What the creature in the block of ice wants you to think...

Satan, from Dante's Inferno

[Gareth Knight] steadfastly remained true to his contacts, which took him down a long line of different magical experiences, firmly based on Christian magic. 

When I met him in the 1990s at a workshop he had a very interesting take on science which had become too complex for modern magicians to touch its hem. 

In a Manchester workshop in 1995 which referenced Dante’s inferno, he pointed out that for thousands of years humanity had believed in an earth centred universe and from the perspective of a human living on earth still worked that way. 

I asked: “So modern science’s concept that we are worthless, semi-intelligent fluff, attached to a tiny spec of dust floating in an infinite ocean of emptiness is a dead end?” 

“It is more than that, it is what the creature in the block of ice wants you to think,” Knight replied.

Quoted by Nick Farrell

There are many generally-accepted and supposeldly-established facts and theories that "the creature in the block of ice" wants us to think; but which we believe are true on the basis that external authority is the best (or only) source for truth and goodness. 

Typically, we believe them on the basis of fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of reality of which we are hardly aware, or which seem to "obvious" that it would be insane to question them...

Such as; that the universe was made by physics from dead-stuff. 

And "therefore" that the only difference between (on the one hand) living, conscious, purposive, intelligent, self-reproducing beings such as ourselves...

And (on the other hand) assumed-unalive entities such as quarks, hadrons and electrons; strong/weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity; robots, computers, and "AI"...

Is a different arrangement of things. 

"Therefore", ultimately, we are worthless, semi-intelligent fluff, attached to a tiny spec of dust floating in an infinite ocean of emptiness; going nowhere in particular and for no reason. 

Well that is what the creature in the block of ice wants us to believe; and if you believe it, then you are doing exactly what that creature wishes. 

Or else, you could believe that we are purposive living-beings inhabiting a living-universe of other living-beings [details to be agreed later...].

There are no other coherent choices: Ultimately; either All is dead, or All is alive.