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Grant Meisenholder
Trad climber
CA
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//This tells me that there is really no such thing as a atheist, only those who choose to ignore
the Truth they have seen clearly presented to us all through what has been made.//
I completely agree, except switch the word "atheist" for "rational religious person".
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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JL, I think you haven't understood my point, perhaps you interpreted my statement as saying that religious, spiritual, etc are not real because they are not realizable physically. Certainly the ideas are real, and ideas do motivate people to act, so their effects are tangible.
My point is that these ideas are the result of a physical process which is measurable. Exactly how the ideas come into existence is still unexplained in detail. But even if they were explained as the result of a purely physical process, they could be thoughts of all those things you are talking about. There is certainly nothing which precludes that possibility.
Techniques to manipulate thought through training the mind can lead to insight regarding the mind, also on the perception of reality.
The duality here is not the usual western one... at least not as I understand it...
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jstan
climber
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Assume: there is a creator
Assume. the creator made everything
Assume. everyone sees what has been made
Then: non believers are ignoring (not admitting the existence of) the world around them.
That is easy to test.
Hold a non-believer under water. If he recognises the water exists just before he has drowned then he goes to heaven.
If he does not, he goes to hell.
This was done with witches in New England in the 1600's.
A wonderful resolution for the problem of non-believers.
Christians believed this was Christian in the 1600's.
How about you Flanders?
Did Jesus go around arguing death for non-believers?
Or were the Christians in 1600, not quite Christian?
And if they were not quite Christian, do you suppose others today may also suffer from this malady?
If this is true is it not our duty to discover the truth?
Perhaps the answer is to drown some Christians.
If they go to Heaven, they were Christian.
If they go to Hell, voila, we have shown they were not Christian!
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WBraun
climber
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jstan
We're already in hell, it can only get worst, there will be no more television.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Ed wrote: "My point is that these ideas are the result of a physical process which is measurable."
What I'm saying, Ed, is that "ideas" are one thing, and I agree that ideas are in large part tied to brain, though I doubt in the way you are saying, i.e., that the brain "creates" ideas, or that an idea is the "product" of neuro functioning. As I've said before, the neuro-functioning IS the idea.
Where do you suppose is the separation or distance between the neuro-fuinctioning and the idea?
However ideas are "content," or stuff, things, measurable units of energy. Raw awareness itself is not this, nor is it a brain (content, material, etc.) function, created by the brain nor yet a property. The stuff constantly geysering up from "nothing" in measurable. The borderless field in which thoughts, ideas, neurofunctioning, hormomes, blood, sweet and tears arise is of course measureless.
Though I'm not well enough versed in QM to know exactly what it is all about, but I've heard others say that awareness is like the wave function (not "there") and thoughts are "matter" to which all science (measuring) is rooted. But of course the wave function and the matter, or awareness and thought, are the selfsame. Zen construs this concept as: Emptiness is form and form is emptiness - exactly.
To understand this experientially, you'd simply have to meditate till you understand that awareness itself is non-local, impersonal and totally ungraspable. Till that time your thoughts and evaluating mind will tell you awareness is a creation or product of the evolved brain. Of course awareness will never argue because the witness is not "you."
JL
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jstan
climber
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"there will be no more television."
Ahhhhhh!
Heaven!
At last.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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One last thought, returing to the idea that one day you woke up and forgot all your beliefs or mental constructs. Undestand that this question has been considered by inquiring minds for ages, especially by hard core Quantum Mechanics hombres.
Schrödinger, in his little book "What is Life?" points out that what is meant by 'I' is not the collection of experienced events but namely the canvas upon which they are collected. If a hypnotist succeeds in blotting out all earlier reminiscences, he writes, there would be no loss of personal existence - "Nor will there ever be."
This last clause - "Nor will there ever be" a loss of personal existence is a reiteration of his belief that the true "I" and true personal existence lies in the canvass on which "things" are collected, not in the things themselves. This underscores Schrödinger's sympathy with Hindu concept of the Brahman, "that each individual's consciousness is only a manifestation of a unitary consciousness or infinate wave form pervading the universe."
Go figure that would come from the old Austrian playboy.
JL
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Flanders!
Trad climber
June Lake, CA
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Funny that this draws such vitriol. All it says is that we can know that God exists. It's not quite
filled with the hatred and death to sinners that you guys want to add to it.
The God I know reaches out with mercy, grace, and love...extending those gifts to anyone who
cares to take hold of them, but never forcing anyone to walk with him or follow his advice.
Personally, I see it as a good thing and attempt to walk the talk (with difficulty at times), and just
like I see in Him, If God himself does not badger or coerce anyone to accept His advice, I don't
feel like I should either. Dialogue is good, the sharing of our experiences, but beyond that
I can only be responsible for what I think and do, and hope the best for my fellow man. It's up
to each of us to find the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Doug
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Gobee
Trad climber
Los Angeles
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If there is no God then we are just rats running on a treadmill!
But THANK God He IS!
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apogee
climber
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Flanders and Gobee:
Religion is for those who need it.
Unknown
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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rrider-
Another variation on your theme that I like is the idea that corelates the extinction of so many animal species with the growth of the human population. As more animals die, their souls have to go somewhere so they jump into all the new humans being created.
Thus there are more and more animals masquerading as human beings. Conversely there are more and more first time inexperienced humans struggling to figure out what it is to be human anyhow.
Of course this may actually be an insult to the animals.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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ghost-
I'm assuming that your creation account featuring raven is from the North American Native tradition?
I am reminded of a Hindu saying from India also involving a raven. Imagine a raven flies from the flat plains next to the Ganges to the crestline of the Himalayas once every thousand years. The raven then takes a beak full of dirt from the mountains and flies back to the Gangetic plain with it. When the Himalayas have been reduced in this way to be as flat as northern India, then one day will have passed in the mind of God.
Needless to say, Hindus have no problem with the idea of evolution.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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I'm a little late to the discussion tonight. I was posting many pics on the Facelift thread. Yo all might want to take a look. Many pics include you and the ending is for our heart, soul, mind and being....as we address here. Be back wit yo all manana. Tired. Discussions presented today great and enjoyed reading. Peace, lynnie
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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Weschrist-
Translation please?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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"like the wave function"
well, really the wave function is an abstract construction which allows us to calculate the probability of an occurrence of some process so described... formally, we never measure the wave function, only it's magnitude. It is, no doubt, an approximation to reality and a provisional concept of great utility. You can call it truth, but I prefer to think of it more as a very useful idea.
It is easy to get twisted up into knots (and everyone early in the quantum mechanics game did) over the physical interpretation of the wave function, but I don't think that any of that twisting and knotting resulted in much productive insight. After the resolution of the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paradox (the apparent non-locality of the non-relativistic quantum mechanics and the non-existence of "hidden variables") we take a much more subdued view of the whole thing.
Quantum mechanics remains a fertile ground for all manner of bizarre ideas by people who aren't willing to actually learn it. Maybe we physicists should be more willing to teach it.
I don't accept your point about "raw awareness," as being anything particularly special, and certainly it is a subjective concept. Learning how to change your thoughts in response to the sensory perception, and even to alter what is perceived is possible. When the observer does this, does it alter physical reality? No.
As far as Schrödinger concept of individuality, well I don't see where it addresses the difference between a purely mechanical explanation for what we experience vs. a spiritual one... both are consistent with our "observation."
If your arguments live by the wave equation, they die by the wave equation too. A universal wave equation does not have entanglement because its coherence cannot be maintained... in our world it gets us back to what we see around us, not what we detect at the atomic scale.... that idea is hogwash, as far as the physics is concerned.
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Didn't Fred Beckey date an "Ardi" BITD?
Ron, ROTFLMAO
And yet there is no mention of Islam…
Hey Bluey I mentioned it in my post of October 3
“Jesus Christ was real, but the shite idiots that thought up the religions that believe in the God of Abraham (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) and use it for their own agenda are just that, SH#TE. And of course other crap religions and cults (such as the cult of Scientology).”
And now that the Italian judicial system has ruled that Berlusconi is not above the law and is not immune from prosecution, do you think GAWD will save his crooked arse?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Ed wrote: "I don't accept your point about "raw awareness," as being anything particularly special, and certainly it is a subjective concept."
This is a tough one for people to grasp: that awareness itself is not a concept (content) nor is it personal (remember, I said it was impersonal). But if you're still thinking that awareness is "produced" by your brain, then you're left with your own conclusions.
Also, a physical interpretation of awareness is silly, since it is entirely insubstantial. And try proving it even exists. It's like the ontology of the wave function:
"Whether the wave function is real, and what it represents, are major questions in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Many famous physicists have puzzled over this problem, such as Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Some approaches regard it as merely representing information in the mind of the observer. Some, ranging from Schrödinger, Einstein, David Bohm and Hugh Everett III and others, argued that the wavefunction must have an objective existence."
JL
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jstan
climber
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"Funny that this draws such vitriol. All it says is that we can know that God exists. It's not
quite filled with the hatred and death to sinners that you guys want to add to it."
To repeat:
"All it says is that we can know that God exists."
Flanders, what you posted with its faux-logic allows us to know nothing. Nothing at all. And
it was Christians following this kind of imitation logic who were actually drowning people or
burning them at the stake.
If people were trying to sell Christianity without employing enforcement (heaven/hell and
that nonsence), and were just saying the things Hillel and Christ actually said, in modern
days you would get a friendlier reception.
The bible is a pastiche of words pursuing unknown agendas of the day pasted together over
thousands of years. Somewhere there has to be a well researched and documented book
giving us what the founders of Christianity actually said. It may be only one page but
whatever the length, Christians need to go to it and follow that.
That is if you really want to be Christian.
And those who do want to be Christians have a real problem. There are a huge number of
people claiming to be Christian out there pushing their own agendas using religion as a
cover.
A huge credibilty problem.
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Jan, no comments on my questions to you from a couple pages ago? Too bad!
Radical - no problem, apology accepted. I had to graph out the lineage for myself to get it straight in my head, so I know how tricky it can be. But I'm pretty careful to insure that before I write something as fact, that it's something I've double/triple checked from various sources.
One thing I discovered when I graphed this stuff out is this: There was a period over 100,000 years long (from about 250,000 years ago to 120,000 years ago) when there were four entirely unique hominids roaming the earth! In addition to us (Homo Sapiens), there were Homo Erectus, Homo Rhodesiensus, and Homo Neanderthalis. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be around then? Three other sort of people-ish people who you might occasionally run into - alike, but horribly strangely different. I sometimes wonder if this is how the idea of Aliens got into the zeitgeist, the greater human subconscious. A lurking fear of the "other" out there - somewhere. What are they like? No-one knows for sure, though there are many tales...
In fact, Homo Sapiens shared the earth with one or another Homo species for 85% of our time here. That has *got* to have had an impact. And most recently, it was with Neanderthals, who must have been very scary - significantly larger and more powerful, and, at first anyway, totally comparable intellectually.
Okay, now going waaay back in time...
Regarding the age of the MRCA between humans and and chimps - I think it gets tricky to figure out genetically, in part because it's thought that there was interbreeding between the Homo (ancestors of us) line and the Pan (ancestors of the chimps) long after the two diverged. My reading of it is that there's pretty clear mixing of the two in our own DNA.
Who knows, perhaps Ardi's people kept the ancestors of today's chimpanzees as something like pets/slaves, and occasionally bred with them. It may seem repulsive, but remember, the ancestors of the chimps were likely just as different from today's chimps as we are from Ardi.
GO
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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jstan wrote: And those who do want to be Christians have a real problem. There are a huge number of people claiming to be Christian out there pushing their own agendas using religion as a cover.
Just change the phrase "huge number" to "All".
Of course, if you believe it, then your particular "agenda" is simply "truth". And who can argue with that?
G
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