Al Billings wrote:
>
> Jeff wrote:
>
> > Folks who are inclined to mystical explanations of reality tend to take
> > anything that is not yet explained--or not explained fully or with great
> > confidence--by the methods of science, and attribute its features to
> > mystical agencies, and to claim that it cannot now, cannot ever be
> > explained by science, and that therefore science is--hurray!! we
> > win--inferior to faith and mysticism.
>
> Bullshit.
>
> If you knew people who were mystically inclined, you would know better.
> Please quit projecting your personal biases onto others.
>
> I'm mystically inclined and have no problems with scientific explanations for
> phenomena. It does not effect the subjectivity of experiences or the fact that
> there are phenomena which we cannot be readily explained because they have
> occurred outside of the lab. The late Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan was a proponent of
> meditation within the Jewish religious tradition and of Kabbalah. He was well
> respected. He was also a nuclear physicist and was well respected there as
> well. Your explanation does people a disservice with its simple minded
> thinking and dislike of people different than yourself.
I know a lot of mystically inclined people, and the overwhelming majority are
know-nothing zipperheads, and happy to stay that way. They find thinking
rationally, logically, to be too tiring for their poor little minds. They
prefer, as a famous wrestler has said, 'the crutch of religion.' Religion and
mysticism ARE the opiates of society, just as much as opiates are the religion
of society.
While studying mystical things can be interesting, and good study for someone
interested in stretching their mind, actually beleiving any of that nonsense is
the realm of simpletons.
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