Crap! that went all wrong. Here is the piece in full. Basically it is the logic behind what a lot of you are saying about evil. That evil *only* exists because somebody came up with the idea of evil. That concept can be extended to scientific laws (like the law of gravity). Here is the piece again (with the first line, that puts it all in context).
after a while he say "Do you believe in ghosts?"
"No," I say.
"Why not?"
"Because they are un-sci-en-ti-fic."
"They contain no matter," I continue, "and have no energy and therefore, according to laws of science, do not exist except in peple's minds."
"Of course," I add, "the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's mind. It is best to be completly scientific about the whole thing and refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science. That way you are safe. That doesn't leave you very much to believe in, but that is scientific too."
"I do not know what you are talking about," Chris says. "One of the kids at the YMCA camp says he believes in ghosts."
"He was just spoofing you."
"No he wasn't. ......."
"what is his name?" Sylvia says.
"Tom White Bear."
"Ohhh, Indian!" (Red Indian :D)
I laugh. "I guess I'm going to have to take that back a little," I say. "I was thinking of European ghosts."
"What is the difference?"
"Well, Indians sometimes have a different way of looking at things, which I am not saying is completly wrong. Science is not part of Indian Tradition."
"Sure I say reversing myself, "I believe in ghosts too."
"It's completly natural," I say, "to think of Europeans who believed in ghosts or Indians who believed in ghosts as ignorant. The scientific point of view has wiped out every other view to a point where they all seem primitive, so that if a person today talks about ghosts or spirits he is considered ignorant or may be nutty. It is just all but completly impossible to imagine a world where ghosts can actually exist."
"my own opinion is that the intellect of modern man isn't that superior. IQs aren't that much different. Those Indians and medival men were just as intelligent as we are, but the context in which they thought was completly different. Within that context of thoughts, ghosts and spirits are quite as real as atoms, particles, photons and quants are to modern man. In that sense I believe in ghosts. Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know."
"What?"
"Oh, the laws of Physics and of logic ... the number system ... the principle of algebric substituion. They are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly that they seem real."
"For example, it seems completly natural to presume that gravitation and laws of gravitation existed before Issac Newton. It would sound completly nutty to think that untill seventeenth century there was no gravity."
"So when did this law start? Has is always existed?"
"what I am driving at," I say, "is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed."
"Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone's mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no space either, not anywhere-this law of gravity still existed?"
"If that law of gravity existed," I say, "I honestly don't know what a thing has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me that law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence that that law of gravity didn't have. Or a single scientific sttribute of existence it did have. And yet it is still 'common sense' to believe that it existed."
"Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round untill you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before issac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense."
"And what that means is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It's a ghost! We are all very conceited about running down other people's ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own."
"Why does everyone believe in the laws of gravity then?"
"Mass hypnosis. In a very orthodox form known as education."
"The problem, the contradiction that scientists are stuck with, is that of mind. Mind has no matter or energy but they can not escape its predominance over everything they do. Logic exists in mind. Number only exists in mind. i do not get upset when scientists say that ghosts exists in mind. It is only that gets me. Science is only in your mind too, it is just that that doesn't make it bad. Or ghosts either."
"Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The world has no existance whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in the antiquity was so recognised as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It's run by ghosts. We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us, ghosts of Moses and Christ and the Buddha, and Plato, and Descartes, and Rousseau and Jefferson and lincoln, on and on and on. Issac Newton is a very good ghost. One of the best. Your common sense is nothing more than voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living."
