Naturalism

[EdmundJohnstone]

What do you think of Naturalism? Does it make any sense? Just another belief system, right?

[sky]

Originally Posted by EdmundJohnstone

What do you think of Naturalism? Does it make any sense? Just another belief system, right?

Everything is a belief system.

[Found Goat]

Naturalism, first and foremost, is a philosophy, not an exact science. It’s a man-made belief system which regards scientific laws, as man understands them to be at any given time, to be all there is, that there is nothing of superior intelligence that exists outside of man’s five senses, that there are no spiritual realms, and that the universe had no Creator in the sense of an intelligent Designer.

It is a preposterously irrational position to take for anyone in the know, yet fantastically there are otherwise sane and sensible homo sapiens who hold onto this worldview of theirs with such dogmatic determinism that they seem to me to be beyond all hope and redemption.

There are naturalists who hold onto their faith as there is also a religious aspect to this ideology. By studying nature, they posit, one finds truth. Yet how can this be when this doctrine discounts the supersensible component that exists at the very root of nature itself? Many esoterics will tell you that it is by observing the known world with microscopic vision that one will naturally be led into eventually if not inevitably acknowledging the unknown. It one’s heart is pure, that is. Only if one is a seeker after truth and not an upholder of a rigidly biased outlook.

Was there ever a heyday when naturalism filled the land? When was there a time without animism, polytheism, pantheism, monotheism, magic? They like to call it the Enlightenment, just because they hold a candle up while bumbling about in the dark. Did it all start with Lord Monboddo (1714-99)? This was not a knighted gorilla but rather a Scottishman and amateur naturalist who also went by the name of James Burnett. Almost a century before Darwin, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer (who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” an expression that inspired Nietzsche's obscene “superman” philosophy), this Lord M published a six-volume work that theorized man’s ancestors to be simians. He was ridiculed in his day and labeled an eccentric. Then Charlie came along in the 1800s and became an overnight sensation, with his The Origin Of Species. It was a case of Simon or rather Charlie Says, as very quickly many jumped on the popular academic bandwagon and took to their own pens and published works, as if caught up in cultural trance of “monkey see-monkey do” and the rest, as they say, is pseudo-prehistory.

Following what I might describe for the sake of the naturalist as having experienced a “nervous collapse” some years ago, I disavowed any existence in the supernatural and converted to a naturalistic ontology. No more orphic studies. No more praying to Zeus or communing with nature spirits. I longer spoke to trees and plants and felt an awful loss. The unseen voices I continued to hear that were often prescient, accurately predictive of imminently future events, I told myself were only coming from me, my brain. I knew I was self-deluding myself in trying to “rationalize” it all away, but so it was. It wasn’t that I turned to atheism or even to agnosticism but what might only be described as a phase of over-zealous self-denial. Who was I kidding? Me, trying to think in naturalist terms after all that I had experienced, after what I had personally come to know, after tasting of gnosis? My descent into naturalistic territory was, it goes without saying, understandably short-lived.

There is no turning back for the supernaturalist. Yeah, yeah, some get all semantical and will say that everything is natural, even the as-of-yet not-fully-understood so-called supernatural elements of life, but I continue to use this apt term anyway and for the life of me can’t comprehend the naturalist who cannot fathom or refuses to accept the existence of spirit beneath it all.

[EdmundJohnstone]

Yes you are right. Most physicists and medics are naturalist and materialists (no spirits, just brains) though. Their argument is: We are governed just by our brains (consciousness made by brain) and when we die we are like before being born, nothing like void, and there is no evidence for spirit, just fantasy. They claim that the Universe was born by accident, not by will, and that life exists because there wouldn't be any other possibility not to in the way that all conditions aligned to make this Planet suitable, if one condition is taken away, there is no more life, so they conclude that life started accidentally as well.

As you know they postulate that life started from micro organisms, bacteria in marine environment then evolved into marine life and finally progressed into earth life and air life. Us as humans evolved from a common ancestor with apes, so this all was a trial and error of genes adapting to different conditions within the Environment from Marine (Bacteria transforming into fish, and later lizards) to Earth(worms, lizards, apes, birds) to Air(birds). Why do you think is that? Human ego?

Originally Posted by Found Goat

Naturalism, first and foremost, is a philosophy, not an exact science. It’s a man-made belief system which regards scientific laws, as man understands them to be at any given time, to be all there is, that there is nothing of superior intelligence that exists outside of man’s five senses, that there are no spiritual realms, and that the universe had no Creator in the sense of an intelligent Designer.

It is a preposterously irrational position to take for anyone in the know, yet fantastically there are otherwise sane and sensible homo sapiens who hold onto this worldview of theirs with such dogmatic determinism that they seem to me to be beyond all hope and redemption.

There are naturalists who hold onto their faith as there is also a religious aspect to this ideology. By studying nature, they posit, one finds truth. Yet how can this be when this doctrine discounts the supersensible component that exists at the very root of nature itself? Many esoterics will tell you that it is by observing the known world with microscopic vision that one will naturally be led into eventually if not inevitably acknowledging the unknown. It one’s heart is pure, that is. Only if one is a seeker after truth and not an upholder of a rigidly biased outlook.

Was there ever a heyday when naturalism filled the land? When was there a time without animism, polytheism, pantheism, monotheism, magic? They like to call it the Enlightenment, just because they hold a candle up while bumbling about in the dark. Did it all start with Lord Monboddo (1714-99)? This was not a knighted gorilla but rather a Scottishman and amateur naturalist who also went by the name of James Burnett. Almost a century before Darwin, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer (who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” an expression that inspired Nietzsche's obscene “superman” philosophy), this Lord M published a six-volume work that theorized man’s ancestors to be simians. He was ridiculed in his day and labeled an eccentric. Then Charlie came along in the 1800s and became an overnight sensation, with his The Origin Of Species. It was a case of Simon or rather Charlie Says, as very quickly many jumped on the popular academic bandwagon and took to their own pens and published works, as if caught up in cultural trance of “monkey see-monkey do” and the rest, as they say, is pseudo-prehistory.

Following what I might describe for the sake of the naturalist as having experienced a “nervous collapse” some years ago, I disavowed any existence in the supernatural and converted to a naturalistic ontology. No more orphic studies. No more praying to Zeus or communing with nature spirits. I longer spoke to trees and plants and felt an awful loss. The unseen voices I continued to hear that were often prescient, accurately predictive of imminently future events, I told myself were only coming from me, my brain. I knew I was self-deluding myself in trying to “rationalize” it all away, but so it was. It wasn’t that I turned to atheism or even to agnosticism but what might only be described as a phase of over-zealous self-denial. Who was I kidding? Me, trying to think in naturalist terms after all that I had experienced, after what I had personally come to know, after tasting of gnosis? My descent into naturalistic territory was, it goes without saying, understandably short-lived.

There is no turning back for the supernaturalist. Yeah, yeah, some get all semantical and will say that everything is natural, even the as-of-yet not-fully-understood so-called supernatural elements of life, but I continue to use this apt term anyway and for the life of me can’t comprehend the naturalist who cannot fathom or refuses to accept the existence of spirit beneath it all.

[Found Goat]

Here I thought Creationism was ludicrous! The Genesis account according to Scientism – preached at Monday school and post-graduate indoctrination centers – is an equally absurd cosmogony/pre-history, itself steeped in anthropocentricism and knowledge filtration/suppression.

We might as well have originated via autoerotic reproduction (as portrayed in the opening scene of Mel Brooks’ History Of The World: Part 1) as the traditional evolutionary take as to how man came into being doesn’t seem any more likely nor an intelligible alternative.

From the primordial soup of past eons this post appears to you now. And they say miracles do not exist within this mechanistic universe of ours. I like fries with my fish, but I must consume that fillet quickly what with my abdominal intolerance for amphibian.

Now, class, what have we since learned that’s new from our empirical priests? Yes, Johnny? That man did not evolve from chimps?

Johnny may be onto something. For now it is being taught that man and apes cohabitated in Africa millennia ago ... yet continue to share the same common ancestor. As to what that might be, remains to be hypothesized and alchemized into precious doctrine.

They would say it has nothing to do with man’s ego, their wanting to believe that we’re the be-all-and-end-all of the evolutionary Life Principle. The chimps are either our ancestors or our cousins, take your pick; either way, we are bonded together by the banana. So, you see, there is humility in our theory, not like the monotheists who think of themselves as God’s special creation. Why, the heliocentric model replaced Ptolemaic geocentricism, did it not? Johnny’s parroted affirmation of this all but confirms our biased suspicions.

Transcendental experiences exist, but the mammal behind the microscope remains ignorant of the supersensible reality beneath his 3D illusion. From a spiritual perspective, his is still a Neanderthal wielding a cudgel, all the while proclaiming to the world atop his makeshift and rickety soap box facts that Johnny’s teacher herself only had learned from propagandistic textbook drawings and impressionable museum depictions.

This is not to say that man did not in an indirect way “evolve” from reptilians ... albeit with a capital “r” and their possibly inhabiting Shamballa.

[BigJohn]

Originally Posted by EdmundJohnstone

What do you think of Naturalism? Does it make any sense? Just another belief system, right?

I lean mostly toward Animism.