Post by Shuijing~ on Sept 6, 2013 0:32:09 GMT -5
Hi guys ^_^
I'm glad that some of you are still regularly on here. I used to be on Inflash a lot. But it was mainly for the_dude_. He was kind enough to seriously emotionally support me during the lowest emotional period of my life to date (no exaggeration). I hope he doesn't mind me saying the contents of the rest of this post. If he does... I'm in trouble *__* Kick me out / delete it with admin powers before anyone reads it.
I left because during the end of Inflash I had personal problems and also during this time, a close connection with the_dude_. And after I realised that I needed to change my attitude towards life, this was one of the things I had to change. The site stopped anyway and everything changed in my life too, and I got very busy. I should also say that I lied about my username being my given name and being part-Chinese. I guess it happened because I've always been told to protect my ID online as a kid, which is when I joined inflash. I don't think I ever lied until the_dude_ asked me straight up when I started speaking to him, but being purposefully misleading carries exactly the same weight. And I'm asking the_dude_, illwinn & Moon (and everyone else) to forgive me for that.
I'm sorry.
The reason I couldn't keep talking was because of a big paradigm shift. I didn't have the courage to say what it was. But it changed my outlook of life and the universe to one that didn't really involve inflash. It answered long-existing and innate questions I had about why we exist the way we do, and it gave me practical solutions for how we can live the true nature of our lives. It's sucky of me that I didn't come back, but it was the right thing to do at the time.
The mistake was that I shouldn't have loaded so many of my problems onto the_dude_ in the first place. All of it he supported me through with forbearance, giving me his best advice. It must have been very frustrating at times but he never let me feel that. And he was always there, even if I was annoying, he was all the more reassuring. Thank you.
But it was unfair to have started a friendship (although I didn't realise) that I couldn't follow through on for the rest of my life once my life had to change. That's not how I am. For that I'm really sorry, and I'm asking him to forgive me for everything.
The way things actually turned out, I can't imagine what I would have done without him during that time. And I feel sorry. There's no way to make up for any of this.
I thought I could at least share the only valuable thing in my life. The thing I discovered more clearly once I'd left and cleared my head. What I understand now is that there is a bigger direction we are following in life. In essence, that there are good reasons to believe that no matter what, everything on this planet and universe had an origin. Call it the Big Bang, whatever. And everything that begins to exist has a cause. And the Universe began to exist. Therefore the universe must have a cause. And this cause cannot itself be affected by the dimension of time, or be composed of matter as we know it, because both time and matter were created during the Big Bang. The cause must be timeless and not made of the matter we can see/feel. It turns out these properties are in line with the Islamic view of God (Allah).
So I now understand there are good reasons to believe in God. One, singular God, the same one for Adam, Jesus, Moses and then Muhammad, peace be upon them all. They were all calling people at different times to attest to God's singularity, so that would be why the messages of the major world religions are fundamentally the same. You know, I think Moonstruck and I wondered about this thread of similarity once on a random Inflash thread. I found the Islamic view is that they actually are from the same God. However, some scriptures history knows for a fact have become altered over the years. But the people I'm around introduced me to the Qur'an. And it hasn't been changed one letter in the 1400 years since it was revealed... so it makes sense that it is the truth. I feel a lot of peace now because I feel like I'm actually more sure of who I am. I guess it took life events as the catalysts and some deductive (not inductive) reasoning to get it.
I hope you can find it here too: www.onereason.org/.
You're all smart, so I'm sure you'll figure it out ^_^ & I'm not asking anyone to necessarily come to the same conclusion as me, just to think about life for a bit. Because that's what helped me. If you have questions you can talk to the people on that site I think, or message me or whatever.
Another thing I figured out, (which perhaps Winn will appreciate... maybe) is that although science is sort of the best outcome of the western renaissance (once they brought it over from the east), it has a scope and it has limits (which the east already realised so they had philosophy etc to answer the other Qs science can't by its nature). Being a medical student makes you realise this a little but I also took a course in the philosophy of science (which weirdly they don't teach you in science degrees).
Basically, its limits are that science cannot ever provide certainty, because it relies on empiricism and inductive (probability based, 0-99%) reasoning, not deductive reasoning (rationality based, 100%). Science is based on observation so cannot address the third person experience, only the first person. I can't know what it's like for anyone else to taste a strawberry, just me, even though you could monitor which parts of your brain are activated or where the nerves travel, the taste itself is unknown. Science cannot address moral truths, like whether it should be legally wrong or right to allow something like "incest" with birth control, so can't tell you what's right and wrong for a healthy society. You can't therefore apply science to all parts of life. And there are other ways of finding the truth, such as testimony which science itself must rely upon all the time. For example, if a group of experts systematically reviewed a field of research and told you something was true, you'd likely believe it to be true without consulting the evidence base for every new discovery. We use these all the time, showing that science is a useful way, but not /the/ way to approach all life's questions.
Also (and perhaps most importantly) it can only address the physical, material world, so when it came to things pre-Big Bang, I had questions it wasn't answering. I always used to think science will give me all the answers, but science by definition is the attempt to establish facts about the natural world by making observations and deriving reasoning based on those observations. We have innate logical systems in our minds to allow for deductive reasoning as well as empirical, inductive reasoning. I think I tried to substitute all reasoning (deductive and inductive) with just inductive. I get now that Science is a process that works for industry and engineering and medicine, but the big questions still require deduction, and have always done so since the dawn of time, before scientific advancements were so great.
Anyway, that's me over and out for now.
Take care Inflash,
Your friendly neighbourhood alias.
I'm glad that some of you are still regularly on here. I used to be on Inflash a lot. But it was mainly for the_dude_. He was kind enough to seriously emotionally support me during the lowest emotional period of my life to date (no exaggeration). I hope he doesn't mind me saying the contents of the rest of this post. If he does... I'm in trouble *__* Kick me out / delete it with admin powers before anyone reads it.
I left because during the end of Inflash I had personal problems and also during this time, a close connection with the_dude_. And after I realised that I needed to change my attitude towards life, this was one of the things I had to change. The site stopped anyway and everything changed in my life too, and I got very busy. I should also say that I lied about my username being my given name and being part-Chinese. I guess it happened because I've always been told to protect my ID online as a kid, which is when I joined inflash. I don't think I ever lied until the_dude_ asked me straight up when I started speaking to him, but being purposefully misleading carries exactly the same weight. And I'm asking the_dude_, illwinn & Moon (and everyone else) to forgive me for that.
I'm sorry.
The reason I couldn't keep talking was because of a big paradigm shift. I didn't have the courage to say what it was. But it changed my outlook of life and the universe to one that didn't really involve inflash. It answered long-existing and innate questions I had about why we exist the way we do, and it gave me practical solutions for how we can live the true nature of our lives. It's sucky of me that I didn't come back, but it was the right thing to do at the time.
The mistake was that I shouldn't have loaded so many of my problems onto the_dude_ in the first place. All of it he supported me through with forbearance, giving me his best advice. It must have been very frustrating at times but he never let me feel that. And he was always there, even if I was annoying, he was all the more reassuring. Thank you.
But it was unfair to have started a friendship (although I didn't realise) that I couldn't follow through on for the rest of my life once my life had to change. That's not how I am. For that I'm really sorry, and I'm asking him to forgive me for everything.
The way things actually turned out, I can't imagine what I would have done without him during that time. And I feel sorry. There's no way to make up for any of this.
I thought I could at least share the only valuable thing in my life. The thing I discovered more clearly once I'd left and cleared my head. What I understand now is that there is a bigger direction we are following in life. In essence, that there are good reasons to believe that no matter what, everything on this planet and universe had an origin. Call it the Big Bang, whatever. And everything that begins to exist has a cause. And the Universe began to exist. Therefore the universe must have a cause. And this cause cannot itself be affected by the dimension of time, or be composed of matter as we know it, because both time and matter were created during the Big Bang. The cause must be timeless and not made of the matter we can see/feel. It turns out these properties are in line with the Islamic view of God (Allah).
So I now understand there are good reasons to believe in God. One, singular God, the same one for Adam, Jesus, Moses and then Muhammad, peace be upon them all. They were all calling people at different times to attest to God's singularity, so that would be why the messages of the major world religions are fundamentally the same. You know, I think Moonstruck and I wondered about this thread of similarity once on a random Inflash thread. I found the Islamic view is that they actually are from the same God. However, some scriptures history knows for a fact have become altered over the years. But the people I'm around introduced me to the Qur'an. And it hasn't been changed one letter in the 1400 years since it was revealed... so it makes sense that it is the truth. I feel a lot of peace now because I feel like I'm actually more sure of who I am. I guess it took life events as the catalysts and some deductive (not inductive) reasoning to get it.
I hope you can find it here too: www.onereason.org/.
You're all smart, so I'm sure you'll figure it out ^_^ & I'm not asking anyone to necessarily come to the same conclusion as me, just to think about life for a bit. Because that's what helped me. If you have questions you can talk to the people on that site I think, or message me or whatever.
Another thing I figured out, (which perhaps Winn will appreciate... maybe) is that although science is sort of the best outcome of the western renaissance (once they brought it over from the east), it has a scope and it has limits (which the east already realised so they had philosophy etc to answer the other Qs science can't by its nature). Being a medical student makes you realise this a little but I also took a course in the philosophy of science (which weirdly they don't teach you in science degrees).
Basically, its limits are that science cannot ever provide certainty, because it relies on empiricism and inductive (probability based, 0-99%) reasoning, not deductive reasoning (rationality based, 100%). Science is based on observation so cannot address the third person experience, only the first person. I can't know what it's like for anyone else to taste a strawberry, just me, even though you could monitor which parts of your brain are activated or where the nerves travel, the taste itself is unknown. Science cannot address moral truths, like whether it should be legally wrong or right to allow something like "incest" with birth control, so can't tell you what's right and wrong for a healthy society. You can't therefore apply science to all parts of life. And there are other ways of finding the truth, such as testimony which science itself must rely upon all the time. For example, if a group of experts systematically reviewed a field of research and told you something was true, you'd likely believe it to be true without consulting the evidence base for every new discovery. We use these all the time, showing that science is a useful way, but not /the/ way to approach all life's questions.
Also (and perhaps most importantly) it can only address the physical, material world, so when it came to things pre-Big Bang, I had questions it wasn't answering. I always used to think science will give me all the answers, but science by definition is the attempt to establish facts about the natural world by making observations and deriving reasoning based on those observations. We have innate logical systems in our minds to allow for deductive reasoning as well as empirical, inductive reasoning. I think I tried to substitute all reasoning (deductive and inductive) with just inductive. I get now that Science is a process that works for industry and engineering and medicine, but the big questions still require deduction, and have always done so since the dawn of time, before scientific advancements were so great.
Anyway, that's me over and out for now.
Take care Inflash,
Your friendly neighbourhood alias.