Deep, kinda like some caves I've been in. That was some good chewing gum for
my brain.
From: gi...@att.net
To: <texascavers@texascavers.com>
Subject: [Texascavers] imaginary overalls
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:25:40 +0000
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Jan Campbell" <jan_campb...@sbcglobal.net>
> Only if you imagine there IS no heaven. But if there is, isn't it an
> objective reality, rather than a subjective one?
We now come to the philosophical portion of our program:
Imagining that there is no Heaven would pretty much be equal to imagining
that
there is. They are both active pursuits--something that one has to make an
active effort to realize. On the other hand, there is a passive condition
that
is necessary to the understanding of the mechanism of belief systems to
begin
with. To actively imagine that there is no Heaven requires an active back
formation from an active imagination that there is a Heaven. To wit:
Way back in the development of humanity there was a time before any
concepts of
the supernatural, of gods, of heaven had been imagined. There was no belief
system--in Heaven or anything else; we hadn't learned to do it yet. This
lack of belief was totally passive--no one had to take any action in order
to not believe in Heaven, or to not imagine it or anything else. Only after
someone had imagined that there was a Heaven and popularized it into the
imagination of other people--be they merely family members or entire
societies--would anyone be required to actively imagine that a heaven did
not exist. The purity of an uncorrupted imagination had been polluted by
the otherwise unsupported belief system of overly active minds. And that,
essentially, is the problem with the concept of atheism--it is a back
formation of a belief system that something is real which the atheists
never bought into in the first place. In their natural state they are not
"non-believers"; they
were there first, before there were believers. So they have been named and
put
into a defensive position by the mass neurosis of a socially driven belief
system that they are otherwise not an active part of.
But even if there is a Heaven, it is highly likely that it makes no
difference
at all if one believes in it or not, since there is no proof or evidence
that
anyone's concept of what Heaven--physically or spiritually--consists of, or
that their belief or lack of belief in it makes any difference--now or
ever. It is
all subject to to the vagaries of one's own imagination based upon a
mother's
stories, picture books, personal tastes, and other incidental visions. In
that
case it's subjective. But one's images of a heaven based on personal
greed--say
like eternal life & happiness (a mighty convoluted concept in it's own
right)--makes for a very objective heaven. Doesn't it? ...the object of
one's desires. I think it is no accident that in Spanish the word which
means "to wish" also means "to wait."
Striving to be as open minded as possible I would never insist that the
existance of an actual physical/spiritual Heaven is completely beyond the
realm
of possibility. Remember that my earlier statement "the Universe is
stranger than we
can imagine" leaves room for such all things beyond that of the
imagination. But at
the same time I would be willing to wager that the odds of such a thing
would be
a good bit worse than the odds of, say, winning the lottery--three or four
times
in a row. All in all, it makes no difference what one believes because that
is
all it is, just a belief--it is a concept of the imagination without any
basis
of further solidity: physical, spiritual, magical, or any other type of
hocus-pocus one may further conceive or pretend to be true. Though things
may be
absolutely real in the imagination, that is the limit of their reality. The
proof of that is that if something is physically real, then their is no
need to
believe in it--in fact, to say one believed in something one can touch is
not belief but physical reality.
--Ediger
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit our website: http://texascavers.com
To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com
For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
_________________________________________________________________
A place for moms to take a break!
http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit our website: http://texascavers.com
To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com
For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com
