TODAY'S CONSIDERATIONS
"Science will someday advance to the point that it will confirm the validity of the non-dual teachings."
--Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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[Continued from yesterday]
So with all of the scientific evidence and with the wealth of facts available, why do 99.9% of all humans prefer myths and superstitions and lies over facts and truth?
1. Programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing, and indoctrination.
2. Humankind's propensity for foolishness and being fooled.
3. Humankind's preference for emotional highs such as that generated by emotionally-intoxicating religious and / or spiritual teachings and activities.
Remember this quote?
4. Hence, humans' tendency toward laziness which leads them to prefer being spoon-fed "knowledge" (a.k.a., "learned ignorance") rather than working to find truth via facts.
5. The fact that 99.9%+ of all humans have had the Ultimate Sickness passed down to them; the fact that the key symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness (per Maharaj) include "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity"; and the fact that they have not found the Ultimate Medicine which could free them of those symptoms.
6. Pride. Arrogance. Egotism. Humans are driven by ego-states (false identities, personalities) which are sustained by massive levels of egotism. That can lead to their being proud, not of anything accomplished but, of things they had nothing to do with.
For example, I cannot drive more than a few miles from my house without seeing a car with a bumper sticker like this one:
Nor can I go many days without hearing some proclaim, "I'm proud to be a Native-born Texan."
Really? So one of your greatest points of pride has nothing to do with anything you've ever done but has everything to do with the fact that the canal from which your plant food body was spewed by the one you call "mother" just so happened to be within the boundaries of an area called "Texas" at the time of said spewing? And now that is a source of pride for you?
The same applies to the "Proud American," many of whom in this region double down on their unjustified pride over being not only "A Texan" but also "An American." Some of those prideful types display this bumper sticker:
Of course there are in the U.S. "Proud Southerners," "Proud Westerners," etc., and scattered all around the globe are "Proud Brits," "Proud Germans," and "Proud Whatevers."
There is also an Ultimate Sickness / egotism connection as well: When gasoline prices were exceptionally high, Obama offered a suggestion which has proved to reduce a car's gasoline consumption by 3 to 4%. His opponents attacked him and his suggestion, to which he replied, 'It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."
It is a fact that many persons really do take pride in being ignorant.
When persons are trapped in the Ultimate Sickness, they will display the "ignorance, stupidity, and insanity" which Maharaj made clear will accompany that Sickness.
Others take pride in the fact they have become "a great success" or "ultra-wealthy" or "a nobleman" or "an affluent landowner" or "a member of the gentry or some other upper social or economic class," but in many cases, whatever they claim to have earned was actually given to them or handed down to them and they actually had nothing to do with accomplishing anything on their own. Often their so-called "success" came in spite of rather than because of.
Others take pride in their beliefs which have been accumulated as a result of ignorant and insane programming, conditioning, acculturation, domestication, brainwashing, and indoctrination or other factors which they had nothing to do with:
"I'm proud to be white."
"I'm proud to be a Republican / Democrat / Independent, etc."
"I'm proud to be a Christian / Jew / Muslim / etc."
For the sake of illustration of the point, let's consider one belief which many Christians hold dear, a belief rooted in ignorance but one which they cling to and argue about while refusing to even consider the available scientific evidence which could enlighten them to the falsehood of their belief, namely, "the age of the world."
Take something as simple as having at least some slight clue about the age of the universe and the earth which would require only a small degree of wisdom and sanity and awareness of the relevant facts and truth:
There are currently 2,000,000,000+ Christians on the planet and there have been billions upon billions more over the last 2000 years. There is plenty of scientific evidence which shows the considerable age of rocks and the considerable age of fossils and the considerable age of human remains, yet billions of Christians have believed without any questioning at all that "the world" was created by God only . . . 6,021 years ago.
And their belief is not even that the earth is "around 6,000 years old." No, their belief is that know that "the world" is specifically "six thousand and twenty-one years old" and, furthermore, that they know even more particularly the exact day and time when their god supposedly "created the world."
Specifically, they believe that "The Creation of the World by God" occurred "at the moment of nightfall on 22 October 4004 B.C. and the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October of the year 4004 B.C.," or, again, only 6,021 years ago. No more. No less.
And why do they believe that? Their belief can be traced back to one man who came up with that nonsense:
Catholic Bishop James Ussher / Usher
4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656
And what calculations did he make to arrive at that conclusion? He used what he took to be the one and only infallible source (and the one and only source of knowledge needed by anyone), namely, the Holy Bible and, specifically, the Old Testament (Jewish) part of that book.
Using certain parts of that text, he came up with what he deemed to be a simple and accurate and infallible method of determining when "Creation" happened" by going through the Old Testament part and studying the "begats" in the Bible - as in "Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel."
He read the recorded age of those who had been "begotten"; found the number of years that the persons listed therein were said to have lived; from that, calculated how many years had passed from Creation to "the present" (which was around 1650 A.D. for him); and then worked back from there to determine the exact moment of "The Creation."
Now, while doing the math involved with "the begats," he accepted without question that Adam really lived for 930 years, that Methuselah really lived 969 years, and that Noah really lived 950 years.
He never considered that the record might be incomplete and that the record did not include in its listing the humans who lived during a 930-year interim but were left off the list or during a 969-year interim but were left off the list or during a 950-year interim but were left off the list.
As with so many who take pride in their belief that the "holy" scriptures are infallible and are therefore to be taken literally and at face value and without any questioning, he believed that many men in "the early days of the world" really did each live for nearly 1000 years.
At any rate, after his calculations of the years involved with all that "begetting," the numbers he came up with convinced him that "it all started 4,371 years earlier (as of 1650 A.D. when he reached that conclusion) which is now - in the year 2017 - a total of 6,021 years since "the 'creation' of the universe and the earth," according to Ussher and according to the billions who have accepted his ignorance-and-insanity-based calculations as having been accurate and true.
So for the 367 years since Ussher published his "findings," millions and billions of Christians have accepted as fact the calculations of Bishop Ussher and have accepted as fact that the universe and earth are only - as of now - just 6,021 years old, all scientific evidence to the contrary be damned.
Only six-thousand and twenty-one years? Really? Hell's bells, when I was a kid traveling with my parents from Louisiana and through East Texas - to be dropped off at Grandmother's to spend time with her - we sometimes stopped to eat at restaurants in towns with a population of fewer than twenty-eight people.
Those sparsely populated towns often had only one cafe, a Southern Baptist / Evangelical Church, one blinking light at their one intersection, and one gasoline station. In those cafes, I was served meals which I'm pretty sure were made from food that had to be more than 6,021 years old and meals which were served by waiters and waitresses who had to be more than 6,021 years old.
And though time can seem to stand still for an 8-year-old boy who was ready to get to Grandmother's place and go play in the woods, I'm pretty sure that it took the servers more than 6,021 years just to get our food from to the kitchen to our table and more than 6,021 years to just bring us our check after we had long finished eating.
So 6,021 years? Really?
Considerations from others that have looked at this topic:
Aldous Huxley: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Walter Cronkite: “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Issac Asimov: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge'.”
Richard Dawkins: “One of the effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.” (You know, God really does "work in mysterious ways.")
George Bernard Shaw: “He knows nothing; but he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
Victor Cousin: “If ignorance is bliss, there should be more happy people.”
Lao Tzu: “To know that you do not know is the best. To think you know when you do not is a disease. Recognizing this disease as a disease is to be free of it.”
And from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj:
"Realization is but the opposite of ignorance."
"The circles of ignorance may be ever-widening, yet it remains a bondage all the same."
"'Creation' itself is rooted in ignorance."
and
"An ignorant man is ignorant of his ignorance."
And there's the rub.
Those who turn their backs on the light of science and facts and truth will stand face-to-face with fiction and illusions and delusions and will lovingly embrace the darkness of their ignorance.
To be continued
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