GENIUS FORUMS

You're essentially attacking me for saying "Some things, I don't know". It would be like if you told me a story that last night you saw a light flashing on a hill. I ask you, well what do you believe that that light was? You reply "Well it might have been a kid with a strong flashlight; it might have been an aircraft beacon; it might have been a strobe light at a party; it might have been any number of things." I reply "Your beliefs are too vague. Your thinking is incoherent and convoluted." Is that fair?

Well, that wouldn't be fair if it were an accurate analogy.

Since I never once said to you, "Therefore, I strongly believe in a non-omnipotent omnibenevolent alien," it isn't. (Not to mention the fact that you haven't stated what it is you saw (experienced) in the first place.)

Dan Rowden wrote:Of what can a cosmic or divine (total) consciousness be conscious?

Itself, for one thing.

This is a great thread. I don't really have the time or patience to roll up my sleeves and do point - by - pointers. But so far, my take is that Leyla thinks she has proven God does not exist. That's every bit as impossible as "proving" he does exist. Leyla also sounds a bit jealous of Ernie, and Ernie doesn't sound a bit jealous of anyone. I wonder why that is.

Mikiel, could you take the plug out of your ass and deflate? Stop with the IQ crap. We get it. You are not a moron. And stop with the Melchizedek nonsense. A true Melchizedek would counsel behind the scenes. He wouldn't be up on a soapbox calling everybody else's God-testimonials "second hand," as if his own were not. He would not attract attention to himself since it would be counter productive. I thought you were abandoning the rude-boy persona, mikiel.

Leyla also sounds a bit jealous of Ernie, and Ernie doesn't sound a bit jealous of anyone. I wonder why that is.

Because you're an idiot.

Then there’s this beauty:

I've already told you that I was agnostic to start with, remember? I didn't "need" to believe in God, then, and I don't "need" to now, but it is quite a potent belief to have. I didn't overturn my agnosticism lightly, either. For example, I don't believe in logical proofs for God, nor do I believe in revelatory scriptures. Empirical evidence is what I go on.

Ha! There's not a religious bone in my body.

You don’t believe in logical proofs for god, yet you appear on this forum to do what, then, if not proselytise the virtues of your own personal religious experience?

Just how you think your claim to not having a religious bone in your body would be taken seriously is, quite frankly, not so unbelievable given your “thinking” so far.

Leyla Shen wrote:

You're essentially attacking me for saying "Some things, I don't know". It would be like if you told me a story that last night you saw a light flashing on a hill. I ask you, well what do you believe that that light was? You reply "Well it might have been a kid with a strong flashlight; it might have been an aircraft beacon; it might have been a strobe light at a party; it might have been any number of things." I reply "Your beliefs are too vague. Your thinking is incoherent and convoluted." Is that fair?

Well, that wouldn't be fair if it were an accurate analogy.

Since I never once said to you, "Therefore, I strongly believe in a non-omnipotent omnibenevolent alien," it isn't. (Not to mention the fact that you haven't stated what it is you saw (experienced) in the first place.)

Read the bold face part (my emphasis). You just completely missed Ernie's analogy.

Leyla Shen wrote:Then there’s this beauty:

I've already told you that I was agnostic to start with, remember? I didn't "need" to believe in God, then, and I don't "need" to now, but it is quite a potent belief to have. I didn't overturn my agnosticism lightly, either. For example, I don't believe in logical proofs for God, nor do I believe in revelatory scriptures. Empirical evidence is what I go on.

Ha! There's not a religious bone in my body.

You don’t believe in logical proofs for god, yet you appear on a forum to do what, then, if not proselytise the virtues of your own personal religious experience?

Just how you think your claim to not having a religious bone in your body would be taken seriously is, quite frankly, not so unbelievable given your “thinking” so far.

He's not proseletyzing. He's testifying. Not allowed in your court? "Your Honor"?

[laughs!] Yeah, ok, numbskull.

Leyla Shen wrote:[laughs!] Yeah, ok, numbskull.

May I go back to my cell now?

brokenhead wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote:Of what can a cosmic or divine (total) consciousness be conscious?

Itself, for one thing.

What self?

Fuck's sake.

He's "testifying" in typical religious fashion: speaking in tongues!

May I go back to my cell now?

You never left it. The Holy Ghost proxy doesn't count in my Court.

Dan Rowden wrote:

brokenhead wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote:Of what can a cosmic or divine (total) consciousness be conscious?

Itself, for one thing.

What self?

Are you not aware you exist? You think, therefore you are. You have not required anything external to yourself to prove this to yourself. Why would a putative divine consciousness not have the same awareness? It's as if you were saying "Let's suppose a divine consciousness exists. What could it be aware of, if it doesn't exist?" We are supposing that it does. If so, it could be aware of itself.

Leyla Shen wrote:Fuck's sake.

He's "testifying" in typical religious fashion: speaking in tongues!

May I go back to my cell now?

You never left it. The Holy Ghost proxy doesn't count in my Court.

You know, I never got to make my one phone call...

Get on your knees and pray, darlin'.

Just realized that Gaia's conscious - via wizard circuit.

earnest: Let me explain the dishonesty in simple terms for you then, Leyla. You started off by claiming (and later failing to justify that claim, but that's another story) the impossibility of the God that I described. Clearly then, you found it well-defined enough to "know" that it was impossible.

Leyla: Clearly then, I have proven him to be impossible

That's a complete non-sequitur.

Leyla Shen wrote:since I was the one who defined and correctly labelled “his” glorious vagueness, bringing him and all his contradictory and vague glory into contrast with truth for you. If you don’t believe me, take an honest look.

"into contrast with truth"? Exactly what truth have you contrasted my beliefs with? That God is man's creation? I've already explained how this is a dogmatic bias, and you still have failed to respond to my explanation. That's the only "truth" that I've seen you expound on.

"contradictory"? What exactly is contradictory about the conception of God that I have presented to you? You identified a contradiction in my claims, which I explained. As to any contradictions in my conception, you'll have to lay them out on the table if you want us to acknowledge them, Leyla, rather than to simply allude to them.

As for vagueness, I'm not ashamed to admit that where I don't know, I don't make things up, although I do speculate. I've already explained by analogy why there's nothing wrong with that.

Leyla Shen wrote:If you were an honest man, you would simply say that I proved your God to be impossible

Your audacity is astonishing. Exactly how have you proved my God to be impossible?

Even if you ignore everything else in this post, this is the one question that I expect you to answer. With a solid argument.

Leyla Shen wrote:rather than projecting your immorality onto me

I have no idea what you mean by this. What immorality exactly? And how am I projecting this immorality onto you?

Leyla Shen wrote:whilst strongly, secretly, believing I‘m acting, being, forcing evil...

Ha! Your mindreading is no longer a secret! Now you're free to buy a crystal ball and join the gypsies.

In other words: I'll tell you what I "strongly, secretly" believe, not the other way around.

Leyla Shen wrote:That’s the problem with god-believers like you. Total irresponsibility and irrationality.

Actually, the only one demonstrating irrationality around here is you, Leyla. You're the one who advanced the incredibly biased argument that God necessarily is a creation of man. You're the one who finds problem with someone saying "I know this much, but beyond that I can only speculate", and thinks that somehow this proves wrong what is already known.

As for irresponsibility, I have no idea what you mean. Care to justify it?

earnest: Uh, yeah, well you made a complete mess of that.

Leyla: It's your mess.

You misrepresent me and then claim that your misrepresentation is my mess? How's that for irresponsibility?

Leyla Shen wrote:You really ought to clean it up

There's nothing to clean up. There are just areas where I lack knowledge.

Leyla Shen wrote:rather than expecting others to do it for you

Hey, you took it upon yourself to attack me, I certainly didn't expect you to "come in and clean up my mess". I'd actually far rather you'd kept your dogmatic nose out of it: there's been very little in this dialogue for me except the chance to practice my skills of forbearance and of debating.

Leyla Shen wrote:as you sit back behind your gaping holes of nothing, thinking you've been responsible for something.

Again, more misrepresentation. First off, I have tangible beliefs: they aren't merely gaping holes of nothing. Secondly, what is it that you think that I think I've been responsible for?

Comments in passing:

This post of yours strikes me as being comprised almost entirely of assertion and opinion, with essentially no argument. You claim to have proved the impossibility of my God, which is an entirely laughable claim, and which you present no argument for beyond "your God seems vague to me": there's plenty of definition there, Leyla, you just have a desire to paint me as an irrational moron, so you choose to ignore the well-defined aspects of my conception of God.

Basically what it comes down to is this, Leyla: there are no valid logical arguments for or against my conception of God (at least, none that I have seen or can imagine). His existence is an empirical matter. You haven't experienced anything that leads you to believe in such a God. Fair enough. That doesn't mean that such experiences are impossible, and the fact that you are so invested in trying to deny this speaks to a deep emotional bias - which is quite ironic since you claim that my belief in God is emotionally-based (it isn't). Further evidence of your emotionality is the fact that you condescend and swear so much. You're clearly very invested in your perspective, and unwilling to acknowledge the validity of my point of view even when I counter every one of your arguments.

Leyla Shen wrote:

You're essentially attacking me for saying "Some things, I don't know". It would be like if you told me a story that last night you saw a light flashing on a hill. I ask you, well what do you believe that that light was? You reply "Well it might have been a kid with a strong flashlight; it might have been an aircraft beacon; it might have been a strobe light at a party; it might have been any number of things." I reply "Your beliefs are too vague. Your thinking is incoherent and convoluted." Is that fair?

Well, that wouldn't be fair if it were an accurate analogy.

Since I never once said to you, "Therefore, I strongly believe in a non-omnipotent omnibenevolent alien," it isn't.

The corresponding statement from the analogy is "Therefore, I strongly believe that there was a flashing light on the hill last night."

brokenhead wrote:You [Leyla] just completely missed Ernie's analogy.

Exactly.

Leyla Shen wrote:(Not to mention the fact that you haven't stated what it is you saw (experienced) in the first place.)

There's not a chance in hell that I'm going to share it with the likes of you.

Leyla Shen wrote:Then there’s this beauty:

I've already told you that I was agnostic to start with, remember? I didn't "need" to believe in God, then, and I don't "need" to now, but it is quite a potent belief to have. I didn't overturn my agnosticism lightly, either. For example, I don't believe in logical proofs for God, nor do I believe in revelatory scriptures. Empirical evidence is what I go on.

Ha! There's not a religious bone in my body.

I don't know what you think you're proving there. You seem to be grasping at straws. It's quite revealing of your attitude: anything to try to prove that my thoughts are less than rigorous. You really are invested in it.

Belief in God needn't be religious. By "religious" I mean belief in a set of doctrines, regular participation in rituals, membership of a church or other organisation, etc. All of that is very far from me.

Leyla Shen wrote:You don’t believe in logical proofs for god, yet you appear on this forum to do what, then, if not proselytise the virtues of your own personal religious experience?

All that I've done is participate in a discussion on the nature of God, started by someone else. I haven't been proselytising at all. I couldn't care less whether you share my belief or not.

Leyla Shen wrote:Just how you think your claim to not having a religious bone in your body would be taken seriously is, quite frankly, not so unbelievable given your “thinking” so far.

Probably we have different ideas on what "religious" means in the context in which it occurred. See above for my understanding.

As for you casting aspersions on my thinking, that's pretty rich. You're the one whose "thinking" includes the necessity that God was invented by man, and the nonsensical belief that you have proved God to be impossible.

You're so busy blah, blah fucken blahing you miss the incredibly simple and obvious truth!

The corresponding statement from the analogy is "Therefore, I strongly believe that there was a flashing light on the hill last night."

I tell you "I saw a flashing light and its cause could have been x, y and z; therefore, I believe in a flashing light" is analogous with your undisclosed (I don't care if you don't tell me what it is, by the way) experience and the subsequent belief in an omni-omnipotent, omnibenevolent god therefore I believe in a non-omnipotent, omnibenevolent god"?

Get real!

(More later.)

I'm being real, but you don't have to believe me.

It might not have been light after all: it might have been a new form of radiation that affects the eyes in the same way, yet you still believe in it as light because that's the most rational explanation.

I see no evidence, nor have you provided any (and I don't care!), for your anthropomorphised god. (Besides, you can't even be sure it wasn't satan playing tricks on you, now can you....).

Yes, that's rational---not irrational, as I've been telling you.

brokenhead wrote:

Dan Rowden wrote: What self?

Are you not aware you exist? You think, therefore you are. You have not required anything external to yourself to prove this to yourself. Why would a putative divine consciousness not have the same awareness? It's as if you were saying "Let's suppose a divine consciousness exists. What could it be aware of, if it doesn't exist?" We are supposing that it does. If so, it could be aware of itself.

Can't you see man you're anthropomorphising God. Leyla has only mentioned it about half a dozen times.Fuck me.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Leyla Shen wrote:I see no evidence, nor have you provided any (and I don't care!), for your anthropomorphised god.

Apparently not. That doesn't mean that it can't exist.

Leyla Shen wrote:(Besides, you can't even be sure it wasn't satan playing tricks on you, now can you....).

And you can't be sure that your mental processes aren't the result of a group of aliens beaming conscious thoughts - which you mistake for your own - into your mind. Yet presumably you don't believe that.

This is a world of much uncertainty. There are only a few things that one can be definitively sure of. One simply makes one's best judgement based on the evidence, being open to the possibility that one is wrong.

Leyla Shen wrote:Yes, that's rational---not irrational, as I've been telling you.

You've been telling me that my God is impossible, without a shred of justified argument to back you up. That, Leyla, is irrational.

Ataraxia wrote:Can't you see man you're anthropomorphising God.

I've already explained the inherent bias in this argument. The implicit claim in it is that - because we learnt of ourselves first - it is impossible for another being with similar characteristics to exist: that that being must be a figment of our imaginations. That's just utterly flawed reasoning.

Rubbish.

The flawed reasoning is deciding to change "god" to "being" to make yourself sound rational in hindsight.

In fact, come to think of it, what you have just demonstrated is the most disingenous, base and contemptible quality a human or an alien could possibly possess.

And to think you sneered at the mention of the word Scientology!

Leyla Shen wrote:The flawed reasoning is deciding to change "god" to "being" to make yourself sound rational in hindsight.

I don't even know what your point is. A being to me is a conscious entity. You are a being, animals are beings, angels and demons are beings, God and the Devil are beings. I'm not "changing" God into anything, I'm placing Him into a category. What's your problem with that?

Leyla Shen wrote:In fact, come to think of it, what you have just demonstrated is the most disingenous, base and contemptible quality a human or an alien could possibly possess.

Very intriguing. What quality is that?

Leyla Shen wrote:And to think you sneered at the mention of the word Scientology!

I can't even remember when Scientology came up. As it happens, though, I find Scientology to be highly implausible as a representative of truth, although who really knows - many things are possible. The fact that one has to pay so much money to learn it makes me very skeptical.

Earnest-seeker wrote:

All that I know is that God manifests as a separate, conscious, personal entity.

I don't believe that He is either omnipotent or omniscient.

But make no mistake, God is an active participant in reality.

As far as I can see, you have turned God into an alien creature of some kind, a conscious extra-terrestrial, which has the effect of reducing your spiritual outlook to that of believing in UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster, and the like. I don't see how your conception of God has any relevance to the core spiritual task of opening one's mind to the nature of Reality.

Indeed, the way you regard the whole matter as an empirical one only serves to trivialize your outlook from the outset.

ES: All that I know is that God manifests as a separate, conscious, personal entity.

Iolaus: How do you know this.

ES: It's something that I'd rather not go into publicly. I'd be willing to share it via PM if you're interested.

It's a worry that while arguing for the existence of an alien god you are unwilling to share the evidence for it in public.

Oh, and of course the other main way in which we disagree is on the nature of the Devil and evil. To me these are real, tangible things, which are natural (and relatively equal) oppositions to God. Reality is a battleground, which one only recognises when one is in certain states. Some drugs can do it to some people. I've been there, and I've experienced evil in action.

You're not projecting your own emotionals issues here and turning them into metaphysical entities under the distorting influence of an altered state?

Let me give you an example of the difference to me between an idea and a belief, and how what I'm talking about in you applies. There's a belief (so strong that it's classed by them as "wisdom") of many on this forum, particularly its moderators, that the universe is infinite in physical extent. They have no proof of this, and the evidence that they have so far (that so far our telescopes have not detected an end to the universe; that in our experience space seems to be continuous such that one thing leads to another) is suggestive only. To me, there's a reasonably strong chance that they're right. But to me it remains that: an intriguing idea that might be right, whereas to them, it is a strong belief such that they won't countenance alternatives. That's the kind of thinking that I was trying to highlight in you: forming a strong belief about something (i.e. "that God definitely does not exist"; "that the universe is infinite in physical extent") when the possibility actually remains that something different is the case (i.e. "that God - or a being sufficiently similar to retain that title - exists"; "that the universe peters out at it's edges or wraps around on itself") and sufficient evidence has not yet been accumulated. That kind of dogmatism is rife on this forum.

As one of the moderators, I don't subscribe to that belief. I don't think Kevin or Dan do either. So you're mischaracterizing us here.

All I affirm, as far as this issue is concerned, is that Reality is everywhere and everywhen. This is a consequence of Reality being defined to be utterly everything, the totality. There is no point where Reality ends and something else begins.

As for whether the universe is infinite in extent, I don't have any views on the matter. It is one of Nature's unknowables. It is infinite in the sense that it isn't finite - that is, it doesn't have boundaries and a distinguishable form (again, by definition). But that doesn't necessarily mean that the physical universe extends infinitely outwards in all directions.

I make it my business to not subscribe to any form of dogmatism whatsoever. So if you think you see any other instances of it, please point it out.

[To Anna]: Oh, yes, you are the very epitome of Woman. You haven't had a logical thought in your life: henid city, baby, henid city. You're probably also in the process of manipulating some poor sucker into some form of delusional (as they all are) romantic relationship with you (if you haven't done so already), probably with the intention of polluting the planet with more unconscious souls who haven't a hope of enlightenment (again, if you haven't done so already). You'd best be off and enjoy your shopping and gossip, sweetheart - these forums are clearly going way over your head.

I pretty much agree with that. Anna is earnest, but after reading over this thread her thoughts are still very henid-like to me. Amongst the jumble of different traditional concepts clashing together (particularly Christian and Hindu), there is fantasy, confusion, contradictions, vague conceptions, and an awful lot of wishful thinking going on.

I also find it interesting that she wants to become a "companion" of God, which suggests that she still conceives of spirtuality in terms of having an emotional relationship with another.

-