Not just if you say it is. You must percieve it to be flat, and honestly believe it. Back in the day, the world really was flat in those peoples minds, and that is all that matters.

Kudos to you, Rick. Now what we need to do is give some public denouncements in churches during Sunday mass.

Well done Flex, your starting to catch on.

In this case the Perception without experience was delusion. They took on a superstious belief that if you sailed to the horizon you would fall of the edge of the world and into a den of monsters.
Whether it mattered to them or not, is not the point.
If there is a universe supported by consciousness and its natural laws of being, and it contains objects of perception, is it solely created for delusional comprehension?
Tho that may be the case for the imagination driven by fear, and anyone who is not grounded in the refined use of the senses.
Fear is a feeling created by the mind wandering into the past and possible futures, plagued by superstitious beliefs that the physical body is the sole embodiment of the consiousness that inhabits it. Knowing this is a fallacy helps lend the mind to disseminate between halucinations or thoughts that are entertained not from experience but from the influence of rumors, and to turn towards something that is more stable, like optimism and possibility.

It would be one thing if everyone were witness to the edge of the world and those who were falling off as they sailed toward it, but this perception was mentally fabricated without any experience. Sure they experienced fear but that doesn't make anything real, it only makes the feeling of fear seem real.

If you say what they believed was all that mattered then I would say what really mattered, was that illusion was cast aside for experience through the evolution of conscious awareness and thought, in the ability to use the senses more wisely than to simply fall under the influence of every suggestion that creates caution and blocked intuitive resonance to the heart from fear.
Following every thought that wanders into the mind is not intelligence, and to follow those thoughts that lead to increasing fear rather than conscious awareness is lunacy.

To simply cast aside the idea of any clarity of understanding through refinement of the senses in the assumption that every person is only perceiving reality according to their individual ego means there is no consciousness above and beyond limited self interpretation.

I do agree that everything that is entering the awareness is automatically filtered through the muck of experiences of the past in lower states of conscious awareness as described by Patanjalo in the Yoga Sutras, but I also know that one can rise above the influence of illusions based on superstition and fear.

Thing is, the ego thinks it can build its own measuring system and make baseline comparisons to its own self judgment without opening itself to more than its limited points of reference. Because it can't escape its own cage of limitation and remain the same it would rather drag everything down to its level than risk moving outside of the self created box.

Those who believe their perceptions are limited will naturally try to place that belief into others because that is the nature of the influence of limitation created by ego identification.

Tho there is much knowledge accumulated on the Earth much of it doesn't really matter when you are sick, hungry or dead.
For all that has been accomplished by feeding the intellect, humanity is still far from achieving awareness in a reality that works to support humanity in its ability to be unconditionally supportive of each other as a whole, productive as a whole and compassionate as a whole.
Instead, it supports the teaching of competitiveness with the idea that winners are better than losers.

This is the same superstitious thinking that created fear of falling off of the edge of the world. People become stressed over the idea that they may not be able to live up to the grade, no matter who is creating the standard. Mostly it is our own lack of self worth that keeps us from rising above the democratic system of beliefs about ourselves as a species or as a community participant.

Kids are killing each other to prove they have balls enough to be strong, because they can't find it inside of themselves to stand on their own without seeking recognition on the outside from someone who might convince them they are ok.
Kids who are suffering under peer pressure and the projected stress of their parents who grew up to live and accept the same psychosis are being sabotaged by their stressed parents who are too busy with their own insecurities to help their kids.
In fact they don't know how to help them because they haven't helped themselves, they only know how to prepare themselves to enter a rat race to be accepted in a society heavily influenced by their peers and the mainstream media.

Perception is everything. If one cannot become clear or if there is no hope of becoming clear to the reality of things there is no hope that humanity would rise above its self created dogmas and self destructive behaviors to separate itself into classes of haves and have nots, in intelligence, beauty, wealth and health.

The universe has an intelligence behind it and it lives in all of us. There is no reason to believe we are cut off from it or that we can never perceive the ultimate reality of life clearly, together in Unity of heart mind and spirit.

If you really want to change the world you would have to know there is something that it can change into.

You will never know what that is as long as you focus on what is wrong with it and what needs to change.
You would necessarily have to know what is beyond evil and what is beyond that which is misperception.

What you focus on grows.

Focus on any problem through the idea of best guess scenarios and the belief in the limited misperception of reality in yourself and everyone else and nothing will ever change because you yourself have no faith even in yourself, to change.

If you could rise above delusion and separation from that which links all life, you would know what is in all life. How your brother or sister thinks, the desires they have and the reasons desires are compromised by fear and faithless beliefs created out of fear, self doubt and superstition.

Focus on the universal intelligence that is at every moment supporting your growth beyond fear and suffering, and It feeds your mind with intelligence to create something that will outlive and outshine the shadows of fear and delusion.

Of course if you really believe there is no such thing then you have no way for it to show itself, you aren't looking for it, and your senses are closed to the reality of it!!

Hmm, If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Does the tree fall, how do we know it has fallen? How do we know what sound a tree is supposed to make when it falls?

How is it you can claim that your perception of something can be made clearer than someone elses? I think you can have the perception that your perception is clearer, but I see no plausible explanation that your perception is anymore right or wrong then anyone elses.

I'm reminded of the story in the Chuang Tzu about the fish- How do you know what I know?

By experiencing it fall and being a part of it.
Unless you deny the creation of manifest reality, then there is something to experience. Perception through belief my alter the experience due to feelings and attachments but if there is something to experience then there is something that is tangible to consciousness itself. That is the reflection of consciousness. Consciousness is a constant presence and once one goes through the filters of belief to experience what is behind the images created through those filters then perception is cleared of any pretense.


You wouldn't in your present state of belief because you still focus only on surface appearances and judge what you and others see.

This is perception, that is perception... but you throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Literally this saying is regarding the camouflage created around reality.

Back in the days when the yearly bath was taking place the father got the first bath, then the wife the kids and the youngest was last. By that time the water was so dirty you couldn't see what was in it. Hence the saying, don't throw the baby out....

If the mind is stressed with belief upon belief it is difficult to perceive what is in it but to assume this is the natural condition of the mind, and that it cannot perceive with any clarity is not a rational assumption.

It is the natural ability of the human to percieve clearly not the other way around.
The rationality of enlightenment is clear perception.

Indeed, but what constitutes clear perception? Why does your opinion of what clear perception is overrule someone elses?

What if you have two enlightened people with differing views? Which one is correct?

Consciousness recognises consciousness. Resonance with truth.

If you believe you've beened burned too many times by false beliefs you will wait forever for God to prove to you that God exists.

Have you ever met an enlightened person?
Do you believe they exist and do you believe they would have clear perception?

Have you ever been in a room with more than one enlightened person?

If you did you wouldn't ask me the question. Your ego does because it doesn't believe in the idea of anyone being able to lead you to clear perception of yourself.
The underlying belief in your subconscious is that you would rather fight for your own independence than to surrender yourself to another. You just don't trust in the reality of clear perception.

There are three recommendations in the eastern traditions of teaching enlightenment.
Surround your self with enlightened company
Study scripture (the written word of the enlightened)
Svadhaya (study of the Self) through meditation on the still self within all activity. Which by the way is not emptiness.

You still didnt answer the question, what constitutes clear perception and why is that perception clearer than anyone elses?

I did answer the question. You don't believe in it so for you there is no answer.

By the way you didn't answer my question about having met an enlightened person.

I dono if I have because im not sure what an enlightened person is. Im using your theory of enlightenment being in cohesion with clear perspective.

I have the open mind and am willing to listen to your explanation of what clear perception is. I cannot believe in something I do not yet know, so tell me your thoughts on this so I have the chance to believe in it.

Anyway, getting back to the topic, I would propose that anytime these religious propagandist fools and bible/koran thumpers feel compelled to indoctrinate us in their "wisdom", we should think twice about the dangers of toleration, and respond with a laugh and a swift rebuke.

Whether we care to admit it or not, there is a war being waged between Reason and Religious Superstition. It is time to take action to ensure that the right side wins and that our society is saved from further humiliation and stupidity.

And to anyone who doubts the seriousness of the dangers that religious dogma poses to society, then read "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris. If you can't afford it or find it in bookstores, search for the PDF version using Emule ( http://www.emule-project.net ).

You believe that the universe is open to endless possibilites and yet you haven't experienced all the possibilities, only what you have accepted to be real in your mind.
What stops you in this instance from being able to believe this possibility?
If you can answer this question you might be able to remove some of the blocks that keep you from knowing more than you do, and experiencing more than you do.

:/ Your still avoiding the question, im willing to listen to your answer and genuinly consider it, now either you know the answer or you dont.

Can't give you anything until you put down what you are holding. You aren't making room for anything more than you are carrying.

I have put it down, my reality is now open for new ideas and new beliefs. So, answer the question, if not for me than for someone else. Unless, you dont know the answer?

I've already answered the question, if you really put down what you keep in front of it (your beliefs) then it will become Self evident.

Enough cryptology, I dont think you know the answer yourself. If you did, then you could plainly tell me, not giving me cryptic messages okay?

Nothing is stopping me...

Yes, let's laugh and criticize them until they adopt our point of view!

Long live hypocrisy!

Yes, I realize that my argument method directly contradicts it's content, and thus, I am hypocritical as well. That was intentional, so don't bother pointing it out.


That's a bit melodramatic...

I do, however, agree with you Lucid. I think we should attempt to change their minds, but I question your methodology.

Just read through this thread, mostly. I'm afraid I did not read all of one long post. Watched all of the about 20 hours of the Beyond Belief conference via Google videos and Tom Harris was a participant. He had some quite dogmatic beliefs himself, apparently, concerning how Islam is most evil and Christianity rather benign. I liked the comment by a person in the audience that recent research suggests that our latest war in Iraq has killed perhaps close to 700,000 innocents, basically so-called Christians murdering for their dogma. This does not take into account the estimated millions killed by the long held sanctions, mostly children.

The reason why I viewed all of the available videos of the "Beyond Belief" conference is because I am trying to figure out a basic scientific cosmology and the set of evidence born theory that has a spiritual, say, a religious connotation in agreement with known science. Lots of little things come into what appears to be some clarification such as there being two kinds of faith, one born of expectations based on knowledge and another based on a desire to belong to a powerful elite, call it "coerced" belief. The so-called struggle between science and religion then becomes basically a struggle between epistemic relativism and science. As far as I can tell, science is relative epistemics.

I'll be posting my ideas soon including a breakdown of various cosmologies via analysis and representation using directed probabiltiy vector graphs, appears to throw a lot of light on the subject.

Just watched the movie "The Secret of Conscious Co-Creation" on google though I think it is only listed there as "The Secret." I later found the full title via isohunt. I kind of enjoyed the video. There does seem to be a mystical, magical quality to existence, one we can tap and use to create the best of all possible worlds. Here's hoping.

I can't wait to see your breakdown. How are you going to post the directed probability vector graphs?

Actually I've already posted them as just an aside to an old site I no longer own. The provider has kept it available gratis now for almost six months. I'll let you know when I get it up again on my new site where I hope to focus on it more completely than on the old site.

BTW, the author of "Letter to a Christian Nation" is actually "Sam Harris."

Interesting that in the "Beyond Belief" conference they seemingly all confused the tenents of Hinduism with Buddhism.

Holy crap! Thanks, Chip. I corrected the posts (well most of them) with that typo. I'm not sure where Tom came from or how I let that slip.

Oh no, your not watching that law of attraction new age crap are you? That by simply thinking that you will get a million dollars it will magically come to you?

Let us hope that man kind will survive another wave of this religous dogma.

LOL. Well, maximus, I see some reference in your posts in this thread to reality being a function of consciousness. Maybe it was a different poster? If you take that to logical ends, the general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and even string theory and the idea of a multiverse, then something falls out of that that says we are not helpless automatons. I think all you need to come to that conclusion is a steady state universe which whether or not string theory proves likely can still be the case. In fact, appears to me we can only induce what the totality of the universe is as I sincerely doubt if any of us can be around long enough to witness what would be necessary to deduce the nature of universe.

That is what is known as the Unified Theory of Everything and they are still working on it.

Im the same person who posted before, I just dont buy into hoping for things to come to you out of thin air. Positive thinking and focus is fine but you dont get anywhere without purposely going their. Things do happen for a reason and you need to create that reason in order to get the effect.

Its cause and effect. You can go into Chaos Theory with this but essentially, thinking about something isnt enough... want proof? I know a guy who has thought about winning the lottery every day of his life since he was 18. Still hasnt happened.

If you read my treatise on philosophy you will see that reality has rules, one of them is cause and effect. Although reality or the perception of it is a consciousness experience, this doesnt mean you can suddenly percieve yourself walking on water.. its not that easy. Well unless your a schitzophreniac I suppose. Otherwise, reality is based off of rules and you need to play by those rules, trying to go outside them means going to a diffrent reality. If you want to make things happen in this reality you need to use those rules to your advantage.

You wanna know what the real secret is? People always want a cure and never a prevention. They always will buy into the get rich quick schemes and making money without working for it. The secret is essentially about fufilling peoples hopes and dreams that they can somehow get everything they want in life without lifting a finger. Alls it really is, is a get rich quick scheme that borders in the new age realm and not only promises money but also anything else you can dream up.

I basically agree with you maximus. I have long believed there is a positive power to negative thinking, in fact, all four combinations are valid. The trick is to think. I don't believe in that movie entirely, just something like that appears likely from my own experiences. They do include some rather stringent clarifications, you just can't get anything and everything just through thinking "but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need..." (maybe I quote that Rolling Stones song correctly).

BTW, Truth is not an opinion. Truth is something not a one of us can know but we can begin to approximate through collusion. The idea that truth is opinon is Ayn Rand new age stuff out the ying-yang and it fosters much violence. Oh, violence is the unintelligent application of force as far as I can tell.

Well I have known many successful people and I can tell you that they all got rich through working their asses off. Ive never met anyone who made a large sum of money by doing nothing, hell it even takes work to sue someone and thats about as easy as it gets. In the end, positive thinking can help you from sabotaging yourself but thats about as far as it goes.

This applies to anything, the great classical musicians were so skilled because they practiced day and night. You cannot positive think your way to being a master of art anymore than you can positive think your way to being a neuroscientist. Skill in anything comes from practice and thinking about what your doing.

People like the divine Raphael were so skilled at art because they had been doing it all day long since they were 8 years old. Along with the fact that he was talented and very intelligent, this makes for a great combination as an artist. People think that these artists made art out of thin air, when they have no clue that paintings like The Virgin of The Rocks took 2 and a half years to complete.

It annoys me how some marketers try to profit by talking about secrets of how they did things when it was really just intelligence, talent and most of all sweat - combined together to make a great masterpiece. They made great paintings because they worked really really hard on them and people get rich because they work really hard to get rich.

Afraid there is a great gulf in our understandings, maximus. For one thing, I find "money" to be inherently dysfunctional. Accepting that it's accumulation is a measure of wealth is thinking a zero sum game is all that is possible and I find that rather crass and inept. Tokens is tokens.

There is another difficulty, we are conversing in an online forum. It has characteristics that do not allow for real communication, linear dependence on words and maybe an occasional graphic, it is not peer to peer by its very nature. It's characteristics cater to epistemic relativism, power deciding right which is just plain wrong. Easy to think that "killing the messenger" proves a contention. If that is all we are going to be able to muster then I expect humanity will be just a failed experiment and that is liable to be quite an unpleasant and drawn out episode of great suffering and death within our short lifetimes.

BTW, as far as I can tell, philosophy is a love of wisdoms, not wisdom.

Oh, I kind of have the idea that if you are a human being on Earth, thinking that one or another has or has had success is just allusion. As long as our biosphere is under the threat of total collapse, success is just a fantasy. With some real success we will be seeing longevity increase faster than expected mortality. Our biosphere will entail space colonies throughout this solar system and interstellar vessels promising to plant our consciousness elsewhere, maybe even intergalactic eventually. That is not yet the case at all. Forget the alluding to people in the past. They died. You and me may not have to do that if we play our cards right.

Kind of worthless for me to go on with this discussion.

and she parroted the idea from Nietzsche, as she did much of her "objectivism". I'm not sure where Nietzsche got it from.

Sigh* Then is the atomic bomb violent? It requires a great deal of intelligence to apply it in both its creation and application. It is definatly not new age stuff, it is a philosophy about perception and perspective and the role it plays in the formation of reality. It touches on neuroscience and the logical functions of the brain and how the logical side will illogically explain things when seperated from the right lobe. This is because reality needs consistent rules and whether those rules are true or not is entirely up to you.


Lucid, I have heard of a few other philosophers who had the truth is an opinion philosophy as well. Im not sure where it originates from though but I think it goes quite far back in history.

There are quite a few more who have done nothing to inherit their money, or win the lottery other than to by a ticket. Tho their hard work to make a dollar to by a ticket could be construed as the logical factor the reality is, that the current reality in which one lives is to a great degree designed prior to birth.
Based on the desires which were foremost in the consciousness of the individual in the previous lifetimes the universe responds to fulfill the desire.
In your friend, wanting to win the lottery may be a holdover from another/many lifetimes to live a life of ease and wealth, or newly created in thisone, but if it doesn't manifest it is only because the desire for something different underlies the lottery desire and was brought forward into this life to fulfill itself.
We are not always consciously aware of the reasons we create the lessons that we do but never the less we are responsible for the things that go on around us.


Omniscience exists within the fabric of the universe and it takes a modicum of openness to congnise the mechanical components within the mechanics of it.
Francis Crick was high on LSD ( http://www.miqel.com/entheogens/francis_crick_dna_lsd.html ) when he cognized the DNA helix. A temporary crack was achieved in the veil between intellectual constructs of his subconscious belief system to allow the vision to come forth into his awareness.

The discovery of the atom and its properties was something of an cognitive accomplishment but the following need to harness its destructive power as a bomb to destroy life regardless of the lingering fallout and threat to the rest of humanity was not the best that intelligence could achieve.
As we speak the government is running out of room to store its atomic waste and spends a great deal of energy and money trying to keep what it does have stable enough so it doesn't explode and destroy the planet, or leak into the earth from its containment system and poison the planet.
They continue to store more every year with this threat in mind thinking that some day in the future someone will devise a solution. To me this doesn't bode well as an example of intelligence. It's more of a crap shoot where intelligence gambles the future of humanity on a possible future solution, with the idea in mind that the risk now is negligable and allows us as a species to continue the madness and live out our lives because it doesn't matter that we will be dead if and when the problem comes to its crisis point.


And it makes sense to the waking state mind because it does not fathom anything stable in the changing world other than change, death and taxes.

There is a story called the Mahabharata, where everyone gets the ability to manipulate matter at will with the ego intact. The end result is that by the time everyone is through allowing their thoughts to extend themselves through the the careless emotional influence of their current state of conscious awareness, 7 people are left on the planet because they have vaporized each other in the petty differences in thoughts, and the subsequent jealousies created by separation and judgment. To each of them Truth was their opinion and they took it to the extent of its difference and the need to protect it and fight for it.

There is an underlying truth in humanity that binds us all together but that takes real intelligence to bring it forth without destroying each other and the environment.
Sacrifice of life and the health of the environment can be a useful means to wake up but it's not the only way. There are even more intelligent ways to do it.

I like your definition of violence. It implies that if intelligence is used in the decision to use force, the result is non-violent.

An intelligent agent (when successful) will use the minimum amount of force necessary. Should circumstances ever arise in which it can be shown that, for example, a nuclear weapon is the only feasible option, then by minimizing the application of force, the agent is acting non-violently. That is, all other scenarios are worse.

It's a bit of a stretch, but it hangs together.

That, is a stretch. Shades of George W.

yet another episode of selective logic

The example I had in mind was the decision to use nuclear weapons to end WW II. I know this is disputed by some, but there are reliable estimates that the decision saved about a million American soldiers. Many of us (in the USA) might not be here today talking about this if that decision had been made in the other direction.

Regarding the violence factor and intelligence. When Japan sought to expand it's resources by invading Manchuria that was an act of violence. When Nazi Germany extended its intentions of genocide in Europe that was violent. Then when the U.S. Extended the threat of nuclear supremecy, that was the best it could muster in it's combined efforts in intelligent action.
As Far as intelligence goes humanity tends to find it's solutions thru control in show of force, and use of force.

By dropping the Atom Bombs the U.S. killed more people in a matter of minutes than any other battle in the same amount of time.
The bomb wasn't just dropped on those who started the war or controlled the masses but on civilian populations.

Even in todays war against terrorism I find it hard to believe with all of the intelligence and money spent they can't seem to find the leaders who created the threat in the first place.
It is more likely that there is a bigger picture of manipulation going in which there are people on both sides manipulating the masses to create industry to support war for purposes of wealth and power.