Rational Empiricism - a religion for nonbelievers

What happens if you don't have a religion?
You conform unconsciously or get confused when you have to make choices in life. Looking back at such a wavering life could cause much distress. You might regret the lost opportunity and it may be too late to fix it.

What is a religion?
A religion is a set of guiding principles for making choices in life. Religion gives the person clarity to make those choices and to consciously decide where to spend their time and energy in this world. It facilitates the person to live a meaningful and pleasurable life and gives the strength to navigate through the painful times.

Does religion need a God?
Religion has to be based on some solid, unshakable foundation. Belief in a God and God's word or a God's messenger's word  is one way to create a religion. One downside to such God-founded religion is that there are powerful middlemen interpreting the God's message and laying down rules for others to follow. A second problem is, at times practitioners of religion vilify other Gods and religions and cause communal disharmony. A more serious downside is the nature of faith itself; a faithful can't rationalize why he has faith but he has to always protect his faith. After living a long, devout life, if some incident suddenly converts him to a non-believer, then it invalidates a large portion of his life which would be quite devastating.

What is the foundation for Rational Empiricism?
Rational Empiricism is a non-theistic religion founded in reflecting and reasoning human experiences. Every human can testify to these two experiences; a) duality - that he exists and he is different from other things in Universe and b) causality - that there are causes for things to come into existence, causes for their sustenance and causes for them ceasing to exist. From these experiences, one can rationalize a definition for the Universe to be ''an interconnection of infinite, unique objects'. How?
1. Duality gives rise observation of objects
2. Duality also gives rise to distinction of self from other objects and to distinction of one unique object from another.
3. Duality also gives rise to observation of incomprehensible number of objects in Universe which gives rise to infinite, unique objects.
4. Causality indicates that these objects are interconnected as they continuously interact in space and time creating, sustaining and destroying each other.
Putting these concepts together, the definition of Universe as an interconnection of infinite, unique objects is justified. This definition of Universe forms the basis for the religion: Rational Empiricism.

What are the guiding principles of Rational Empiricism?
There are four guiding principles of Rational Empiricism interpreted from conception of Universe:
1. Principle of Uniqueness - Each human is unique, so is every other object in Universe.
2. Principle of Interconnectedness - Humans and other objects are interconnected to each other in complex ways.
3. Principle of Infiniteness - Each human (himself a collection of innumerable objects) and other seemingly infinite objects constitute the Universe.
4. Principle of Fitness - Each human is a person unless he is a corpse.

What is the promise of Rational Empiricism?
Rational Empiricism promises a meaningful and pleasurable life (pleasures within the boundaries of meaning) for the practitioner, a more peaceful and just society and a sustainable planet.
1. Principle of Uniqueness encourages expression of individual's unique passions and adding value through work and predicts that people do their best work in such environment.
2. Principle of Interconnectedness supports equality for all in the society and promotes scientific understanding of the interconnected world and policy making based on those findings and predicts that a human society in-sync with nature will thrive.
3. Principle of Infiniteness asserts that a sense of belonging and companionship is desired by every human in this seemingly infinite universe and predicts that love at home will give the recipient of love the strength to navigate through the tough times in life.
4. Principle of Fitness encourage physical and mental fitness while alive before other objects eventually figure out and transform him/her to dirt.

Will Rational Empiricism stand the test of time?
If we stop experiencing duality and causality, then Rational Empiricism can be discarded. But I am guessing that when that happens we won't any longer be humans, we would have evolved to a different species or we will be living in a new Universe.
Also, if we find new ways to rationalize duality and causality different from the way it is done in Rational Empiricism, then Rational Empiricism can be adapted and evolved to the new concepts. For instance, there are two fundamental mysteries of Universe that are purposely not dealt with in Rational Empiricism: a) What is the origin of Awareness? and b)  What is the origin of Universe? Rational Empiricism doesn't bother answering these questions because these mysteries of the Universe doesn't negate our experience of duality and causality. However, if and when somebody presents rational answers to these questions and if that alters our conception of Universe, then we can evolve Rational Empiricism to the new concepts. Until then Rational Empiricism will be valid in its present form for humans.

Attitude - Focus and Progress

Philosophy:
Flow of Existence.
Knowledge and Ignorance about the Flow.
Intuition and Mathematical models are Knowledge.
Prediction is the yardstick of knowledge.
Causal nature of the Flow is apparent from Knowledge and Prediction or vice versa.

Implication:
Understand, if not, Accept the past.
Desire a future.
Act in the present.

Guide (a conscious, personal decision):
Civic focus: Fairness, Service, Science, Work
Personal focus: Sleep, Health, Relationships
Entertainment focus: Arts, Sport, Nature

Attitude:
Make progress

(Incidentally, a study from Harvard today reported that a focused mind is a happy mind.
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/645790.html)

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Hear - Reflect - Contemplate

REVELATION
(Rupert Spira in his book Transparency of Things)
Omnipresence: Consciousness is all there is.
Omniscience: Consciousness is self-aware.
Omnipotence: Consciousness has total freedom.

REFLECTION
Something that is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent could be considered God, even an atheist would agree with that definition. The entirety of existence can be considered to be omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent; as Existence encompasses Everything! So, is consciousness = existence = god?

CONTEMPLATION
1. DUALITY: There is subject-object dichotomy
2. FUNDAMENTAL CLAIM: In the context of duality, every 'thing' in existence is equally significant by virtue of its existence. All superiorities and inferiorities are subjective/contextual.
3. FUNDAMENTAL OBSERVATION: Every 'thing' has some attributes and every 'thing' interacts with things it is connected to - can be visualized as a ripple effect. (Or butterfly/domino effect).
4. EXISTENTIAL QUESTION: What caused the ripple?
5. LIFE: Flow of Existence is algorithmic; proof is science.
6. DILEMMA: Our mindfulness causes confusion within us, creating an illusion of free-will. Realizing that mindfulness is not a willed condition dissolves that confusion.

From this argument, for humans in duality; the logical religion is Philosophy, the logical ethic is Equality, the logical pursuit is Science and the logical mantra for the present moment is Causality.


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Living In Duality

Abandon the search for Absolute, Synthesize a Point-of-Reference

Although we experience duality, we are unable to satisfactorily understand the truths about duality. Our deepest craving is to know the unsublatable truths about origin, nature, purpose etc of duality. Neither Religion nor Philosophy or Science has provided us with unambiguous and irreplaceable answers.

Concept	Religion	Philosophy	Science
Existence	Existence was created by God.	The ground of existence is the transcendental, timeless, ultimate reality.	Big-bang is a popular origin theory. The ground of existence is some fundamental particle.
Self	You are not God.	The self immediately evident to you is non-different from the ultimate reality.	The self is a product of brain’s processes.
Path to Truth/God	Live a life of faith following scripture to approach God in after-life.	Cultivate mental poise that is conducive for realization of the truth.	Look forward to better theories to explain reality.

All the three approaches; religion, philosophy and science agree on the presence of Existence but differ on its origin and nature. All the three agree on a self but differ on its nature. All the three agree that it is a process to obtain the truth and not immediately available to anyone at any time. So, our answer to questions about duality is: we don’t have unsublatable truths to understand duality at the moment.

If we look closely at the proposed paths towards truth, one way is to live a life of faith by following a religion. Another way is to live with noble ideals of an ascetic/monk which is required for mental poise as rationalized by the Philosophy. Yet another way is to pursue a career in fundamental physics or neuroscience to better understand the fundamental particle or the brain respectively. Some folks of faith may indeed pursue the above paths in search of absolute truths (rather than as a profession to make a living). But for most people, it is not very convincing just because of the lack of communicable proofs.

In this blog, I present a logical solution to only those people (including myself) who cannot commit themselves to the paths proposed by religion, philosophy or science. It’s based on the fact that life continues even without figuring out the so-called absolute truths. In light of that fact, it seems to me that the sensible thing to do would be to continue living life in duality and forget about the quest for truth. If the question arises in mind, be aware of it and ignore it. Move on and do the usual stuff. Ignore existential questions, indulge in duality is the mantra. However, can this be done?

Without the unsublatable truth there is no real point of reference for life in duality. Nothing is right/wrong, good/bad, better/worse unless there is a point of reference. Without a point of reference, living in duality is miserable as there is no way to form ethics and rules for decision-making when faced with choices etc. Metaphorically speaking, we need a map when we are lost.

A point-of-reference is an over-arching set of ideas that would explain in a very broad stroke all the happenings in duality. This set of ideas is knowledge we create by reflection on experiences in duality and are not equivalent to the intangible, absolute truths. Such a point-of-reference is our map; it should explain all the happenings of duality in a satisfactory way for us to lead a life in duality with a certain peace of mind. So, a point of reference has to be synthesized by us if we are to relinquish the quest for absolute truth.

Reality Check

As the Observer is the common ground of all multifarious experience, the experience itself is purely only a function of the mental and physical faculties and not of the disinterested Observer. So, we can say our experience of a causal world is intimately tied to the mental and physical composition of the body. From this viewpoint, causality is not an objective view of reality.

Nevertheless, as a human, the world we experience is a causal world. Causality is on the side of reason and adaptable science and not on the side of absolutes and ideologies. From the point of view that causality is an experiential truth, we have to accept that the present moment is perfect. Denying that is denying causality. Denying that is denying science, reason and first-hand experience. There could be no alternative to the present moment (present moment is an effect of earlier causes). When times are bad, instead of complaining about the present moment, we just need move on and do what needs to be done.

Having said all this, we should again emphasize that our experience of causal world is only a product of our body and mind and not ultimate reality. Although we can figure out the cause for birth/sustenance/death of a star for example, the primordial cause of entire existence will always remain a mystery because of the question; what is the cause for the first cause? leading to infinite regress. Similarly, the purpose of this existence will also always remain a mystery as parts (ideas, concepts, theories etc) cannot be used to describe the purpose of the whole ('existence' that includes these ideas, concepts and theories). So, the situation is: the cause of every 'observable' thing (like a star, a tree or a thought) can be found but the cause and purpose of the entire existence itself will remain a mystery.

The preceding paragraph gives the reasons why any metaphysical or mystical ideas to understand or realize ultimate reality (not subjective reality) should be seriously looked at and reflected upon.

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