Perfect world!

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

We usually think of the world as terribly imperfect. If a perfect God created the world...why is it so imperfect?

The point is that we can't define what perfection actually means. How should the world be to be perfect? Without any illness? Without any form of disappointments? Without old age? Without death?  Without relationship problems? Without any form of selfishness and ego? Without any fear?

Can we imagine such a world?

But for that we should not have any needs and desires. All our instincts should disappear.....because it is these instincts and needs that lead to selfishness and individualistic behavior.

Actually, that is what spirituality aims at......to reduce our animal instincts, competitive mindset, and selfishness. When needs and desires get controlled, many of our disappointments also disappear.  Even illnesses reduce when stress and worries reduce. 

Old age and death obviously cannot be eliminated but since death is only like shedding of clothes (refer NDE's) .....even old age and death become irrelevant in the afterlife. 

So...a spiritual life can lead to a near 'perfect' world.

Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Sriram 

[Enki]

Hi everyone,

We usually think of the world as terribly imperfect. If a perfect God created the world...why is it so imperfect?

The point is that we can't define what perfection actually means. How should the world be to be perfect? Without any illness? Without any form of disappointments? Without old age? Without death?  Without relationship problems? Without any form of selfishness and ego? Without any fear?

Can we imagine such a world?

You're in the world of omnipotent gods here.

Actually I don't have to consider what absolute perfection actually means. It doesn't stop me from considering improvements on the designs that evolution has given us. (In human beings for instance improvements related to backache or choking or obesity or hernias)

But for that we should not have any needs and desires. All our instincts should disappear.....because it is these instincts and needs that lead to selfishness and individualistic behavior.

Actually, that is what spirituality aims at......to reduce our animal instincts, competitive mindset, and selfishness. When needs and desires get controlled, many of our disappointments also disappear.  Even illnesses reduce when stress and worries reduce.

There are lots of different techniques to improve our well being and reduce stress. There are many methods which can be used to curtail inordinate desires or excessive selfishness. Whether one calls them spiritual or not is not that particularly significant.

Old age and death obviously cannot be eliminated but since death is only like shedding of clothes (refer NDE's) .....even old age and death become irrelevant in the afterlife.

The fact that you believe in an afterlife is up to you, but as it has no evidential basis whatsoever, I reserve the right to dismiss your assertions unless and until such evidence becomes available.

 

So...a spiritual life can lead to a near 'perfect' world.

Just some thoughts.

It depends on what you term 'spiritual'. My sense of  spirituality is, I suggest, a world away from yours.

[Outrider]

We usually think of the world as terribly imperfect. If a perfect God created the world...why is it so imperfect?

The point is that we can't define what perfection actually means. How should the world be to be perfect? Without any illness? Without any form of disappointments? Without old age? Without death?  Without relationship problems? Without any form of selfishness and ego? Without any fear?

Can we imagine such a world?

Every religion in the world does - what that 'perfection' is varies by cultural background, but they all have them. Whether it's an infinite bureaucracy of clearly defined, perfectly synchronised officialdom, oblivion or an eternity sucking up to a jealous genocidal psychopath, they've all imagined a 'perfect' world... and it's always the next one.
 

But for that we should not have any needs and desires. All our instincts should disappear.....because it is these instincts and needs that lead to selfishness and individualistic behavior.

You mean we've been designed imperfectly by this overarching intelligence that designs all this...?

Actually, that is what spirituality aims at......to reduce our animal instincts, competitive mindset, and selfishness.

Let's make some nonsense up and focus on that so we don't have to deal with the real world and fix things. Let's pretend like we can 'rise above it', because that's so fundamentally different to the religious teachings of... oh, wait.

When needs and desires get controlled, many of our disappointments also disappear.

Where is the potential for joy without the potential for despair? Where is happiness without sorrow, where it love without loss. The world isn't perfect, we aren't perfect, and if we were we wouldn't be human.
 

Old age and death obviously cannot be eliminated...

That sounds like a challenge worth taking up.

... but since death is only like shedding of clothes (refer NDE's) .....even old age and death become irrelevant in the afterlife.

And there we are with 'let's not bother with this life that we know we have because changing stuff here is hard, better to give it up in the unevidenced hope that there's another go'.

So...a spiritual life can lead to a near 'perfect' world.

Or to a permanent death following an unfulfilled potential in the real world.

Just some thoughts.

As thoughts go, it seems to lack any of the thinking bits of thinking, but hey you've got to give that sort of nonsense up, too, right?

O.

[Sriram]

Creation comes from disorder and instability. There is no creation from stability, order and equilibrium. If all elements were as stable as Helium, neon etc. no reactions will happen. (Maybe that is why they are called noble gases). 

There is no such thing as a perfect creation. Creation is always unstable and imperfect.

Reducing animal instincts and developing towards selflessness, humility, truthfulness are all now a part of civilized society. That is of course, thanks to religions and spiritual philosophies, which taught and enforced such things for centuries.

There has been an instinctive and natural  move towards selflessness, cooperation and moral behavior long before what we regard as modern civilized societies came about. Spiritual teachings have been teaching for centuries what we today consider as civilized behavior. Even atheists unwittingly are following the principles and norms that spiritual philosophies (and religions) have taught.

It is this life that leads to a 'perfect' after life. That is why moral behavior is so strictly taught in most spiritual philosophies and religions. The real world is the here after. This is only a preparatory school.

[Gordon]

There has been an instinctive and natural  move towards selflessness, cooperation and moral behavior long before what we regard as modern civilized societies came about. Spiritual teachings have been teaching for centuries what we today consider as civilized behavior. Even atheists unwittingly are following the principles and norms that spiritual philosophies (and religions) have taught.

You're over-reaching again: altruism, in all its guises, is a rational approach that requires no spirituality or religion, and especially the latter given the history of religiously-inspired conflict througout history. What is regarded as 'morality' is subjective and is variable anyway (the so-called moral zeitgeist) and it is quite possible to adopt a moral stance without reference to spirituality or religion (see Aristotle), but of course the spiritual or religiously inclined do like to claim a bit of unjustified credit when it isn't due.

It is this life that leads to a 'perfect' after life. That is why moral behavior is so strictly taught in most spiritual philosophies and religions. The real world is the here after. This is only a preparatory school.

As someone who is closer to the end of my 'preparatory school' time than I would prefer, I'm struggling to feel reassured by your stance.

[Sriram]

There are enough NDE's to reassure you Gordon. Read Sam Parnia's  book 'What happens when we die?'.

Or if you don't want to buy any book check out this video.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhcJNJbRJ6U

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/near-death-experiences-ndes/



You could also try out some yoga as a complementary treatment.

Please keep your habitual skepticism aside Gordon. Its worth it, I assure you. And its not about any religion or ancient mythology.

All the best.

[Outrider]

Creation comes from disorder and instability. There is no creation from stability, order and equilibrium.

The nature of art is that it can come from anywhere - it can be the disruption of order, it can be the manifestation of order, it can be bringing structure to chaos or it can be the competition within chaos. Order and chaos, ultimately, are the same data viewed from different perspectives.

If all elements were as stable as Helium, neon etc. no reactions will happen. (Maybe that is why they are called noble gases).

No element is completely inert, they all react in certain circumstances.

There is no such thing as a perfect creation. Creation is always unstable and imperfect.

In what way is instability imperfect?
 

Reducing animal instincts and developing towards selflessness, humility, truthfulness are all now a part of civilized society. That is of course, thanks to religions and spiritual philosophies, which taught and enforced such things for centuries.

No, it's thanks to communication and humanity's tendency towards social behaviour. Some of it manifested in religion and 'spiritual philosophies', but those also magnified tribalism and exclusion of the out-groups.

There has been an instinctive and natural  move towards selflessness, cooperation and moral behavior long before what we regard as modern civilized societies came about. Spiritual teachings have been teaching for centuries what we today consider as civilized behavior.

Sometimes, and some of them. But those self-same 'spiritual teachings' have also been promoting errant nonsense, blatant discrimination and hate in equal measure.

Even atheists unwittingly are following the principles and norms that spiritual philosophies (and religions) have taught.

Modern societies are attempting to unravel the beneficial elements of prior civilisations and culture - both the parts that were explicitly espoused by religions and those that weren't - and keep those whilst ditching the hate and bile - both the parts that were explicitly espoused by religions and those that weren't. This attempt to depict modernity as somehow emerging as a product of religion rather than in spite of it doesn't really follow the evidence of, say, current displays of religious societies showing their true colours: the explicit discrimination of Hindu nationalism; Christian nationalism in the US; religiously-sponsored racism around the issue of the Israeli state; institutional homophobia across Christian sub-Saharan Africa; cultural and religious imposition of horrendous misogyny across much of the Islamic world.

It is this life that leads to a 'perfect' after life. That is why moral behavior is so strictly taught in most spiritual philosophies and religions.

No, proscriptive behaviour is taught in most spiritual philosophies; sometime that coincides with moral behaviour, sometimes it doesn't.

The real world is the here after.

Whereas other worlds are, at best, hypothetical.

This is only a preparatory school.

Based on what?

O.

[Sriram]

Modern societies are attempting to unravel the beneficial elements of prior civilisations and culture - both the parts that were explicitly espoused by religions and those that weren't - and keep those whilst ditching the hate and bile - both the parts that were explicitly espoused by religions and those that weren't. This attempt to depict modernity as somehow emerging as a product of religion rather than in spite of it doesn't really follow the evidence of, say, current displays of religious societies showing their true colours: the explicit discrimination of Hindu nationalism; Christian nationalism in the US; religiously-sponsored racism around the issue of the Israeli state; institutional homophobia across Christian sub-Saharan Africa; cultural and religious imposition of horrendous misogyny across much of the Islamic world.



O.

If religions had not existed....no Christianity, no Hinduism, no Islam etc.....what modern society would have been today no one can say.  It is in fact unimaginable to move straight from tribal warring societies to modern civilized society, without religious societies in between. 

Almost all our morals and ethics have been at one point or the other taught by some religions. This is what has spread and got into the common psyche and regardless of whether any person today believes in any religion or not, he/she will still behave in line with its teachings.   

We can keep talking about the negative aspects of religions...but then we can keep talking of the negative aspects of science and technology too.

[Outrider]

If religions had not existed....no Christianity, no Hinduism, no Islam etc.....what modern society would have been today no one can say.  It is in fact unimaginable to move straight from tribal warring societies to modern civilized society, without religious societies in between.

Not unimaginable, but it doesn't appear to have been the case anywhere.

Almost all our morals and ethics have been at one point or the other taught by some religions.

And, equally, all sorts of amoral, arbitrary nonsense, and horrendously immoral things have been espoused by religions, almost as though the fact that something is the teaching of a religious is no reliable indicator of whether it's morally justifiable, reprehensible or irrelevant.

This is what has spread and got into the common psyche and regardless of whether any person today believes in any religion or not, he/she will still behave in line with its teachings.

Some of the teaching, perhaps, but not all, and importantly not for the same reasons necessarily as the religion espoused them in the first place.

We can keep talking about the negative aspects of religions...but then we can keep talking of the negative aspects of science and technology too.

Not just can, we actively should - those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

O.

[Stranger]

No unimaginable, but it doesn't appear to have been the case anywhere.

And, equally, all sorts of amoral, arbitrary nonsense, and horrendously immoral things have been espoused by religions, almost as though the fact that something is the teaching of a religious is no reliable indicator of whether it's morally justifiable, reprehensible or irrelevant.

Some of the teaching, perhaps, but not all, and importantly not for the same reasons necessarily as the religion espoused them in the first place.

Not just can, we actively should - those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

O.

  Well said.