems to me that we all need to acknowledge the importance of the subjective if we're ever going to have a "better," aka "saner" world.

 

 

 

Note: The science of statistics, while acknowledging that it cannot predict individual behaviors, does try to predict large-scale behaviors, thus negating any significance for individual decisions/actions. While I note that these statistical calculations can be demonstrated as truth, they come with an underlying assumption that the predictions will continue to be true. I am proposing that a change in basic assumptions, namely that subjectivity matters, could conceivably result in less predictable results, and that those results might possibly be "better" in the long run if the new basic assumptions became common.