--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@...> wrote: > > If you want to have a go at convincing us go ahead. Start wherever > you like on the diagram.
There are many things I don't believe in. Maybe I "don't believe" in more than you (take "Scientism" for a start). It's not my point that any of those things are true, or justifiable. But I'm inclined to think that the "they're all bollocks" reaction is, well, just a little bit ...I don't know, perhaps "crass" is the word I'm looking for. Reincarnation was on the BOLLOCKS list. Avert your eyes: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And Cometh from afar." What a load of bollocks THAT was! Jeez - who writes this crap? Any in-depth study of New Scientist or Scientific American shows there is just no bit of the brain that gets reincarnated. Quod Erat Demonstrandum! Or take astrology. You would probably be inclined to mock the idea of stars "influencing" our lives. Or deploy your big guns viz. that the astronomy astrology is predicated on is false and/or incomplete. If so you would fail to appreciate the metaphysical subtlety of (some) believers: "Astrology is based on the principle of synchronicity. The 'influence of the stars' does not exist in a causal sense. There is no causal influence at all. Astrology "works" - if this is the right word - in the way inscribed on the tabula smaragdina: What is below is like what is above. And what is above is like what is below, so that the miracle of the One may be accomplished." http://www.astro.com/astrology/in_pa_synchro_e.htm This is a metaphysics that can co-exist quite peacefully with any aspect of modern science I would have thought. It just posits the idea of reality as a "totality". I'm not saying I believe in it myself. I'm not sure what I believe in. Or that it has any practical value (I called it a metaphysics after all). I'm just suggesting "Respect", man...
