Bill!, >I'm not the only one who has these doubts.
You're certainly in good company! But if you're skeptical about cause and effect in science (as am I.. you're now in excellent company), I'd be interested as to what you think about the Buddhist idea of cause and effect? Mike ________________________________ From: Bill! <billsm...@hhs1963.org> To: Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, 13 October 2012, 10:13 Subject: [Zen] Re: I need some practice advice Mike, Thanks for the tip but I'm very aware of this. I've got Hume's COMPLETE WORKS which include his AN ENQUIRY INTO HUMAN UNDERSTANDING in which he records his thoughts about cause-and-effect, and Kant's A CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON on my Kindle they are both loaded with my yellow highlights. Also Plato's PARMENDIDES, Betrand Russel's THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY and of course THE PARADOXES OF ZENO. I'm not the only one who has these doubts. ...Bill! --- In Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com, mike brown <uerusuboyo@...> wrote: > > Bill!, > > For me, David Hume does a great job of dispelling the idea of cause and > effect. Although useful, cause and effect is nothing more than an assumption > about the future based on observation of repeated phenomena. For example, is > pushing on a light switch the cause of the light turning on? We observe that > this happens 99 out of a hundred times, but is the pressing of the switch or > the electricity travelling down the wires, the heating of the element? etc > etc This could continued almost ad infinitum to the point where the finger > pushing the switch seems like a different event entirely. So we just assume > that pushing a light switch will turn on the light. Anyway, that's my > (simplistic) understanding of Hume. > > In Buddhism, however, cause and effect can be taken somewhat differently. In > terms of suffering, the Buddha found that 'if this arises - so does that. If > this doesn't arise - that doesn't arise'. We can observe within ourselves > that if greed, hate, anger (this) etc. arises then suffering/dissatisfaction > (that) arises, too. If love, compassion, peace arises then Happiness arises. > If hate, anger etc don't arise then suffering doesn't arise. Compared to a > scientific observation, this truth of Buddhist cause and effect can be > observed by each and every one of us, until... ; ) > > Mike > > > > ________________________________ > From: Bill! <BillSmart@...> > To: Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com > Sent: Saturday, 13 October 2012, 4:15 > Subject: [Zen] Re: I need some practice advice > > > Â > Joe, > > Then I'll add to my sparse defintion: > > Science is a religion whose method is based on a faith in the concept of > cause-and-effect and whose 'corpus' is based on the dualistic illusion of > subject/object. > > Is that better? > > ...Bill! > > --- In Zen_Forum@yahoogroups.com, "Joe" <desert_woodworker@> wrote: > > > > Bill!, > > > > Some of the body of Science -- the corpus, not the Method -- is pure > > categorization, based on stringent and accumulated, vetted, observation. > > > > Botany, for example. And some basics of Astronomy. Geology. > > > > What's formed and what accumulates are lists of entities and their > > properties, and how to tell them apart. No causality yet. > > > > I think, at that level, observational science is more an Art, or act of > > careful book-keeping, than it is yet Religion, or other endeavor dependent > > on Faith. It's a fun stage of the game!, and it takes a lot of work. > > > > --Joe > > > > > "Bill!" <BillSmart@> wrote: > > > > > > Edgar, > > > > > > Science is a religion based on faith in the concept of cause-and-effect. > > >
