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

reply to post by daskakik


ok we can potentially know, but we dont know for sure right now?

reply to post by ImaFungi


Now that is something I can I agree with, with one condition. While I agree that as a scientific consensus we don't know now, do you think that there are people who would be able to know now? They would make for some really hard core theists/atheists.

reply to post by daskakik


because there is truth.,,., there is an answer to the question how did the universe come into existence,..,.. just as its possible for us to one day know through science,.,, perhaps its possible for a human to guess, intuit, or imagine the truth correctly,,,,,, this is something ive thought of before,,.,.,. but asked the question in this form i think,.,.,,,

do you think any human that has ever lived has grasped/understood/visioned accurately the true nature of reality?

I know how much we have progressed since thomas edison has been alive,,, but ive always thought this quote by him was cool.... ( might be a lil paraphrased)

"We know a millionth of one percent of nothing"

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?

What you're saying is really smart. You got to keep thinking outside the constructs of what seems logical and scientific. Look you know logic and science. Now get to know spirit. Just let you mind wonder, and start asking the hard questions.

Like... "God are you out there and if so show yourself to me as I what to know if you're real or not??"

Like that is a daring question. I wish more people would actually take the time to ask that. Even when you're about to go to sleep and your thinking. Just ask it to yourself and to the universe. But be ready that's all I can tell you.

Originally posted by ImaFungi
do you think any human that has ever lived has grasped/understood/visioned accurately the true nature of reality?

I think that the poster below your post and probably above this one summed it up pretty well.

Look you know logic and science. Now get to know spirit.

The problem is that science requires confirmation and peer review. Maybe knowing that information in this day and age doesn't lend itself to that. Doesn't mean that someone can't have knowledge of it. If they indeed did it would not be based on "semi beliefs out of ignorance" as you posted earlier.

Agnostic originally meant that the agnostic cannot define God because God is ineffable. Therefore, if one says, “I believe that X exists” , one has made a meaningless statement.
I have reached a bolder conclusion. Words are meaningless. The plato.stanford.edu... cannot be true. If it were true what does it correspond to? Another correspondence theory of truth and an infinite regress occurs en.wikipedia.org... style.
Words are meaningless but they are purposeful. For example, suppose my wife knows no language. I hold a rock and tell her it is a yjbujy. The next day someone tries to rob us. I yell, “yjbujy”!!! She picks up the yjbujy * and kills the mugger.
I am currently studying mysticism ( the belief that reality must be grasped directly and without the intermediary of words) and Zen.

* Spell check says that I spelled yjbjy wrong! LOL

PS; Another argument that proves that language is meaningless,
“Supposing I teach someone the use of the word "yellow" by repeatedly pointing to a yellow patch and pronouncing the word. On another occasion I make him apply what he has learnt by giving him the order, "choose a yellow ball out of this bag". What was it that happened when he obeyed my order? I say "possibly just this: he heard my words and took a yellow ball from the bag". Now you may be inclined to think that this couldn't possibly have been all; and the kind of the thing that you would suggest is that he imagined something yellow when he understood the order, and then chose a ball according to his image. To see that this is not necessary remember that I could have given him the order, "Imagine a yellow patch". Would you still be inclined to assume that he first imagines a yellow patch, just understanding my order, and then imagines a yellow patch to match the first?”
FROM
www.geocities.jp...

reply to post by ImaFungi

I think i get what your "opponent is arguing.,,.., he is saying the evidence of the existence of the universe and the existence of complex forms and science and intelligent life clearly proves a god created this universe,,.,,.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Originally posted by totallackey
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

I think i get what your "opponent is arguing.,,.., he is saying the evidence of the existence of the universe and the existence of complex forms and science and intelligent life clearly proves a god created this universe,,.,,.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

ok my bad,,, i thought you were arguing for the possibility of an intelligent entity......

you were just arguing for the futility of holding anything but agnosticism as a belief? *


* please tell me how wrong and far from the truth i am.... yet again.... without simply stating what it was you were arguing..

** you - " now i dont even wanna talk to you.... humph"

Originally posted by totallackey
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

I think i get what your "opponent is arguing.,,.., he is saying the evidence of the existence of the universe and the existence of complex forms and science and intelligent life clearly proves a god created this universe,,.,,.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

if you argue for agnosticism what i stated above has to be a viable potential in order for agnosticism to never just always be atheism...

reply to post by Konduit


It's not like that. It's not a team or a club, although I think many look at it that way. At it's very base, it's a relationship with God. That's all. You recognize that He exists, and accept that Christ died for our sins so that we won't be separated from God. That's what hell is. Being separated from God forever. Being here on earth isn't being separated from God. His creation is all around us. All beauty we experience is from Him. I took the opportunity to accept the reality that He exists.

And yeah, there's a lot of crap in the world. That's because we have free will. Since he desires a relationship with us, he gave us the free will to accept Him. Otherwise it would be a fake relationship. Like getting married and your wife is only there because she has no choice. And that's not real love.


I should have added that the Matthew 7:7 does say "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.". So keep seeking. Keep knocking. You'll find. He promises. I started with the New Testament. I started with Matthew, chapter one. By the time I got through John, I started to see... It's been 28 years now.

reply to post by ImaFungi


At no point did I make any argument for deity or creationism or intelligent design...that was not the essence of the argument, nor was it ever discussed. How you ever arrived to the point of phrasing my argumentation in this light is beyond amazing and strains credulity.

The fact you interpreted what i was arguing in this fashion simply demonstrates a decisive inability to understand what was written or a purposeful lie.

Originally posted by miniatus
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.

Well mister, that's actually not true at all. Why?

There have been experiments with rats, where they let them learn something, a maze for example, they scan their brains to see which area light up, cut that part out, and the rats still remember what they learned.

When people get brain damage, sometimes they lose their memory. But that memory can slowly come back. If it was stored in the brain or driven by the brain and it was damaged, how does it come back?

There are cases of people with water heads that have just a millimeter thick of brain cells on the inner surface of the skull, and can still function completely normal, get university degrees and such. Why do they have the same capacity if they lack such a huge amount of grey matter?

The best analogy of the brain seems to be that it's a TV set receiving and processing signals. Scientists assume that because a part of the brain lights up, that that part of the brain is causing it. Or because a part gets damaged and certain stuff doesn't work anymore, that the brain is causing everything, but that's fallacious. If you cut a wire inside your TV, maybe your sound stops working, or it can no longer display red or whatever, but that does not mean that the TV is the source of the color or drives the sound or stores images or whatever. The brain is a decoder of information, like a processor.

I suggest you read The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake. It tackles unfounded assumptions of modern science, and shows with references to papers how experimental evidence have contradicted these assumptions. It tackles the whole mind body problem too.

reply to post by totallackey


so in no way can you be anything but an atheist.

reply to post by miniatus


Reader note: I tend to use "truth" a lot not to say it is proven fact, but instead my own personal truth. Take that as you will.

My take on this has transformed greatly over the years. I was once a firm believer in the soul, then I became a firm non-believer, and now I have simply taken more of a middle ground on the subject...or a totally different road depending on your perspective.

My current definition of the soul is that it is the essence of who we are to others and to ourselves. I see the soul as more of an idea and perception than an actual thing. I believe we like to grasp onto the idea of the soul, our essence, carrying on because we are driven as successful living creatures to survive. What better way to survive than to think we are truly an ethereal being that lives on past death?

I do not believe this is entirely a lie though, it simply ties into the greater truth of our existence. The truth is we are all eternal and always have been, just not in the ways we tend to think as humans. Like you stated, we are made of an eternal energy that is neither created nor destroyed. This energy has taken many forms over what we call time, morphing from one state to another. We as individual people are a collections of star bits, planets, and kings: a collection of things that were and things that are. We will continue to add new bits of energy and release old bits as we grow older and eventually die. We are forever changing and are never the same person that we were even a second ago (when talking physically or even spiritually).

Our idea of soul, or self, is a way of coping with this constant change. We as living creatures need the stability of order to live in our world and survive, hence a solid idea of self (soul) and of time. Life evolves to live and spread, that is our most basic purpose and goal. These survival tools sometimes cause us to think in ways that are opposed to the reality of the universe we live in. We think of ourselves as...well...ourselves; an individual separate from the universe around us.

Personally, I think the better answers of who we are come from looking beyond ourselves and into existence and non-existence as a whole. Like I mentioned before, we see ourselves as individuals and like to think we continue on in such a fashion after death...or even during life. The truth is we are never "just ourselves", we are all of existence and non-existence...we are the greatness of everything and nothing. Our human minds must perceive ourselves as separate entities from the universe for survival reasons, but we are never truly a separate entity, just a part of the whole.

I tend to think our idea of the soul and of joining a collective upon death is a bit of a natural understanding of the truth of our existence in the universe and how we are never truly separate. I am also inclined to believe this is why shamanism existed as the first religions, a natural understanding of the universe and "soul" that gradually shone through. With time these beliefs become what we see around us today in religion and other various philosophies.

Anyway, I think I am rambling now.

So I guess to answer your question: in a way we are energy that is locked in a cocoon, a cocoon of the mind and self. We are indeed freed from this cocoon when we die, but only in the manner that it is shown to never have truly existed in the first place.

reply to post by ImaFungi


Please review the thread. The argument is worded here.

reply to post by totallackey


please review your link,, it sent me to the beginning of the thread,, you cant just tell me in a few simple words? are you in the age range of 24 - 27 and do you live in england or the midewest usa?

reply to post by ImaFungi


Sorry. The context of the argument is this:

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.

T&C essentially reads thou shalt not solicit personal information from other members.

Logic is weird! For example, If I say, “ all ravens are black” I can add to the likelihood of that being the case by looking at my tennis shoes and knowing that there is something not black that is not a raven!
en.wikipedia.org...
Theoretically, one can add to the probability that God exists by imagining something that does not exist, for example unicorns! ( There is something that does not exist and it is not God) Anyway, I am just freely speculating. Perhaps, it does not apply to God but it does show the newly discovered paradoxical nature of logic. Logic ( and maths are a sub-set of logic ) lack the certainty that we once expected of them.
en.wikipedia.org...
It has gotten to the point where a new counter intuitive logic was devised!
plato.stanford.edu...
PS; en.wikipedia.org...

Here is something very weird, from a very respected person en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by totallackey


I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this vortex - but this "logic" is confounding!

You do not believe a position of atheism is possible because no one has seen everything? Well then you can't be a Christian or Muslim or whatever because you haven't either? If people lived by those 2 rules then everybody would be on the fence about everything.

Is it possible there is a god? I guess so but, I BELIEVE THERE ISN"T based on my personal experiences. Just as some do believe based on their personal experiences.