GENIUS FORUMS

Carl G wrote:

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: That would be called the lack of reason and equal to a statement of faith. Why do you not clearly speak out your beliefs and disregard for reasoning about the core tenets of your belief? It would make it so simpler to ignore it for everyone not interested in celebrating religious convictions with you.

You're right, this is like David Quinn venturing his opinion, stated as fact, that definitely we dissipate like clouds when we die. It may be logical from one standpoint but it's unsupported by actual evidence and is certainly unprovable.

Now if David would have compared the lack of intrinsic existence, or our self or any other thing, to a cloud formation hovering above Camelot castle a thousand years ago, I'd agree.

So what is the difference here?

Quinn takes a universal verifiable fact: that we experience, that there's not "nothing whatsoever" and compares it to an near universal observation about the lack of definition of a cloud: always changing, moving, being formless while having many forms as well as being caused and causing constantly.

This is not a matter of evidence, it's a matter of quality of reasoning: in how far wisdom, knowing the nature of reality and our existence, is being exposed. David doesn't make categorical statements of knowing exactly what happens after death, the exact nature of that process. In some ways he sidesteps the whole issue of death and afterlife and brings it back into the only realm where one can build on certainty instead of building ones house on the sandy land, always craving more empirical evidence.

Of course you know all this Carl but you're so in love with being the iconoclast, challenging a perceived common stance and group think, dogma or consensus agreement that you might throw out the baby with the bath water at times.

prince wrote:Right, it just happens at random, a person just occurs out of nothing, no reason, it just happens. The fact that a sperm and ovum starts this proccess is purely random and accidental, without any consequence...Sure, and pigs fly.

No. There are definitely causes, or reasons if you want to call them that, as to what happen. It's also entirely arbitrary to say the process of a human being coming into existence starts at conception, because there are infinite causes that lead up to this, and there will be infinite effects because of it. You imaginary creator which you have no evidence for would be nothing more than just another link in the chain, ultimately no more significant than anything else. What's sad about you is that not only do have you become so attached to one particular cause, so much so that you block out an infinite amount of other causes, but the cause itself can not even be empirically validated.

prince wrote:Ok, so in your view, you are a completely chance event, with no purpose, no inherent intelligence, except in a relative to your own experience sense, which makes you nothing at all because you are just bouncing of other chance events. You have no soul, is what you are saying, and I agree.

It is precisely because I give myself purpose and correctly understand my place in the universe that I do have a soul. When you start interpreting the fact that there is no ultimate purpose given from on high as there being no purpose and no soul, that only speaks to your lack of a soul. It's easier for you to just sink into an unconscious state where all purpose is dictated to you, ironically, by your own imaginings.

prince wrote:It's not blocking out reality. You are doing that, by thinking you inherently exist outside of a reference point that frames your existence. That's what God is.

The question of being rescued is related to how well you can reconcile your spiritual-self with your chemical one. They exist in the same space, but are unaware of each other, until you awaken, then they become fused, locked into place.

When and if this happens, you will know.

If it doesn't, then you are completely fucked.

Nothing inherently exists, and nothing needs to be reconciled. God, if you want to use that word, is just a way of pointing to the formless nature of reality and how it gives rise to the forms we see and experience. Until you understand this you will continue rambling on incoherently about things that couldn't even concern me on a superficial level.

Nick Treklis wrote:

prince wrote:Right, it just happens at random, a person just occurs out of nothing, no reason, it just happens. The fact that a sperm and ovum starts this proccess is purely random and accidental, without any consequence...Sure, and pigs fly.

[quote/]

No. There are definitely causes, or reasons if you want to call them that, as to what happen. It's also entirely arbitrary to say the process of a human being coming into existence starts at conception, because there are infinite causes that lead up to this, and there will be infinite effects because of it.

Right, infinite effects, is what you said. And you hold to the ridiculous idea that these effects are purely random in origin. It's about as likely as winning the lottery a thousand times in a row.

Chaos begets chaos, order begets order. This is the premium law of physics and nature.

A lung is a lung, it wasn't half a lung, or three-quarters of a lung, or a slightly-less than full functioning lung, ever.

Nick Treklis wrote: Nothing inherently exists, and nothing needs to be reconciled. God, if you want to use that word, is just a way of pointing to the formless nature of reality and how it gives rise to the forms we see and experience. Until you understand this you will continue rambling on incoherently about things that couldn't even concern me on a superficial level.

That's because you are on the superficial level.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Don't tell me you're still getting drunk, on common Christianity and all the low brow stuff?

Don't tell me you're still getting drunk on the idiotic idea of atheism, that all is by chance?

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:

Carl G wrote:

Diebert van Rhijn wrote: That would be called the lack of reason and equal to a statement of faith. Why do you not clearly speak out your beliefs and disregard for reasoning about the core tenets of your belief? It would make it so simpler to ignore it for everyone not interested in celebrating religious convictions with you.

You're right, this is like David Quinn venturing his opinion, stated as fact, that definitely we dissipate like clouds when we die. It may be logical from one standpoint but it's unsupported by actual evidence and is certainly unprovable.

Now if David would have compared the lack of intrinsic existence, or our self or any other thing, to a cloud formation hovering above Camelot castle a thousand years ago, I'd agree.

So what is the difference here?

Quinn takes a universal verifiable fact: that we experience, that there's not "nothing whatsoever" and compares it to an near universal observation about the lack of definition of a cloud: always changing, moving, being formless while having many forms as well as being caused and causing constantly.

This is not a matter of evidence, it's a matter of quality of reasoning: in how far wisdom, knowing the nature of reality and our existence, is being exposed. David doesn't make categorical statements of knowing exactly what happens after death, the exact nature of that process. In some ways he sidesteps the whole issue of death and afterlife and brings it back into the only realm where one can build on certainty instead of building ones house on the sandy land, always craving more empirical evidence.

Of course you know all this Carl but you're so in love with being the iconoclast, challenging a perceived common stance and group think, dogma or consensus agreement that you might throw out the baby with the bath water at times.

No, I believe David, as well as Kevin and probably Dan, has stated unequivocally that when humans die they dissipate like clouds. He has drawn this from logical inference. They use this to dispute the possibility of literal reincarnation. They do not allow for the possibility of survival of the soul after the body dies. They do not acknowledge a soul as separate from the body. They say "look up at the sky and see the cloud drifting apart, its elements rejoining the whole to become another form, and you see what happens to you and I at the end of this experience, we are extinguished and then become something else. We can not survive our bodies, there is nothing in us to live beyond our bodies. Nick Treklis is also a big proponent of this idea. But in fact it is unverifiable.

I think prince was always on the gumper due to a literal reincarnation station.

Wow, Steve, that was almost coherent.

Carl G wrote:No, I believe David, as well as Kevin and probably Dan, has stated unequivocally that when humans die they dissipate like clouds. ... They do not allow for the possibility of survival of the soul after the body dies.

Perhaps you misread them. Or I did.

But isn't it obvious that when anything is described like clouds, coming into being every moment, changing shapes every moment and reborn the next, that whatever is happening after our death will be of that same nature? The main problem is not the afterlife, it's ones definition of soul. Can you call what lives on really "me"?

The truth is that already you're a memory of a former self. Most of your time and energy is geared toward keeping that idea intact, keeping up the appearance of continuity for the sake of functionality. Who knows, some might even keep it up after death and haunt old houses. That's actually very easy for me to believe in a world already inhabited by soul-eating ghouls not realizing they're dead already while haunting the crypts they call home.

That was well put and bears both further thought and a hope for clarification from the authors mentioned. In any case you are correct in saying definitions to terms such as soul will be crucial to obtaining clarity. Also precise definitions to 'life' and 'death'. I do believe their original statements referred specifically to the transition that appears to happen when one's present physical body expires, but you are right, this is a larger subject than that.

But isn't it obvious that when anything is described like clouds, coming into being every moment, changing shapes every moment and reborn the next, that whatever is happening after our death will be of that same nature? The main problem is not the afterlife, it's ones definition of soul. Can you call what lives on really "me"?

I think you just need to get it down to "nah."

(I think I just sketched an inner crop circle)

prince wrote:Right, infinite effects, is what you said. And you hold to the ridiculous idea that these effects are purely random in origin.

No. There is no origin.

prince wrote:Chaos begets chaos, order begets order. This is the premium law of physics and nature.

One man's chaos is another man's order.

prince wrote:A lung is a lung, it wasn't half a lung, or three-quarters of a lung, or a slightly-less than full functioning lung, ever.

Everything is in flux.

Even if your imaginary creator existed, he would just be one more cause in the infinite web of causality, which wouldn't make him more of a creator than any other entity.

Nick Treklis wrote: No. There is no origin.

Oh I see, so everything that appears to be real, has an origin, but altogether it has no origin? You do realize that is completely fucking illogical?

prince wrote:Chaos begets chaos, order begets order. This is the premium law of physics and nature.

Nick Treklis wrote: One man's chaos is another man's order.

A nice attempt at refuting, but actually it's lame as hell. You are talking from an anthropocentric point of view. It's like saying ones man's cancer-ridden liver is another man's healthy liver.

prince wrote:A lung is a lung, it wasn't half a lung, or three-quarters of a lung, or a slightly-less than full functioning lung, ever.

Nick Treklis wrote: Everything is in flux.

Everything now? So that would include your comprehension of reality, being in flux. Or is that the exception?

A lung is fluctuating between being a lung, and not being a lung, is that right? So it's sometimes working and sometimes not.. but even when it's not working right, it's still maintaining an organism that is able to not only live, but also mutate its own lungs into something that works better than it did. because of course a lung is evolved from something much simpler, but still worked as a lung, right? but it kept evolving because all the other organs were evolving in tandem! by pure chance!

Yes this is totally believable.....

prince wrote:Oh I see, so everything that appears to be real, has an origin, but altogether it has no origin? You do realize that is completely fucking illogical?

Everything that appears is real and has no origin. Neither does the Infinite have an origin.

prince wrote:A nice attempt at refuting, but actually it's lame as hell. You are talking from an anthropocentric point of view. It's like saying ones man's cancer-ridden liver is another man's healthy liver.

It was not attempting to refute your argument. I'm showing you that we see "order" because we have evolved in a way that allows us to work with our surroundings in an effective manner, not because there is an imaginary inherent order to the universe.

prince wrote:Everything now? So that would include your comprehension of reality, being in flux. Or is that the exception?

There is no exception. All things are in flux. You and I are reborn every moment.

prince wrote:A lung is fluctuating between being a lung, and not being a lung, is that right? So it's sometimes working and sometimes not.. but even when it's not working right, it's still maintaining an organism that is able to not only live, but also mutate its own lungs into something that works better than it did. because of course a lung is evolved from something much simpler, but still worked as a lung, right? but it kept evolving because all the other organs were evolving in tandem! by pure chance!

Yes this is totally believable.....

Instead of spinning what I say you ought to give a sincere attempt at trying to understand what I actually mean.

There is no exception. All things are in flux. You and I are reborn every moment.

In eternal argument.

Nick Treklis wrote:Everything that appears is real and has no origin. Neither does the Infinite have an origin.

Again, illogical. How can it be something if it stems from nothing? It's nonsense, impossible. How can you (being an aspect of this nonsensical infinite nothing) make sense of that which is nonsensical?

Nick Treklis wrote: Instead of spinning what I say you ought to give a sincere attempt at trying to understand what I actually mean.

Oh I understand exactly what you mean, and I'm telling you its horseshit.

An organism, such as a human, can not evolve from something simpler or less sophisticated, by virtue of the fact that it relies on it's environment to facilitate that change. If it is relying on the environment for sustenance (food, water, oxygen) , it is already adapted, it cannot change without putting its own survival at stake. There is no impetus or propulsion for it to adapt any farther than what it already is. The idea that a human evolved from something simpler is not even remotely possible.

If you want to entertain the idea that humans evolved from fish, you have to believe that these organisms had a lung and a gill, and spent their whole lives lying half in the water, and half in the air, and as the breathing apparatus evolved, then they spent most of their lives with progressively less of the 'body' submerged in water, etc etc.

Does that seem evenly remotely feasible?

I have an idea. How about you got enroll at your local community college and take a basic science class that includes the theory of evolution in it's curriculum and a philosophy class that includes an intorduction to logic in it, and get back with me. Until then, there's no point in wasting my time debating a lunatic who I suspect has never had any type of formal schooling, is addicted to drugs, or has some serious psychological issues that need to be professionally dealt with.

I have an idea. How about you stop denying God?

Then you can find some peace in your otherwise pathetic life.

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:The truth is that already you're a memory of a former self. Most of your time and energy is geared toward keeping that idea intact, keeping up the appearance of continuity for the sake of functionality. Who knows, some might even keep it up after death and haunt old houses. That's actually very easy for me to believe in a world already inhabited by soul-eating ghouls not realizing they're dead already while haunting the crypts they call home.

There is always continuity. Memory is not only mental. Even the concept of clouds changing shape or consistency or what have you needs continuity. Otherwise, each incremental "change" is really an entirely different static cloud. It's just a question of where the continuity comes from, above or below. (Both???)

divine focus wrote: Even the concept of clouds changing shape or consistency or what have you needs continuity. Otherwise, each incremental "change" is really an entirely different static cloud. It's just a question of where the continuity comes from, above or below. (Both???)

There's no reason to assert each momentary glance would not give us an entirely different static cloud by all indicators. Everything constantly changes, we occupy a different coordinate by our minuscule body movements, a thousand body cells dying and being born in the mean time, billions of the cloud molecules having changed state or moved in time and space. What's the exact point that one cloud is gone and the next emerges? Or when the whole cloud front dissipated before our eyes? Who is gonna tell us to which degree a change has occurred?

One could just as well say the cloud is entirely new and different each moment. Each experience is like that. But one can also connect it with earlier experiences using our memory and create continuity.

While one could consider an external underlying unbroken, united continuity, still the way we perceive and experience remains heavily quantized. Starting with the concept of beginning and ending, life and death, and including the notions of before and after life. And even soul.

prince wrote:

If you want to entertain the idea that humans evolved from fish, you have to believe that these organisms had a lung and a gill, and spent their whole lives lying half in the water, and half in the air, and as the breathing apparatus evolved, then they spent most of their lives with progressively less of the 'body' submerged in water, etc etc.

Does that seem evenly remotely feasible?[/quote]
-----
Carmel:

You described the basic premise of evolution quite well, for someone who, apparently, doesn't believe in it. :)

Yes, it's feasible because it happened as fossils records have confirmed. It's name is "Tiktalalik". Three beautifully preserved specimen of it were found in 2004. It's a mix of fish and amphibian and has both primitive lungs and gills, wrist and shoulders bones.

...just one example of many, of transitional fossils. There are many others.

Carmel wrote:Yes, it's feasible because it happened as fossils records have confirmed. It's name is "Tiktalalik". Three beautifully preserved specimen of it were found in 2004. It's a mix of fish and amphibian and has both primitive lungs and gills, wrist and shoulders bones.

Oh ok, and you think I'm going to accept that at face value, a bit of tenuous evidence strung together? From what, three specimens? Big fucking deal. Evolutionary examination has proven time and time again to be built on false assumptions. And how exactly does a 'primitive' lung or gill (whatever that may be) evolve into something better? How can a lung be less than a lung? It's either a lung, or its not. There is no transition possible, because in order for it to transform, it has to cease being what it is, therefore it would cease the lifeform of that which it's supposedly attached to. It's impossible.

Where's the rest of the evidence? All the bits in-between?

I'm certainly open to the idea of evolution, but my instinct tells me it's wrong, and I trust my instinct above a textbook.

Your instincts could use a little remedial education:

Evolution 101

yeah sure Dan, we are both evolved from the same organism, and yet we have distinctly different instincts?

And that is explained, how?

You evolved from slime? Ok I accept that!. I know I didn't.