Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Yet Another Disclaimer; oh, and I destroyed the religions by describing them

The more i think about the brain, the more I find i have to change my belief system just to get any new information. So far it seems that staying dogmatic to the ideas I began creating last year, not only is silly as i do not completely agree with them all, but I myself have already taken a step above and beyond them. My older strategy and mindset was as much as i hate to say it, too scientific. I would get to a point where I would need to find some evidence of my ideas to believe them, when in fact the ideas are self referential and in some way affirm themselves. In short, I've been finding a need to scrap rigor in favor of subjectivity, as the brain's thoughts are highly dependent on the core beliefs of a system. In any case, for now on, I can never say if I am making things up as I go, or if I thought of my ideas beforehand and decided to write them down. It doesnt matter; im just going to write.

I've been experimenting with many different thought styles, those of which I am against to the core, but this core is what I'm trying to rip apart a little to get a larger view of the world. I've always had a general interest in all world religions, even though for the majority of my life I've held that I'm an atheist. A year ago I began to attempt to conjoin every religion. I have been able to mutate any religious belief into a simple mental model, each of which I could fit into a single larger one: the brain itself. I decided rather than continuing my long rambling of posts I've been doing, I'd jump right into the grit of my point.

The addictiveness of a mental system, or a religion, comes directly from the structure, or apparent structure of the brain. The belief in a singular god and a singular devil is the belief that there is a single source of life and death in a brain. Cristians' God and Satan are simply embellished wrappers around the concepts of excitation and inhibition. The monotheistic view lacking polarization, holds that there is a single source of both good and evil, light and darkness, etc. This is analogous to the Jewish God, or the Tao Taijitu. This is why the concept of evil is lost on some cultures, but is highly ingrained in other cultures.

Now, there are also polytheistic religions, these are simply that there are numerous smaller versions of these 'ultimate' gods that in essence act the same way as them. The only difference is that these deities are constantly battling each other. These also commonly answer to the greater God(s) equivalent to the monotheistic varieties. Each variety of a religion when seen in this narrow view, leads to just a very small number of variables to consider. In my opinion, the polytheistic gots represent the rainbow of emotions humans can employ. No emotion is greater, only different from the others(I also attribute these to the primal forces of Taoism)

The variables i've seen consist of the following
1) Polarization vs. Unpolarization: Good and Evil truly exist and representative gods can be created, or the two are two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated into more than 1 entity.
2) Multiple vs. Singular: Are there multiple gods or just one. For that matter it must also be considered if they is polarized or unpolarized. If there is a pantheon, is it a group of neutral ones that get into petty squabbles? or is it a great war of a holy pantheon and an evil pantheon fighting for some higher purpose beyond us? It begs the question, what is the difference between a singular polarized belief system, and a multiple polarized belief system. Well, that is completely dependant on the third variable.
3) # of metaphysical hierarchies: Are we among the gods?, are we below the gods? are we above the gods?. Are we below gods that answer to higher gods? Think of it as you will but i think this be represented as -1, 0, 1, 2, 3+, (infinity?). I think of this number as how many levels you have to travel to get to the concept of the highest god. -1 being the megolomaniac, 0 being the athiest, and 1 being the monotheist, etc. Each follows a very different belief system. Each hierarchical level is also dependant on the.

Now, i guarantee there are more variables; as there always are, but with this simple system, and a little creativity i believe anyone could easily catalogue any religion along these simple terms. In case anyone has not figured it out, I am basically equating this god system to the thought mechanism of the brain. Most probably, these gods are simply the mnemes ive been describing earlier, but at the same time i've decided the mneme idea is far too short sighted and by the same token, so is the religious view of the world.

It is my opinion that in a sense the variables described earlier pull an impressive idea that these religions are both true and false at the same time. They are false on the grand scheme that they profess(IE, im still an athest somehow), but they are very true on a small scale that is (nearly) imperceptable to the believer. However, just because it is imperceptable does not mean it is not useful. The scale that the religions do hold true on is so finite, and so small, that it taps into deep meaning of the simplest objects. A religious (and in my opinion justifyable) view is that these deep deep meanings are not only at our roots, but also watching over us; they are the god(s). But again, as I stand, if there are gods, they are not watching over us, they are watching under us.

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