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The Doors of Perception
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Steve Gray
Steve Gray
931 posts

Re: The Doors of Perception
Nov 14, 2005, 14:22
I've had a scientific training and therefore tend to approach things from that viewpoint. Clearly my training has given me some kind of belief system, but it has also given me the desire to constantly question those beliefs.

For me the problem with religious/spiritual beliefs is that people seem unable to justify them in any tangible way and often continue to believe despite evidence to the contrary. There's some strange stuff out there, but I can accept it as strange and difficult to comprehend without feeling the need to attribute it to some spiritual entity. Once you "explain something away" as an act of god or whatever you've let knowledge and understanding off the hook.

I have more than just a gut-feeling that nature is not just strange, it's very, very, very strange. Now whatever this strangeness is, may well be what others perceive as spirituality, god, earth energy, whatever, but for me it's part of the quest for knowledge.

Here's something that has amazing implications: Einstein's theory of general relativity suggests that as the speed of a body increases, time slows down such that when travelling at the speed of light, time stands still. From our perspective it takes a finite time for light to travel across space, but from the point of view of light itself the moment of setting off and the moment of arrival are the same event, which means that space has no size (as far as light is concerned).

The entire universe and everything that happens in it from the big bang to the big crunch is one single event and one single point. In fact it cannot even be said to be that because events and points imply a knowledge of time and space. So for light the universe does not exist, but we in our domain of time-space must rely on light to measure everything about our universe. Is it just an "illusion"? (In quotes because the word derives from "illuminate" - to light up).

Anything that mind-blowingly wierd seems to me to render a lot of other stuff superfluous.

Steve

(I hope Cropredy isn't readying this. Just look where he went with his polygon. He'll have a field day with this stuff).
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Re: The Doors of Perception (Rune)		 Replies:
Re: The Doors of Perception (Rune)
Re: The Doors of Perception (Hob)
Re: The Doors of Perception (PeterH)
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