[MD] "Could have acted differently" v. "the extent to which we perceive DQ"

[Horse]

Hi Guys
I read a great quote recently from Michael Bywater:

"I am an atheist, but I do rather worry how God will take that"

and I think herein lies the problem.

On 11/09/2011 05:12, ARLO J BENSINGER JR wrote:
> [Dan]
> Illusions are a belief in that which doesn't exist.
>
> [Arlo]
> Right. "S's" and "O's" do not "exist". That is the trap of SOM the MOQ argues
> against. But I don't think the MOQ would posit that the (again) the bombs that
> exploded above Nagasaki didn't really exist.

Wrong! I've got to disagree here as a belief in something that doesn't 
exist is a DE-lusion not an IL-lusion.
So, to my mind, belief in God is a delusion, belief in fairies, life 
after death, etc. etc. are delusions.
I also think Pirsig made this mistake (mistaking delusion for illusion) 
when he commented on the reality of the atomic bombs over Japan - but 
they were most certainly NOT delusions.

Static patterns of value are ideas about reality and not the experience 
of reality - SQ is our attempt to order reality and order it in a way 
that makes sense - or agrees with the senses. But "I's", "O's", "S's" 
and "I's" no more "exist" than "S's" or "O's" - i.e. they are all 
deduced from Quality and are not primary. IPOV's are a better way of 
carving up Quality than S/O, but it is Quality that is Reality.

So the idea that "Ideas are as real as rocks" is true as long as you 
remember that both Ideas and Rocks are both derived from Quality and are 
not primary.

I think that a similar mistake was made in the past by a former member 
of this list - that MoQ=Reality and this lead to some disastrous 
conclusions and, I think it is caused, by analogy, to the quote that 
opened this post.
The hold that S/O reality has over us is so strong that, try as we may, 
there is still a lingering, nagging doubt that S/O reality is real and 
we may be, with Quality, barking up the wrong tree. And I don't think 
there is anything wrong with admitting this either as this is the 
reality (in one form or another) which we have all been conditioned to 
believe and that the vast majority of those we know believe - to admit 
that we believe something as flaky as "Quality is Reality" is to almost 
admit to insanity. Look what happened to the guy that proposed this idea!
We still have many bridges to cross before we are entirely free of S/O 
reality.

If you have not experienced an event directly you have only a 
descriptive knowledge of that event - i.e. static knowledge or illusory 
knowledge.

So thinking of SQ as illusion is, I believe, the correct way to view 
what is statically real. What is statically real is not UN-real but is 
not FULLY-real either - DQ is not contained in SQ and as reality is both 
DQ and SQ then SQ alone can never be real. Therefore, what is not fully 
real is illusory.



...but I do rather worry how Quality will take that!

Horse

-- 

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
— Frank Zappa