unidentified thoughts

I read this article published by Scientific American.

This is my conclusion:

Patterns in life do not emerge out of coincidence but they emerge out of repeatability. No events in life are truly random, according to mathematicians. Although, I do not know to what degree that this “nothing is truly random” characteristic applies to.

In the case of winning a lottery:

When we won a lottery once, it’s a coincidence. If we won the lottery multiple times, then we have to know that something is going on here. It could be that unconsciously we know how to win the lottery. Again, we shouldn’t attribute unrelated events of coincidence (e.g. winning a lottery to our ability to be a millionaire, to buy a house, or to find a life partner) to some kind of “higher purpose” or meaning of life, or manipulation by somebody “out there”.

Reading the linked article, I actually could make a simplification. The aspies are more right than anyone. There is really no purpose. We made them up by understanding what is happening out there, and by applying this understanding to the growth of civilizations.

We manipulate the world for our own purpose, not the other way around. When we understand this fact, we would be more wise in taking advantage of the world for our personal gain.

When we gave instructions instead of questions, we had successfully killed curiosity. Thus, we had killed the growth of human beings.

Religion vs Philosophy

What religion had given us is the old style of education to satisfy the teacher, leaders, or an unknown figure. Most religion will always conflicted with logic and reasoning. Thus, religion shouldn’t be treated as a source of “knowledge”, “law”, and definitely not “science”. It should be treated more like a literature, or more broadly as an art.

Human expression could not be confined to one point of view. That’s the act of killing humanity.

On the other side, philosophy actually drives us forward. It doesn’t have any institutionalized organization to coerce humans into following a certain way of thinking. Philosophy is just a guide, knowledge, as a result of human thoughts. Philosophy is independent of race, country, politics, and religion.

Science is the only way for humans to understand nature and how to deal with it, while philosophy is a way to deal with human thoughts and emotions.

The amount of knowledge and philosophy that we could understand will influence our emotions. It will guide our actions for the benefit of mankind.

I’ve been growing from the state of ignorant, dumb, smart, into educated. The more educated I am, the better I am to control my emotions and to use it wisely. Thus, right now I understand that human emotions are characteristic of primitive animals. From a religious point of view, animal instinct is what brings us further from “god”. Whatever “god” is.

Update: added a link to an article about Philosophy and Religion.

“I want these local Meetups because i heard from my friend from United States that it is a very good church and it is much better than normal christian church.”

Out of curiosity, I did some browsing into pantheism.net, and I stumbled into a meetup groups link for Jakarta. A meetup is a good cause — yes I understand — but the above quote signifies the problem of a person who may fall prey to a worshipping culture.

Pantheism is just a belief system. It’s just a way to interpret God from a universe point of view. The statement that it’s a very good church, and much better than normal church is useless and invalid if there’s no understanding why this belief system was created.

So, what will we do in the pantheist church? Worship the nature, the universe? Worship the pantheist leaders like a savior or messiah? What’s the point?

Pantheism doesn’t view the Universe or God as a supernatural being. It’s some kind of basic element of life (this maybe inaccurate). It’s similar to Taoism or it’s inspired from it. Taoism itself basically is just a Chinese philosophy.

The best way to understand pantheism is by studying the universe, just like the well-known scientists Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, etc. You can do that in astrophysics department of any university that offered this course, plus taking some classes in philosophy. Then, you can go on to discuss with your academic peers about the “purpose of life, meaning of life, etc.” if you like to.

“I heard from my friend from United States”

Actually you don’t really need your friend to tell you that there’s a pantheistic belief system. If you pay attention to what your science teachers told you in school, you’ll understand yourself. Afterwards, it’s all about your own exploration about the philosophy, and whether it’s relevant to your life.

The quoted person may not be a science student, or he/she may never learned science or philosophy at all. This is where I think it’s a lot more important to be a scholar than a worshipper.

I understand that prayer and worship is a personal choice, but following a belief system blindly without any philosophical knowledge is the problem that has been causing religious wars and conflicts throughout the history of mankind. Philosophy has a list of unsolved problems. In my opinion, being ignorant towards learning and knowledge — either solo or collaboratively — would make us to find an easy way to understand life and its purpose.

Worshipping culture is happening not only in the established religious system, but also in pop culture. It’s pointless.

You can combine your knowledge of the bible, science, philosophy, with human relationships. That’s all needed to move you forward.

There’s no easy way, just face it.