----- Original Message -----
From: <QueeneMUSE@aol.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 12:36 AM
Subject: Re:Ye Are Gods (was: Re: just me)
> In a message dated 9/18/2000 6:26:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
> emlyn@one.net.au writes:
>
> >
> > No, I don't; rational thinking is not inspiration, and can never
substitute
> > for it. Well, maybe a more intelligent being can use rationality to do
what
> > a less intelligent being would have to use inspiration/intuition for,
but
> > the more intelligent being can still use inspiration to reach even
further.
> > But this is still in the context of, and entirely bounded by, rational
> > thought. You can use inspiration to decide what to prove/test, but
rational
> > thought must do the proof/testing.
>
> ...this is a very keen paragraph.
>
> Forms of thought. The exploration of the effect of thoughts (of god or
> otherwise) is a far more productive exploration that the exploration of
proof
> for (or against) god.
>
> The thought forms we create -- literally shape our existance. Like a blue
> print, inspiration or rational, we make our thoughts into buildings,
churches
> or garages, into skyways, teleportation devices or microwaves....
>
> In that way, and in that way only, god does exist. Not because there
really
> is anything out there "shaping" things, but because for so damn long, our
> existance has been infinitely shaped by the thought(s) that he/it does.
And
> the following mayhem or order depending on your world view.
>
> Things would be very very different if the "god modules" weren't installed
in
> us. Unimagineable to say how.
>
> No one can say that a thought is reality, yet to deny it's existance is
> lunacy. There lies the conundrum.
>
I guess that talking about God at this level is a matter of aesthetics. I
find it faintly distasteful to refer to my inspiration as coming from God;
like eating burnt soup.
I don't think there's any supernatural element to the inspiration/creative
bits of the thought processes. Just nonlinear wet stuff, slapping together
weird, disconnected ideas in weird, difficult to fathom ways, such that you
can't explain the derivation to any useful degree. When your brain comes up
with something out of left field, the only derivation for which would be
some kind of neural trace showing neuron firings in painful detail, from
some distant past up to now, well, just forget the explanation. Just think,
instead, "aha!". A bolt from the blue; it's really a bolt from the grey.
But I can't prove that. I can't say for sure that every part of the
inspirational process comes from less than a bucket full of sloppy brain
stuff. It's Ockham's razor, which boils down to purely subjective aesthetic
sense. One person's god is another person's epilepsy.
Emlyn
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