we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Wed Mar 27, 2013 8:32 am

Met says:
Then again, what if consciousness emerges into some much better and more blissful state. Would you even CARE if you could remember yourself - remember the old you?- IE once you've arrived at "samadi" or "mystical union" maybe all bets (about the 'self') will be off.... it won't matter anymore.
I think we would have to remember our former lives, identities and aspirations, because otherwise there would be no basis in the kind of character development that I see going on with internalizing the values of the good. If we didn't remember and understand our struggles would there be any real internalizing? Values are personal and the are linked to our specific lives and the things we have been through.

As for the question "is the ego the true self" i have argued that spirit is mind. Perhaps the thing we designate as "spirit" is the "true self." Ego is the aspect of will that balances between id and superego (if we are Freudian--perhaps something similar but without "id" and "superego" if not). So we might think of spirit as the aspect of mind that is deeper than the superficial balancing acts of these personality aspects that some have called "id" and "superego."
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by met » Wed Mar 27, 2013 9:49 am

Meta, my own view is like yours, but I was thinking a little more widely, considering all the possibilities. In the karmic traditions - eg - they believe actions taken in past lives aren't (usually) remembered but affect us in terms of character traits and situations we are reborn into. Or, even in THIS life, something can happen that changes us essentially into 'someone else.' Eg - falling in love. Or a brain injury.

Or, Kris Rhodes told me his view once. He believes everybody's spirit returns to God eventually, but only after their sin has been 'burned away', so to speak. So, possibly there might be little or nothing left of a person's personality except for temporal continuity with their former existence. In a sense, his view was a cross between universalism and annihilation.

..... it gets really complicated, no?
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Thu Mar 28, 2013 10:05 am

met wrote:Meta, my own view is like yours, but I was thinking a little more widely, considering all the possibilities. In the karmic traditions - eg - they believe actions taken in past lives aren't (usually) remembered but affect us in terms of character traits and situations we are reborn into. Or, even in THIS life, something can happen that changes us essentially into 'someone else.' Eg - falling in love. Or a brain injury.

Or, Kris Rhodes told me his view once. He believes everybody's spirit returns to God eventually, but only after their sin has been 'burned away', so to speak. So, possibly there might be little or nothing left of a person's personality except for temporal continuity with their former existence. In a sense, his view was a cross between universalism and annihilation.

..... it gets really complicated, no?
well of cousre I can't prove this but I sort of like to think that we will be hooked up with God telepathically, the body of Christ and all. So we will know it all. We will know everything because God will be like this big library of all things and we will have access to it. that's the fancy of a would be professional scholar!

Another thing, all the "crack pots" (if they are) who believe in reincarnation always have hypnotism memories of their past lives. So the theory I've heard in occult source is that there's this thing called "acashic record." My poor spelling probalby got that wrong. It's like a spiritual library. It's all recorded. so apparently in circles where they worry about such things they like the idea of having access to the memories.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by met » Fri Mar 29, 2013 12:21 pm

well of cousre I can't prove this but I sort of like to think that we will be hooked up with God telepathically, the body of Christ and all. So we will know it all. We will know everything because God will be like this big library of all things and we will have access to it. that's the fancy of a would be professional scholar!
the question is: suppose if you did know everything. Would you still be 'you?' Or would u be more like God? :shock: (Shocking thought - Meta as God. Might not be the best possible outcome for some of those CARM atheists)

Anyway, the point is, defining 'self.' What could survive? Is it the self? The boundaries of 'self' aren't nearly as easy to demarcate as it might seem on the surface, so fleet's going to have to be careful here .... ;)
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
Dr Ward Blanton

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:00 pm

Duplicate
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:04 pm

(I have only read the last few posts on this thread)

I'm reading this book and it argues that there is no proof that the mind depends on the brain (the brain produces the mind). It is assumed and people give arguments of brain damage, etc., as support for that. The mind depending on the brain is assumed via materialism.

The author says that the brain can very well act as an intermediary of the body and the mind in a two way transmission. And the book addresses this idea. But I have not not finished it yet. Damage to the brain would be the impairment of the transmission.

I now kind of figure I am the stuff of whatever reality is made up of, maybe mind stuff :P . If I am my material brain and body than I am a not the same self I was 7 or so years ago...But I feel like the same person. Actually, what I am saying is a feeling of connection to reality beyond my physical body, or personal mind, in some way. That is the sense, or feeling, I can have now to a small degree.

How do we know we are not in a dream and I am dreaming you up and you dreaming me up? It only does not look like a dream because the structure of reality is more stable (maybe a more congealed "dream") and predictable than our 'real' dreams. Whereas our night dreams lack the same predictable structure. When we are asleep in our normal dreams we can believe they are reality. These dreams are all in our minds but there stills appears to be an inner and an external reality, even in our dreams. And when we wake up from those dreams we find relief because we remembered who we truly are.

Just some thoughts I have been having for the last few months. Especially from what is called a synchronistic thing apprently having happened.m
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Mar 29, 2013 3:06 pm

The idea of dreaming above is called inter-dependent co-origination. I can find the link later maybe.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:19 pm

Miles, I accept that monism and panspychism or panexperientialism is one possibility, but I have some quibbles. First off, we have categories of consciousness and non-consciousness that seem reasonable - rocks don't behave as though they're conscious and seem to lack the structures to be so or do so. What is conscious appears to have structure and form commensurate with its level of consciousness. Finally, it seems like a lazy dodge, like explaining how a computer works by saying that it's made of computey stuff. Really? Well, why doesn't a beach compute? It's primarily silicon, like a microprocessor... could it be that form and function are more import than substance in this regard?
In our "life-like" dreams, where some can even have lucid dreams, there is an experience of an inner and and outer reality. There is the feeling and the experience of a bodily-like visual, or sense data, point of view and of an inner and an external. All of it is in the mind, in a dream, and yet there is the experience that things such as rocks are non-conscious things. Yet, they are all mind, inside of the dream.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Mar 29, 2013 7:27 pm

fleetmouse
Briefly, my thesis is as follows: There are two potential ways an afterlife could happen - moving and copying. if copying the self is possible, then moving the self is impossible, and vice versa. (I will flesh out this mutual incompatibility later)

Copying is impossible because of the thought experiment I outlined - briefly, if you can be copied, then it's logically possible that you already have, and are unaware of it. Perhaps your copy is in Japan, or Heaven, or Hell. Either way you're unaware of it. Your copy has a separate experientiality, a separate ego. It's an alter ego. If you are annihilated, it makes no difference to you, from a first-person perspective, that your copy's first-person perspective carries on. You are gone. So that's no afterlife at all - it's a different life "continuing" even if that alter ego has your memories.

So that would leave us with moving. I will argue that moving the self is also impossible, because of the interaction problem - the "essence" of the self to be moved, which would putatively include the ego, the center of attention, the first person perspective of you, would have to be non-physical, which invokes dualism and the interaction problem - and dualism simply isn't tenable.

At this point I am confident that, because of this problem, religion is simply wrong about there being an afterlife. I'm intellectually satisfied that this is true and I'm tempted to simply drop the mic forever, but I'll be back... I'll be back... [shakes tiny mouse fist angrily at you]

The whole copying issue just sounds like cloning a sheep in the 'material' world. Doesn't this argument presuppose, that reality is based in physical matter, and that the material body and brain produce the mind, and so therefore one would need to be "cloned" upon death for there to be an afterlife?

Well, you guys get to do thought experiments, I prefer life experiences. We leave the waking world, and fall into the dream world, which can often seem just as real as the waking world, while in that experience. We leave the dream world upon awakening into the 'real' world.

I am not saying this proves anything. I am pointing out that it seems like the philosophical assumption is that the 'material' brain produces the conscious experience, and so leaving the 'material' world, would require the logic and assumptions of your philosophical worldview. Since, according to such a philosophy, we don't live in an animate world, but at base a physical one, and the brain produces the mind, so of course, one would need to be cloned after one dies. And a clone isn't the real you, so no afterlife....

In the experience of entering the dream world, the self does not need to be moved to experience it, but be put into another mind state.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sat Mar 30, 2013 3:23 pm

amoebas don't have brains but they do brain stuff like hunt and eat. they do have a theory of how they do it and it invovles materialism. I still think it's important to realize here is an example of some "mind" type activity that doesn't require a brain.
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