Is the creation and universe friendly towards us?

..many would say that it certainly is not at all friendly, as they type away from the comfort of the chair they sit in...

Other's, perhaps to avoid the implications of a friendly universe in favor of the life we experience, would say that it's utterly indifferent and without any direction or intent whereby our existence is a byproduct of a grand fluke or mere happenstance and just a blip, nothing more.

What this line of thought and questioning raises, for me, is the idea of significance and meaning or purpose and an original intent wherefrom our existence and experience is meaningful and significant.

It is of any significance that we are here now and that there is this something rather than nothing or a something that included us or within which we are a part?

Can an entirely disinterested and impersonal viewpoint be taken in talking about evolution that doesn't consider the inextricable implications of the personal experience of being alive? And can the human being be considered as just another thing, nothing more?

Isn't there something about the generally prevailing "scientific" viewpoint that rings hollow, facile, and disingenuous, particularly in light of ideas like fine tuning, monistic idealism (consciousness, not matter is primary), and the self aware universe?

Are we not on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm where the answer to the question of - Is the creation and universe friendly towards us? is a clear and decisive - YES, however uncomfortable it might make the atheist bias in science, feel?

What would be the implications to the answer of a clear YES?

What does that look like and what does it mean or signify, if it's not nothing at all?

This is where it starts to get interesting, imho, what happens when we start to explore that territory yet without losing for a moment the fundamental curiosity and discipline at the heart of scientific inquiry.

I think there's a whole framework of valid hypotheses that can be considered with the understanding that our own present moment experience contains imbedded within it, an original intent or in other words that it was meant to be and that there is a reason why I can type this and you read it now.

I think that there's a whole set of logical principals which arise from this consideration, involving things like generosity and kindness and love, and that's interesting to me, what I would call a rational basis for "faith" as a reasonable cause for hope and optimism in the face of a world gone mad due in no small part to bad training involved in the whole materialist monist mindset and worldview and paradigm, which is falling apart at the seems.

It's imperative that we consider this "alternative" (soon going mainstream) viewpoint and paradigm and consider it's implications right down to our own mutually enlightened responsibilities to God and to our fellow man and to ourselves, and how we relate at all levels, of only in order so that we might be truly happy and back in congruent alignment with the heart of it all, perhaps not unlike the consideration of very wise and knowledgeable ancient ancient people from a long lost golden age of mankind where the "kingdom of heaven" could be likened to a man, a storekeeper, who brings forth from his storehouse of treasure, treasures that are both very old and very new.

And for the stoic and impersonal, atheistic scientific, materialist monist viewpoint, you'll have to admit that you can't avoid it as a possibility ie: that the whole "world" is friendly towards us, and hey doesn't the physical evidence not point a rather sturdy finger in that direction..?


Welcome your best thoughts,

Ankh

I think the universe is completely neutral. It is fully up to the individual whether their time in this universe is good or bad. What happens if evolution isn't responsible for our current state? What if 'humans' go back millions of years and there have been multiple advanced civilizations rising and falling over the last 500 million years?

If you look at the ancient megaliths and monoliths, it appears the technology was greatest in antiquity and degrades as we go forward in time.

I also think it's funny and amusing. Homorous. Playful.

And how can we not really give it serious consideration, both in the mind and in the heart of personal experience where true knowledge and comprehension lives?

It changes the whole frame of reference, but it's hard for us to go there or stay there for any length of time.

Some among us are better at it than others, not self-forgetting and remaining present to life as it is as a friendly invitation to enjoy it and to have some fun along the way. What else could it be from that perspective? Suffering and sorrow can't have the last word.

I think it's the POV and the logical mind of all the great mystics down through the ages. If such and such is true, then by extension a whole ocean of truth becomes available through that access point, as a fundamental presupposition.

If it's effective, where form follows function, then it must be adopted in favor of the dead meaningless universe hypothesis once held incorrectly and inaccurately.

I want to learn how to better live into it and would be very curious to hear from those among you who don't live in the matrix world of thingness and materialism.

Does it not all relate back to the question posed in the title?

It's a question worth asking, surely.

Best regards,

Ankh

originally posted by: ClovenSky
I think the universe is completely neutral. It is fully up to the individual whether their time in this universe is good or bad. What happens if evolution isn't responsible for our current state? What if 'humans' go back millions of years and there have been multiple advanced civilizations rising and falling over the last 500 million years?

If you look at the ancient megaliths and monoliths, it appears the technology was greatest in antiquity and degrades as we go forward in time.

There was certainly one, a sea faring civilization, from 10,000 to 30, 40, even 50,000 years ago, where everything got wiped out in dual cataclysms. That's all but a known fact now.

I think they implicitly were aware of something at the heart of their golden age civilization that's been lost to us due to our materialist mindset that came to light with Newton and subsequent machine-like bits and pieces interpretations of the cosmos.

And I think it involved this relationship with the natural world with man at the heart of it and as a first cause in a sustainable civil society, what the ancient Indians called the sacred science of Brahmavidya and out of which arose the world's religions.

Point being isn't there still a taproot of this understanding, particularly if we have a type of genetic memory of it somewhere deep within us?

Interesting...

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Would you be able to appreciate the funny, the amusing, the homorous or the playful without experiencing the horror, the revulsion, the despair or the angst of this universe?

Why deny half of this existence? What happens if the bad isn't really the bad as you believe it is?

originally posted by: ClovenSky
a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Would you be able to appreciate the funny, the amusing, the homorous or the playful without experiencing the horror, the revulsion, the despair or the angst of this universe?

Why deny half of this existence? What happens if the bad isn't really the bad as you believe it is?

That's worth considering...

Kind of proves my point though that the joy and humor and playfulness transcends that aspect and thus enfolds it and renders it somehow moot, and that is very funny you must admit?

a reply to: ClovenSky

Reminds me of a quote by Kahlil Gibran

'When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.'

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Looking at it that way would be humorous. That is actually a really interesting thought path if I understand you correctly. By accepting the bad and fully acknowledging it, you disarm it. Where if you don't accept and acknowledge those things are in and part of every single one of us, then they can cause harm.

I agree with you on the materialism. I think that one ideal alone is responsible for the majority of our suffering. I understand the need for food and shelter, but when you start to covet the material past self sufficiency, it tends to cause unhappiness and eventually controls the individual.

The universe is chaos, not friendly nor benevolent. We just observe. I'm okay with that. . . i think.

I say if you're kind, you get that back. Perception of reality is what makes it "good" or "evil"

I am the universe, i am the creator.

I am also day drinking. . .

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

I get what you're saying generally but I don't really get the argument the universe is friendly towards us. Or indeed the earth, without creation we wouldn't be here so can't really argue with that. But the universe?
Life struggles to survive on a daily basis, life preys on other life, countless individuals are lost along the way. Yet life goes on.

In all those Galaxy's in your avatar is there no possibility of life out there? If there is purpose and meaning then all those stars and galaxies must have purpose and meaning too. This is the real mystery for me.

a reply to: ClovenSky


I also like your idea of a long lost high civilization.

Egypt appears to have started degenerating right from it's alleged inception.

But the very choice of location on the Earth of the pyramids suggests a very particular one for any global pre-deluge/cataclysm civilization.

The Sphynx as Leo might even suggest a bookend on a civilization stretching back something like 50,000 years, along with the lines of Pharaohs which go back something like 30,000 years.

Such a civilization could not have sustained itself for so long without some guiding principals and an understanding of the natural world and man's place within it.

a reply to: surfer_soul


Friendly meaning supportive, and supportive of so much life and variety of life that it defies the imagination.

I guess I'm talking about a type of non-local, holographic POV where it may be said that local matters.

Love for these imagined beings and life, as a part of it all, that also plays a role in the new conceptualization as one of intent, generosity and lovingkindness.

As we love so too are we loved.

It's a heavenly principal that we would be well served to embrace.

This exercise is really one of getting out of the box and turning everything upside down to our normal conceptions of the nature of things.

It might very well be that positing a fundamental relationship with a supercosmic creator is the only sensible position to take for sake of one and all in the house.

Just how big IS the house and who's in it? Would they love us? Would we, them?

I am one who believes the universe is full of life in just about every nook and corner.... where any form of life is possible.. Now having said that even here on Earth just about everything (percentage wise) that has ever lived is now extinct ... I would assume that carries true for the rest of the universe. Multiple forms of life has started only to meet its' end either through some type of catastrophic environmental event or just a plain old genetic bottle neck..

The true nature of the universe is probably like the Olympics.. You train as a species but only get one shot at being a success; fail and you fade to obscurity.. youtu.be...

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

This is the old idea of a loving and benovelent creator you are talking about, one where all the evil in the world was caused by the devil or Satan. But why would a loving all powerful creator, permit a devil or evil in its creation?

If there is no devil or evil, then why the unjust suffering for some? What kind of loving Creator allows this?

The Buddhist idea says life itself is suffering and salvation comes upon enlightenment and ending the cycle of rebirth. But not all life is suffering surely? Gnostics blame it on the Archon false creator, but this is similar to the devil really.

Nothing I've studied explains the conundrum of a loving creator with the reality of suffering we see in life.

My best guess is suffering has it's purpose too, physical pain certainly does. Emotional pain I'm not so sure about..

a reply to: surfer_soul

I think there is something to the idea of a necessary suffering for the right reasons or what might be thought of as a meaningful suffering, but there's also something else which also transcends it once taken on and accepted. It needs to plow into the "world" of all unnecessary suffering however, to be perceived and understood, not leave the world or to remove people from it's struggle, which in the human domain is as much psychological as it is physical.

The idea that the creation and life is fundamentally one of suffering and sorrow is, I think a false notion which didn't think it all the way through to it's rational conclusion.

Of what use is it that a person gains the whole world but forfeits their own soul and essential character and passion and the desire to be helpful?

And how could a person who sat under a tree for 17 years not conclude otherwise?

The creation is good, so I reject the idea of the demiurge.

I never said anything btw about a good/evil split as inherent to the creation, that's not the argument I'm trying to make. Please don't assume or presume.

originally posted by: ClovenSky
a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Would you be able to appreciate the funny, the amusing, the homorous or the playful without experiencing the horror, the revulsion, the despair or the angst of this universe?

Why deny half of this existence? What happens if the bad isn't really the bad as you believe it is?

We don't know...cause something will not allow it.

Why do things need to be split into 2...need much more but again not allowed.

Whoever is running this show is diabolical and is going to pay in ways not yet invented..for its embarassing and disgusting behavior.

I think as a whole human intent and interaction is benevolent, but is the universe kind, or friendly towards us ?

I think it's rather brutal , with its self sustaining ways. Here on earth all types of creatures get eaten by others , all in the name of survival... and humans aren't exempt from participating in that type of survival. I think that is an extremely unkind way to sustain life for different life forms, and often question why life on earth is that way.

So OP, I guess I'd have to say creation can be a b****, and by natural order can appear to be malicious.

The natural world around us generally eats, tramples, bites, stings and scratches people.

If it were not for tools, populatiin numbers, and civilisation humans would probably be mostly extinct.

Step out side the biosphere and one would die a horrible death.

Not that friendly . . . .

It also raises the question of - are you grateful? Am I grateful?

Here I think that the cynic and the optimist's paths diverge, and it saddens me that I might have failed in my communication to create a bridge to those who might one day seek to cross it, if not at present.

I do believe that it's a territory worthy of exploration, when we consider the larger implications of a present moment experience and one that is willing and open-minded, to step out of the box and consider life in all it's glory and it's horrors from a whole new perspective and POV.

To accuse God of bad conduct in the creation, is absurd, unless one's reaction/response to life is one of hatred and nihilism, to which there's nothing else you can say but "to each their own" and walk into the new domain of possibility, to leave the dead to bury their dead, as needed, if only to have the courage to retain and to protect and preserve our own joy and enthusiasm and appreciation and gratitude. The two don't really mix, and cannot mix.

This is the dilemma of the distinction that's raised with this question.

And what I'm referring to really is to be alive at some point in the entire cosmological span, having been included and not exluded, even if only for a time, but what is time anyway.. maybe everything is stored in memory, both good and bad but without the double edged sword of judgement and condemnation.

When we consider that it was all meant to be, with an intent and a design, to make one's own individual life experience possible, then even the mundane and the every day lights up with a new light and a new hope and promise, even in the midst of decay and of suffering, sorrow and strife.

I refuse to be left inconsolable and filled with anger and outrage at my own existence and that of the whole creation by extension.

It is good.

The flaw, if there is one, is in our thinking and the reality tunnel we use to try to protect ourselves from an experience of absolute novelty and unfathomable generosity and love.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

I just want you to know I think there is much wisdom in what you have to say, overall. I particularly enjoyed this thought

The flaw, if there is one, is in our thinking and the reality tunnel we use to try to protect ourselves from an experience of absolute novelty and unfathomable generosity and love.

I believe the flaw is indeed generally in our thinking too. That said much of this goes beyond our reason and comprehension, at least mine anyway, for now....