Robert Anton Wilson

[Josh]

Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of The Illuminatus! Trilogy, has had a
huge impact upon the development of my personal philosophy ever since
I read that blasted book and thought I was beginning to understand
Discordianism. Normally I just cite Discordianism for it's influence,
but Rob deserves his own praise. Robert S. Shea was the other author,
and he deserves praise too, but I haven't read as much of his stuff.

Anyways, due to this immense influence, I am know making this
Discussion to post RAW quotes and my own related thoughts.
Startiiiiiiiing .... NOW!

"My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized
agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about
everything."
This quote I absolutely love. I find myself doing the same thing to a
lot of people who I spend extended time talking to. If they express
certainties in any facet of their life, I feel obliged to attempt and
shake their hold onto it. As the Discordian saying goes "Are all
things true? Yes. All things are true. Even false things are true?
Yes, even false things are true. But how can that be? I don't know
man, I didn't do it!"

""Is", "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were
abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what
anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment."
This one I just read an am still processing. I love the final line
though. Makes a very clear statement about human observation and
empiricism that most people forget.

[Josh]

A paragraph from Wiki's article on him:
"In a 2003 interview with High Times magazine, Wilson described
himself as a "Model Agnostic" which he says "consists of never
regarding any model or map of the universe with total 100% belief or
total 100% denial. Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities,
not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic
attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer
sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury
verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory."[16] More simply, he
claims "not to believe anything", since "belief is the death of
intelligence."[17] "

As a result, seeing as how I 'independently' arrived at the same
thought processes I have begun to consider that I am the reincarnation
of Robert Anton Wilson. Never mind he just died in 2007, that's
probably some misnomer of our idea of linear time getting in the way
of things.
Josh

[Marcellus]

Wow, love the quote. Whenever someone asks me what I mean by
agnostic, I always say it means I neither believe nor disbelieve in a
higher power. But every time I say this, I have a little pang of
conscience since I have moved so far away from all monotheistic groups
that they do not seem important enough to mention in the definition of
my own beliefs. I will have to start using Wilson's words from now
on...

[Josh]

I recall saying of myself for a while that I preferred to think of the
universe in terms of probabilities rather than absolutes. The problem
came when I realized I'm a shitty mathematician. :-D

[arassefaw]

But that's also one of the real big question about that universe.Is
there anything in the universe that is absolute? Physicists are
searching every day for the Higgs Boson, aptly named the "God
particle", which would nearly prove that at one time every particle
that exist in the universe can from this one elementary unit.