Are you a bright?

[Southtown]

I have also invited the 'witnesses' in for a chat, many-a-time actually, and even befriended a few. I just wanted to argue with them since I felt that I already knew the bible pretty well.

 

I was raised in the bible belt and got myself baptized about 10 yrs ago. Since then, though, I have done a lot of denomination-hopping because I kept finding flaws with each respective doctrines. For example, the 'witnesses' gave up our weekly visits, by giving me a book and saying 'call us when you agree with this.' Well it just seems backwards to me to commit to a belief system first, and then congregate for studying it.

 

Now, I am a self-professed 'anti-denominationalist' or, to quote some kid from my grade school, an 'individualist.' Likewise, I also find the Brights to be a rather pointless exercise in proselytizing and just as offensive to our inherent ability to reason as is any organized religion. Why can't we just all be individuals and start to discuss our differing beliefs directly instead of squabbling over stereotypes?

[Moontanman]

Now, I am a self-professed 'anti-denominationalist' or, to quote some kid from my grade school, an 'individualist.' Likewise, I also find the Brights to be a rather pointless exercise in proselytizing and just as offensive to our inherent ability to reason as is any organized religion. Why can't we just all be individuals and start to discuss our differing beliefs directly instead of squabbling over stereotypes?

 

If the playing field was level and everyone was fair and even you would have a point, but as long as the people who would control my life are organized then i will also benefit from an organization that gives us allies that don't judge or coarse us into their way of thought by some form of domination or marginalization.

[C1ay]

Likewise, I also find the Brights to be a rather pointless exercise in proselytizing and just as offensive to our inherent ability to reason as is any organized religion. Why can't we just all be individuals and start to discuss our differing beliefs directly instead of squabbling over stereotypes?

 

I see a key difference. Brights are not about "beliefs", they are about hunting truths, verifiable, testable explanations of the reality we call nature. That's the problem with religions in general, they are the ones that want to preach and proselytize their "beliefs" as the truth and they further oppose any that question those beliefs. For them it is really not about what's true but what they want to proclaim as true, their unverifiable, untestable beliefs. I am a Bright because I care about the truth, whatever it may be, not our differing beliefs. Why can't we all just search for the truth and quit making up answers for people to believe in. The truth is what it is after all, regardless of anyone's beliefs.

[coldcreation]

With every theory produced arises the same question: Is there more to what we see than meets the eye? Perceptibly, the answer is maybe. In the most unassuming object, whatever it is, we can find beauty, truth and reality. The scientist doesn’t create these qualities, he discovers them, or uncovers them, in the process of investigation or observation. Nor does he expect any reward for his efforts. The mystery exists and flourishes in every entity of the universe. It has nothing to do with scale, size or distance, with grandeur or remoteness. Everything pivots on what is perceived in the world.

 

 

Check this out though; the blending of science and religion by the Pope himself, with the hopes of discovering the ultimate truth (God):

 

On a recent excursion through the Observatoire de Paris, I stumbled upon the Vatican Observatory Annual Report 2000. Unsurprisingly, the transcript invites us to “keep in mind that there is more to the contents [of the report] then meets the eye.” In his address to scientists, the Pope mentioned the “great challenges” that face us: to know how to move from “phenomenon to fundamentals” then to go beyond mere “experience to the spiritual realities” that truly explain those experiences. His Holiness insisted that painstaking scientific research is an unadulterated way to arrive at the source of all truth revealed in the Scriptures: “The exploration of both the micro and the macro cosmos is a song to God’s glory, which is reflected in everything in the universe.”

The proof of the pudding is in eating.

(proverb)

 

CC

*

[Southtown]

If the playing field was level and everyone was fair and even you would have a point, but as long as the people who would control my life are organized then i will also benefit from an organization that gives us allies that don't judge or coarse us into their way of thought by some form of domination or marginalization.

I don't know what you're talking about. Can you give me an example?

 

I see a key difference. Brights are not about "beliefs", they are about hunting truths, verifiable, testable explanations of the reality we call nature. That's the problem with religions in general, they are the ones that want to preach and proselytize their "beliefs" as the truth and they further oppose any that question those beliefs. For them it is really not about what's true but what they want to proclaim as true, their unverifiable, untestable beliefs. I am a Bright because I care about the truth, whatever it may be, not our differing beliefs. Why can't we all just search for the truth and quit making up answers for people to believe in. The truth is what it is after all, regardless of anyone's beliefs.

Yeah, but I doubt that all Brights will be in complete agreement on every issue.

[coldcreation]

And, In his address to the Pontifical Academy of sciences on November 13, 2000, Pope John Paul II echoed recurrently the conception based on the “anthropological and humanistic dimensions of science…Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw from one another into a wider world, a world in which each can flourish.”

 

If I knew what it meant, I would like to see exacty how religion can "purify science from idolatry and false absolutes."

 

 

 

 

:naughty:

[C1ay]

Yeah, but I doubt that all Brights will be in complete agreement on every issue.

 

Opinions differ in all groups. Testable, verifiable evidence regarding natural phenomena is not about who agrees or disagrees with it though, it speaks for itself.

[Moontanman]

I don't know what you're talking about. Can you give me an example?

 

Yes, I have actually been passed over for job promotion because my life style didn't include things like religion, racism, and sexism.

 

Yeah, but I doubt that all Brights will be in complete agreement on every issue.

 

True but the brights do not require every one think exactly the way every one else does. It's just a way for people who do not include the supernatural or other views based on anything other than the pursuit of the truth.

[coldcreation]

True but the brights do not require every one think exactly the way every one else does. It's just a way for people who do not include the supernatural or other views based on anything other than the pursuit of the truth.

 

 

 

The area of contention seems to be on the definition of 'truth,' or worse, the means by which to arrive at the truth.

 

This is not new. We've inherited the problem from our forefathers.

 

In effect, the controversy has continued and has been disputed on all fronts and in all camps, in the interpretation of observations, in the conceptual theoretical context, and in the context of the Church (not to elaborate on the associated sex, greed, money, power (and subsequent wars), or other nonphysical fronts).

 

And despite this dismal vantage-point it was still hoped that observations would embody the truth. That is why the Vatican set up an observatory (see quote from the Pope above). Truth—the absolute unification of the subjective and the objective—could only become finally perceptible by way of internal development and by way of outward development, in individuals and in science, respectively. For them, however, cosmology could only become ‘complete’ by overstepping the bounds of science and passing from the sphere of physics into that of Truth, just as the big bang had given way to new physics and then new philosophy before spirit could come to predominate. Such a move into the ‘sphere of spirit’ was possible for individuals, but it would mean the end of science.

 

From a scientific perspective the ideal of ‘absolute’ internal realization merely preserves the duality of mind and matter, spirit and nature, keeping the two apart. This could also be articulated in different ways, through a chain of associations: wave and corpuscle, velocity and position, vacuum field and angular momentum, mass and energy, time and space, real and imaginary, internal and external world, individual and universal. And there are more of those associations one might call poles apart, or diametrically opposed antitheses, or even equivalences: objective and subjective, rational and irrational, life and death, past and future, voluntary and involuntary. Some might call the divide between them a continuum, thus there is flux that allows the transforming of one to the other.

 

The real ‘absolute opposites,’ however, would be, say, pole and non-pole.

 

The brights represent, at least for me, and in an abstract sence, a 'non-pole.'

 

It is precisely because the duality mind vs matter (or in another way, the opposition between the supernatural and the natural) can be vacated, if the thought process that leads to the supernatural can be explained in physical terms. Though this objective remain hitherto elusive.

 

The attempt must be made through methodological scientific expression to demonstrate that the complex human attributes that lead to the belief in the supernatural, and that manifest themselves as creative thought, feeling, will and awareness—often regarded as distinct from the physical body—are inextricably attached to the fundamental laws of nature. And as such, products of pure imagination can be rationalized in logical and consistent physical terms.

 

Edit: That will be my goal as an active member of brights.

 

 

Something has only just begun.

 

 

 

 

CC

[Biomajor]

I'm a very proud Bright! :D