[FoRK] Faith and/or Science dingding redux

[Lion Kimbro]

On Nov 28, 2007 1:50 PM, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> My days are spent raising kids to find ways around damage like yours.

  Yes, yes!  That's exactly what I'm referring to.

  I mean, -->  doesn't that seem kind of boring?

  By the way you put it, it sounds more like
  "clinical life support," or something.

  I mean, "very much alive, vibrant, and with focus,"
  -- it rings hollow, to me, like you don't quite
  believe in it.  It seems like a placeholder for
  something else, something that hasn't quite been
  figured out yet.


  The Damanhur people are mad hatters, to be sure,
  but they at LEAST seem to be the healthy sort of
  mad hatters,  and they're the sort of people that I'd
  rather be like.

  They're certainly not oppressing you or your kids.

  When people interview them, and ask, "What's the
  goal?" ... they answer, "To inspire people around the
  world to do better than us."  To evoke life, imagination,
  and creativity.  Where's the oppression in that?

  I mean, it certainly sounds cool to me.  That's the
  kind of person I'd like to be like.


  I realize that by poking at you, I'm not doing that;
  That I'm sinning, that I'm in error.  It's because I don't
  know how to do better, while still communicating.
  But these Damanhur people are giving me some clues
  about what I can do right.


  I see the value in what you're doing.  You're trying
  to make people be sensible, be more egalitarian,
  care about each other, and not kill each other over
  imaginary beings.  Admirable;  I like it!  Your tribe,
  your movement, (I know you guys say it's not a
  group or a movement, but there it is--) is doing
  awesome stuff right now, really turning heads about
  rethinking religion fundamentally and such.  Right on.
  I can value that.  But it's not what I'd like to be doing
  myself.

  I'm trying to live in full integrity with the psychological
  realities of the soul, and the truths of science.

  Gods are ideas.  I think that, in the end, science
  and religion will be in powerful embrace.

  As we learn to see deeply-- as we learn to see
  full cost & value chains, as the Semantic Web
  comes online, and we start really seeing into the
  world deeply;  When we can follow the language
  of fashion and story and timeline and art and history
  as a living substance in our hands-- when the new
  user interfaces in the world make it so easy to
  communicate and form groups and tell stories and
  relate ideas and *see* all the things as living entities
  thriving through time;  When we can move the Earth
  backwards and forwards through time and see all
  the species moving around and evolving, and getting
  all the pointers to the evidence and "how we know;"
  When we can see arguments and debates as substances
  that draw pictures in the air--  I think we will have
  a new religion, the religion of the Universe.

  I know you're against Awe, but there it is:  I'm in Awe.

  I think if you're not in Awe, your heart's just closed,
  or you're just not actually seeing what's Real.

  It's okay.  I'm not going to "jackboot" you for it.  I'm not
  going to take your house away or anything.  If you choose
  to talk with me, I might ask, "What's got you down?",
  though.

  If "what's got you down" is "religion," ...  I don't know what
  to say, really.  "Religion...  Isn't that an imaginary?
  Can you turn it good?"

  My experience with imaginaries is that they don't get
  destroyed by frontal attack;  It tends to just give them
  more strength.  But they *can* be turned by re-envisioning.
  That seems to me to be the more healthy way.

  -- Lion