Adelphiasophism
Intuition
Abstract
© 1998 The Adelphiasophists and AskWhy! Publications. Freely distribute as long as it is unaltered and properly attributed
Contents Updated: Sunday, March 07, 1999
Science and Intuition
The rule of God has led us to neglect our instincts in favour of reason. That does not mean that reason is wrong. It plainly is not. Adelphiasophists follow reason but do not eschew intuition, especially in its manifestation of personal creativity. Intuition and reason are complementary not alternatives. We must seek to develop our intuition.
The use of intuition means that we can arrive at a conclusion to a pressing problem without having to wait for the full logical solution. It would mean that we would normally ere on the cautious side, avoiding the exacerbation of a problem rather than pleading that there is no reason why we should not continue our practices. We should not use the argument that conclusions are not demonstrable or proven in reason therefore we need not act, when intuition urges caution.
Logic demands that we always have the correct facts and the correct premise. Often we have neither, or cannot be sure that some essential piece of information is missing. Again we have to use our intuition, and intuition always tells us to take care.
Whatever conclusion we come to we must be ready to change our view if new information comes to light. We can be sure of one thing and that is that we are not perfect. We must therefore always be humble enough to admit we were wrong.
Misled matriarchs attack science by denying that accepts intuition. It is hard to see how something as numinous as intuition could have some prescribed role in the scientific method but scientists like Einstein admit to drawing on intuition for their discoveries. Is there any book on science history that does not tell about the discovery of the benzene ring by Kekulé? It is a prime example of intuition—the unconscious mind working on a problem the conscious mind has failed to solve. Intuition is probably a central part of scientific discovery but is hidden by subsequent rationalisation by the discoverer.
Some other of our sisters think that intuition introduces a completely new thought—out of the blue—whereas logic is stuck with rearranging accepted wisdom. Intuition is the unconscious working of the mind. It demands a problem first, since otherwise what is it working on?
Some matriarchs argue that science is patriarchal like the religion of Yehouah, and ideally, like Christianity, should be rejected, but because we can no longer abandon it, we must judge it on how harmonious it is, and the yardstick should be feminine intuition.
The fallacy here is that scientific truth is somehow arbitrary. We might wish to declare, on the basis of whatever evidence impresses us, including intuition, that certain experiments are forbidden, but it is Lysenkoism to pretend that the results of experiments already carried out can be judged arbitrarily. Of course, they can, but it is not science. Scientific hypotheses are judged by reference to reality not to instincts no matter how good they might be. Intuition is not an alternative truth. It is an alternative mental process to rational thought.
Just as computers can be digital or analogue, if rational thought is digital then intuition is analogue. Rational thinking needs the figures in place to work properly. If the figures are not all available then assumptions have to be consciously made to supply them. Intuition only needs partial information to yield an outcome—and working unconsciously. Scientists often work on hunches, even if not often enough. But their hunches still have to be tested in the real world because there is no guarantee that a hunch will be correct.
It is this very testing of ideas against reality that New Age critics of science do not like, and some matriarchs insult as patriarchal. Though they speak frequently of harmony, they cannot see that intuition and logic are not competing systems of thought but complementary ones.
Science’s discovery of the law of evolution—the survival of the fittest—is really the Goddess’s harmony.
If a human female unwisely swims in a tropical river and is eaten by a crocodile, is it because the Goddess did not love her, or prefers to love crocodiles? Neither.
When animals, wild or domesticated, harm humans, they are sought out and destroyed, as if the animal should have known human laws. The crocodile hasn’t read the statute books or God’s bible and doesn’t know "Thou shalt not kill". The woman was foolish or ignorant. It was no fault of the crocodile, which simply followed its natural instinct to feed itself.
This is the harmony of the Goddess. Animals do what is natural with no blame attached. Only humans can consciously act counter to their instincts. Adelphiasophists think they should be more ready to listen to their intuition than they have been.
Chaos Theory is a warning to us. The tiniest changes can lead to monstrous consequences in chaotic systems, and the cosmos is a chaotic system. Chaotic in this sense means complicated by multiple feedbacks, making any response to any stimulus unpredictable. Humans are happy to carry out grotesque experiments on the fundamental blueprint of life, the genetic code, without the slightest idea what might happen.
"It is quite safe," the experts tell us. The unsinkable Titanic sank!
Mystical Phenomena
Since angels, fairies and aliens manifest themselves in similar ways in all cultures, they must be real, according to some matriarchs. Scientists do not accept angels, pixies and fairies because, being supernatural, proof of them are not subject to falsifiable hypotheses. For scientists, hypotheses that cannot be falsified, cannot be valid. Scientists, wanting objective evidence, relegate them to religious experiences or madness. Mystical experiences are indeed culture bound and not usually similar. In Catholic countries people used to see visions of the BVM but increasingly they see visions of the UFO.
However, scientists do not think the mystical phenomena are false. They think they are real illusions. The fairy or ghost is false (discounting hoaxes) but the experience of having seen one is real. Illusions like the ones experienced can be explained, at least partially, and can often be induced, showing that there are contributing circumstances, but those who have seen the illusion delude themselves that it was real and will not be convinced otherwise by any scientist. None of this is helped by the increasing neurosis of people, which a change of attitude to life could help alleviate. Patriarchal religion has a long history of using people’s delusions to allow them to keep control. Acceptance of patriarchal quackery and fraudulence cannot possibly help the Goddess.
Science naturally works in the real world itself, and scientists are not free from the faults and foibles of any normal human being. Some are crooks. Some try to find evidence for anti-social views through science.
Some matriarchs criticise scientists who find racial differences between people. Yet elsewhere they quote approvingly scientific findings that men and women think differently. Both fields of research have been politically incorrect in the last 30 years and only bigots would not question with extreme suspicion any finding of mental differences whether between races or sexes. But if results stand up under questioning and testing, they have to be acknowledged.
All scientists have to be aware that devising genuinely culture fair tests is not easy and that inability to perform skilfully on one test does not preclude skill in another. We have to accept Nature as it is, not how we would like it to be, and that is diverse.
A popular feminist criticism of scientists is that they are not really objective but seek information to help "controlling". Their cure seems to be to abandon all pretence at objectivity in favour of subjectivity and emotion. Well under the subjective emotional system, the patriarchal religions controlled us absolutely for millennia. If we are in an evolutionary cycle out of patriarchy, the development of science in the last 200 years has helped to untie its bonds. The success of science supports the thesis of us cycling back to matriarchy.
Prayer
We are a part of the cosmos and have no need to worship anything beyond it, least of all, Yehouah, the absurd invention by men of the male transcendental god. It was plain to everyone that the Goddess was the very Cosmos itself, she was Nature. Any god was necessarily part of her, so they decided that Old Beardy lived beyond Nature, an irrational and non-intuitive idea. Thus they invented the transcendental. If the Cosmos is everything that exists anywhere—as it is—then how can there be something else? Such arguments never deterred the male priesthood whose sky god suddenly passed over to the other side of the sky and being above and beyond Nature was superior to the Goddess. This concept is nonsense and worship of this male figment is therefore also nonsense. However prayer is not nonsense.
If the transcendental god is nonsense then surely praying to him must also be nonsense. Curiously, it is not. The psychological or intuitive aspect of prayer must be understood to appreciate how it works. There is no god to answer our prayers, but praying is a psychological process akin to meditation. It awakens responses within us that we might not have thought we had. It quite literally strengthens us. Since there is no god, the effect does not come from him but from ourselves. Prayer is the ultimate placebo, and now we know from extensive studies that placebos actually work.
When we pray, we hope our prayers will be answered. Often we find they are, in that we find the resources to cope. When we take a pill, we hope it will cure our ailment. Often it does, although it is just glucose and some innocuous salt. Praying to the Goddess, even though she is merely pictured as female because of her feminine qualities and the primacy of the female in Nature, can do no harm. Or rather the harm is that it gives Nature a personality or a consciousness that she does not have. Adelphiasophists might have to excuse this on the grounds that many people find abstractions difficult and they will personify the Goddess whether we like it or not. By all means, pray to the Goddess. You will be amazed to find a response—within!
Occult Practices
Occult practices like Astrology and Tarot divination should be given a proper inspection and perhaps deserve more respect than they have, when used correctly. The same observations apply to them as apply to prayer. All such forms are essentially psychological. Though, the planets might have subtle effects on our Natures and various earthly cycles, they are unlikely to have any important effect on our individual destinies.
What is true though is that an astrological reading should be personally interpreted allowing intuition to work. The sun signs of the daily papers seem to be incredibly accurate because we read into them something about ourselves, or what we would like to be true about ourselves. It is the psychological act of interpretation which is important, not the phony act of making a reading.
The same applies to Tarot or any other such technique. They are potentially ways of exercising intuitive powers. Some say these occult arts were invented by men as part of their religious control procedures. No doubt some were, but the ancient oracles, who were originally women, such as those at Delphi intoxicated themselves on the noxious fumes issuing from a vent in the earth. They answered the questioner with apparent gibberish but another priestess or priestesses would make some sense of it by putting it into verse.
The result was something like the quatrains of Nostradamus. It was the personal act of interpreting the versified oracles that drew on the intuition of the original supplicants, enabling them to make their own sense out of it. The barely coherent verse eventually meant something to the questioner. The subconscious mind of the supplicant used the symbolism of the verse to generate the answer.
It is like the way sleeping on a problem can lead to a solution. That is why those using these techniques should be careful to let the subject produce the answers. They are really subtle tools to make people solve their problems themselves, using their own intuition. They are aids to intuition. Plainly, then, if some Gipsy Rose Lee just tells the subject that the tea leaves mean so-and-so, the whole purpose has been missed.
