From: Jon Gilbert (jjj@io.com)
Date: Fri 22 Nov 2002 - 04:00:30 GMT
> > >
>> >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.
No, "true" is that statement which... everything you said. A true
statement is a logically infallible one. But "Truth" is completely
different and has nothing to do with logic or arguments. Truth, for
me, is something related to the feeling (unaccompanied by words or
thoughts) of my heart beating in my chest while I am meditating.
> >
>> 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.
Memebots who have fallen victim to non-evolving sociotypes also
receive my sympathy. However, to engage with a group of texts (from
various philosophical schools, religions, etc.) in a synthesizing and
appreciative way, to discover for oneself the common ground -- the
memes they all seem to share -- that is also congruent with ones own
experience of Truth, this is that aspect of life the sarcastic
agnostic wishes to continue to ignore, since it would probably reveal
their own hypocrisy to themselves and shatter their egos.
> >
>> 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.
Prior experience is not a real thing, my friend. Neural plasticity
and memory studies have shown it to be a rather imperfect construct.
I for one (don't know about you) have had plenty of dreams that were
like nothing I had ever experienced before. I think the best answer I
have heard to the question, "From where do dreams originate?" was, "I
don't know, from dreaming or something?"
An 'apprehender' [sic] reads or interprets a message only through
what they already understand, through the meme-constructs they
already possess. The message itself could have had a completely
different original meme than the one that infects the mind of the
'apprehender.' There are subtle signals that a woman gives a man
which he may apprehend, but that doesn't mean he will get the message.
JS Gilbert
DIGITLA SOFTWORE BLAWEITU!
> >
>> JS Gilbert
>>
>> "ekei eimi en meswi autwn"
>>
>> ===============================================================
>> 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
>>
>
>
>
>===============================================================
>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
===============================================================
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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