I'm an atheist, and lover of science.. but I had to wonder, what if there is something beyond our p

Originally posted by miniatus
Anyone who knows me by my posts knows that I'm a logical, scientific minded person.. and an Atheist at that.. but I decided to let my mind wonder a bit beyond logic and came up with an interesting thought.. and I'm sure others have considered this so I'm not taking credit for anything.. this is just how my mind wondered..

It's well understood, well not exactly, but understood at least.. that our thoughts, senses, emotions.. and everything that makes us "us" .. is driven by our brian.. that jello up in your skull.. it drives everything that we do and sometimes it malfunctions of course.. but it's the pilot and our bodies are the machine that it controls.

It's also firmly believed as fact by those of us that are science minded.. that when your brain ceases to function, you are no more.. fade to black.. existance is gone for you.. Well this is where I allowed myself to break out of my logic restraints ever so briefly and think... what if that isn't true? .. what if we really are some being of energy that is simply locked in our physical form? much like a cocoon for a butterfly, and what if it's not the mind that informs the body, but that energy that informs the mind merely to drive the body.. energy never goes away it merely transforms...

I do not do drugs, I'm mentally fit, I'm not under any influences =) so don't go there .. I'm just allowing myself to slide out of my typical rational ways to ponder the possibility .. I've seen "ghosts" when I was younger, it very well could just be that it was my imagination.. but if not.. something like this could certainly explain it .. I just can't imagine any way to "test" this idea.. does it really seem that far fetched? What do you think?

I believe anyone and everyone thinks of this...Even the ones who do believe in "God" its just human nature.

I believe in there being something after death, Maybe not another Life, as we have it now, but some sense of being, after our earthly self dies. Every time I think about what death will be like, I feel like it wouldn't be fair for there not to be nothing after death, because us as humans want answers to why we are here.This is why I dont fear death, 1) Because I dont belive in a Heaven or Hell. and 2) I believe it will give me a higher sense of life and show me the answers to every humans question to why and how we became alive.

And what you said about not being on drugs wasnt really a point you needed to cover....I've done the Hallucinogenic drugs. I think those hallucinogens only make you see or experience whats already going on inside you brain.

Someone correct me if im just rambling and getting off topic, but thats what i think..

You can always hedge your bets.

I don't think that any deity is interested in a bunch of people prostrating themselves in front of them and worshiping them.

Rather I think that if there are deities that they are interested in your own development.

So all you have to do is learn to love your fellow people. Accept them for who they are and be kind to them .

reply to post by Krazysh0t


Yes, thankyou.

Note to self: ATSing while drinking Makers mark and trying to talk metaphysics is a no-no.

reply to post by miniatus


There comes a time when everyone has to pick a side man. I was a disbeliever once myself, until 2 years ago. Sometimes things happen that science cannot explain, and there's a great many things science can't explain. I studied the paranormal for 10 years after an incident in Y2K. I'd heard about sprits and stuff going to sunday school as a kid but it was more of a type of thing where i'd pull the covers over my head so i could get to sleep at night. I grew out of it as i got older, filing it under irrational fear. In Y2K i found out there wasn't anything irrational about it. When i was working security at a country club. Strange things happening here and there. A door i had locked would be wide open, lights turned on i had turned off. My job was to make sure everyone was out of the building at midnight and the only key passed directly from the manager to me and back to him in the morning so there were no spare keys for anyone to pull a trick on me with. Anyways, one night i was sitting in the men's bar and grill in the old subasement part of the original structure built in 1905. I had the tv on and i was sitting in the couch waiting for my next walkabout and at about 2:15-2:20 AM i heard an old man laughing in the locker room. There was only one way into the locker room and a person would have to walk by me to go in there so no one could have even been in there. So i went and investigated the noise and found nothing and went to sit back down. About 1 minutes later i heard the old man laughing again in the same lockeroom. I went back in and checked and again nothing.

A few nights passed by, and i decided i didn't want to even go down there because that old man would keep laughing, but there was no one there., So i decided to go to the new section of the building and hang out in the president's lounge. It hadn't even been an hour when every had left and i locked up when i was sitting at the bar and the wineglasses started shaking and none of the shotglasses or beer mugs were shaking just the wineglasses. I called my superviser and told him about teh strange crap going on and by the time i had called him there was quite a bit and thats when he told me i got the job because the last guy walked off the job when he was walking down the hallway in the old subasement and he turned around and had seen an apparition of an old man looking at him and trying to talk to him. Turns out the old man laughing had been the same old man my predecessor had seen. Needless to say i didn't keep that post, it got to the point where i wouldn't even go in the building after midnight.

I'm a christian (about 2 years now) and it's been a long road getting here and i've learned there's only one name spirits fear, Jesus Christ (Messiah Yeshua) and i quit messing with EVP and EMF detectors and cameras because that crap draws them to you and christians are forbidden to communicate with the dead. The last incidents i had was 2 years ago before i was saved and i was hearing footsteps walking across my floors and no one was there, i heard someone walk up behind me and turned around only to find no one, and my wife had seen somoene walk into the bathroom while she was showering and thought it was me but i was at the other end of the house in my office. I had cups thrown at me and no one was there to throw them and they hit the wall, and once a voice turned on my light at 4 am when i was in bed and told me "Get up!". It was very unnerving to know you were alone but you could feel another malevolent presence there with you.

As an atheist myself, (also an agnostic), I don't think that just because you don't believe in a god, that you can't believe in an afterlife.
There are many things that we have little or miminal information or evidence for, but it is indeed a universe of wonder.

No one knows the truth because no one has ever lived to tell the tale. (And for those who would point to NDEs, well, if you come back from the dead, you were never truely dead.)

Keep asking the big questions!

Originally posted by smilesmcgee
...if you come back from the dead, you were never truly dead.

Remember Lazarus?

thanks for your post, I like your approach to the subject. Careful, curious and concise in your own particular way.

I'm an atheist, and lover of science.

Well at this moment you consider yourself and atheist, but really that is just a thought about the way you have become. That can change like the remote car you mentioned, but after all that is not the driver. So if it is not the driver its not really you.A lover of science is a love for a way in gathering information about a wide spectrum of subjects. A preference! the you that you are has preferences but these preferences are not you. If they were you they would have to be always the same. But just take musical preferences, they change. At one point you like "old McDonald had a farm" the next you like Blondy.So if we take you analytical scientific approach you have just realized there is a crack in that method. The scientific mind can no longer continue to ignore this, because to do so would be to ignore something that has shown its face.

Why must it be beyond you? Why can't you think it's you? But then again it is the nature of the ego to claim that it has a higher self.

Lets look at water for a moment, and see that it is a liquid today. Then comes a time when this liquid changes form during a particular "season," and becomes ice. And as another "season" comes along, that same water is capable of becoming steam. It is fundamentally the same thing, but takes on multiple forms. So in the same way, why must one separate the body and the spirit? Spirit means breath, it's life, it's vibration - inhale, exhale. The body itself is vibration and life. The soul, that is the psyche/mind, is also vibrating, or pulsating if you will. So, why separate it all? It's all one. All things vibrate, they pulsate, they go from dark to light to light to dark; from life to death to death to life; from sound to silence to silence to sound; from chaos to order to order to chaos; from no-thing to everything to everything to no-thing.

So here you are as John Doe or Mary Smith, hearing stories of an afterlife and contemplating whether such a place exists or not, and thinking what if I am more than I am? Well, you are more than you are because you're everything and nothing, and there is an afterlife but it's also a before-life. It's all seasonal, it's all pulsating. One cannot discover all sides if he clings to one side only: try to hold your breath... you won't last long, because you need to exhale before you can inhale again, and you need to do both to live - "He who tries to save his life will lose it." The reason there even is life is because of this "duality," but duality always contradicts itself unless one realizes that it is in fact non-dual. So when one clings to either this or that, one is contradicting himself. It is not simply this or that, but this and that, because this wouldn't exist without that, otherwise it wouldn't be this.

I hate the idea of having to play for a "team" be it Christian, Muslim, Atheist, or whatever religion or institution you choose to associate yourself with. It's all been proliferated for the same purpose, to divide and conquer.

I choose to just be, I believe there is intelligent design to the universe, and I believe that Mankind is in charge of it's own destiny.

Originally posted by Konduit
I choose to just be, I believe there is intelligent design to the universe, and I believe that Mankind is in charge of it's own destiny.

Right there, you have tossed in your lot with the "intelligent design" crowd against those who will criticize you for your "medieval beliefs" and trust in something that is neither observable, nor measurable. Choose your side, or they will choose it for you.

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by Konduit
I choose to just be, I believe there is intelligent design to the universe, and I believe that Mankind is in charge of it's own destiny.

Right there, you have tossed in your lot with the "intelligent design" crowd against those who will criticize you for your "medieval beliefs" and trust in something that is neither observable, nor measurable. Choose your side, or they will choose it for you.

Who cares if other people judge what one is or isn't?

Nobody knows who we as a species are or where we came from.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with people believing whatever makes them feel comfortable to believe.

It doesn't matter whether there is a creator or if we are the creators - either way, we are still here, we are still alive, we must still figure out how to move forward.

I can't see any benefit to claiming to be either atheistic or deistic in any way, other than to categorize oneself for judgement on worthiness to others.

*shrug*

Miniatus, you say you like to think rationally and logically and scientifically. But, you admit that not all of your life experiences can be unequivocally defined by rationalization or logic or science.

This is because our existence and our perceptions of our existence are defined and shaped by dimensions around us that we have barely even started to discover.

There's nothing wrong with thinking outside of the box of your self-imposed category. Knowledge is infinite and cannot be confined to a check-box. I feel like I should tell you that you should explore what you are thinking, if only to learn about how other people experience the universe.

Go for it.

I have not read the entire thread yet but here are my thoughts after brushing over the first page:

A few weeks ago, I experienced a major setback in my life when the thought of how deficient and untrustworthy my brain is and began to wonder if everything, I mean EVERYTHING, including my personality, was an illusion. If my mind can malfunction enough to make me suffer hallucinations and the like from time to time, and my brain is the means for which I can measure and weigh my surrounding universe, how do I know ANYTHING is real? I mean, your senses are wired to your brain, and your brain interprets everything that you can attest that you factually know, so if you live, as in my case, with a mental disability, how do you know that ANYTHING is real? See that's a real scary thing to the logical and skeptical atheists (not meaning to sound derogatory, as I actually admire atheists for many reasons, also because I briefly adopted their ways for a time, before arriving at my destination as a Gnostic Luciferian with atheistic or agnostic tendencies -- cautiously spiritual you might say.) See, for one, if there are in fact beings that CAN influence the brain to do whatever they want, then how do you know that you are not their prisoner and you are not being subjected to a fake universe? I am not saying that is what I personally believe, but it is one thought I sometimes entertain, including the idea that we are actually a race of ageless or immortal beings just passing the time and playing a sort of "game" to entertain ourselves, because after doing everything after a long period of time and knowing so much, wouldn't it be a relief to be given a chance to "start over" or live differently or something like that. It would be like Star Trek's holodeck -- a way of experiencing new things and exploring ideas such as personality and whatnot and what really makes you "you." I also had dreams that we are a race that outlived the universe we were in, and now live in a confined space surrounded by darkness where everything is dead, and by indulging in such "games" is the only way we can continue to experience anything "new." There are any number of possibilities that might explain the concept of the "soul" and it may just be according to the "rules" or "physics" of this particular dimension that we change if our brain is damaged. You mentioned that the brain might be something like an antenna or receiver, right? Well, can your TV produce perfect pictures if the signal is weak or if the antenna is damaged? No, the person you are is still the same, somewhere, but your signal has become mixed and weakened, just like the signal is still broadcasting undamaged somewhere but you just can't get it all or get it perfect. Your phone or Wi-Fi can't operate properly on a weak signal either, so yeah, it is feasible in my opinion... Might read a few more pages on this to get some more info as the subject is explored...

Also, please note that I do not know if there really is a soul, and am still suffering from a certain lack of confidence that I might just be an illusory being, or that the very notion of "ego" is illusory, although it factually cannot be squelched unless you are dead, IMO. I accept that I might just disappear when I die. I however, in this time of lack of evidence, would rather remain a little optimistic and hopeful...

what if we really are some being of energy that is simply locked in our physical form? much like a cocoon for a butterfly

I like this analogy. Just yesterday I was explaining our essence to a friend and mentioned how we change vessels just how you said.

You are a spiritual being, it is slowly taking over you and you will not be able to stop it.

Apparantly ascension occurs and you are reborn. You just need to find a ascended master to equip you with your parachute for eternity. If the primary chute fails then pull the reserve. if that fails as well you able to go back and get a refund.

Originally posted by ottobot

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by Konduit
I choose to just be, I believe there is intelligent design to the universe, and I believe that Mankind is in charge of it's own destiny.

Right there, you have tossed in your lot with the "intelligent design" crowd against those who will criticize you for your "medieval beliefs" and trust in something that is neither observable, nor measurable. Choose your side, or they will choose it for you.

Who cares if other people judge what one is or isn't?

Nobody knows who we as a species are or where we came from.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with people believing whatever makes them feel comfortable to believe.

It doesn't matter whether there is a creator or if we are the creators - either way, we are still here, we are still alive, we must still figure out how to move forward.

I can't see any benefit to claiming to be either atheistic or deistic in any way, other than to categorize oneself for judgement on worthiness to others.

*shrug*

Miniatus, you say you like to think rationally and logically and scientifically. But, you admit that not all of your life experiences can be unequivocally defined by rationalization or logic or science.

This is because our existence and our perceptions of our existence are defined and shaped by dimensions around us that we have barely even started to discover.

There's nothing wrong with thinking outside of the box of your self-imposed category. Knowledge is infinite and cannot be confined to a check-box. I feel like I should tell you that you should explore what you are thinking, if only to learn about how other people experience the universe.

Go for it.

I agree with everything you said.

I used to care about how I labelled myself and how people would judge me for that. I've stepped outside myself on several occasions asking myself those gigantic questions about spirit, self, science and what is considered fact or fiction. I could go on to tell you how I feel about it all, but you are you, and I am me. For the sake of discussion if somebody asks, I typically tell them that I'm agnostic. I used to be an atheist, or would call myself one and would do battle with others who thought differently. I despise myself now for that.

I guess you could say that I've had experiences with certain mind altering drugs, philosophical questions and scientific reasoning for the betterment of my life.

An ongoing war between my perception and what I value as concrete knowledge. I feel nothing is concrete in a sense, and that we can open as many doors as we wish to attain that good night's rest, but part of the drive to live is not knowing to put yourself out there with those odds. I do value logic and reasoning but there's a point where one can hold a dangerously militant point of view while telling themselves that they prefer to step outside of the box, when merely they have one foot out the doorway, afraid to leave that space.

There's this prismatic vibe associated with the spirit, or this energy. I very much value the scientific knowledge I acquire in this life and how it pertains to the material world and my journey through it. It could be true that all things fade to black at the end, or it could be true that it is another beginning. How exactly does the self manage to incorporate itself into a body from birth? Do we return to that slumber only to awake again? If all things do fade to black, can there possibly be another way of vibrating through something else and perceiving things differently?

These things are ultimately a circular discussion most of the time.
 

well yeh what i meant was what was said above.

reply to post by miniatus

Rumours of another world?

Welcome to the unknown. I do not believe a position of atheism is possible.

1) You can never lay claim to having seen everything
2) Since 1 is true, you must be open to the possibility there could be something else out there with which you are unfamiliar. And that something could be (insert adjective and noun here).

If you deny 2, then you are simply in a state of denial.

reply to post by miniatus


I haven't read this thread, just your OP. All I wanted to say was that I think it's really cool that you're just thinking about that. I've never had a time in my life that I didn't think there was more than just this physical life I'm living, though I will admit I have had moments where I've considered "what if this is all there is?" Those moments are depressing for me, so I have a hard time understanding the atheist view and going through the motions of life with that view. I'm not trying to attack anyone that is atheist, just saying I don't get it.

Anyway, star and flag just for you sharing something really personal. I think it's cool.