The Law

Atheist, anarchist. No gods, no kings. No rulers, no ruled. Just people.

You and me.

 Now, imagine neither of us doing what we wouldn't the other to do.

 That really is the only law. To follow it is to have peace; to break it is the cause of all conflict. It is the foundation for community and society. Where the law is respected, humanity thrives; in its absence misery is the rule. The law inflicts its own punishment as inevitably as gravity.

 Why do people want to make it complicated?

A Sense of the Divine...

"A sense of the divine" does not constitute proof of the existense of divine beings.

I have that sense myself.

I feel it as a sense of connectedness, this Alan Watts video tickles it in me.

Read William James or Sam Harris.

I had a good philosophy teacher: he taught me the informal fallacies and kicked me out the door with the admonition to ask questions and think.

One of those questions is that of epistemology: how do you know what you know?

That sense can just is also called the sense of the numinous;

2) a surpassing comprehension or understanding; mysterious." http://dictionary.reference.com/

It is far older than the thundering Levantine war king of Sinai.

The fact that you, I and maybe everyone else has that sense does not say anything about how you, I or anyone else learned what we think we know about it.

You also have a sense of sight, but how did you acquire knowledge about the things you see? You did not know what the objects you perceived were until you were taught either by experience or other people once you were capable of understanding them even on a pre-verbal level.

The fact that you have a sense of hearing does not tell you what a sound signifies or a word means; that is learned.

The fact you sense the numinous says nothing about the properties or nature of what that sense perceives.

How did you come to identify that perception with an eternal, personal, omnipotent, purposeful, conscious being?

It does not follow.

In the same way the idea that some people must rule others is learned, the idea that something must rule everything is learned.

Neither the state nor gods exist except as ideas in people's minds.

Definitions are everything

And herein is always the rub. We can only discuss god if you define god. I can't define "notness" (though the kabbalists sure as heck tried), I don't need to since you're who's saying what isn't obvious is. Define this god phenomenon and we can talk about if what you defines does, or even can, exist.

Things I've Found July 29, 2010

Just Think- Sam Harris part 1 of 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHHOiF-dFEg




Just Think- Sam Harris part 2 of 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG72wpp_mLM

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Without Firing A Single Shot: Voluntaryist Resistance and Societal Defense
by Carl Watner

[I]n August 1915, Bertrand Russell published an article in THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY. He wrote: "Let us imagine that England were to disband its army, after a generation of instruction in the principles of passive resistance as a better defense than war. Let us suppose that England at the same time publicly announced that no armed opposition would be offered to any invader, that all might come freely, but that no obedience would be yielded to any commands that a foreign authority might issue. What would happen in this case?" First of all he noted that if England disbanded its army and navy, any would-be invader, such as Germany, would be hard-pressed to find a pretext for invasion. Suppose, however, that a German army invaded an England where no one offered violent resistance? After evicting the King from Buckingham Palace and taking over the Parliament building, what would the Germans do if all the existing British officials refused to cooperate?

Some of the more prominent would be imprisoned, perhaps even shot, in order to encourage the others. But if the others held firm, if they refused to recognize or transmit any order given by the Germans, if they continued to carry out decrees previously made by the English Parliament and the English government, the Germans would have to dismiss them all, even to the humblest postman, and call in German talent to fill the breach.

The dismissed officials could not all be imprisoned or shot; since no fighting would have occurred, such wholesale brutality would be out of the question. And it would be very difficult for the Germans suddenly, and out of nothing, to create an administrative machine. Whatever edicts they might issue would be quietly ignored by the population. If they ordered that German should be the language taught in schools, the schoolmasters would go on as if no such order had been issued; if the schoolmasters were dismissed, the parents would no longer send the children to school. If they ordered that English young men should undergo military service, the young men would simply refuse; ... . If they tried to take over the railways, there would be a strike of the railway servants. Whatever they touched would instantly become paralyzed, and it would soon be evident, even to them, that nothing was to be made out of England unless the population could be conciliated. ...

In a civilized, highly organized, highly political state, government is impossible without the consent of the governed. Any object for which a considerable body of men are prepared to starve and die can be achieved by ... [nonviolent] means, without the need of resort to force. And if this is true of objects desired by a minority only, it is a thousand times truer of objects desired unanimously by the whole nation.

http://www.voluntaryist.com/forthcoming/withoutfiringashot.php

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How To Vote For Liberty
by Joe Sobran

http://voluntaryist.com/nonvoting/vote_for_liberty.php

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This song always makes cry.

Samhain at Four Quarters Farm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK76IQD8sF0

Functionally Atheist

I'm not an atheist, actually, but can make no claims about God, whatever God may be or not be, outside of my own subjective experience. When it comes to God, there is no "out there" out there where God could be. There is only "in here" and I'm the only one in here, besides God.

However, I live in what is, or at least some how appears to be, a real, material universe. By reality I mean what Phillip K. Dick put perfectly: "That which does not go away because you stop believing it." In that place, the only place we exist as far as others are concerned, the only medium through which we can communicate, there is no evidence of God. Nothing objective anyway.

The net effect is, when it comes to material reality I'm a stone cold materialist. I believe some ever more precise combination of physics (and all it entails) and reason will account for all that we experience. This is not to say there is no God, just that everything we've learned as we've turned away from ignorance and superstition has taught us God is not required.

I think that's about as close to falsifiability as you get with respect to God and God does not do well in the encounter.

On the other hand. Inside where I live, where my existence is a continuing play of symbols and metaphor, grasping for patterns in the waves of sensation constantly pouring over me, there is a place where I experience something larger than me. I don't know how else to describe it. I truly experience it rarely, but when I do. mostly in some sort of meditative state, or when genuinely at peace--sitting on a hillside on a warm spring day--I can see forever and feel the all of everything humming. A soft warmth in the darkness. Encompassing.

But totally subjective. I wouldn't think of trying to prove such a thing.

Ain Soph Aur
Ain Soph
Ain
.

God
is
Not!

God=Not

!God