Dispelling Philosophy, Religion, Science and all aspects of Life
Created | Updated May 27, 2005
If anything in this article offends anybody, I am genuinely sorry. That is not the purpose of this article. You, dear reader, should take everything said with a pinch of salt, and not too seriously. If you are one of those people who tends to get offended at things, please read this, but don't complain thereafter.
Alright. Philosophy. There sure seems to be hell of a lot of choice for those people who just can't accept a religion (of course, that is a form of philosophy). Although there are so many philosophies that have come about, not a single one has been universally accepted. The reason for this being that there is always some kind of doubt that arises from where the philosopher has essentially 'filled in the blanks' or 'put two and two together'.
This is where my view of religion and philosophy differ, slightly. Where philosophy fills in some blanks, makes a couple of general RULES, religion tends to attempt to fill in ALL the blanks, which is inevitably guess-work, and as a consequence tends to be regarded as a frivolous, habitual (or hereditary) thing by the general population (as far as I am aware of- of course, there are absolutely mass followings of, for example, Buddhism in China- but isn't it a coincidence that most people adopt the religion that is most popular in their geographical area? Or the religion of their families, that they have been brought up as believing as true, just like Santa?).
It is HEALTHY to doubt! Shop around, try some things on. You might find yourself partial to something. Something might click and tell you that this is fundamentally right. You could even save a few pounds on petrol every Sunday.
Any such feelings are, of course, misplaced as I have already stated. If any religion is based on guesswork, there's a lot of cracks to fill, and I don't think they quite have it done with solid material. I'm sorry- 'faith is required?'... 'divine inspiration?'... CRASH!!!
May I analyse that a moment? 'You just have to have faith' translates as 'you just have to believe this despite all available evidence to the contrary'. 'Divine Inspiration' is another one of these inarguable arguments. OK, yes. Perhaps a higher being did write the words through this individual, but doesn't it seem odd that in many cases these texts were written by people who would have been put to death for believing otherwise? I mean, if I were God (forbid!), I would use a disbeliever to write my scriptures. I mean, they're going to believe in you if you actually TALK to them... pick up a believer, kill two birds with one stone. Banks offer great deals to new customers all the time because IT WORKS to get new customers, to the bank's advantage. God's supposed to be clever- why couldn't he do the same thing 'Join now and get to write the Holy Scriptures'. No? Well, maybe that's just me. Perhaps I've overlooked something, I don't know.
Philosophy is a milder form of the same thing. The philosopher takes what he percieves in the world, and tries to make sense of it all. Its the 'tries to make sense of it all' bit that lets the system down, here. Its like a computer- input, process, output (and on occasion, feedback, leading to new input, but that is not necessary for this model. The input is the perception of the world- note that this may not be what is actually going on in the world, but what the philosopher THINKS is going on in the world. The output is the philosophy itself. Now, if you input something into a computer, and it processes it, generally the output will be accurate, as in 1+1=2. This is because the computer is a perfect machine. A philosopher is neither perfect, nor a machine. There is always doubt, opinion, misjudgments and misperception. Existence is enormously complex- nobody could ever gain all the information required to understand it. Thi is then fed through 'philosopher', an aspect of existence, and therefore equally complex and impossible to understand. The result is an attempt to understand based on the workings of a system that is impossible to understand itself. I wouldn't trust that to make any major decisions (for example, how I'm going to lead my life). Hell, I wouldn't trust that to speak my weight.
Science is another system like philosophy that takes what is there and accumulates a result. The major difference is measurement. Quantum Physics suggested that nothing could be said it have happened until it had been measured. Schrödinger’s Cat theory argues against this. I argue against this as well. I suggest that nothing can be said to have definitely happened even AFTER it has been measured. Scientists have made a lot of discoveries over the years, many (and I mean M A N Y) of these have later been proven to be absolute cobblers, despite being measured. The reason for this is that, again, measurement does not fill in all the cracks. Assumptions must be made in order to reach the final conclusion in many cases. Ask an astrologer in 1900 how many moons the earth has and he'd answer 'One' after giving you a puzzled look as to why you would ask, and possibly call into the optician's on the way home from work. Ask an informed astrologer today and they will give you that look that they are about to tell you something that not a lot of people know and say, "Well, the Earth actually has five moons". Both of these answers for me are totally inaccurate. The actual answer in both cases should have been "I don't know". The reason for this is that, in reality, they do not know for sure. There could have been oversights, miscalculations, misinterpretations... anything. Its could have been teenagers playing an elaborate prank with some string and a piece of flint that they painted grey. However, all the available evidence suggests that, in fact, yes there are 5 moons to the earth, therefore science ASSUMES that that's the truth.
Let's think about that. If you were found with your hand attached to a knife, which was in turn attached to the inside of somebody's lung, all available evidence would assume that you were responsible. Well, maybe you are, but if you KNOW that you are not, there's not a lot you can do, because the court KNOWS that you are. Admittedly, generally when somebody if found holding onto a weapon that is lodged inside somebody, they are responsible for the unfortunate circumstance, but this aspect of the model does not apply to science. With science, there is no 'generally'. Where religion is a stab in the dark, science is an educated guess. An educated guess is, nonetheless, still a guess, so things like gravity should really not be taken as seriously as they tend to be.
Well, as this article draws to a close, I hear you all crying out for an answer to Life. Do I have one. Why, yes, as it goes I do. The great answer to Life is... 'I do not know'.
Yep, that's it all right. Do doubt about it. Think about all that's been said in this article up till now. Anything that you can hope to believe is, at best, assumption. If you touch the screen in front of you, you will perceive that you are touching the screen. A perception is not a definite occurrence. You might be dreaming right now; how would you know? Reality is dismissible. Yes, you perceive BEING, yes you have thoughts, but when you clicked the mouse to access this article, did your finger click, or did YOU click?
In the same way, then, do YOU think, or is a greater oneness of being devolving thoughts to you? Are you sure you're thinking? Really, you have to reason to be sure. You perceive thoughts. You yourself are making assumptions about your own being, and as stated before, assumptions are not definite. Yes, absolutely, all aspects of Life are subjects to questions which cannot be answered and therefore should be ignored.
What do you do now? Well, a wise man once wrote 'the chances of finding out what's really going on are so vastly remote that you might as well just say "Hang the sense of it" and try to keep yourself occupied'. It is therefore vital that you stop worrying about all these questions and immediately do some enjoyable, creative and/or productive. May I recommend baking a cake?
Alright. Philosophy. There sure seems to be hell of a lot of choice for those people who just can't accept a religion (of course, that is a form of philosophy). Although there are so many philosophies that have come about, not a single one has been universally accepted. The reason for this being that there is always some kind of doubt that arises from where the philosopher has essentially 'filled in the blanks' or 'put two and two together'.
This is where my view of religion and philosophy differ, slightly. Where philosophy fills in some blanks, makes a couple of general RULES, religion tends to attempt to fill in ALL the blanks, which is inevitably guess-work, and as a consequence tends to be regarded as a frivolous, habitual (or hereditary) thing by the general population (as far as I am aware of- of course, there are absolutely mass followings of, for example, Buddhism in China- but isn't it a coincidence that most people adopt the religion that is most popular in their geographical area? Or the religion of their families, that they have been brought up as believing as true, just like Santa?).
It is HEALTHY to doubt! Shop around, try some things on. You might find yourself partial to something. Something might click and tell you that this is fundamentally right. You could even save a few pounds on petrol every Sunday.
Any such feelings are, of course, misplaced as I have already stated. If any religion is based on guesswork, there's a lot of cracks to fill, and I don't think they quite have it done with solid material. I'm sorry- 'faith is required?'... 'divine inspiration?'... CRASH!!!
May I analyse that a moment? 'You just have to have faith' translates as 'you just have to believe this despite all available evidence to the contrary'. 'Divine Inspiration' is another one of these inarguable arguments. OK, yes. Perhaps a higher being did write the words through this individual, but doesn't it seem odd that in many cases these texts were written by people who would have been put to death for believing otherwise? I mean, if I were God (forbid!), I would use a disbeliever to write my scriptures. I mean, they're going to believe in you if you actually TALK to them... pick up a believer, kill two birds with one stone. Banks offer great deals to new customers all the time because IT WORKS to get new customers, to the bank's advantage. God's supposed to be clever- why couldn't he do the same thing 'Join now and get to write the Holy Scriptures'. No? Well, maybe that's just me. Perhaps I've overlooked something, I don't know.
Philosophy is a milder form of the same thing. The philosopher takes what he percieves in the world, and tries to make sense of it all. Its the 'tries to make sense of it all' bit that lets the system down, here. Its like a computer- input, process, output (and on occasion, feedback, leading to new input, but that is not necessary for this model. The input is the perception of the world- note that this may not be what is actually going on in the world, but what the philosopher THINKS is going on in the world. The output is the philosophy itself. Now, if you input something into a computer, and it processes it, generally the output will be accurate, as in 1+1=2. This is because the computer is a perfect machine. A philosopher is neither perfect, nor a machine. There is always doubt, opinion, misjudgments and misperception. Existence is enormously complex- nobody could ever gain all the information required to understand it. Thi is then fed through 'philosopher', an aspect of existence, and therefore equally complex and impossible to understand. The result is an attempt to understand based on the workings of a system that is impossible to understand itself. I wouldn't trust that to make any major decisions (for example, how I'm going to lead my life). Hell, I wouldn't trust that to speak my weight.
Science is another system like philosophy that takes what is there and accumulates a result. The major difference is measurement. Quantum Physics suggested that nothing could be said it have happened until it had been measured. Schrödinger’s Cat theory argues against this. I argue against this as well. I suggest that nothing can be said to have definitely happened even AFTER it has been measured. Scientists have made a lot of discoveries over the years, many (and I mean M A N Y) of these have later been proven to be absolute cobblers, despite being measured. The reason for this is that, again, measurement does not fill in all the cracks. Assumptions must be made in order to reach the final conclusion in many cases. Ask an astrologer in 1900 how many moons the earth has and he'd answer 'One' after giving you a puzzled look as to why you would ask, and possibly call into the optician's on the way home from work. Ask an informed astrologer today and they will give you that look that they are about to tell you something that not a lot of people know and say, "Well, the Earth actually has five moons". Both of these answers for me are totally inaccurate. The actual answer in both cases should have been "I don't know". The reason for this is that, in reality, they do not know for sure. There could have been oversights, miscalculations, misinterpretations... anything. Its could have been teenagers playing an elaborate prank with some string and a piece of flint that they painted grey. However, all the available evidence suggests that, in fact, yes there are 5 moons to the earth, therefore science ASSUMES that that's the truth.
Let's think about that. If you were found with your hand attached to a knife, which was in turn attached to the inside of somebody's lung, all available evidence would assume that you were responsible. Well, maybe you are, but if you KNOW that you are not, there's not a lot you can do, because the court KNOWS that you are. Admittedly, generally when somebody if found holding onto a weapon that is lodged inside somebody, they are responsible for the unfortunate circumstance, but this aspect of the model does not apply to science. With science, there is no 'generally'. Where religion is a stab in the dark, science is an educated guess. An educated guess is, nonetheless, still a guess, so things like gravity should really not be taken as seriously as they tend to be.
Well, as this article draws to a close, I hear you all crying out for an answer to Life. Do I have one. Why, yes, as it goes I do. The great answer to Life is... 'I do not know'.
Yep, that's it all right. Do doubt about it. Think about all that's been said in this article up till now. Anything that you can hope to believe is, at best, assumption. If you touch the screen in front of you, you will perceive that you are touching the screen. A perception is not a definite occurrence. You might be dreaming right now; how would you know? Reality is dismissible. Yes, you perceive BEING, yes you have thoughts, but when you clicked the mouse to access this article, did your finger click, or did YOU click?
In the same way, then, do YOU think, or is a greater oneness of being devolving thoughts to you? Are you sure you're thinking? Really, you have to reason to be sure. You perceive thoughts. You yourself are making assumptions about your own being, and as stated before, assumptions are not definite. Yes, absolutely, all aspects of Life are subjects to questions which cannot be answered and therefore should be ignored.
What do you do now? Well, a wise man once wrote 'the chances of finding out what's really going on are so vastly remote that you might as well just say "Hang the sense of it" and try to keep yourself occupied'. It is therefore vital that you stop worrying about all these questions and immediately do some enjoyable, creative and/or productive. May I recommend baking a cake?
