BP - Is There an Antibiotic Nightmare Coming to America?

Time Is Not Change Is

Ta-Wan

Look at these 3;

1) a movie is playing and people move across the screen

2) a computer game or animation is processing and people on the screen

3) life, people moving around

What is happening is just a happening which appears to be peopling. I was walking and smiling at this for some time earlier today, the happening was a happening, I was a smiling happening peopling but not aware of myselfeling. I was not there it was just a happening, then someone said 'excuse me' and it made me laugh, one of these peoplings spoke to me. I then felt like a happening peopling a answering - but the happening was still happening, I was the happening briefly identifying with a character.

You can identify with a character on screen, watch them flow through the story, but there is no one there - on the screen there is just a constant wave of changing colours.

The film or computer animation or game is occuring from a timeless source and the change produced is giving the idea of people doing things over time. There is no going back in the processor, no before or after. There is only that 110100100101 there right now becoming what you see, then it is 001010010111 it has just changed and you form a continuity from that.

There is just a changing happening. One of my parents friends just died, they are sad - the happening is no longer animating that person as was, that person is just the impression people have in their minds of them - but that is all they ever were ever anyway.

When you are not there and the universe is happening with no attachment to forms you are absent and in bliss due to this, you may view the happening from the level of the film or the viewer or the other characters but you'll get hung up if you do most of those. The state is not achieved by trying as the entity trying is starting from inside the trap of self to escape the self. Self can not escape self by trying as self is the doer.

It seems though by setting the task as something for the mind to do it short circuits, the camera no longer thinks it is moving the objects around on the film. The screen no longer thinks it is doing the processor.

This post originally appeared on Ta-Wan's blog, Tao Wow.

Ziporyn on Xunzi IV

Scott Bradley

[I]t is only the sage who does not seek to understand Heaven.
(Xunzi; 62/17/7ff)

Ziporyn introduces this quote from Xunzi with the observation that "what cannot be spoken of, he passes over in silence." Thus, Xunzi acknowledges the fundamental observation of Daoism that "the dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao", but rather than allowing this to determine the parameters and character of his knowing, he formulates an epistemology outside the context of the fundamentally unknowable. He understands that all our ideas about how the world works are "peculiarly unfixed", as Zhuangzi tells us, but proceeds as if it does not matter. This would not in itself be a form of dishonesty if his "understanding stopped at what it does not know", but he instead goes on to tell us in sweeping terms how the world actually does work: "The exemplary person forms a triad with heaven and earth . . ." (28/9/63ff)

There is a very real sense in which the human experience requires us to 'act as if' things make ultimate 'sense'. We use words to convey ideas as if they are more than "the twittering of baby birds". "Walking two roads" enables us to do so without "bad faith", without self-deceit — we understand both the necessity of assuming the validity of words and their ultimately unfixed character at the same time. Similarly, science tells us how the world works while also keeping in mind that today's paradigm will likely be overturned by tomorrow's (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Kuhn). Without acknowledging that it does not ultimately know simultaneous to telling us that it does, science could not advance. The curious thing, however, is that Newtonian physics 'works' despite being overturned by Einsteinian physics, just as our ad hoc ‘spiritual’ formulas often work even when ‘erroneous’. Faith, hope, and even prayer can ‘work’, even when embedded in pure fantasy.

It is especially curious how this statement by Xunzi is in many ways entirely consistent with the position of philosophical Daoism. Yet, since his project was in many ways to co-opt the Daoist view when he could not out-rightly refute it, it is perhaps not so surprising that he would at least give it a nod.

"[I]t is only the sage who does not seek to understand Heaven." This implies that everyone else does. There is a great chuckle here in that we typically think of the sage, the religious, the 'metaphysician' (as some advertise themselves) as doing precisely this very thing. How Zhuangzian might have been Xunzi's sage had he remained consistent with this insight! Instead, he opted out of a paradigm consciously embedded in Mystery.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

The Science of Unreality

Trey Smith

A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection.

In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.

Maldacena's idea thrilled physicists because it offered a way to put the popular but still unproven theory of strings on solid footing — and because it solved apparent inconsistencies between quantum physics and Einstein's theory of gravity. It provided physicists with a mathematical Rosetta stone, a 'duality', that allowed them to translate back and forth between the two languages, and solve problems in one model that seemed intractable in the other and vice versa. But although the validity of Maldacena's ideas has pretty much been taken for granted ever since, a rigorous proof has been elusive.

In two papers posted on the arXiv repository, Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki University in Japan and his colleagues now provide, if not an actual proof, at least compelling evidence that Maldacena’s conjecture is true.
~ from Is the Universe a Hologram? Physicists Say It's Possible by Ron Cowen ~

I find this "discovery" to be quite intriguing, but, in terms of my singular existence, I'm not sure that it really matters. Ta-Wan (the more science-minded of the three of us writers) may think differently.

But what if this theory turns out to be true? Does it mean we are mere reflections of a different reality? What do you think?

Someone Else Needs To Go On a Diet

Trey Smith

There is a very interesting article over at ProPublica, "Do These Chemicals Make Me Look Fat?", that you should take a look at. The main thesis is that the obesity epidemic seen in the world today may have a very important variable that is not being considered: chemicals in our environment.

You see, it's not just people who are growing fatter.  Both domesticated animals and those who live in close proximity to humans are growing heftier too.  So, it would seem that the two main causes typically identified -- junk food and lack of exercise -- don't necessarily apply to many of these critters. 

What is it then that humans and these animals share in common?  We each live in a world contaminated and polluted by an almost ubiquitous array of chemicals.  We find this stuff in the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the gadgets we play with and in the air, water and soil.  In our modern world, it is next too impossible to escape the reach of chemicals.

More than a decade ago, Paula Baille-Hamilton, a visiting fellow at Stirling University in Scotland who studies toxicology and human metabolism, started perusing scientific literature for chemicals that might promote obesity. She turned up so many papers containing evidence of chemical-induced obesity in animals (often, she says, passed off by study authors as a fluke in their work) that it took her three years to organize evidence for the aptly titled 2002 review paper: “Chemical Toxins: A Hypothesis to Explain the Global Obesity Epidemic.” “I found evidence of chemicals that affect every aspect of our metabolism,” Baille-Hamilton said. Carbamates, which are used in insecticides and fungicides, can suppress the level of physical activity in mice. Phthalates are used to give flexibility to plastics and are found in a wide array of scented products, from perfume to shampoo. In people, they alter metabolism and have been found in higher concentrations in heavier men and women.

No one is suggesting that chemicals are the sole villains here. I think there is no question that poor eating habits and a lack of physical activity play a role. But these make for easy targets because they focus on personal responsibility, while taking corporate responsibility out of the mix. They focus on individual shortcomings, while leaving the captains of industry free to pursue almighty profit at all costs.

Why are we so willing to focus on two vices -- sloth and gluttony -- while giving another vice -- greed -- a free pass?

BP - The Science Behind Greedy CEO Psychopaths

There's Still a 5 Percent Chance They Are Wrong!

Trey Smith

When it comes to most things in life, 95 percent is considered to be almost a certainty. If the weather forecast calls for a 95 percent chance of precipitation, most people accept it as given and prepare accordingly. If a student scores 95 percent on a test, that student is almost certain to earn an A. Almost any team in any sport that won 95 percent of the time would have the best record.

It seems that the only time when 95 percent is considered far too low of a threshold is when it comes to global warming/climate change. Climate change deniers grab hold of the 5 percent of uncertainty and parade around with it like it means something vastly important. While many see a political candidate who garners 51 percent of the vote as achieving some sort of a mandate, somehow the 95 percent certainty that most of the climate change we are experiencing is human-caused represents no mandate at all!

Odd how it seems to work out that way.

When a Mandate Is Or Isn't

Trey Smith

In the 2004 presidential election, incumbent George W. Bush defeated challenger John Kerry in the the popular vote 50.7% to 48.3% for a winning margin of 2.4%. Despite the fact that Bush barely received a clear majority of the votes cast and less than a majority of eligible votes (a lot of people didn't vote at all), both he and his supporters claimed that the vote represented a mandate for his agenda. This historical fact is interesting when juxtaposed against the so-called controversy about human-caused global warming.

As I am sure readers are well aware, many of the same conservatives who supported George W. Bush claim that the science around climate change is far from settled. If you listen to what they say or read what they write, it sounds like little more than a 50/50 proposition. According to recent research, this supposition doesn't match up well with the facts!

A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.

Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.

The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.

The study described the dissent as a "vanishingly small proportion" of published research.

So, let's recap. George W. Bush received 50.7% of the vote in 2004 and we are told that this represents a clear mandate or consensus. In 2013, 97.1% of scientists agree that climate change is human-caused and yet we are told that this does not represent any sort of mandate or consensus.

Hmm. The definition of a mandate seems a tad bit inconsistent, doesn't it?

Answering My Own Question

Trey Smith

In my previous post today on the dangers of nuclear waste, I wrote,

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the definition of utter insanity. We are voluntarily creating substances that could end life as we know it and we KNOW this, but we keep doing it anyway. What could be more insane than that?

Actually, I do know of something that IS more insane than that.

There are certain elements in our present society -- fundamentalist Christians come to mind -- who poo poo almost anything scientific. When scientists develop a theory, these are the people who immediately scoff and laugh at it. If one person doesn't agree with any aspect of the theory -- even if that one person is NOT a scientist -- these folks run around saying, "This theory is very controversial and there are lots of scientists who disagree."

And yet, many of these same individuals support the use of nuclear energy because...wait for it...they figure that later human generations will figure out how to store and/or clean it safely. And how will these later generations do that? By utilizing much the same scientific method these people lampoon today!

In other words, those folks who do not accept the almost universal consensus of modern-day scientists that global warming is both real and human-caused are looking to science to solve a problem that we are creating for future generations (as well as ourselves) right now. Not only is that thoroughly disingenuous, but it is completely irrational (insane)!

The Marsh Pheasant -- Nourishment in Suffering II

Scott Bradley

In yesterday's post we were considering the implications of Zhuangzi’s opening statement in Chapter Three of the Zhuangzi to the effect that, since knowledge is “limitless” and human capacities “limited”, it is a dangerous and potentially hurtful thing to pursue the former as a means to nourishing the latter. I suggested religious belief as an example of following this road of knowledge — ‘knowing’ something understood as nourishing life. Space did not allow for the usual qualifications.

Religious answers are essentially arbitrary, final stops on the road of unlimited knowledge; they are like the indivisible atom of Lucretian physics; they work as long as we don’t discover how simplistic this point of view is. Curiously, Zhuangzi seems to have lived in a time and place when no easy "answers" were at hand; people (the 'educated classes', at least) were on that road of unlimited knowledge in their pursuit. Thus was his response germane to his times. But arbitrary stops along that road become problematical only when one realizes, even if subconsciously, that they are, in fact, arbitrary. There have been times, and there are always individuals, in which and for whom these answers are understood as final and sufficient; why would we wish to disabuse them of their belief and the solace it provides? Zhuangzi speaks to and is for those who share his existential suffering, not those who do not. It addresses those who are already ‘unfixed’ from the ready-made answers which our cultures have provided to ease our existential suffering; there is no evangelistic need to unfix those already ‘happily’ fixed.

Zhuangzi's philosophy is, I think, remarkable in that it so relevantly addresses our age where the human experience, post-Enlightenment and post-belief (even in the ability of reason to provide us with a final and sufficient stop), realizes that no easy ‘answers’ are at hand.

Since the Zhuangzian goal is sometimes described as to dwell in the “limitless”, the description of the limitlessness of knowledge as problematical can be confusing. This is resolved when we understand that it is knowledge as a provider of meaning that is limitless precisely because it cannot provide that meaning; it is the limitlessness of a vain pursuit. The Daoist understanding of limitlessness is something else altogether. This limitlessness is that which has let go the pursuit of meaning-in-an-answer altogether and has chosen instead to embrace not-knowing on the one hand, while “handing it all over to the inevitable”, on the other. This is the limitlessness that ensues from a complete surrender of oneself in trust, an act which, though seemingly reckless, is (perhaps) the only alternative for the ‘unfixed’ to one of life-denial and alienation.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

The Marsh Pheasant -- Nourishment in Suffering I

Scott Bradley

Wu (The Butterfly as Companion) observes that a central theme of the third of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi is the role of suffering in life and what to do about it. I had not previously thought of its message in that way.

The title of the chapter (Yang Sheng Chu) is variously rendered (despite being only three characters) but I agree with Wu that "The Principle of Nourishing Life" best represents its content and successfully includes other renderings. It begins by telling us that knowledge is limitless and life limited, and thus to pursue knowledge in the hope of nourishing life (finding contentment) will only cause more and unnecessary suffering.

We might see this by analogy in the scientific pursuit of the ultimate, foundational principle behind Everything. If we begin with the atom, which means that which is indivisible, and arrive at what is the latest in understanding the bits that make it up (having discovered that we can, in fact, divide it), the Higgs boson, we are told that it "arises". Arises from where? There is no end to where knowledge can take us, which is great, as long as we are not following it to arrive at meaning. In nourishing life, contentment will elude us if we think it will be discovered in limitless, ever-receding knowledge.

The way to nourish life, Zhuangzi tells us, is to take it as it is and to live it as it is. How is it? Life is many things, but among these suffering is a large part. There are many stripes of suffering in life, but it is principally 'existential' suffering to which he refers. We live in self-conscious awareness and hunger for 'meaning' and continuity, but we discover no guarantor of either. We suffer "the Lord's dangle", hung out over an eternal void, waiting for our turn to drop.

The way to nourish life, Zhuangzi suggests, is to embrace this existential suffering as that which nourishes us. He suggests, not an escape from this suffering, but a conscious use of it. We are nourished in and through the suffering. The greatest cause of our existential suffering is our complete not-knowing the why and the wherefore of it all. Embrace and use this, Zhuangzi suggests.

We see this in the brief and simple reference to the marsh pheasant. Its life is tough; it's a long way between seeds to eat and even farther to get a drink. But it would not for a minute consider living in a cage though everything were provided. To do so would be to fail of the task of living as a wild pheasant and would thereby destroy that which it intended to save.

Religious 'answers' are, for Zhuangzi, analogous to this cage. They compromise the suffering that is essential to existence. Our spirituality is most authentic when "wild"; living without answers in not-knowing we truly nourish life. Free and unfettered wandering is the call of the wild pheasant in the midst of its struggle and its response to it.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

Ice decides to melt

Ta-Wan 

Try this claim for size:

"I allowed myself to break free from the false idea of free will and live now truly free."

No matter the verb following the pronoun "I" at the beginning of the sentence there is conflict. One can not bring about any action if free will is not the case. Then free will exists? Well, no, it does not. What we have is an exposure of how our given language, grammar and vocabularies shape our explanations.

Should I have two children in their first couple of years of life and encourage each to say a different word than one another when they see a dog then they will, in later life, internally voice these sounds when they think of or see a dog. This experiment is proven by two children who grow up in countries where different languages are spoken.

So called consciousness -- being conscious of a dog in this case -- requires a learned label. No label, no internal voice, we are said to be unconscious of that phenomena. You can prove this true by attempting to hold in your awareness any one thing that you've never seen before and have no label for.

Impossible as this is, it is great for us that we have nebulous container words and place holders in our language (such as "thing", "stuff" and so on) to allow us to wriggle free of certain death.

Then, if we have a set vocabulary and grammar structure, our descriptive, conscious worlds are fictions and very barren. The world you "consciously think" about is not as colourful as you had once thought, it is far from accurate, and is very unreal. Nothing said in words by a "conscious being" relates at all to what's out there in reality.

A dog watching his owner play chess may well recognize his owner, may even sense the owner's mood, but has no consciousness of the progress of the game. A human watching grass grow can tell many stories about the event, but is unconscious of the underlying mechanism of growth. When the science explaining the quantum mechanical effects underlying photosynthesis are understood, well enough to be rendered in language, then the person may believe they are now conscious of the system but, as vocabulary and language structure do not fit the quantum world - they're not.

There are many cases in which we can see that the learned world of labels, which is also the world we are apparently conscious of, is not reality. The description or storyline that we attach to the world is subjective, unique and of miniscule resolution. The true reality is an indefinable movement of uncaused being, of which no one can be separate. No one is doing anything, but in that movement of oneness, there can be constructed inner worlds. - Conscious worlds mapped by low resolution bits.

Consciousness says the world is bits, primarily "I" and other key players.

Truth sees itself, unformed, shifting. Nebulous.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

You're at very best a fiction

Ta-Wan

"I", the person my wife named Ta Wan (a mildly derogatory pronoun Ta followed by a reference to my wearing glasses, wan in her language), have been quite busy of late. My normal schedule has been added to by needing to do more around the house than normal plus take my wife everywhere in a wheel chair while she recovers from a broken ankle. We don't have a car, so even such things as shopping or hospital visits have been several hour long missions navigating bumpy footpaths and getting on and off trains and buses - often with her wrestling to keep a hold of several bags of shopping. 

Anyway, my normal blogging has been put to one side and, while our upset routines have been little compared to fellow rambler Trey and his wife, I've hardly put finger to key in a couple of months. I did sit for an hour and write one long ramble (viewable over on my personal blog) which was a mishmash of ideas that arose from my typical reading matter which is commonly comprised of: physics, cosmology, neuroscience and eastern philosophy. On that note, this free will thing I'm fascinated over is still hot and exciting brain gum. 

From my eastern philosophical Taoist root, I'm prejudiced to begin and end my thoughts in oneness and so my love of physics and neuroscience stem from both their excellent scientific core, that being testably falsifiable, and their creeping arrival at how the universe is in fact one. Some people just feel all is one and some are quite in opposition to the idea, so the standing of science alongside my philosophical leanings is quite the foundation my finite, flimsy, fictitious ego needs to hold onto as it crumbles away into oblivion. Science has given me stuff I can see, feel, touch and benefit from, it has a transparent, testable truth, is open to change views on new evidence - this I find real and valid when placed in opposition to the completely philosophical or the religious. 

Neuroscience then is the current hot news, new ideas, hardly understood, very much in its infancy but with instruments only dreamed about that can explore the workings of the live and active human brain, making repeatable tests and related claims that the brain and the body just animate. In the way, a flower just grows and turns out the shape and colour it does we also just come about. The flower can't choose blue leaves as it would not photosynthesize, it can't choose the colour or shape of its flower, it is what it is. In a much more complex, yet similar way, we can't choose how tall we'll be or the colour of our eyes. Further, we can want whatever we want to want - but we can't choose our wants.  

Our "decision" to be a plumber or school teacher are just as much "decisions" as our height or weight. Our "decisions" over what to eat or not to eat are just as much "decisions" as what we dream about. The trace to the causal root of the apparent decisions is a false, after the event, concoction of our brain and not the true causal chain - as there is no causality. The universe is a ceaseless, timeless, flowing and even if you believe that 'yourself' that You learned yourself to be between the ages of 1 and 2 then even still, you're not a thing separate to the universe, you're the universe and the You, is at best, a fiction.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

nothingness?

Ta-Wan

Why should there be something that we call nothingness?

Nothing is a concept built from the idea that there is a thing called something.

Seen as it is though 'something' is almost entirely empty. At the smallest scales, we can see that all of the stuff around us is made of atoms which are 99.999% empty.

Emptiness is not though empty. At the smallest scales, emptiness is teeming with stuff just as valid as the stuff we say forms 'something'.

The difference between nothing and something is not real. We can not rightly refer to nothingness as any meaningful thing.

Of course, from a Taoist stance, something and nothing would be said to be mutually arising and not valid as separate things. There is though much theory in such widely separate fields as religion and science referring to nothing all the time, as if it were a valid thing to fathom!

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

Spiritual Atheist 3.0

Ta-Wan

Solving the spiritual/atheist paradox

First a fact: We all have a natural quest for meaning in our lives.

Second an assumption: You, being an intelligent and rational person, will look towards science for explanations.

If you look towards ancient scripture, then please move on.

If you're still reading, then you are the modern Spiritual/Atheist. You live in a paradoxical place, but you don't fall down here as the truth of the matter is no such paradox.  We just don't explain the situation well enough normally to see that it is actually quite a sane position.

It is natural -- even given our innate desire for answers to our biggest questions -- to discount a "spiritual" approach as fallible and something that will be proven as fanciful once science furthers its goals. Yet, as said, we all naturally have a tendency to wish to know where, why and how we fit into the mystery of life. We perhaps feel that the inner desire is in our evolutionary baggage or excuse it in some other way. If we strongly embrace it, then we may feel it contradicts our scientifically-obtained knowledge and we may indeed feel a split in our Spiritual/Atheist persona.

Spirit, as first defined by the Greeks, was breath and so, no breath, no life. Spirit then evolved as a term to become a thing separate to the living organism, something that may even outlive the body. This most people would agree now is untrue given modern science and so spirituality in this discussion is not a spirit that is a thing in any way but a label. The term Spirituality can be tinged a little and placed alongside Religion as something thinkers should be steering clear of.

As said though there is an inner drive in us all to for answers and many people cannot even get by in life at all without some ad-hoc solutions to theses 'Spiritual' questions. Whether 'Spiritual' is the right word then is in the semantics and how one interprets the word. I'm using the word to point to that part of us all that wishes to know. In this way, I perhaps unfairly include even the most rational scientists in this group as they are driven by this same inner wish for fulfillment. As we progress though, you'll see that in the end I see no genuine divide between all of the groups I've mentioned.

I suppose the greatest perceived split between the Scientific and the Spiritual approaches are of Science's apparent wish to find bits within bits and Spirituality's apparent wish to unite all. Science has been seen to be occasionally unholistic as in its method of wishing to find the bits that make the things, or the cause of the things as in these quests it is seen to be blind to the infinite regress of such an approach. Spirituality, on the other hand, can often be seen to be too wishy-washy as it so easily embraces all into a wholeness, while not processing so called real knowledge or making real testable claims.

Science does though have a well accepted goal of unification and spirituality does care for the parts, the most obvious 'bit' it cares for is the very individual entity doing the inquiring, the one seeking answers. A true Spiritual/Atheist cannot accept things that science has no way of proving or if they do then they should have left this conversation earlier with those folk who look toward ancient scripture for comfort. They can though hold some views that grate with science and seem on the surface unprovable. Let's take some glaring cases that in being so outstanding save us the effort of talking through smaller points.

Let's look at these seemingly unscientific and very mumbo-jumbo-esque statements: "There is no self, All is One, There is no Death."

That should stir the more scientific folk to rise to defence, if not attack. These statements are though quite scientific and our explaining this leads to the unification of the seeming paradox. If I make such bold claims as these though, I must state quite clearly how they are scientific or my last few minutes have been a waste of time.

Scientific claims are "falsifiable" that is, given the description of the method used, anyone with sufficient apparatus can follow the experiment and either agree with the claimed results or disagree. So then: 

"All is One" = the scientifically accepted idea of the Universe. Uni being One and Verse being anything from turning, to song to motion. So then, any scientific person who accepts a universe fully agrees with a spiritual person who sees Oneness. 

"There is no self" = the scientifically provable case that there is no precise place where a person is. There is no one place in the brain, no one organ, no chance of a body surviving without a suitable environment (such as Earth), no ongoing air supply, food source or so on. The apparent self is an ongoing and ever shifting process and not a fixed thing. Self then is either non-existent or ill-defined. Science should have no problem with this and so there is agreement again here with the Spiritual perspective.

"There is no death" = the scientifically provable case of the previously mentioned flow of life, that all is an ever shifting process and not fixed. We could very well say that a self comes to life at a time in space, as science and even common convention may incline us to, but we may also say that the universe, moved, shifted and changed and, for a time, we seemed to be, and for a time, we seemed to no longer be. While science is the sticking point here, it is the very exactness of science which brings for the agreement in the end. It is impossible to define a fixed moment where a fixed person came to be or where one ceased to be. Take the case of the medical coma for such a grey area.

This may sound flowery and unscientific, but if you follow my message rather than the literal wording which, I admit, rubs up against the social norms, then the idea portrayed here is that:

There is a valid stance which accepts all of science, but still fulfills our natural desire for a spiritual explanation. There is a view that fully accepts the findings of science and waits for more to come with no fear of it overturning presupposed unproven claims. There is a view of wholeness that loves the bits, the technology, the medicine, the intellectual wonder that science brings, but is also already complete and validated. A place that is fully content, ever complete in an ocean of change and apparent uncertainty.

There is a person called a Spiritual/Atheist who is not living in contradiction of anything, is not trapped by dogma, is not unfulfilled by life and so left ever seeking. This person is here as much as the next person, lives life, enjoys, learns, suffers, thrills and will die, but is not drawn to the unprovable, in need of the yet-to-be proven, but is simple and takes what their mind creates as life but is free of complex explanation or mystical unprovables.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

Yin and Yang Discovered by Science!

Ta-Wan

Yin and Yang have been discovered by Science (kind of).

Did you ever hear about Dark Matter and Dark energy? Most scientists on the subjects would be keen to make clear that the two unknown things were unrelated except by the mysterious "Dark" in their name (the dark in both cases being a demonstrator holding term showing that they are hard to measure and as yet difficult to describe).

Yet two scientists have made a daring addendum to Einstein's theories to unify Dark Energy and Dark Matter to two sides of the same coin. Manifested as pushing and expansion the Dark one is Dark Energy (I suppose Yang) and the other is Dark Matter (Yin I guess?).

This is warming to a Taoist as there is no strict duality in Taoism. The most dual things we have are Yin and Yang but we must always within a sentence or two of mentioning them point out that they are inseparable aspects of the same movement. It is nice to see science taking steps towards its goal of unification.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

The Te of the Tao

Ta-Wan

They've beaten me to it numerous times and now Scott Bradley has brought to our attention yet another book uniting science and spirituality. From the excellent Tao of Physics by Frijov Capra to the works of the Dalai Lama, there are scientists welcoming spiritualists and spiritualists welcoming scientists. I really feel I have such a book bursting its way out of me too, but for anyone who's been subjected to much of my ramblings, you'll know I'm not a great writer.

For one thing, real science needs real explanations, so it may well be best left to science to explain itself. Often, to convey a point about science as you attempt to tack a path speaking of a wider subject matter, you are forced to miss many details. Scientists accuse you of dumbing down the subject or worse of pseudo-science. If you go as deep as science requires, then you miss your goal of a broader inquiry.

Still one very key point remains for all such discussions. What makes a photon wiggle?

You see, science would love us to believe, and says it proves, that there was nothing and it gained complexity and here we are. Consciousness is a result of originally dead and inanimate space dust which configured itself.

Now let me make this clear. I am no creationist! The idea that something chose or designed all of this is certainly no help. It makes the answer more complex and less rewarding and I just can't accept it one bit. Where then do I sit?

Back in the beginning of science there was this nothing, but it had a life, an energy, it wiggled. If you say that reality is in the mind and the mind wiggled, then you need a mind to come first. Not much use.

This wiggling universe with no one in it. Isn't this wiggle both what scientists say is fact and what they attempt to convince those of a mystical bent does not exist? Isn't the wiggle the Te of the Tao?

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

Religious Naturalism

Scott Bradley

I've recently come across a book by Ursula Goodenough, a cell biologist, entitled The Sacred Depths of Nature. Her project is to use what science knows as a springboard for a spiritual appreciation of what it does not know (and does), with the hope of establishing a spiritual common ground acceptable to all religions; one that might help us solve our very real existential problems. She calls this over-religion, “religious naturalism”. Good luck!

I've only just begun the book, but suspect I'll be commenting on it more than just this once. So far, she has advocated for an appreciation of the utter Mystery which is behind and beyond everything that science can know. Yes. "What is" is Emergent, it arises. Yes. And she has suggested that our response to what is might be one of "thankful assent". Yes! Thankfulness arises!

This second response comes on the heels of her observation that human consciousness is entirely explainable as a biochemical and biophysical phenomenon. There is no "vital force", no qi, that animates us. There is no Life, only lives. This last is my deduction. Life with an "L" is a concept intended to generalize what exists only in the particular.

If there is no Life, but only biochemical creations that live, then there is no consciousness that survives death. Ms. Goodenough believes that science demonstrates this, and with an appropriate nod to the fact that we cannot be so absolutely sure about anything, I accept her conclusion.

I admit to having dabbled a bit in vitalism here in these posts, making of qi something more than Mystery. Zhuangzi suggests that qi is "a waiting for the presence of beings", a fertile emptiness. It does not exist; it is that things do. And this, like absolutely everything, is Mystery.

The real focus of this post is an affirmation of this point of departure. The spirituality that I wish to pursue begins with what we know as a springboard to an appreciation of what we cannot possibly know. It begins with an acceptance that "I" is a momentary biochemical phenomenon. It begins and ends without a speculative metaphysics that would try and convince me otherwise.

I feel some ambivalence here, not because I wish it to be otherwise, but because I am wary of all knowing, even scientific knowing. Drift and doubt remain. Nevertheless, I believe this stark, reductionist 'fact' that human consciousness is only a manifestation of the workings of physics and biochemistry is an excellent place to begin one's spiritual response to reality. Deal with it.

Dealing with it, we are confronted with the delusional character of the "I" which demands to be more than it is. "I" is not delusional, only we make it so. I exist. I won't exist. My response begins here. I can’t imagine a more challenging place to begin.

You can check out Scott's other miscellaneous writings here.

What they came to know

Ta-Wan

It is often amazing what apparently less advanced people knew. Now I mean the technologically less advanced of say 5,000 years ago and less and it is up to you if you believe that we had previous technological highs or not. It seems true that our minds have been just as able for a couple of hundred thousand years or more, enough certainly to say that anything passed down to us was done by equally able, equally fallible, but basically by folks like us. The difference being our much larger population, ability to share ideas and language for describing our ideas.

Sometimes I wonder if the apparent foresight of past masters only arose as a relic of translation. Translators are naturally strong when it comes to language, so in translating an idea strange to us, they can easily paint it in our language in a way that when we read it, we sit in awe of past wisdom. Then though you have the translators who openly tell us that they feel the original message cannot be painted in our language in the same original saturation and depth of colour. Sanskrit would be a good example.

So then again another example comes forward to make me think of this all over again. The Buddha did not write and spoke a fairly simple language. Over the years his words were added to and translated over and over, but we feel that the core message came through. One key message, that of causality, is one I have found to be in contrast with a sense of oneness that he also taught, Taoism speaks of and other nondual teachings also. Cause and effect always seems open to an infinite regress and so becomes meaningless it seems.

There I was last night watching a lecture at the cutting edge of science, a lecture which, as a sub heading, was looking for complete unification and oneness in science to date -- and they concluded that causality is real and the basic language of the universe! Well done Buddha for sitting under a tree and getting that!

The theory is Causal Set Theory by, amongst others a protégé of Stephen Hawking, and it says, amongst other things, that space is a quantized thing and that causality is the basic language of the universe. It goes on to say that causality cannot operate completely over the vast distances of the universe but.. go Buddha!

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

Afternoon Matinee: Education and Climate Change