Through the eyes of Atheism

reply to post by randyvs


Welcome to ignore. Your posts are now forever beneath my level of awareness. I specifically outlined one plausible scenario wherein an atheist (one who believes in NO GODS) *might* possess a worldview which is immeasurably larger then your own, and you dismissed it as "blah blah blah."

You do not possess the native intelligence to even begin to articulate the nature of this debate, and your idiotic post proves this.

Until you learn to play by the rules that you outlined in your own OP, you are not worthy.

Have a nice day. :p

So how do atheists explain their ability to believe in the spirit and the soul. Yet claim authority over something no one can know anything about ( the spirit world ) and kick God out.

The short answer is because people can believe in weird things without attributing them to a godhead. There are plenty of Buddhists who are atheist yet believe in reincarnation of souls.

SKYNET doesn't know beauty, it doesn't know smells. It feels no pity, no remorse, it doesn't show mercy. It looks at something like a sunset and sees only hard data; the inclination of the solar disk across the orbit of the planet, reads with perfect clarity the time left until total dark, it knows how full the moon is going to be and how much ambient light there is going to be for its units to use in their missions. It analyzes the air and knows what is in it and why exactly the colors are there. It can filter and analyze all the particles in the air but it can't see the beauty of the whole because it is not human. SKYNET shares some basic feelings with its human enemies; greed, fear, joy, but it isn't human and it doesn't have human desires.

-- Christopher T. Shields

"According to Descartes, only humans combine res cogitans (the stuff of consciousness) with res extensa (material stuff). Animals, which he refers to as 'brutes', are nothing more than unconscious machines."iv Accordingly, Descartes' followers had no compunctions about nailing dogs up to boards and cutting them open to see how the parts worked, understanding their cries of pain as nothing more than the wheezing of bellows and the creaking of wheels. Fontenelle, one of Descartes' contemporaries, describes it like this: "They administered beatings to dogs with perfect indifference, and made fun of those who pitied the creatures as if they had felt pain. They said that the animals were clocks; that the cries they emitted when struck, were only the noise of a little spring which had been touched, but that the whole body was without feeling. They nailed poor animals up on boards by their four paws to vivisect them and see the circulation of the blood."

-- Max Velmans

By this logic, the other objects of the universe, including living ones, do not really matter. They lack something that the self possesses. Morality applies to them no more than it applies to a blender, a clock. Suppose I take a soft plastic toy cat and replace its squeaker with a device that when squeezed made a sound just like a cat in mortal agony. When I stamp on it with my boot, I am not really causing suffering, only the appearance of suffering. I haven't done anything immoral (a little twisted, maybe, but not evil). If animals and indeed the entire universe are similarly insensate, bearing only the illusion of feeling, then the same moral license applies to the whole universe. Such is the implacable conclusion of the Galilean banishment of the subjective from the realm of scientific reality.

-- Charles Eisenstein; Max Velmans' quote taken from same source.

Originally posted by 0zzymand0s
reply to post by randyvs

 

Welcome to ignore. Your posts are now forever beneath my level of awareness. I specifically outlined one plausible scenario wherein an atheist (one who believes in NO GODS) *might* possess a worldview which is immeasurably larger then your own, and you dismissed it as "blah blah blah."

You do not possess the native intelligence to even begin to articulate the nature of this debate, and your idiotic post proves this.

Until you learn to play by the rules that you outlined in your own OP, you are not worthy.

Have a nice day. :p

Hey if the apology isn't enough for you ? Then your to sensitive for my abrasive uneducated demeanor any way.

Or we could agree that, provided you keep your retorts short for the time being ? I could manage my reply's much better.

Again I'm of a limited resource and I APOLOGISE !

Petrus

That's an interesting post.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

If it could be proven by modern science that our reality is an intrinsic manifestation of a higher domain of intelligent light, would you be compelled by reason to accept the God-hypothesis?

Please explain what you mean by (1) an intrinsic dimension, (2) a higher domain, (3) intelligent light and (4) the God-hypothesis.

When you have defined these terms in a comprehensible way*, we can discuss whether or not I would accept such a demonstration. Until then it is simply impossible, because I have not the ghost of a clue what you’re talking about.


*Hint: a definition should make the concept it is defining easier to understand, not harder.

reply to post by Astyanax

I don't have much time right now, but the reference is to the idea of a "tangled hieararchy" within a monistic idealism (consciousness is primary), with reality, our reality, being an emination from a first/last cause ie: from "above" or from a Source, which is continually informing and refreshing our universe, while remaining fully informed all the way along (see Akashic Record, or Field or Zero Point Field). I supposed I am alluding to an intelligent Tao, who's substrate is light, where light is primary as a cosmological connecting principal ie: to a single photon of light everything is touching, and time and therefore and causation have ceased, representing a higher domain or realm of infinite possibility which can only be actualized by conscious choice or an intention, and therefore a will.

By intelligence, I mean information processing leading to an actualized creative choice.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

I don't have much time right now, but the reference is to the idea of a "tangled hieararchy" within a monistic idealism (consciousness is primary), with reality, our reality, being an emination from a first/last cause ie: from "above" or from a Source, which is continually informing and refreshing our universe, while remaining fully informed all the way along (see Akashic Record, or Field or Zero Point Field). I supposed I am alluding to an intelligent Tao, who's substrate is light, where light is primary as a cosmological connecting principal ie: to a single photon of light everything is touching, and time and therefore and causation have ceased, representing a higher domain or realm of infinite possibility which can only be actualized by conscious choice or an intention, and therefore a will.

By intelligence, I mean information processing leading to an actualized creative choice.

Originally posted by Astyanax
*Hint: a definition should make the concept it is defining easier to understand, not harder.

You fail.

Care to try again?

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
our reality, being an emination from a first/last cause

Teleological arguments never work.

I think what the man was asking you - as have I a few times - is can you prove any of your hypotheses to anyone else?

Originally posted by randyvs

A man made religion
that picks and chooses what the individual wants or is convenient to their chosen lifestyle.

sounds familiar, check this out

differant branches of christianity:

Catholic
Orthodox/Eastern Christian
African indigenous sects (AICs)
Pentecostal
Reformed/Presbyterian/Congregational/United
Anglican
Baptist
Methodist
Lutheran
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Adventist
Latter Day Saints
Apostolic/New Apostolic
Stone-Campbell ("Restoration Movement")
New Thought (Unity, Christian Science, etc.)
Brethren (incl. Plymouth)
Mennonite
Friends (Quakers)
church of england

and i probably missed a few

Originally posted by DaveNorris

Originally posted by randyvs

A man made religion
that picks and chooses what the individual wants or is convenient to their chosen lifestyle.

sounds familiar, check this out

differant branches of christianity:

Catholic
Orthodox/Eastern Christian
African indigenous sects (AICs)
Pentecostal
Reformed/Presbyterian/Congregational/United
Anglican
Baptist
Methodist
Lutheran
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Adventist
Latter Day Saints
Apostolic/New Apostolic
Stone-Campbell ("Restoration Movement")
New Thought (Unity, Christian Science, etc.)
Brethren (incl. Plymouth)
Mennonite
Friends (Quakers)
church of england

and i probably missed a few

edit on 25/8/2011 by DaveNorris because: (no reason given)

edit on 25/8/2011 by DaveNorris because: spelling

edit on 25/8/2011 by DaveNorris because: spelling

But those are established religions ( yuck ) by an authority. Although I admit that is about all being established says for them.

reply to post by traditionaldrummer

I think what the man was asking you - as have I a few times - is can you prove any of your hypotheses to anyone else?

Not even that. I’m reduced to asking him to make his hypotheses intelligible.

NewAgeMan, try it like this:

‘An intrinsic dimension means....'

'A higher domain mean...'

'Intelligent light means...'

Like a dictionary, you know?

The reason I ask is that you are using words in a special way, a way in which they are not ordinarily used. You are redefining terms as you use them. Until you explain your definitions, no-one knows what you mean.

In fact, we suspect even you don’t know what you mean.

Care to try one more time? It’s past midnight where I live and I’m going to bed now. You have all night (or all day if you’re American) to figure out how to give sensible, understandable definitions for these terms you’ve used. I’ll only see what you’ve got – if anything – tomorrow. So take your time.

Originally posted by Astyanax

Not even that. I’m reduced to asking him to make his hypotheses intelligible.

In that case of that poster it appears to be a personification of the old phrase "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with B.S.".

Esoteric language is beneficial to the self-made guru. Just ask Deepak Chopra. But Chopra at least will attempt to explain himself and field a few questions. New Age Person is having difficulty answering even gentle questions from ATS members. That's gotta be a rough one.

How can I "fail" in TRYING to describe such a thing?

I'm going to repost these two descriptions, not as an appeal to authority, but instead to offer the descriptions of others more informed and well educated than I am in such matters, both of which amount to the same thing I'm trying, and apparently failing, to describe in words.

"The God Theory" by Bernard Haisch
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249274834&sr=8-1

Haisch is an astrophysicist whose professional positions include Staff Scientist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, Deputy Director for the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. His work has led to close involvement with NASA; he is the author of over 130 scientific papers; and was the Scientific Editor of the Astrophysical Journal for nine years, as well as the editor in chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

an excerpt

If you think of whitte light as a metaphor of infinite, formless potential, the colors on a slide or frame of film become a structured reality grounded in the polarity that comes about through intelligent subtraction from that absolute formless potential. It results from the limitation of the unlimited. I contend that this metaphor provides a comprehensible theory for the creation of a manifest reality (our universe) from the selective limitation of infinite potential (God)...
If there exists an absolute realm that consists of infinite potential out of which a created realm of polarity emerges, is there any sensible reason not to call this "God"? Or to put it frankly, if the absolute is not God, what is it? For our purposes here, I will indentify the Absolute with God. More precisely I will call the Absolute the Godhead. Applying this new terminology to the optics analogy, we can conclude that our physical universe comes about when the Godhead selectively limits itself, taking on the role of Creator and manifesting a realm of space and time and, within that realm, filtering out some of its own infinite potential...
Viewed this way, the process of creation is the exact opposite of making something out of nothing. It is, on the contrary, a filtering process that makes something out of everything. Creation is not capricious or random addition; it is intelligent and selective subtraction. The implications of this are profound.

If the Absolute is the Godhead, and if creation is the process by which the Godhead filters out parts of its own infinite potential to manifest a physical reality that supports experience, then the stuff that is left over, the residue of this process, is our physical universe, and ourselves included. We are nothing less than a part of that Godhead - quite literally.

Next, by Ervin Laszlo

Science and the Akashic Field, an Integral Theory of Everything, 2004
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249275852&sr=8-1

And, his other seminal work
Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos: The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality
www.amazon.com...=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1249275852&sr=8-6

Ervin Laszlo is considered one of the foremost thinkers and scientists of our age, perhaps the greatest mind since Einstein. His principal focus of research involves the Zero Point Field. He is the author of around seventy five books (his works having been translated into at least seventeen languages), and he has contributed to over 400 papers. Widely considered the father of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, he has worked as an advisor to the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2004 and 2005. A multidisciplinarian, Laszlo has straddled numerous fields, having worked at universities as a professor of philosophy, music, futures studies, systems science, peace studies, and evolutionary studies. He was a sucessful concert pianist until he was thirty eight.

In his view, the zero-point field (or the Akashic Field, as he calls it) is quite literally the "mind of God".

Naming Hal Puthoff, Roger Penrose, Fritz-Albert Popp, and a handful of others as "front line investigators", Laszlo quotes Puthoff who says of the new scientific paradigm:

[What] would emerge would be an increased understanding that all of us are immersed, both as living and physical beings, in an overall interpenetrating and interdependant field in ecological balance with the cosmos as a whole, and that even the boundary lines between the physical and "metaphysical" would dissolve into a unitary viewpoint of the universe as a fluid, changing, energetic/informational cosmological unity."

an excert from Science and the Akashic Field, an Integral Theory of Everything

Akasha (a . ka . sha) is a Sanskrit word meaning "ether": all-pervasive space. Originally signifying "radiation" or "brilliance", in Indian philosophy akasha was considered the first and most fundamental of the five elements - the others being vata (air), agni (fire), ap (water), and prithivi (earth). Akasha embraces the properties of all five elements: it is the womb from which everything we percieve with our senses has emerged and into which everything will ultimately re-descend. The Akashic Record (also called The Akashic Chronicle) is the enduring record of all that happens, and has ever happened, in space and time."

Laszlo's view of the history of the universe is of a series of universes that rise and fall, but are each "in-formed" by the existence of the previous one. In Laszlo's mind, the universe is becoming more and more in-formed, and within the physical universe, matter (which is the crystallization of intersecting pressure waves or an interference pattern moving through the zero-point field) is becoming increasing in-formed and evolving toward higher forms of consciousness and realization.

------------

According to James Oroc's experiences (Tryptamine Palace), when the ego is dissolved in consciousness through the temporary formation of a type of neurological "Bose Einstein Condensate", there is no real dilineation or distinction between individual consciousness and God-consciousness or the universal "akashic field" (Lazslo) aka Zero Point Field.

So our apparently differentiated universe of forms follows from a function which may be defined as an intelligent subtraction from or a limitation of, the absolute formless potential, as the Source.

That we are and must be in a relationship WITH such a source, as evolved and consciously aware beings surely cannot be denied, unless the human being is particularized as a mere "thing" instead of an intrinsic part of the entire evolutionary process.

When we add to this conceptualization, the proof of non-locality given by Bell's theorem, and the ideas of a holographic universe or of an explicate reality eminating from an implicate order put forward by David Bohm and others, the implications are utterly astounding.

Additionally, within a monistic idealist frame (consciousness, not matter, as primary) the choosing self, prior to choice, and the collapse of the wave of probability, must also be considered a non-local phenomenon (timeless, spaceless), and a monistic idealism offers the only resolution to the various quantum paradoxes ie: consciousness as the very ground of being, and the most essential "stuff" of life, matter and existence

Thus, as conscious beings, we are, at least in potential, a true "chip off the old OLD block", and how can it be denied that we are not the byproduct of primordial source energy, and thus, through the eternally unfolding present moment, not still in relationship with that same source of all life, right across the entire breadth and depth of all being and becoming? We stand therefore at the threshold of a domain of limitless possibility or what might be called a gateway, of eternal life.

And what I write and the words I use are not simply to placate or satisfy one or two closed-minded atheists, these are simply ideas and descriptions being put forth for anyone and everyone's consideration, and possible benefit, and where it leads, if anywhere, who knows, I'm just TRYING my best that's all, to descibe in words something that by its very nature exceeds the capacity for any distinction or differentiation drawn by the use of language.

Regards,

NAM

.

Atheism is a form of faith all the same. One dogma is not better than another friend. We could sit here for years and debate the accidental vs intelligent design concepts, but at the end of the day we really have no clue. We can make all the things life is made of, but we cannot call them to action/life. Until we understand life, anyone who purports to know the answer is very clearly full of #.

My answer to this big question is. # if I know!

Hmmm, not sure where to begin......

To say that life isn't as full because someone doesn't follow a god/religion is just foolish. There really is no space for religion in a full and happy life. It can only detract it.

If there are Gods up there, then I'm sure that choosing to be a good person is going to count for more than attendance in church. We have free will. In my eyes, people who go to church aren't using theirs. Just another form of sheeple.

Aetheism is a hard thing to discuss in the context of religion because it's not one.

Originally posted by moonleaf
.

What is the universe, to a single photon of light..?