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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Earlier, we saw, as Maharaj noted, that valid scientific evidence can be used to support the validity of the non-dual teachings / understandings, yet how many will ever truly grasp those teachings (un-teachings) / understandings? Few, according to the numbers shared yesterday, numbers which Maharaj used in his guesstimate of how many are realized.
Study his numbers and you'll see that he said that at any given moment there are only a few thousand persons on the planet who will ever understand these teachings (un-teachings) / understandings. Take out a few thousand and what remains?
About 7.6 billion persons who are far more attached to ignorance and to lies than to wisdom and facts. The ancient myths and superstitions from which the earliest pagan religions drew their beliefs have now evolved into the dogma and teachings of some 4,200 modern day religions with thousands of (sub-)sects and with many thousands of (sub-)denominations which now combine to make up one body of unnatural or supernatural or religious or spiritual belief systems and one body of "dogma-based knowledge" (a.k.a., "learned ignorance," to use Maharaj's term).
That body makes up The Newest Cult of Ignorance which is being spread around the globe by the contagion which "non-dualists refer to as "the Ultimate Sickness."
THE NEWEST CULT OF IGNORANCE:
The Increase In False Beliefs With The Attacks On Science And Scientific Evidence
The various "Ages of Darkness" and "Ages of Enlightenment" have been discussed on this site. Historically, "The Ignorance vs. The Understanding" pendulum has been swinging for as long as humans or human-like beings have walked the planet.
In Texas, the current public school and textbook standards, which were written in 2009, already subvert science and truth. {Slaves in the state-approved textbooks are depicted as something akin to "volunteer workers" who were given "a much better life on cotton plantations than they would have had in the jungles of Africa").
Regarding the legislature's effort to further erode the line between religion and government, the Texas law allows public school teachers who have attachments to dogma to bring debunked and unconstitutional creationist arguments into their classrooms with legal protection, and the textbooks now include information which not only attacks evolution but also - in some communities - outlaws the teachings of evolution in public schools and endorses the teaching of creationist theories only.
The growing "home school" population uses Christianity-based materials. One of the top sellers of such materials for home schooling advertises the following (even as they misspell the name of what they sell:
Homeschool [sic] Curriculum
Homeschool [sic] curriculum, workbooks, living books, and resources for all styles and methods of homeschooling! Discover the homeschool [sic] curriculum that will best fit with your child and family to meet your educational goals.
That most popular site with home schooling parents? "Christianbook.com."
Another popular provider of home schooling materials advertise that they have
Materials covering the entire span from "Preschool to Grade 12"
along with
"Video Lessons, and More!"
informing parents that they can
Inspire Learning and Teach Biblical Values with [sic] Comprehensive Christian Curriculum.
One man whose parents kept him at home and "schooled" him there later because an advocate for ending all home school programs. He pointed out that
"many parents suggest they are homeschooling [sic] because they are more concerned about the quality of education their children receive than about the religious teachings that are included."
He shared what he came to understand from his own experience:
"For those of us Christians who were in homeschooling [sic] for the long haul, it wasn’t a question of whether or not we were 'religious' homeschoolers: [sic] it was a question of whether we were knee-deep, [sic] or just a little into the religious homeschooling movement.
"Try to cut out the 'movement' from my homeschooling experience, and quite frankly, there is nothing much left. [sic] Because no matter how many positive aspects of homeschooling I can create in my mind, all of them are infiltrated somehow with legalism and religion."
Another man who went through home schooling also advocates against it and its curriculum:
"The problem isn’t merely that the workbook authors force scripture into the lessons whether it belongs there or not. It’s that they teach incorrect information (like Creationism [sic]), omit some information altogether, and never get into the sort of depth you’d expect to find in any rigorous public school curriculum. The result is inevitably that students who use these resources 'graduate' with a much narrower understanding of core subjects. (I use 'understanding' loosely.)
"One important example of these problems? The way homeschooling [sic] texts handle the civil rights movement. There is no mention of the KKK, Jim Crow, or lynchings. The word ‘racism’ never appears. This short description of what happened after the killing of Dr. King was this: 'Angry young blacks rioted, robbed, and burned buildings in several American cities. All of this was done in the name of a man who wished to be remembered as a man of peace.' That’s what homeschooled [sic] students are expected to take away from King’s death.
"And this is just one topic in one subject. This sort of thing happens throughout the curriculum. The students who have to rely on these books get a minimal education at best, leaving them unprepared to understand or deal with situations outside their bubble."
Now, many charter schools are also blurring the line between religious and public education and the new administration is the U.S. would end public education as it is known and replace it with Christian-friendly charter schools.
Consider:
Maharaj's recommendation was that science be studied long enough and deeply enough that persons can use scientific understandings to reach a full non-dual understanding, yet the more influential forces at work right now in many quarters include those persons who hate science because it challenges their blind faith and bogus beliefs and dogma-based ignorance.
Rather than advance scientific awareness, their push is to spread with their anti-science stance the most "ultra-conservative," "highly religious," and "as far right belief systems" possible.
The result: widespread dissemination of the symptoms of the Ultimate Sickness.
One particularly disturbing fact to them challenges their belief - discussed yesterday - that the universe and the earth both came into existence at the same moment exactly 6,021 years ago. Set forth by science is the proof that the universe is 13.772 billion years (with a +/- margin of error of about 59 million years) and that the earth is at least 4.54 billion years old (with a +/- margin of error of about 50 million years).
Paleoanthropologists from the University of Johannesburg have uncovered new information from their study of the Ballito Bay child fossils - first discovered in Durban, South Africa - which indicate modern humans are much older than initially thought. The paleoanthropologists report:
"Up until now the understanding of humans and evolution of Homo sapiens was always believed to have started at around 200,000 years ago, but based on these individuals we can now show that Homo sapiens split off possibly as far back as 350,000 years ago.]
As noted, those estimates of the age of the universe and planet earth are considerably different from the Bible-based estimate that "the world" is only about 6000 years old.
Religion also came up with such debates as, "Can several angels be in the same place at once?" and "How many angels can dance on the point of a needle."
[The answer as for as dancing on the point of a needle is concerned?
As best I've been able to calculate by listening to religious beliefs over the years, it depends on the religious affiliation that the human / angel-to-be had prior to dying and becoming a half-human, half-bird, gauzy but invisible angel:
For Catholics, the correct answer would seemingly have to be "two" and - while alive - one of the pair would have had to be a male and the other would have had to be a female because it is only be acceptable for people of the same sex to dance according to that religion.
If Evangelical or Baptist, the correct answer would be "none." Why? Because it is only the Devil who approves of people putting their bodies against each other and gyrating rhythmically in order to be tempted to do something vile, like getting turned on and having sexual relations." (In the Evangelical / Southern Baptist Church in which I was raised, the joke we told was, "Why can't Baptists have sex standing up? The answer: Because someone might see us and think we're dancing.")
If Orthodox Jewish, the correct answer would also be "none because contact between men and women in public is forbidden."
If a Muslim, Salafist or Wahhabi, the correct answer would also be "none" because dancing in general is deemed to be haram (forbidden); thus, their traditions also prohibit contact between men and women in public (especially those not married to each other, now known as "The Mike Pence Rule" in the U.S.) In these Muslim societies, men and women either dance separately or the men dance in large groups and the women can only watch because they are forbidden to dance.]
The "Catch-22" around Maharaj's largely-ignored recommendation to use science is this:
Science, as he noted, can assist with the removal of ignorance, but those trapped in ignorance hate science. Quite the conundrum, yes?
Yet his recommendation notwithstanding, Maharaj also made clear that both science and spirituality have only a temporary place in your process of moving to realization, that is, to freedom from ignorance.
Confucius said:
Thus Maharaj made clear that one cannot begin with finding truth or seeing truth or knowing truth. Indeed, he noted that one must begin by seeing the false:
The Newest Cult Of Ignorance shares many common goals with the ancient cults of ignorance;
Stamp out science
Understand that scientists would have you accept beliefs which will cast you into the eternal fires of hell
Promote questioning nothing
Take pride in ignorance when the option is a liberal or progressive public school education or college education
God is the Highest Authority, and those speaking for God and quoting God are the Highest Authorities on earth
What you should do when charged with being ignorant is look to the first letters in that word 'ignorant' and . . . "i-g-n-o-r e those people and their assessment
To be continued.
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