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Friday, January 20, 2006

The closest thing to Gospel Truth I've ever come across

Robert Anton Wilson | Cosmic Trigger, Volume I:
"...my viewpoint in this book is one of agnosticism. The word 'agnostic' appears explicitly in the prologue and the agnostic attitude is revealed again and again in the text, but many people still think I 'believe' some of the metaphors and models employed here. I therefore want to make it even clearer than ever before that

I DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING

...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. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered clinically dead under current medical standards, where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended.

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude."

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