Bryant The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Eden

Thinking Outside the Box
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-3-7438-1211-6
Verlag: BookRix
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 353 Seiten

One of the most important foundations for a person's life, and many times, one of the most neglected, it their worldview. I invite you to join me in an examination of my perspective on worldview. This can also be referred to as your life paradigm, the filter through which you interpret reality.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bryant, Daniel

Leseproben

The Eternal Mind
Cogito ergo sum is a Latin philosophical proposition by René Descartes usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am". The phrase originally appeared in French as je pense, donc je suis in his Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. It appeared in Latin in his later Principles of Philosophy. As Descartes explained, "We cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt." A fuller form, dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am"), aptly captures Descartes' intent. This proposition became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to form a secure foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought. Exodus 3:13-15 (American Standard translation) “And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. (Side note: “I am” = “I exist”)” Descartes’ pronouncement is the beginning of a line of reasoning I want to focus on to think through some things that I think are fundamental to having a right perception of reality. In essence, a person cannot deny their own existence. To do so could be classified as a form of insanity. If you did not exist, you would not be able to realize, or think that you did not exist. If you doubt that you exist, then, as Descartes asserts, the fact that you doubt means that you are thinking, (albeit wrongly). The fact that you are thinking disproves your doubt, because if you did not exist, you could not think. All of this should be so obvious to any sane person that it should not even need to be said. The fact that it had to be said proves that there is something seriously flawed with man’s reasoning abilities. I believe that there comes a point in time in every living human being’s mind when he is faced with the questions, “Why do I exist?” “What is the reason for it?” “What does it all mean?” We face this dilemma, and stuff the question into the back of our minds, and move on with “life”. The problem is that when this question is not answered, and we suppress it and ignore it, the life we get on with is not real life. It is a delusion. There is a reason for our existence, and it goes back before our individual existences began. The reason was birthed in the eternal mind. What do I mean by “The Eternal Mind”? I will get to that in a minute. Mind is the origin of everything mankind has ever done. That is what separates us from the animals. Animals do not invent things. Animals act on instinct. I love animals. All of them are beautiful in their own ways, but they are different from human beings. That cannot be denied. If human beings are nothing more than highly evolved animals, why is it that we do not witness other species of animals evolving to the point where their minds are capable of being creative and inventing and building things? Sure, beavers build dams, and birds build nests. But this is instinctive. Birds always make the same kinds of nests, and beavers always build the same kinds of dams. It doesn’t change. Human beings have restless, creative minds. Why? Why is it that all throughout man’s history art has existed? It might be argued that some art is for the purpose of communicating ideas, or history. I would not argue that point. But there is a lot of art, simply for the sake of art. If man is nothing more than a highly evolved primate, art for art’s sake serves no purpose. Why is it that all throughout man’s history music has existed? Music serves no purpose, other than bringing pleasure to our minds through our ears. But why does music bring us pleasure? Why does art bring us pleasure? Evolution cannot answer this question, because in order for us to simply survive and continue our species, there is no reason for it. Behind every invention, every work of art, everything made by the hands of mankind, is a mind, a thought, or a series of thoughts, an idea. Let’s take a very simple example, the thumb tack. I could use much more complex examples, but for now, I will stick with the thumb tack for the sake of simplicity. (Pun intended.) According to Wikipedia, Edwin Moore invented the "push-pin" in 1900 and founded the Moore Push-Pin Company. Moore described the push-pin as a pin with a handle. Later, in 1904, in Lychen, German clockmaker Johann Kirsten invented flat-headed thumb tacks for use with drawings. I will assume this is accurate, although I have not researched it thoroughly. Someone saw the need for a device to hold papers to a wall. This was a thought process. It culminated in the invention of the thumb tack. Let’s take a more complex example. I am typing this on a Latitude E5440 series Laptop Computer. Someone, or some group of people designed this laptop. A thought process involving planning, designing, and building went into bringing this laptop into existence. It does not take a genius to come to this conclusion. This laptop is not the result of someone throwing a bunch of computer parts in a box, and shaking up the box until a computer was formed. That is a ludicrous idea. Take a moment to look at the complexity of life around you right now. Think of the complexity of nature. The complexity of the planet we live on. The ever changing weather patterns, the complexity of plant and animal life. The complexity of the Universe we live in, and what we know about it so far. It seems as if our knowledge barely scratches the surface. It staggers the mind. With the invention of the Hubble telescope, we now have the ability to take pictures into the far recesses of space. The images fill the imagination with awe and excitement? What are we looking at? What does it all mean? These questions have plagued the mind of one of the most brilliant men the world has ever known, Steven Hawking, the paralyzed long term survivor of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Hawking has pondered the wonders of Black Holes for decades, and the medical community has not been able to figure out how to cure this dreaded disease that holds him as a prisoner inside his own body. The universe needs to make sense for Hawking. It needs to make sense for each of us. A lot of theories abound that seek to explain these things. But there is something dreadfully illusive that we just can’t seem to put our fingers on to explain it all. Think of the complexity of your own body. Medical science is continuously discovering new and amazing things about how our bodies work. Every time we think we have it all figured out, new data surfaces that proves to us that we have just scratched the surface. Many medical professionals agree that we are currently witnessing an onslaught of autoimmune diseases affecting millions of people, and the research into these issues has barely just began to make some headway into the treatment of these various diseases. Think of the complexity of things on the microscopic level. Beyond our normal unaided visual abilities lies a world of micro-organisms that is hard to comprehend. It is like another world. All of this appears very much as if it were planned and created, the result of thoughts originating in a mind. Complexity does not just originate from nothingness. Nothing cannot produce something. Random chaos does not produce order. Order is intentionally created. Now, think for a moment about things that are not created as the result of a mind, or thought. A bag of garbage for example. It is waste. No one in a household started out meditating on the creation of a bag of trash in the kitchen trash can. It just happens, the result of a mindless process. We throw trash in the can until the bag is full, then we get rid of it. It is not a planned, thought out process. Think of a car that has been totaled. It has been transformed from being a useful method of transportation into a pile of worthless metal. No one gets into their car thinking, “Today I plan on wrecking my car and turning it into a pile of useless garbage”, but it happens nonetheless. So these two extremes, creation and chance’ represent two different methods of interpreting reality as we know it. Data alone is not sufficient to explain reality. The reason is that because, as human beings encounter data and things we are constantly interpreting. Some methods of interpretation are more effective than others. As you are reading these words, you are interpreting my meaning. You may not necessarily be interpreting them correctly because you are not in my mind, but you are interpreting them in...