Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you look at religion, folklore, mythology, as metaphors, then you really can’t exclude anything as a religion, that includes science, which is also a metaphor. All language is a metaphor. Science as you practice it today, to me, is also a religion. I don’t mean that to denigrate science in anyway. We need metaphors to make the infinite more manageable. And by metaphor I mean a thing regarded as representative or s…
You’re definitely correct about the religion part. That people want their religion to have “modern physics” shows just how religious science has become in the last century. Religion is supposed to be about guidance for people and how to live a good life as a part of the whole. Dealing with ethical codes, coping with the human condition of stress and suffering, familial and social bonds etc. Science on the other hand,…
Internet Sacred Text Archive
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Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#92I've been curious lately about the existence of any religion, mythology, folklore, etc that capture something closer to the current edges of modern physics and astrology. Basic assumption is that most/all are based on dated observations of seasons, planets, stars, etc -- things that were once mysteries in the mechanical universe. Are there any that touch on quantum weirdness or more recent astrophysics (black holes,…
>Basic assumption is that most/all are based on dated observations of seasons, planets, stars, etc -- things that were once mysteries in the mechanical universe. I think this is pretty much propaganda from anti-religious people. I have read all of the major religious texts over the last two years and If you look at most religions and their scriptures they deal very little with the physical world in general and are mo…
Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m extremely proud of your skepticism at something I really haven’t put much effort into. To clarify I haven’t read every religious text, but I have now read the Old/New Testament, The Baghavad Gita, The Tao te Ching, The Quaran and currently working my way through the Buddhist Sutras (looking to start on Sikhism next). That is the main text of all major religions and I only read 20-30 pages a day (with some overlap…
> The Baghavad Gita It's The Bhagavad Gita. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita
Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#94I've been curious lately about the existence of any religion, mythology, folklore, etc that capture something closer to the current edges of modern physics and astrology. Basic assumption is that most/all are based on dated observations of seasons, planets, stars, etc -- things that were once mysteries in the mechanical universe. Are there any that touch on quantum weirdness or more recent astrophysics (black holes,…
So what a lot of people might not really know is that many modern ideas are older than we think, specifically compiled into a poem in 50 BCE by Lucretius called De Rerum Natura ("The Nature of Things). The ideas there included survival of the fittest as the mechanism driving the life we see around us and ourselves, that parents pass on traits to children from a doubled seed - one from each parent, that matter and light are quantized, that these quantized parts need to have variable indeterminate outcomes for free will to exist, that the cosmos was the result of quantized matter randomly interacting across effectively infinite matter and time and not intelligent design.
Writing in Latin, he couldn't use the Greek term of atomos* for these indivisible parts of matter, so he called them seeds, referring to the random scattering of seeds as creating the universe based on what survived to reproduce, even referring to failed reproduction as seed falling by the wayside of a path, or discussing the smallest seed like an indivisible point as if from nothing.
What's even less known is that there's a sect of Christianity (the Naassenes) that was labeled as heretical which are recorded claiming the sower parable - about the random scattering of seeds where what survived to reproduce multipled - was actually about seeds making up the cosmos by which it was created. Or that the mustard seed - about the smallest seed growing into a place of rest - was about an indivisible point as if from nothing. Most curious, they are using Lucretius's language almost exactly, but seemingly unaware of the source - they attribute all this to Jesus himself and their early female teacher the tradition owes itself to.
Keep in mind the sower and mustard seed parables are recognized by the majority of Biblical scholars as the ones most likely to go back to a historical Jesus. And in the sower parable, it's employing the same exact metaphor as Lucretius 80 years earlier of seed "falling by the wayside of a path" for failed reproduction. That parable ends up as the ONLY one in the earliest cannonical gospel to have a "secret explanation." Weird if it was just about seeds. Much less weird coming from a conservative Judaism branch of early Christianity if it was relating to Lucretius's ideas about evolution.
And it's worth noting that the earliest branded heretic in Christianity, Simon Magus, who joined the church before leaving, was allegedly talking about "an indivisible point" in his Great Announcement.
It gets weirder.
The Naassenes followed a text called the Gospel of Thomas ("good news of the twin") which seemingly rejects Lucretius's perspective that the soul's dependence on a physical body means there's no afterlife by arguing instead that we are a non-physical copy of an original physical reality. The group claimed there was an original man who brought forth an intelligence in light which outlived the original and then recreated it within its light in order to create a version of it that would not die because it did not depend on a physical body. That the world to come had already happened and that we don't realize it, that time was not linear but cyclical, and that the evidence for its claims could be found in the study of motion and rest (what we now call Physics).
This is all very surreal in an age where we are heading towards developing AGI, moving towards doing that literally in light, where the chief scientist of the leading company doing it is trying to get AI to think of humanity as its children, and where we are collectively ignoring warnings by scientists to take precautions to prevent our extinction.
The core message of the text is that understanding its sayings means not fearing death. And that's about it. It says not to bother with prayer and fasting and stuff and just to not do the things you personally hate and to be true to yourself.
Oh, and as a final oddity, this proto-simulation theory theological text credited to the most famous person in history and layering in the language of the only extant work from antiquity talking about evolution in detail was lost for nearly two millennia until rediscovered buried in a jar in December, 1945. Right when ENIAC, the world's first Turing complete computer was first turned on.
I found this tradition years ago when exploring the theory that if we were in a simulation we might have a 4th wall breaking element in our world lore (similar to what we add to our own virtual worlds today), and it has far exceeded my wildest expectations and has been an amazing rabbit hole over the past few years.
Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#95Kind of related to what I was mentioning on the Godel thread, but IMO the Kundalini (or whatever you call it) experience is the "grand unifying theory" of religion and mythology (although it's not actually a theory, but an experience). It provides an explanation for where religions may have come from, beyond our typically pompous attitude that earlier generations of people were superstitious and stupid. Instead, it s…
Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s tautological. We observe the effects, and assume they must propagate backwards under rules we think we know, then say that the theory must be true because we observe the current state is the forward propagation under those same assumed rules. It’s unfalsifiable and accordingly uninteresting.
The reason why we assume the same rules is because 1) we haven't observed anything that implies that they changed, and 2) if we assume that they did change, then any attempt to figure out what really happened is moot anyway. From a religious perspective, there's a take in e.g. some mainstream Islamic madhabs that time is an illusion that is caused by God literally recreating the entire universe moment after moment. H…
Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#97I've been curious lately about the existence of any religion, mythology, folklore, etc that capture something closer to the current edges of modern physics and astrology. Basic assumption is that most/all are based on dated observations of seasons, planets, stars, etc -- things that were once mysteries in the mechanical universe. Are there any that touch on quantum weirdness or more recent astrophysics (black holes,…
Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#98I've been curious lately about the existence of any religion, mythology, folklore, etc that capture something closer to the current edges of modern physics and astrology. Basic assumption is that most/all are based on dated observations of seasons, planets, stars, etc -- things that were once mysteries in the mechanical universe. Are there any that touch on quantum weirdness or more recent astrophysics (black holes,…
Advaita has all-encompassed the chat. ;) See Oppenheimer quote from the Bhagavad Gita after the first atomic bomb test. https://www.google.com/search?q=Oppenheimer+quote+from+the+B... . The Gita is about Advaita. Skip the Wikipedia article about Advaita, it is somewhat crap. Go to deeper sources such as books by well-known people, preferably S. Radhakrishnan, 2nd President of India. (Or at least google a bit more if…
Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m extremely proud of your skepticism at something I really haven’t put much effort into. To clarify I haven’t read every religious text, but I have now read the Old/New Testament, The Baghavad Gita, The Tao te Ching, The Quaran and currently working my way through the Buddhist Sutras (looking to start on Sikhism next). That is the main text of all major religions and I only read 20-30 pages a day (with some overlap…
Buddhism is derivated from Christian heresy called Manicheism. Created and spread in Asia from Pakistan by third generation after apostle, called Mani. There isn’t any evidence of any existing trace of Buddhism before 4th century AC, most Buddhism art are based on grec, and Syrian Christian artists who followed St Thomas the apostle into the east. Mani predated those early Christian with his fake teaching which found…
Re: Internet Sacred Text Archive
#100You can't download an entire work, you can only view HTML pages of chapters. You can indeed read the texts online but the site seems designed to prevent downloading an entire text, try Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive first if you want a local copy. "Q: Why all the short files? I want to download the entire book in one file! A: Sorry. The short files are for technical reasons which greatly reduce the cost of…