thebigideas

Looks like they updated this free book with empirical research. www.ofgrandeur.com What do you guys think of the ideas presented?

Your beliefs are based on emotional balance. You become attracted to specific ideas or beliefs because of the role those ideas or beliefs play in your emotional balance. Your beliefs can change when other sources of emotions change. People can change their beliefs in the same way they can fall out of love with one person and in love with another. We have specific beliefs to cope with our environments. Some people cope with the sadness caused by their environment by using intoxicating substances; others cope with their environment by having specific beliefs or habits. The world is filled with billions of followers of different religions. People are correct for having their individual beliefs because their beliefs keep them more emotionally balanced than they would be without those beliefs. Some people may not believe empirical evidence provided by scientists because if they were to believe in that evidence, then they would probably become emotionally unbalanced based on where they are currently experiencing their happiness and sadness. Emotional balance may be the result of a law of nature or the universe called the Law of Emotional Balance. The Law of Emotional Balance states that a person will experience as much happiness as sadness before being allowed to die. Even though we may never be able to absolutely prove the Law of Emotional Balance because it seems impossible to quantify all of the emotions a person will experience in a lifetime, this does not mean that there is no evidence pointing to the existence of this law. Even without a way of quantifying all emotions, we can still determine if the Law of Emotional Balance is a possibility or outright impossible. For the Law of Emotional Balance to be true, certain base requirements would have to be met. The universe would need to have uncertainty programmed into it because without uncertainty, we could always predict the future and take in mostly happiness and minimal sadness and, thereby, violate the Law of Emotional Balance. We would need to have dreams during which our defenses are lowered so we could be forced to experience specific emotions needed to prevent violations of the Law of Emotional Balance. We would need homeostasis in cells, because cells are also living organisms that comprise other organisms like humans. We would need unusual/unique cultural structures with flexibility: sins, penance, religion, laws, punishments, government . . . The list goes on . . . Since these base requirements for the Law of Emotional Balance are met, why not try to test to see if emotional balance is maintained by a law. Falsifiable experiments exist that build a case in support of emotional balance as a law. Conservation laws prevent charged particles from turning into pure energy unless they are neutralized with equal and opposite charges. Emotions and electricity may very well be directly tied together, so it is not too much of a stretch to consider that there may be a conservation law that governs emotions. The Law of Emotional Balance proposes that there may very well be a reservoir of “emotional energy,” and this reservoir is forced to follow the Law of Emotional Balance. It is this reservoir that many people have come to believe is God or God’s active hand in impacting a seemingly causally closed world governed by the laws of physics. All objections to the Law of Emotional Balance are based on assumptions that are not necessarily true. As examples, it is an assumption that thinking you can commit suicide at any time is the same phenomenon as actually committing suicide at any time. It is an assumption that fetuses do not experience emotions in utero. In fact, it has been scientifically proven that fetuses do experience emotions in utero. It is an assumption that people starving in Third World countries do not become emotionally balanced before their death. It is an assumption that depressed people do not experience pleasure. People with chronic lifelong illnesses like depression have their baselines adjusted to their illnesses, and slight decreases in their daily depression cause them to experience pleasure, even though they are experiencing a level of depression that would make a non-depressed person experience sadness. All arguments against the Law of Emotional Balance are assumptions, and when analyzed, each argument leaves plenty of room to support that the Law of Emotional Balance is still a possibility. The Law of Emotional Balance does not preclude that there is a creator of the universe. But the Law of Emotional Balance supports the notion that the world is causally closed and that the Law of Emotional Balance is what has given humankind the impression that there is a presence that actively responds to our thoughts, feelings, desires, and necessities. Based on the Law of Emotional Balance, regardless of the choices we make in life, we will experience as much happiness as we do sadness. But the difference between some lifestyles and others is that some lifestyles will contribute to or inevitably result in the Earth being inhospitable for humans, and other lifestyles will not. We are destroying and contaminating the ecosystems that provide us with potable water, healthy food, and clean air. We have to adopt belief structures and lifestyles that secure without a doubt that our planet will be continue to be able to sustain human life.