Scientism and the Divine
An old writing from my archive
Ultimately the problem is in the mind, A lot of these "great" modern thinkers have serious flaws in their theories or ideologies, whether intended or unintended, and operate in an abstract fabricated reality. They are typically linguistic thinkers and manipulate language, taking the words to be the thing itself and not something intended as a representation of a concept, believing that in doing so they can manipulate reality. To a degree they are correct insofar as they manipulate weak minded people to bring about certain social dynamics, but they are merely changing abstract representations and perceptions of reality, not reality itself. This compromises the understanding of language making it inefficient, imprecise, and conditional. This leads to communication errors, confusion, and eventually generalized insanity and chaos. It's important to get away from linguistic thought and toward reasoning with the concepts themselves, that is understanding the concept represented by the word instead of just trying to use words correctly in a statement. This is related to soft linguistic determinism, where language and working vocabularies influence a person's thinking and capacity for thought. This increases their potential exposure to new concepts and a means to organize their thoughts/communicate more effectively and precisely. Consider the subtle differences in certain words, even words which are considered synonymous, like "envy" and "jealousy". Having a robust language allows a people to build upon what came before instead of having to reinvent the wheel every generation. Language is extremely important, and it's also currently degenerating at a rapid pace. There is a reason the Bible was only printed in Latin for centuries.
Rejecting "Scientism" and monist materialism is also important. Same with religions which seek to limit your thinking. The word "God" has collected a lot of baggage, to the point it is difficult to have productive discussions about the Divine or anything greater than our physical reality. We connect with the Divine through our consciousness. Consider that perfection and time are mutually exclusive things, because time is merely our perception of change and entropy. Perfection cannot change or it ceases to be, therefore it is a timeless and constant state of things. The concept of a perfect cube, for example, does not exist in our physical reality, but it does in our minds as a concept and can be shared with others. It is timeless and never changes. Without time and change there could be no experience, so conscious being which have experiences MUST exist in time and therefore must be imperfect. The mind is the locus where the timeless realm of perfection and archetypes exist intersects with the conscious experience, or the imperfect realm within time. Consciousness cannot be proven to exist directly, it cannot be quantified or measured, only its effects can be through the will and thus the actions of the physical being itself. This is the same as the Natural Laws which determine the parameters and behavior of the physical reality we inhabit. We cannot measure, quantify, or understand the mechanisms by which they function, we can only observe their outward effects on matter and use its consistent persistent influence to make predictions. It's the counter-balance to entropy. Where entropy creates chaos in system and breaks them down, Natural Law creates order of ever increasing complexity in sustained systems, sometimes with the residual matter of greater complexity created by previous systems. That does not mean the drive to approximate perfection is futile, 99.9% perfection is better than .1% clearly. Approaching perfection and thus the Divine is asymptotic, like a convergent series, allows for the existence of consciousness and the pursuit of improvement perpetually, even if there are diminishing returns, however it also means that there is never a point when living and striving for improvement become futile. If "God" has any meaning at all, it is connected to consciousness and Natural Law, but also outside of physical reality. It is both within and yet separate. There is more to be said about this but we both agree there is a "God" so I don't need to get into my evidence that makes it more plausible for its existence than its non-existence.
