My Belief System

To begin, a brainteaser: There is a legend regarding Vlad the Impaler. It is said that two monks once called upon his castle. He gave them meals separately, and while they ate, he asked what the people thought of him. One monk truthfully told Vlad that the people of the country thought him a cruel villain; the other flatteringly told him that he was a popular ruler. In the morning, Vlad had one of the two monks killed, and allowed the other to go.

First choose which Monk you believe was killed.

The question, though, is not why Vlad would have killed that monk. The question becomes: What does your choice say about you?

Lacking a brilliant segue, I will jump right into the heart of my philosophy.

Every great accomplishment in any realm, historically, has come from an individual questioning and challenging the status quo. At one time, it was "known" that the earth was flat. It was then "known" that it was round, and the center of the universe. After traversing heliocentrism, we landed, societally on an a-centric (without center) view of the universe.

In the same respect, we "know" certain things today. Laws of Thermodynamics, Gravity, Physics, Evolution, the nature of Space-Time, Mathematical principles, etc. With the same fervor and absolute faith with which we believe that the earth is round, or that the Pathogen Postulate is accurate, we must question these assumed facts.

We have to face the reality that nothing can be empiracally proven. We can say that the shape of the earth follows logically from what we, as a society, know, but no single individual can empiracally know that it is true.

It is a given that we do not, given all of our science and thinking, understand fully the nature of the universe. Checking to see if our conclusions follow the laws of science we have will not be fruitful. Of course an explanation of nature that was derived within a system will be consistent with that system. What we must do is question whether or not the system is consistent with reality.

I have found it impossible to objectively analyze my own thoughts. It is hard to step outside the boundaries established by what we think we know as a group, let alone the ideas that serve as building blocks for my individual thinking. Dialogue, then, is the only way to actually advance thinking. If I propose an idea, and it is challenged by someone else, we can both work our hardest to defend our positions. The more voices involved, the more flaws can be found.

In short: Question Everything. Even question the premise that everything must be questioned. Question ideas, and question the basis of those ideas, then question the system by which we establish the basis.

The universe is a puzzle. You can't look at a lot of individual pieces and understand what it's a picture of, but you can rearrange the pieces until you get a picture. Once you have the picture, all the pieces will be in their places.

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Hi Rev. mojo, The Ineffable. Nov 13, 2000

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Rev. mojo, The Ineffable

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