Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Eckhart Tolle through Dogmatic Eyes

Proleptic Life (Prolepsis = anticipating and answering objections in advance :p) has a few unintentionally hilarious blogposts up that are a perfect illustration of confirmation bias: noticing and assigning significance to observations that confirm our prior beliefs, while filtering out or rationalizing away observations that do not fit with what we believe.
This pic illustrates it well, we live in our own little world (which was created by mostly other people through the silly beliefs we take over) and some of us take our Belief System (BS) way too seriously and have gotten out of touch with reality.

Check out the first page, there are at least seven freaking posts which can be summarized as: Christian rejects all writings of Eckhart Tolle through reading his books with a Bible Filter. I like Eckhart Tolle's teachings, as any teacher he's not for everyone though the criticism he's getting here is not really criticism at all. This guy probably posted this stuff because he had to re-affirm his fundamentalist Christian BS which got challenged. You can see the comments of some very relieved Christians who now again, thank God, don't have to take responsibility for their own lives, forget about their own divinity - how arrogant and silly to even fathom that! - and just go back to accepting Jesus and waiting for him to come back and fix everything! Who said mind control wasn't easy?
"What we hear from a source we accept as authoritative is given far more weight than the same statements if heard from what is to us at the time a less credible source. What we see, hear, or experience with intensity has added weight. And what we hear repetitively from authoritative sources has even more weight." - Maxwell Malts, The New Psycho-Cybernetics
So no worries, the sheep straying from the flock can always return upon contact with any kind of authority figure like say, a fellow fundamentalist Christian (who has more weight than Eckhart Tolle, who is not a fundamentalist Christian).

Never underestimate the rigidity of belief systems. It's really amazing, I mean the world must seem filled with hell-bound idiots to fundamentalists, all the folks who are all unable to pick out the right ancient symbolist book full of contradictions with which to filter the world and thus are going to hell.

I prefer to look at a world filled with people taking their Belief System too seriously, through Model Agnosticism, the only model I know without dogmas. I can only hope through time that people stop taking any kind of nonsense for truth wether it be materialist, religious or just plain out there fundamentalism by learning about belief systems and how they filter your reality. If you have not experienced it, how can it be true? Even if you have experienced it, how can you be certain your interpretation of it is correct? Etc. If you know any other interesting models like Model Agnosticism let me know!
"The agnostic principle refuses total belief or total denial and regards models as tools to be used only and always where appropriate and replaced (by other models) only and always where not appropriate. It does not regard any models, or any class of models, as more “profound” than any other models, or any class of models but asks only how a model serves, or fails to serve, those who use it." Robert Anton Wilson

'I do not believe anything.' This remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity on the part of most viewers.
It seems to be a hangover of the medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist, one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think Capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in Socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in X, one must alternatively have blind faith in not-X or the reverse of X. My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence." Robert Anton Wilson

2 comments:

don said...

As a former born again Christian now 3 years sober, I appreciate your comment on how the fundamentalist church is going crazy about Eckhart Tolle, as how dare someone say to the ego is the problem. Of course not, the bad people and the devil out there are the problem. Love, compassion- oh no, judgment and fear, thank you Jesus. It reminds me of a movie I say years ago, where two generals were fighting in the war room when somebody else walked in and said, "You can't fight in here, this is the war room". I think Tolle has got it right- the mind is Insane. Fundys.com

Dedroidify said...

Kudos Don, it's always inspirational to see someone leave fundamentalism.

I love that hilarious quote at the end!

That site is hilarious too
FUNDYS.COM: fundamentalist - no fun, too much dam, and not enough mental. haha!