Free Will in terms of tiny daily decisions. (forum.centerforinquiry.org)

 I participate at Center of Inquiry Forum.  It's small, only a few of us old guys/gals, I keep hoping others would discover us, but I'm told: discussion isn't a "thing" anymore.  Maybe that helps explain the mess our society is in.  Some new voices on the platform would be fun.  Recently a member shared a few paragraphs about his experience and I felt like following up and sharing from my experience.  For this blog I'll single out a few sentences, visit the CFI forum for the discussion:

"...  First needed item to change it to really need and want to change. And you need help, And you need to have the will to pay the price.

At 30 I was in a dead end, I needed to change, 2 years of psychotherapy. It was hard. I finished some sessions crying."

I've developed a well defined perspective, a specific frame of reference I hope is worth sharing  An evolution respecting Earth Centrist perspective.  Something I'd love to discuss with anyone who 'gets it' - or at least is curious.  Thus I share.  The following was my follow on, (though it is going to go through some changes as I clean and rewrite for this blog).

Thanks for sharing that. I hope it’s okay to extent it into a bit of a dialogue, because thinking of what you’ve gone through, of course makes me think of what I’ve been through. We’ve had different journeys, but we’re healthy humans and it seems to me key events are similar, such as needs for partners/friends, careers, community, etc.  We go through the same emotional roller coasters, have similar needs, our challenges are relatable.  Though I was very lucky and my twenties were '75 to '85 and the road was welcoming for this clean cut nice guy.  Jobs were plenty for those who showed up, and cared, and were reasonable competent, along with being enthusiastic students.

Philosophy Club - Is Belief in God Rational?

... I should be going to bed, but my head is full of dancing memories from this evening’s (Dec 3rd) panel discussion that had four FLC professors debating the question: “Is belief in God rational?”  Excellent stories told and arguments offered, claims made and responded to with counterclaims and more questions, as words upon words cascaded over each other. 

 

Not for the first time. I found myself wondering, if philosophy’s goal is to help us understand, why the love for adding layers upon layers of creative complexity and hairsplitting that often obscures the fundamentals?  After all, it is the simple fundamentals that make a coherent understanding possible? 

Please understand I come at this God question from a different, and apparently somewhat unique Earth Centrist, science respecting, bottom up, evolutionary perspective that I’d like to share with you. 

Is Belief in God Rational?

To me, that framing feels like a trick question of sorts

God is a belief in itself.

God is not a Thing.

Regarding people’s faith in a God - I ask, how does an assumption of God get transmuted into a Thing?

Is a belief in a belief rational?  ( Is faith rational? )

I’d say sure, from an evolutionary and pragmatic societal perspective, there are a host of reasons faith in meta-physical beliefs could and does bring benefits to believers. 

Regarding what God is, that needs to start with resolving the ageless question, “Who Am I?”  

Fact is, I, we, are evolved biological animals, the product of half a billion unbroken years of Earth’s processes.  

From the beginning all creatures have required a degree of awareness, processing and action abilities, each according to their individual biological complexity and kind.  Ours is simply the most advanced mind, thanks to our incredible evolved body and its experiences.

Still, our thoughts are the interior reflection of our body communicating with itself as it processes incoming information from within and outside. (See Drs. Solms, Damasio, Sapolski, etc. for details.)  It is our body and brain interacting with physical reality that produces our mind, our sense of self, all our thoughts - collectively our Mindscape.  

The inevitable conclusion from the full scope of relevant biological/physical sciences is that consciousness is not a thing, it is an interaction.  Our Consciousness is produced in the living moment by our living body.

As with the dynamo that stops producing electricity when it stops spinning - so too when our body stops living, our mind/consciousness ceases to be produced, after that, we become memories within those we leave behind.

It seems to me self-evident from the above that our God’s must be a product of our thoughts, which in turn, are driven by personal biological imperatives, needs, ego, bias, etc.  

The Hard Problem is figuring out why such a straightforward observation - that our body/brain interacting with the world produces our mind - is so assiduously avoided.

Our Gods are very real, still we should be very clear, our Gods belong to the meta-physical realm.  

Gods are not part of this physical reality that makes up the biology of our bodies, nor the substance of this miracle planet Earth that created us to begin with, along with the rules all of Earth’s nature operates under.

Key concepts:  Appreciating the ‘Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide.’

Appreciating that our living body produces our thoughts, and that our Gods are born from within our own ego-centric thoughts. 

***

The other question discussed was: “Does Morality Require God?”  

How can it, if we create our own Gods? 

For me, that realization puts the responsibility right back upon us humans, collectively and individually.

 

November 22, 1963, a very bad day for America and the world and our future.

 On this day in 1963, at about the time I’m typing this, recess was over for the younger kids at John J. Audubon elementary school. I found myself climbing back up the stairs to my third grade classroom when I overheard an older boy coming down the stairs for their recess time. He was telling his friend, “did you hear, they shot the president.”

My parents being civic and interested in the politics and world affairs, plus proud Democrats, we knew all about our President. For my sibs, along with millions of other Americans back then, the Kennedy’s were like distant relatives, meaning it was personal - and the words were like a punch in the belly. Reinforced by our sad struggling teacher explaining what was being broadcast on the news and informed us school was over for that day and that we should go home to our families. We left school and all of us walked back home to be with our parents.

New horizons, ...

I believe the direction of this blog will be changing.  Whereas I'd always wanted to be an activist of sorts and was using this blog as outreach - I’ve pretty well given up on that notion.  

I'm thinking I should start using this blog simply for its mental health therapeutic value.  Use writing to help process the monstrosity I am witnessing unfold.  Then, like a message in a bottle, I’ll toss my words into the digital void.  Maybe some AI will find it, wouldn’t that be exciting?  

Although for me, destination isn’t the point, it has always been the journey itself that matters.  After all, with time the destination point becomes another departure point.  No matter where you go, there you are.

Yeah, it's funny/sad, I used to entertain visions of connecting with a few good sharp people (of the more educated and endowed set).  A few who related to my words, that were defending climate science and Earth sciences, and Evolution Appreciating efforts, and such thoughts that I worked on enunciating and getting people interested in.  

People who could look past my rough edges, knowing that with a little mentoring those edges could be smoothed, since my core perspective was solid regarding society’s need to get real about our evolved biological selves - and our dependence upon this planet's biosphere & its global heat and moisture distribution engine.  In short, the Physical Reality we were nurtured within.

I dreamed of becoming a part of a dynamic team, looking for that interaction and networking, inspiring each other to rise up and confront the Faith Based War on Science with rationality.   I knew I was under educated and under endowed, never any financial backing, nor safety net, with kids and family to work for and worry over, etc.  

Dancing the sword’s edge of life the whole way.  

Once my kids grew up I got involved in local Democrats caucus and the convention process, attending State Convention at least four times.  

I've engaged and argued for a more dynamic Democratic Party and all I got was patronizing, and dismissal - as I was forced to watch politics as usual and Democrats losing one crucial heartbreaking battle after another.  I always wondered why the DNC didn’t have talent scouts at their conventions actively looking for self-starting individuals out there on the floor, etc., etc.  If I had Republican values, I’d have been snapped up in a moment, that hurts most of all!  

Now here I sit, early days of post election 2024, struggling to come to terms with the voters of this one time “land of the free” and home of the brave rejecting USA's very government - its established Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the principle Fair Play, along with our pluralistic aspirations and rejecting serious science to top it off.  

I mean this election is handing our government over to a bunch of convicted and unconvicted criminal minds, who have billionaire backers, - yet most Americans seem clueless that something truly profound has happened.

To my eyes we have crossed over into dystopia territory, things will start moving faster yet. 

Billionaires who are self-absorbed and self-serving and possessing utter contempt for our very government, and we just handed them control of our government.  It's insanity.  American’s will find out the cost of willful ignorance in short order - and oh how I wish I’m wrong.  

But that’s the thing, appreciating there is a difference between our fantasies and the real lives we live.  Not respecting that divide, is at the root of many mistakes.  Time after time, after time.

Okay, so now the Christian Warriors have won their self fabricated “War Against Everyone Else,” even at the cost of the very USA government that protected them in the first place.  But who cares, too much is never enough, and greed is good, and these days self-interest is all that matters - when you have God in your back-pocket, all the better.

When is someone going to start explaining to the God Fearing that we create our own Gods from within our own body/brain/mind/experiences? 

God's are real, but only within the metaphysical realm of our mind (individual and collectively) - - -  our planet, her complex systems, our biosphere and biology, all that happens in a totally different realm.

The physical realm needs to be differentiated from our mental realm, our consciousness, our thoughts and emotions.

Our body is the cumulative product of some half billion years of Earth’s evolutionary processes, with your specific bloodline evolving all that time without a missed beat.  

Your consciousness is the cumulative product of all the days and experiences of your life, as processed through your singular body.

Your Gods are the product of your mind processing the challenges and tragedy of living a human life, knowing death is always at hand - and your inevitable destination.  

Thinking about it, it seems self evident that buried memories of infancy and innocent peaceful security, must have served as the kernel, from which various notions of God could grow within our mindscapes.

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My GoFundMe update report - November 10, 2024 - In Defense of Women (v.3)

Let us try to elevate this reproductive rights discussion beyond the same old cliches to a more empathic thoughtful level.

My GoFundMe update report of November 10, 2024 

In Defense of Women (postcard activism)

 * I want to send my heart felt thanks and appreciation to GoFundMe, and staff, for allowing me this opportunity, and for allowing me to hang on despite so little support. I have the postcards ready to go, and there's a greater need than ever for these simple and constructive thoughts to be shared and discussed. If we aren't changing minds we are losing.

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November 10, 2024

Since my last update, my life has been tremendously crowded busy, with some civic work, travel and caretaking grandchildren, working around our cabin, and of course my Maddy dog and the many walks she expects and that keep me exercising. I'll admit, I was brought low by the lack of support and interest, topped off by another brush off from my friends within the Local Democratic Party when I personally reached out to them for a little help and support in reaching out with this postcard and some help with stamps. Seems they thought it was a mute issue, already won and not important just then - another belly punch that knocked the wind out of me and had me returning to other chores.

In Defense of Women. A postcard advocacy campaign. (v.3)

In defense of women.  

A postcard advocacy campaign.

I have a dream that someday our society can learn to recognize and acknowledge the woman, above all others, possesses the situational awareness, and the moral, ethical, and legal standing to decide the future of the growing life within herself.

I myself can never figure out how/why people can be so cold and ruthless as to deny a woman those fundamental dignities, though I’ve spent decades trying.  As a man with wife and children and grandchildren, including caretaking infants and toddlers, whom I get along with quite well I might add, it matters to me that there’s been so much manufactured misunderstanding.

That’s why I've taken the challenge to refine my personal argument “In Defense of Women”.

It took a while, you know how it goes, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, now after 250@v.1 (Nov 6, $109) and 1000@v.2 (Jan 24, $155).   I do believe v.3 finally says all I want to share, as concise and well as I can.  Last month I ordered up 2,000 postcards (at $220).  Postage Stamps $0.53@ to send.  Although they'll also make great handouts at certain events.  I make no claim on the text and welcome anyone to copy and reuse, or rework, as they see fit.

 

Now I’m hoping, I’m asking, I’ll even plead, for some help with purchasing postage stamps so I can broadcast these thoughts, by sending out these postcards in defense of a women's right to self defense and sovereignty over her own body.  

I’m starting to address the postcards, first to various woman’s organizations, followed by Democratic Party county offices in key states, various reporters and news agencies, among others, (Help with some stamps and I’ll send them to any addresses you may suggest.).  After the election I want to send one to all 119th Congressional US Senators and Representatives.  With a little luck, add some ammo to the coming debates.

I may be a man of big dreams, but also one of modest means.  Without help from some people who support these values I’m striving to share, the postcards will only be trickling out.  Please help me turn up the volume.

If we aren’t changing minds, we are losing.

Thank you, Peter Miesler

Email: Citizenschallenge at gmail

Please help at GoFundMe

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In Defense of Women, Postcard Activism - Can you help me?

 Please

In Defense of Women, Postcard Activism

Can you help?

I believe there are too many misinformed individuals out there, and that Democrats need to work harder at gaining and sharing basic solid information and arguments.

It would help us to enable the choir to become more persuasive in our regular interactions and discussion with people, friends, & family.  After all, if we aren’t changing minds, we are losing.

I believe that the better we can verbalize the issues, the easier it is to engage and stand up for justice.  The better our chances to help evolve people’s thinking on issues that matter.