____twoism

TaoTapeTao wrote:"To call a chair a chair" is a terrible analogy for the issue of labels and religion so it's very inconsistent and unrealistic to relate to that analogy.

Also, you can most certainly be a free thinker and still acknowledge preconceived notions of God or whatever. Free thought is considering the possibilities as you said, so you contradict yourself if you suggest that working with those ideas is not free thought. Free thought means thinking for yourself

But the bigger issue is athiesm is EXACTLY that- taking the notion of god and then inverting it. So by your explanation- atheism is NOT free thought because it is built from the pre-determined ideas of god and theology. So there can be no free thought with atheism according to your post.

Atheism doesn't start from scratch, it starts from supposed belief systems.

Atheists or any theists can certainly be free-thinking but it's the "I'm x or x" that subverts free thought to begin with. It's a title, and titles imply predetermined and defined notions on what is what.

EDIT: And also, I don't believe in God for one second, but you can't for one second state as verbatim what is and what is not. That is fact. Period. You don't know if God does exist, and you don't know what cows think about. This might seem like an arbitrary detail, but I hate the idea of affirming things that can only be supposed. But I still do agree, I think God is a man-made idea. But even that comes from something real- experiencing reality. So you can't just denounce it and shrug it off like it has no significance. Otherwise you aren't really free in thought- you're closed off from contingencies and angles.

I think we are getting hung up on labels. They're useful, as it is always good within a discussion to define terms to an extent - hence my tongue in cheek chair analogy.
I'm not sure you got my central point - which was that saying 'I don't know about the existence of god' is pre-determining the debate to raise the concept of god above other concepts. I take your point that using the term atheism also does this, although I see atheism as a simple, non judgemental 'non-belief' as rodheh has pointed out.
None of this means that the concept should be ignored, just that it would make sense to ignore it initially, just as, indeed, scientific concepts could also be ignored, so as to avoid preconceptions.
As it is, what I find interesting about the whole idea of how the world came about is how science is starting to converge with some aspects of religion (such as the idea of the interconnectedness of things).

MrMessiah wrote:

mechanismj wrote: You said that if evidence one day comes along that proves there is a God, you would be FORCED to change your tune. Not exactly free thinking, is it? That's why you can't see the box.

Semantic dickwaving. If something's scientifically proven, then it's rational to adapt your thinking to deal with it.

You could call it that, sure. If I'm swinging my linguistic phallus around and it happens to smack one of our beloved forum members upside the head, causing them to become enlightened to a different way of thinking, then it's totally worth it.

jcnporter wrote:As it is, what I find interesting about the whole idea of how the world came about is how science is starting to converge with some aspects of religion (such as the idea of the interconnectedness of things).

This. I have noticed this quite a bit and have been pretty excited about it. Not because it confirms religion, but shows that behind differing belief systems there is intention- a connecting thread/cause for certain conclusions. Again, I'm no buddhist but on many occasions personal conclusions I've made about reality have coincided eerily to some buddhist philosophy. Of course that's not the only one, just an example.

naicob wrote: Every human concept is a human invention. People personalize God, or the concept of God, because people personalize everything. It is hard to imagine God because our imaginations are limited.

What is mathematics without the human mind?

As I said, 'god' is quite a specific concept. I mention this because it is often claimed that whatever was the starting point (if there is one) for existence can be called 'god'. It can't.

You seem to think everyone who is religious is imagining God with human characteristics. I find that religious people are more than capable of imagining God as something beyond the scope of their understanding and beyond the scope of humanity. You will never start with a blank page because your experience as an always experiencing human is what makes something like that impossible. Just because you were once one way or another, doesn't mean the recorder was ever shut off. In fact it's been recording since before you can remember and before you were born.

It is not a matter of what individuals think. Most religions portray god as having human characteristics.
It may not be possible to start with a completely blank page but one can certainly start without narrowing the conclusion straight away to one of god vs the big bang.

So, what are these other concepts that aren't human inventions?

They could be any concept you care to come up with that haven't already been invented and pushed into the debate as a pre-determined 'main contender'.

An atheist dismisses the possibility of divine intervention or a creator. Why? Because things he has experienced as a human being makes him think this is the case, not because he is starting from scratch. If you're 'still' searching, you're hardly doing anything new, and by the very act of experiencing reality, you're inventing or interpreting something because it is the way you do things as a human.

You are projecting your definition of atheism and what atheists believe here. I guess that labels have become an issue because they mean different things to different people.
Again we come back to this - labels (albeit clumsy labels as we have seen) in this case are applied after consideration and thought, not before.

TaoTapeTao wrote:

jcnporter wrote:As it is, what I find interesting about the whole idea of how the world came about is how science is starting to converge with some aspects of religion (such as the idea of the interconnectedness of things).

This. I have noticed this quite a bit and have been pretty excited about it. Not because it confirms religion, but shows that behind differing belief systems there is intention- a connecting thread/cause for certain conclusions. Again, I'm no buddhist but on many occasions personal conclusions I've made about reality have coincided eerily to some buddhist philosophy. Of course that's not the only one, just an example.

Perhaps the cold, calculated exact explanations science gives of the grand mythological stories and allegories of religions is what modern day spirituality is.

mechanismj wrote: Perhaps the cold, calculated exact explanations science gives of the grand mythological stories and allegories of religions is what modern day spirituality is.

'Straw Dogs', by philosopher John Gray is a great book, if you haven't already read it, he makes a very good case for treating our reliance on science and progress as as much of a 'faith' as religion.

TaoTapeTao wrote:

jcnporter wrote:As it is, what I find interesting about the whole idea of how the world came about is how science is starting to converge with some aspects of religion (such as the idea of the interconnectedness of things).

This. I have noticed this quite a bit and have been pretty excited about it. Not because it confirms religion, but shows that behind differing belief systems there is intention- a connecting thread/cause for certain conclusions. Again, I'm no buddhist but on many occasions personal conclusions I've made about reality have coincided eerily to some buddhist philosophy. Of course that's not the only one, just an example.

I think it was reading about the idea of quantum entanglement that got me really fascinated. The idea has a spiritual feel to it.
I think religion started as a way to explain the world to ourselves and hence how to 'live well' and unfortunately became something else.

jcnporter wrote:

mechanismj wrote: Perhaps the cold, calculated exact explanations science gives of the grand mythological stories and allegories of religions is what modern day spirituality is.

'Straw Dogs', by philosopher John Gray is a great book, if you haven't already read it, he makes a very good case for treating our reliance on science and progress as as much of a 'faith' as religion.

I'll have to look into that one. I've often had the same thought.

Rodheh wrote:

naicob wrote:

Rodheh wrote: No, it's not just religion or atheism. There are atheistic religions even. You could also be a theist who isn't part of any religion, like a deist.

I don't know what your deal is. Apparently you've some sort of prejudice against atheists because it seems that it's of the highest importance to you to suggest that we are stupid. "Free of thought"? Is that really necessary?

A very large chunk of people who are atheists came to be atheists by challenging and questioning the beliefs they were brought up with. I would not call this being "free of thought".

Excuse me if I think 'free thinkers' have their collective heads up a gigantic ass. Anyone seriously calling themselves a free thinker needs to get their head examined and cleaned. That's my opinion.

I have nothing against atheism or atheists, theists, the comatose, or the insane. I do have a problem with arrogance, which I find to be the lowest form of closed mindedness. Claiming to be a 'free thinker' stinks of extreme arrogance.

A very large chunk of people, regardless of affiliation or behaviourism, challenge themselves, their environment, beliefs, institutions, etc. Just because many people don't sit around trying to prove or disprove things, or understand something as grand as the Universe with something as puny as their minds, doesn't make them any less prone to free thought. I could be freely thinking about a doughnut for the rest of eternity, or is 'free thought' limited to those that 'get it' and reserved for 'the big questions'?

Do you not understand why the term "freethought" was used to begin with? Nobody here is claiming they are moreso a "free thinker" than anyone else who is keen on logic. It's an umbrella term of which several stances on the existence of god fall under. I didn't want the thread to just be "atheist boccers" because I know we have nonreligious believers here.

I presumed most everyone would have understood this but I guess not. Perhaps you did understand it but you just have such an issue with the idea of free thought in correlation to atheism that you feel the need to derail this thread into ranting about the words we use to describe things as opposed to the things themselves. This is like when people get angry about the term "IDM".

I feel that we are too limited as people to be sure of pretty much anything, which includes 'evidence'. When we say the evidence does not exist, it doesn't mean it doesn't, it could mean that it isn't discovered yet, but it could also mean that it cannot be discovered because even if it hammered us on the head for all eternity, we would still be oblivious to it. It also includes limitations of logic and reason. We demand reason as if we're entitled to it, yet we're very unreasonable to begin with when we apply our limited logic.

We think in language-- when I think of 'freethought' I think of the ability to think freely. When someone calls themselves 'free thinking' they damn well better be distinguishing themselves in a free thinking way, if they aren't, they make a mockery of the term, and a mockery of themselves.

You latch on to a group policy of 'freethought' and repeat what others have thought for you because it somehow 'fits' into a thought you once had. It becomes intellectual phonyism and is suitable mostly for the arrogant and the lazy. Agnostic Atheist, or Gnostic Theist, etc.-- ridiculous terms, ridiculous scales, and anyone thinking a little more freely than a typical 'free thinker' will see through it rather quickly. It is utterly unnecessary to apply such labels to oneself, not because one did or didn't 'think of them first' (I don't even know why that's so damn important) but because a label works much like a mental leash collar. Is reason, logic, and empiricism the end of human thought? It is to a 'free thinker' who needs facts, but doesn't realize that the facts might be nonexistant or impossible to know, because if he did, he wouldn't base his entire outlook strictly based on facts that could be completely false.

We need to be more humble, more open to different interpretations. Humility is something humanity could use so much more of because arrogance seems to prevail everywhere, even within a community which you would hope (based on labels alone), would be 'free' of.

naicob wrote:
That is precisely why artists like BoC that separate themselves from the herd are often unclassifiable. I would call them free thinking artists because they are original in their approach. I get upset when people call them 'electronica' or 'ambient' not because they don't make electronic music, but because someone who doesn't really enjoy ambient or electronic music would never give them a shot simply based on those classifications. I can't stand most electronic music, yet I think the brilliance of BoC is unmatched regardless of genre and is completely different than 99.9% of 'electronic music'.

and BoC agrees with you too.

in an interview around the time Campfire Headphase came out they said something very close to...

"were not an IDM band, were not an electronica band, were just a band".

Nothing is unclassifiable. They can say they are just a band but they will fall under categorization anyway. It's all arbitrary. In their minds they're just a band, for some they are instrumental hip hop, for some idm and so forth.

Basefree wrote:Nothing is unclassifiable. They can say they are just a band but they will fall under categorization anyway. It's all arbitrary. In their minds they're just a band, for some they are instrumental hip hop, for some idm and so forth.

Sure, but the free thinking kicks in when they refuse to classify themselves or limit themselves with an unnecessary label.

Basefree wrote:Nothing is unclassifiable. They can say they are just a band but they will fall under categorization anyway. It's all arbitrary. In their minds they're just a band, for some they are instrumental hip hop, for some idm and so forth.

yeah, they're saying musical genres are arbitrary.

naicob wrote:the free thinking kicks in when they refuse to classify themselves or limit themselves with an unnecessary label.

Labels have nothing to do with entirely subscribing to ideas without your own thinking space. They don't enslave your thoughts. Nothing would progress if that was the case. And 'free thinking' is as much a label itself.

People just tend to pick whatever's closest to them. That's how you vote in politics for example. I'd be amazed if you agreed with each and every notion of your preferenced party, or chose not to vote because you disagreed with one of their ten main themes.

Basefree wrote:

naicob wrote:the free thinking kicks in when they refuse to classify themselves or limit themselves with an unnecessary label.

Labels have nothing to do with entirely subscribing to ideas without your own thinking space. They don't enslave your thoughts. Nothing would progress if that was the case. And 'free thinking' is as much a label itself.

People just tend to pick whatever's closest to them. That's how you vote in politics for example. I'd be amazed if you agreed with each and every notion of your preferenced party, or chose not to vote because you disagreed with one of their ten main themes.

Look around you and at society at large. See any real progression? I hardly see any, more like mass regression on a global, unprecedented scale. The larger the group/mass the larger the delusion, the stronger the gravitational pull of mass stupidity. I've never voted. I cannot bring myself to vote for a lesser evil because I find it hard to distinguish which evil is worse. I think the system is entirely broken and democracy, which is only pseudo-democracy in practice, is proving to be a gigantic failure-- as has every other system before it. No theoretically perfect system will work with a flawed humanity.

Basefree wrote:Labels have nothing to do with entirely subscribing to ideas without your own thinking space. They don't enslave your thoughts. Nothing would progress if that was the case..

Do you have anything to back up that claim? And labels can totally dominate thought and influence how people think. When culture and language is separated into different categories it immediately divides thought with it- that's why people who subscribe to certain cultural trends think in certain ways- the label instills thought processes. One could argue that free thought is impossible with language for the simple fact that any thought you have is immediately distorted by your language complex and approximated in the best way that it fits in with preconceived words or ideas. Please don't try and tell me that language and labels do not distort perception because it seems to me that language dominates thought.

An example would be that immediately and without intention- any certain word or label fires certain thoughts or ideas relative to the word. Words are charged with perspective and people's thoughts are constantly subverted by inherent meanings or implications in the different words. Any sort of definition is limiting in the larger scale.

This is why writers fuck with language, and this is why musicians experiment and bend genre.

TaoTapeTao wrote:

Basefree wrote:Labels have nothing to do with entirely subscribing to ideas without your own thinking space. They don't enslave your thoughts. Nothing would progress if that was the case..

Do you have anything to back up that claim? And labels can totally dominate thought and influence how people think. When culture and language is separated into different categories it immediately divides thought with it- that's why people who subscribe to certain cultural trends think in certain ways- the label instills thought processes. One could argue that free thought is impossible with language for the simple fact that any thought you have is immediately distorted by your language complex and approximated in the best way that it fits in with preconceived words or ideas. Please don't try and tell me that language and labels do not distort perception because it seems to me that language dominates thought.

An example would be that immediately and without intention- any certain word or label fires certain thoughts or ideas relative to the word. Words are charged with perspective and people's thoughts are constantly subverted by inherent meanings or implications in the different words. Any sort of definition is limiting in the larger scale.

This is why writers fuck with language, and this is why musicians experiment and bend genre.

Well, the good writers and musicians in my opinion.

Ken Wilber called all of this 'confusing the map for the territory' in his book, The Spectrum of Consciousness. Words are only a vague marker. They are not the actual experience.

Basefree, are you saying you'd be amazed if someone chose not to vote or didn't support a party?

I think I can most closely approximate my feelings on the subject with this clip, especially at the two minute mark and on.

mechanismj wrote:Basefree, are you saying you'd be amazed if someone chose not to vote or didn't support a party?

I'm not. People must have the right not to vote. That's another discussion though. I wanted to exemplify people identify with groups and labels even if they don't agree with each and every notion of them, because those groups are still the closest they have to their thinking.

Some posts here indicate labels are authorities that take away freedom of thought and chain you to think and act as the label requires. They aren't, unless you want them to be. I will label myself a Boc fan now and I won't open Ebay after this post to empty it of every poster and vinyl on sale.

On free thought itself: I like the definition Wikipedia gives - logic over authority. Thought itself can never be ideally free - it will always depend on something (in the end, the brain, which has physical limitations).

aw what the heck

Basefree wrote:Some posts here indicate labels are authorities that take away freedom of thought and chain you to think and act as the label requires. They aren't, unless you want them to be. I will label myself a Boc fan now and I won't open Ebay after this post to empty it of every poster and vinyl on sale.

On free thought itself: I like the definition Wikipedia gives - logic over authority. Thought itself can never be ideally free - it will always depend on something (in the end, the brain, which has physical limitations).

I was more illustrating the common delusion people have when they identify with a definition or label in that people can be informed by names without even realizing. Like I said, language is a very subversive thing.

But in the end I'm not sure 'free thought' really exists because every thought or feeling is informed by past experience and a multiplicity of personal biases or information filters. It's just how thought works nowadays. The minute you introduce free thought into the mix, there is already a bias of language at play. But right now I'm just being a semantic asshole (but still its kinda true)