The conflict between them is responsibility. In a world where everything is ultimately the unescapable effect of a previous cause, then we have no responsibility over our actions, we are just victims of our circunstances and have no power over them. Everything is just written since the beginning of time, we are just the aftermath of the big bang, a product of inertia.
O.K., I concede, I can see the temptation to think this way, because it intuitively
feels like determinism strips you of your power and responsibility. But it is simply not the case.
Let's explore the concept of
control for a moment. What does it mean to have control over something? In other words, what does it mean to have the
capacity to do something? It means that, hypothetically IF you were to desire it, you would produce it, because you have the prerequisite faculties and tools. This is 100% compatible with the notion that, in
reality, whether or not you actually DO choose to exercise your power is predetermined from the very first moment of time.
In other words, even though our deterministic universe means that there is only one *real* timeline, in which the future is a predictable outcome of the past, this doesn't change the fact that there are innumerable *hypothetical* alternate timelines, representing all the scenarios you have the power to create.
I wish Roger&Me were still hanging around. He would back me up on this all day. I'm somewhat passionate about the idea too, because I might be wrong, but it seems important to recognize that your own actions are an inevitable result from your past. It allows you to have compassion for yourself when you make mistakes.
I think scientfic knowledge will never be as perfect and complete as it would need to be to be able to predict everything that will happen in the future by understanding it as the default effect of the state of being in a given time.
I agree. I think the best we could do would be to create an extremely sophisticated computer simulation of reality, and fast-forward the playback. But I doubt technology will ever be able to predict the behavior of a human.
I'd ask you to clarify what type of inner perception you'd like an example of. there are four flavors of inner perception I know of: physical, mental, emotional and vibrational. The outer reality of the physical world is still ultimately an inner perception as far as my senses tell me.
Describe to me an example of how one might use a physical, mental, emotional, or vibrational perception for spiritual purposes. I'm not trying to corner you in any way, I'm just genuinely curious as to what you mean by "spiritual work" as opposed to scientific investigation.