Hello everyone On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 5:17 AM, Horse <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Guys > I read a great quote recently from Michael Bywater: > > "I am an atheist, but I do rather worry how God will take that" > > and I think herein lies the problem. > > On 11/09/2011 05:12, ARLO J BENSINGER JR wrote: >> >> [Dan] >> Illusions are a belief in that which doesn't exist. >> >> [Arlo] >> Right. "S's" and "O's" do not "exist". That is the trap of SOM the MOQ >> argues >> against. But I don't think the MOQ would posit that the (again) the bombs >> that >> exploded above Nagasaki didn't really exist. > >Horse: > Wrong! I've got to disagree here as a belief in something that doesn't exist > is a DE-lusion not an IL-lusion.
Dan: illusion (ɪˈluːʒən) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide] — n 1. a false appearance or deceptive impression of reality: the mirror gives an illusion of depth 2. a false or misleading perception or belief; delusion: he has the illusion that he is really clever [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/illusion] Dan comments: A false perception or belief of reality is false precisely because it doesn't exist. delusion (dɪˈluːʒən) [Click for IPA pronunciation guide] — n 1. a mistaken or misleading opinion, idea, belief, etc: he has delusions of grandeur 2. psychiatry illusion See also hallucination a belief held in the face of evidence to the contrary, that is resistant to all reason 3. the act of deluding or state of being deluded [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/delusion] Dan comments: Do you see the difference? An illusion refers a belief in false inorganic and biological patterns of quality (some "thing" that doesn't exist) while a delusion refers to social and intellectual patterns of quality (a mistaken idea or opinion). Horse: > So, to my mind, belief in God is a delusion, belief in fairies, life after > death, etc. etc. are delusions. > I also think Pirsig made this mistake (mistaking delusion for illusion) when > he commented on the reality of the atomic bombs over Japan - but they were > most certainly NOT delusions. Dan: Whether the bombs were illusions or not would most certainly depend on the cultural context of who was doing the valuing. I remember reading about a monk who was asked what he would do if an atomic bomb were dropped near him... if he would think of it as merely an illusion. He replied that he would sit down, meditate, and become one with the bomb, since no matter what else he did, he would become one with it anyway when the blast hit. >Horse: > Static patterns of value are ideas about reality and not the experience of > reality - SQ is our attempt to order reality and order it in a way that > makes sense - or agrees with the senses. But "I's", "O's", "S's" and "I's" > no more "exist" than "S's" or "O's" - i.e. they are all deduced from Quality > and are not primary. IPOV's are a better way of carving up Quality than S/O, > but it is Quality that is Reality. Dan: Some static patterns are ideas about reality. Other static patterns are experiences of reality... such as the bomb, or striking one's leg on a coffee table while navigating a dark room. And yes, all static patterns are secondary. >Horse: > So the idea that "Ideas are as real as rocks" is true as long as you > remember that both Ideas and Rocks are both derived from Quality and are not > primary. > > I think that a similar mistake was made in the past by a former member of > this list - that MoQ=Reality and this lead to some disastrous conclusions > and, I think it is caused, by analogy, to the quote that opened this post. > The hold that S/O reality has over us is so strong that, try as we may, > there is still a lingering, nagging doubt that S/O reality is real and we > may be, with Quality, barking up the wrong tree. And I don't think there is > anything wrong with admitting this either as this is the reality (in one > form or another) which we have all been conditioned to believe and that the > vast majority of those we know believe - to admit that we believe something > as flaky as "Quality is Reality" is to almost admit to insanity. Look what > happened to the guy that proposed this idea! > We still have many bridges to cross before we are entirely free of S/O > reality. Dan: I don't think it's necessary or even advisable to break away from subject/object thinking as long as we remember that it is a shorthand for patterns of quality. >Horse: > If you have not experienced an event directly you have only a descriptive > knowledge of that event - i.e. static knowledge or illusory knowledge. Dan: We all experience events directly. We simply hurry to cover it up with descriptive knowledge of the past out of the fear we feel for the unknown. >Horse: > So thinking of SQ as illusion is, I believe, the correct way to view what is > statically real. What is statically real is not UN-real but is not > FULLY-real either - DQ is not contained in SQ and as reality is both DQ and > SQ then SQ alone can never be real. Therefore, what is not fully real is > illusory. Dan: Static quality isn't an illusion so much as it is secondary to experience. It is the misinterpretation of static quality that is the illusion, which was my original point to Steve about thinking of "could have beens" as a matter of free will. While it is perfectly natural to regret past decisions and wonder what could have been, it is an illusion to think one could have done anything else... like the monk becoming one with the bomb. > > >Horse: > ...but I do rather worry how Quality will take that! Dan: Well, I don't know about Quality, but at least now you know how I take it! Thank you, Dan Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
