Madness Of Crowds
"I mean, Jesus Christ!" I threw my hands in the air. "I don't understand how someone can look at that data and then not immediately turn around and think 'hmm… maybe everything I think is 'right' is actually 'wrong." It's just such a basic thought process. Materialism is obviously incompatible with this NDE evidence. So do you throw out the evidence, or do you question materialism? What would a real scientist do?"
"They'd question materialism?"
"Right! I don't understand how this is not obvious. God talks about this in relation to reincarnation — another phenomenon that is perfectly plausible if the observer is the observed…"
Is there such a thing as reincarnation?
It is difficult to believe there is still a question about this. I find it hard to imagine. There have been so many reports from thoroughly reliable sources of past life experiences. Some of these people have brought back strikingly detailed descriptions of events, and such completely verifiable data as to eliminate any possibility that they were making it up or had contrived to somehow deceive researchers and loved ones.
Neale Donald Walsch
"I'm with God on this one. Why the fuck is there still a question about all this?" I continued. "When I first began looking into this problem five years ago, it took me, like, a day of research to figure out that the observer and the observed were the same thing. All I did was look at the data, realize it was incompatible with materialism, and then pinpoint the core assumption that was causing the problem: materialism assumes that the observer and the observed are separate variables. If you simplify things and assume they are the same variable, all the complexity collapses in an instant. This simpler explanation explains everything that materialism can, and everything it can't. Honestly, it's not that fucking hard. I just get very concerned about the future of humanity when the so-called 'enlightened' intellectuals of our era are too close-minded to figure out something as goddamn basic as that. And I know people might call me an arrogant holier-than-thou bitch for pointing this out, but that doesn't detract from the fact that I am objectively right. I'm just calling bullshit where I see it."
"You sound pretty judgemental, though," Zac teased. "What happened to 'each to their own — without judgment?' Why do you keep attacking them?"
"Firstly, I never claimed to be an enlightened zen angel. I'm human. I get angry at shit like this, and I need to vent. Secondly, I'm not attacking them. I'm merely engaging the issue. From a purely selfish perspective, their incompetence has served me incredibly well. Solving this riddle has been quite the journey of growth and self-discovery for me. But like I said earlier, when we were talking about the patriarchy, if the truth hurts a scientist's ego, then he should really ask himself why. It's like God said — 'That's the problem with truth. The truth is relentless. It won't leave you alone. It keeps creeping up on you from every side, showing you what's really so. That can be annoying.'
Exposing the truth is my job as an artist. Responding to the truth is their job as humans. I'm actually doing the scientific community a favor. I'm holding them to a higher standard than they hold themselves. I'm challenging them to take this new perspective and build on it. I know they can do better. They just need to see the embarrassing truth of what their current mode of thinking has produced, then make a higher choice. Because let's be honest here — it's pretty embarrassing that they've spent centuries adhering to a worldview that an uneducated young outsider was able to deductively disprove in about five minutes when she simply pointed out that materialism assumes the existence of a redundant variable — y — that we have no evidence for. It's even more embarrassing that the scientific community has been ridiculing and censoring people who believe consciousness is more fundamental than physical reality — when really, consciousness is the only thing we know for sure exists. What a fucking joke. God must have a sense of humor if his algorithm allowed this ridiculous situation to unfold."
"I mean, the scientists are obviously intelligent people," Zac said. "And up until a few hours ago, I was convinced materialism was true as well, so I can see where the belief comes from."
"Yeah, but you don't get paid to work on this problem full-time, so you have an excuse. These people have one job. One fucking job: find the objective truth. You do not find the objective truth by ignoring and suppressing evidence, or banishing dissenters.
I am going to blame this problem on two things: the close-minded nature of the scientists themselves, and the institutions they operate within. Institutions are massive structures in our society that can warp the truth like mass warps spacetime. The truth bends around an institution in the same way that light bends around a black hole."
"Why is that?"
"Fear. The moment scientists accept that materialism is wrong, everything changes. The foundations of physics will crumble. Change is scary. Change is a threat to the ego. Scientists have built an entire religion around materialism — a religion entirely based on faith, as we've just established. And we all know how religious institutions keep people in line. They deny evidence that contradicts their worldview and thus infect the minds of their followers with lies — lies like 'you're just a sack of meat' and 'your consciousness has no effect on physical reality.' When someone questions those lies, they ridicule and exile her for not falling in line — which is exactly what happens in the scientific community. Science is an institution like the Catholic church, and it will protect itself at all costs."
"I'm not buying that," Zac said. "Science is not the same as Catholicism. Catholicism is much worse. At least science attempts to find the truth. For the most part, scientists change their minds when presented with new evidence."
"Wait. I want to be clear about something. You think I'm attacking science, but I'm not. I'm attacking institutions. Science has become an institution, and that's what I have a problem with. Pure science and critical thinking, existing independently of institutional incentives and structures, is a beautiful thing — just like pure spirituality, existing independently of institutional incentives and structures, is a beautiful thing. We've spent the whole night applying the scientific method to uncover the truth that I'm speaking tonight. Obviously, I'm a big fan of science done correctly. All I'm saying is this: modern science is an institution, just like religion is. It's simply naive and objectively wrong to believe otherwise, given the dysfunction we've uncovered tonight. And institutions bend and manipulate and warp the truth to protect the foundations they stand upon. That's how they maintain power. God talks about this here…"
Why don’t You fix the world, instead of allowing it to go to hell?
Why don’t you?
I don’t have the power.
Nonsense. You’ve the power and the ability right now to end world hunger this minute, to cure diseases this instant. What if I told you your own medical profession holds back cures, refuses to approve alternative medicines and procedures because they threaten the very structure of the “healing” profession? What if I told you that the governments of the world do not want to end world hunger? Would you believe me?
I’d have a hard time with that. I know that’s the populist view, but I can’t believe it’s actually true. No doctor wants to deny a cure. No countryman wants to see his people die.
No individual doctor, that’s true. No particular countryman, that’s right. But doctoring and politicking have become institutionalized, and it’s the institutions that fight these things, sometimes very subtly, sometimes even unwittingly, but inevitably… because to those institutions it’s a matter of survival.
And so, to give you just one very simple and obvious example, doctors in the West deny the healing efficacies of doctors in the East because to accept them, to admit that certain alternate modalities might just provide some healing, would be to tear at the very fabric of the institution as it has structured itself.
This is not malevolent, yet it is insidious. The profession doesn’t do this because it is evil. It does it because it is scared.
All attack is a call for help.
Neale Donald Walsch
"God sounds like a conspiracy theorist," Zac joked. "Don't tell me you're an anti-vaxxer."
I rolled my eyes. "Pointing out obvious dysfunction in an institution doesn't make me a conspiracy theorist. If the scientific establishment weren't behaving like an institutionalized religion, then it wouldn't be denying evidence, ridiculing and exiling dissenters, or worshipping a God called 'Materialism.' I don't have a problem with people believing whatever they want in the privacy of their own minds. Believe in the flying spaghetti monster, or believe in Zeus, or believe in materialism entirely on faith — I don't care. If it doesn't affect me or other people, then it's not my problem.
But the moment you try to shove your religion down my throat, or have it affect my life in any way, I will call you out on your illogical bullshit — just like Richard Dawkins will, quite rightly, fight against Christians who want to teach creationism in the classroom. If Dawkins — and the rest of the scientific community — have a problem with faith-based religion infecting our society, then they can't complain when I call them out for doing the same thing.
I believe an enlightened society is a secular society that separates church and state. If Richard Dawkins wants to worship materialism in the privacy of his own home, or in a church with his fellow scientists — then he can go ahead. But the faith-based religion of materialism should not inform our government policy, our education system, our healthcare, or anything else like that."
"You're so feisty tonight," Zac smirked.
"No. I'm just pissed off. These institutions create the perfect breeding ground for collective delusion, dysfunction, and utter madness. If you place a bunch of scientists — and scientists are just 'one to n' thinkers — inside a protected institution like this, it's no wonder they've convinced themselves that materialism is true. The entire system is optimized to do exactly that."
"What do you mean?"