Re: Islam and Europe

From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri 22 Nov 2002 - 03:43:30 GMT

  • Next message: Grant Callaghan: "Re: Islam and Europe"

    > >
    > >The TRUTH of today's world is a different meme than the TRUTH that
    > >comes to us through religion. Only one of them prepares us to face
    > >the world of the 21st century, and it's not religious TRUTH.
    > >
    > >Grant
    >
    > Your notion of what "religious TRUTH" is, is itself a meme.
    >
    Truth is that statement which "faithfully" represents that personal, social, historical or empirical state or process of affairs to which it purports to refer. Thus statements that do not congruently correspond to their objects are untrue. A good indicator of this condition is when the statement in question is contradicted by contiguous truths rather than seamlessly cohere with them. An indicator that the statement is neither true nor false, but is instead meaningless, is a logical flaw, such as internal self-contradiction.
    >
    > I would argue, from my memetic constructs, that true religion is the
    > ability to find the truth for yourself with the aid of religious
    > texts, which contain the clues left behind by those who have travelled
    > the path. But if you lack the fundamental question that illuminates
    > the esoteric meaning in religious texts and renders them "alive," then
    > you are interfacing with those texts on an exoteric level that sees
    > them in terms of logic and analysis, comparison and evaluation.
    > Fundamental human experience is the same now as before; that is not to
    > venerate the past, but it is also not to discount the value of wisdom.
    > Life is what you make it, and so are religious texts. When you
    > approach something to discover the truth hidden in it, the
    > contradictions that are revealed are in yourself, not in the text.
    > Then you smile at your own imperfection.
    >
    And at blatant empirical errors inscribed in a less knowledgeable time, yet still venerated as Holy Gospel Writ by the True Believer who refuses to allow facts or logic to intervene.
    >
    > Language itself -- religious texts themselves -- do not contain
    > memes. Memes are formed by your interpretation of the text, i.e. the
    > integration of that text into your existing belief-space, related to
    > your existing memetic constructs. Dreams can introduce memes to you;
    > from where do they originate?
    >
    From prior experience. But memes are formed by the encounter of the message with the apprehender; in the absence of either, they cannot inhere.
    >
    > JS Gilbert
    >
    > "ekei eimi en meswi autwn"
    >
    > ===============================================================
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    > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
    >

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

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