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Post by paul on Jul 12, 2013 7:45:17 GMT 9.5
When I entered university long ago I believed freedom of thought to be the highest good.
About 3 years later when I finished maths and chem and moved to economics I went through a period where everyday as I went to act in a situation I would observe the beliefs underlying my proposed action. I would be amazed that anyone could believe such things as I had been taught in family, school and religion. This was probably a result of expanding my thinking into a broader context - social and economic.
This experience was sufficiently intense that I felt as though I was in free-fall - without any stable beliefs. After 9 months the experience slowed down and I more or less stabilised.
In the midst of that time I had a revelation - I knew that I had a soul. This was the first stage of gnosis.
Much later I realised that even having dealt with those programmed beliefs I still did not have freedom of thought. There were things I did not want to think about and I was still embedded in a Newtonian and Cartesian world view.
Much later still I realised that regardless of the world view, I still had internal mental processes, perhaps inherent in humans, that limited my choice of thinking.
How then to escape human-type thinking to have genuine freedom of thought?
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Post by paul on Jul 14, 2013 9:13:12 GMT 9.5
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Post by mgc on Aug 9, 2013 23:23:26 GMT 9.5
all those who r not braindead have freedom of thought. what u seem to aspire to sounds more like freedom from dogma. perhaps it would be useful to attempt to recognize dogma in your thought processes and question its validity.
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Post by paul on Aug 10, 2013 7:30:57 GMT 9.5
>all those who r not braindead have freedom of thought
Is that a dogma?
Or is there evidence?
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Post by mgc on Aug 10, 2013 10:34:30 GMT 9.5
i dont know, ask the thought police?
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Post by paul on Aug 16, 2013 7:11:54 GMT 9.5
So what symptoms would there be of freedom of thought?
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Post by paul on Aug 23, 2013 15:33:09 GMT 9.5
>So what symptoms would there be of freedom of thought?
A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with a friend who had been having trouble with remembering names of ordinary objects. She went to a cranial osteopath and now tells me she can think more clearly, and remember words like "chair".
So is freedom of thought limited by the brain?
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Post by mgc on Aug 23, 2013 21:48:10 GMT 9.5
in what way do u mean limited? if u have no brain, ud be free of thought.
what is needed for freedom of dogma?
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Post by paul on Aug 24, 2013 6:16:22 GMT 9.5
>if u have no brain, ud be free of thought.
That is not at all clear? Some people have later reported thought while their brains were being recorded as non-functional during a near death experience.
The question I was asking though was whether deformations of the skull - e.g. through forceps birth or falling on the head, can limit the freedom of thought. In the case I mentioned there was a difficulty in thinking common words because of slight skull deformation. Could there be more subtle thought limitations as well?
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Post by paul on Aug 24, 2013 6:22:24 GMT 9.5
>what is needed for freedom of dogma?
This is a difficult question. For example most humans build their dogmas (opinions) from the thought materials emanated by or used by other thinkers. Thus the materials used for dogmas are second hand.
I don't know where a human could go to get virgin thought material (mental plane substance). Mountain tops might be worth trying.
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Post by mgc on Aug 24, 2013 11:43:29 GMT 9.5
>if u have no brain, ud be free of thought. That is not at all clear? Some people have later reported thought while their brains were being recorded as non-functional during a near death experience. The question I was asking though was whether deformations of the skull - e.g. through forceps birth or falling on the head, can limit the freedom of thought. In the case I mentioned there was a difficulty in thinking common words because of slight skull deformation. Could there be more subtle thought limitations as well? it was a joke. i doubt the braindead-ness (/ word) of people who have later reported thought while their brains were being recorded as non-functional. if ur not completely braindead, ur not completely free of thought. sure, there r all kinds of conditions that affect the brain and our thinking process.
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Post by mgc on Aug 24, 2013 11:45:14 GMT 9.5
>what is needed for freedom of dogma? This is a difficult question. For example most humans build their dogmas (opinions) from the thought materials emanated by or used by other thinkers. Thus the materials used for dogmas are second hand. I don't know where a human could go to get virgin thought material (mental plane substance). Mountain tops might be worth trying. what is dogma?
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Post by paul on Aug 24, 2013 12:55:36 GMT 9.5
dogma (n.) Look up dogma at Dictionary.com c.1600 (in plural dogmata), from Latin dogma "philosophical tenet," from Greek dogma (genitive dogmatos) "opinion, tenet," literally "that which one thinks is true," from dokein "to seem good, think" (see decent). Treated in 17c.-18c. as a Greek word in English.
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Post by mgc on Aug 24, 2013 23:26:38 GMT 9.5
""Dogma is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. It serves as part of the primary basis of an ideology or belief system, and it cannot be changed or discarded without affecting the very system's paradigm, or the ideology itself. They can refer to acceptable opinions of philosophers or philosophical schools, public decrees, religion, or issued decisions of political authorities"" wiki
principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. "spin + gravity causes spheres" is a fine example of dogma.
gravity causes spheres, spin causes them to flatten. and dont take my word for it, use math.
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Post by paul on Aug 25, 2013 6:06:25 GMT 9.5
gravity causes spheres, spin causes them to flatten. So gravity caused the Earth to be a sphere and if it spins it will go flat. Are there any planets where that has happened?
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Post by mgc on Aug 25, 2013 11:10:47 GMT 9.5
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Post by paul on Aug 25, 2013 11:51:11 GMT 9.5
So how do we get from a round slightly flattened planet to a very flat solar system?
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Post by mgc on Aug 25, 2013 12:51:05 GMT 9.5
density
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Post by paul on Aug 25, 2013 13:11:10 GMT 9.5
The conventional theory is that a ball of gas formed a flat solar system with spherical sun and planets. So where is the density that makes the solar system go flat?
In the spherical planets?
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Post by mgc on Aug 25, 2013 13:28:21 GMT 9.5
most of the gasses contained in the due to spin already flattened proto-disk condensed into the sun and planets. denser materials r found towards the center in greater quantity. the kuiper belt and oort cloud contain most of the lightest elements.
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