NATURE IS OUR CREATOR

Humans are the helpers and interpreters of nature. Humans have only acted rationally and comprehensively in so far as we have learned about and adapted to nature. By experimenting with nature or observing nature humans have come to perceive nature’s order and learn nature's laws.  Never does nature say one thing and wisdom another. Thus the knowledge of nature’s laws and order is power. There is no strength that can break the causal chain of nature, and nature cannot be conquered but by being obeyed.  Accordingly the twin goals—human science and human power—come in the end to be one. To be ignorant of the related causes and effects is to be frustrated in actions.

Our creator has clearly defined mental guidelines to direct our path: The laws of attraction, cause and effect, substitution, belief, habit, use or lose, and correspondence are only a few. Each guideline leads us to the safest and most fruitful path to travel. There is law and order in the universe. These rules for the road plant our feet on firm ground. They are words of reality that can provide light and uplift for our immediate pathways, and they can offer a beam of light down the corridors of our uncertain tomorrows.

Thus knowledge of nature’s laws and order is power, but mere knowledge is insufficient to keep an individual from acting like a fool. Nevertheless, obey these laws and prosper, disregard them and fail. 

UNLESS YOU ARE A CRITICAL THINKER, YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU'VE BEEN REPEATEDLY TOLD

Hypnotism is nothing more than suggestion and susceptibility to suggestion.

Culture is strongly hypnotic. Culture hypnotizes its subjects by use of repetition. If someone hears or reads something often they are more inclined to believe that it is true. Culture also hypnotizes its subjects by using their want to be like 'everybody else' (to be normal); most people think that if most people believe that something is true, then it must be true.

Of course, one's belief may be a fallacy instilled by one's culture. Take 'RELIGION' for example:

If you were born in India you would probably be a HINDU.

If you were born in China, you would probably believe in Taoism.

If you were born in Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, or Sri Lanka you would most likely believe in the Theravada Buddhism.

If you were born in Tibet, Bhutan, or Korea, you would most likely believe in Mahayana Buddhism.

A person born in Saudi Arabia would most likely believe in Islam.

And, one born in the USA would most likely believe in Christianity

WITH ABILITY COMES RESPONSIBILITY

We were not the source of our existence. We find ourselves born into a world we didn't choose and at first had no control—a world not of our own making and for the most part indifferent to our concerns.

The existentialist conceptions of freedom and value arise from a view of the individual. Since as adults we are ultimately responsible for our inner world, we can think subjectively or objectively, accurately or inaccurately, realistically or fancifully, optimistically or pessimistically, pragmatically or idealistically. We have freedom over our internal nature, and the source of our value is determined both by how we think, what we say, what we do, and what we don't do.

Given that we have independent mental potential, we are free to think independently for ourselves. We can, of course, let others do our thinking for us (and, of course, it is wise to follow a leader at times), but the individual alone can create himself or herself; those who don't have no personality--such a person is a copy of someone else's personality. 

It is an existentialist view that we create our own nature. First, we are born into existence without a predetermined nature and only later do we construct our nature or essence through our thoughts and actions.

In other words, our existence precedes our nature. As human beings with the potential to think independently, we have the ability to self-create or re-create ourselves.

Existentialists are opposed to the traditional view that the essence of a person precedes that person's existence. In other words. existentialists do not believe that we have a given nature prior to birth that predetermines our ultimate purpose or value. 

Correctly understood, it is the individual who is ultimately responsible for determining his or her purposes and values.

Of course, as children we did not have the physical maturity or sufficient experience to be responsible for our own decisions; but, as mature adults with the potential to think for ourselves, we are responsible for doing so. To abdicate this responsibility by allowing our minds to be programmed and controlled by cultures, traditions, other people, or institutions is irresponsible.

PRAGMATIC ADVICE FOR MODERATION

The following advice is found in the Bible (Ecclesiastes 7:15 -17)

IN THIS MEANINGLESS LIFE....

                                                                                                                                                                    

A good human being may die while another lives on, even though he or she is evil. So don't be too good or too wise--why kill yourself?

But don't be too wicked or too foolish, either--why die before you have to?

AVOID BOTH EXTREMES.

PROCESSES THAT DEFINE A RATIONAL, INTELLIGENT HUMAN BEING

PERCEPTION provides us with information.

MEMORY stores the information from perception for future use.

THINKING utilizes the knowledge provided by perception and memory and combines and organizes it into new patterns and combinations.

PERCEPTION represents the present.

MEMORY reinstates past experiences.

THINKING reaches toward the future, toward something that has yet to be brought into existence.

Customarily, all three of these processes (PERCEPTION, MEMORY, & THINKING) are going on at the same time; together they constitute what is called COGNITION, a group of processes by which a person achieves knowledge and command of his or her external and internal worlds.

If a person possessed only the ability to perceive, he or she would be bound to the immediate present. Add memory to perception, and a person becomes a creature with a past as well as a present. By adding the power of thought, a person is able to project himself or herself into the future. Through thought, a person can rearrange both his or her internal and external worlds to suit his or her fancy and his or her needs.

THERE IS NO MORE IMPORTANT MENTAL PROCESS THAN THINKING, UNLESS IT BE THAT OF TRANSFORMING THOUGHT INTO APPROPRIATE ACTIVITY.

Thinking is an active search for something that the person wants and needs. It is an internal trying-out process, a testing of and an experimenting with reality. It reflects a need to explain and to understand, and a desire to create.

TO PERCEIVE THE WORLD CORRECTLY, TO REMEMBER ACCURATELY, TO THINK EFFECTIVELY, AND THEN TO ACT APPROPRIATELY--THESE ARE PROCESSES THAT DEFINE A RATIONAL, INTELLIGENT HUMAN BEING.

FAITH AND FACT ARE TRUE

PERMAN WILSON'S DISCOVERY

Because we live in two worlds (one mental and the other material), each one of us has its own truth--one real and the other ideal.

For something to be deemed true in one's mental world, one has only to believe it.

For something to be deemed true in one's material world, it has to be observable and verifiable.

In the mental world a mere belief may be called a faith.

In the material world a verifiable observation is called  a fact.

PRAGMATISM

William James (January 11, 1842 - August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who trained as a physician who trained as a physician and earned his M.D. degree at Harvard. He was the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. He also wrote influential books on pragmatism, psychology, educational psychology, the psychology of religious experience, and mysticism.

In his book, published in 1907, entitled Pragmatism, James suggested the division of philosophers into two distinct groups:

(1) "TENDER-MINDED" and
(2) "TOUGH-MINDED."

To the first group belong the rationalists, those "going by principles," the idealists, believers in free will, religious and optimistic thinkers.

To the second belong the empiricists, those "going by fact," the materialists, determinists, and irreligious and pessimistic ones.

James himself was striving for a philosophical position which would satisfy both types of philosophers, and the pragmatic method he proposed was meant "primarily as a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise may be interminable."

It consists in asking, "What practical difference would it make to anyone if this rather than that notion were true?"

If there is no practical difference, then the dispute is idle.

But it is obvious, for instance, that belief in a benevolent Creator and ruler of the universe makes a tremendous difference in the life of the believer. In this way theological and metaphysical statements were given a kind of respectability through James' "pragmatic" theory of truth.

According to it, A BELIEF IS TRUE WHEN IT IS "SATISFYING," "USEFUL," "EXPEDIENT."

In other words, IT IS THE RESULT OF THE BELIEF THAT COUNTS. IF WE ACT UPON A BELIEF AND IT "WORKS," THEN IT IS TRUE.

Unfortunately, the pragmatic theory of truth has only a limited application. It clearly does not apply to such statements as "The earth revolves around the sun," even though it might be more satisfying to believe that we are at the center of the universe and not inhabitants of a minor planet.

JAMES OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED ONE OF THE WAYS OF FINDING TRUTH WITH WHAT TRUTH IS. UTILITY IS MERELY ONE OF THE TESTS OF TRUTH, NOT TRUTH ITSELF.

The philosophical position that James presented in his book 'A Pluralistic Universe (1909) is the expression of his being a composite of the two types into which he divided philosophers. He was a mixture of tough-mindedness and tender-mindedness, trying to satisfy the demands of reason and scientific matter-of-factness with the demands of the heart. He projected this inner conflict onto the universe, which for him was not a harmonious whole, not a 'uni-' but a 'pluri-verse'; conflicting purposes and cross-currents seem so obvious that he considered "the religion of common people, polytheism," closer to the truth than monotheism.

THE ADVANTAGE OF VIEWING THE UNIVERSE AS "UNFINISHED" AND GOD AS NOT OMNIPOTENT IS THAT IT ALLOWS US TO SEE HUMANS AS FREE TO SHAPE OUR OWN FUTURE, AND AS CO-WORKERS OF GOD.

This view of the universe and of God was what William James called "the melioristic type of theism" (in Latin 'melior' means 'better'); this view adumbrates the possibility of gradual improvement of the human condition; IT IS A MIDDLE POSITION BETWEEN 'CRUDE NATURALISM' AND 'SUPERNATURAL ABSOLUTISM.'