[tesla69]

Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. [1 Timothy 6]

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

Gee, Rob, I'm reading your posts, but it seems you insist on not considering mine.

i was talking to pbradley man!

sorry!

[Rob Instigator]

dude, I quoted you.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by pbradley

You really do think we're so far beyond them, don't you. I debate with atari about man's incapacity to have a full understanding of reality and yet you posit that we already do. Bizarre. I'm tired of non-sequitor pseudo-discussion for now.

Aw, now I see I've been the dummy in the crossfire.

I think our brains are much much farther beyond animals than our human understanding is.
I think humans are actively trying to catch up while a LOT of humans are actively trying to keep them from doing so.

I am on the side of the former.

those in power support the status quo.

[m1rr0r dash]

WARNING!

 

WARNING!

[atari 2600]

oops, forgive me, I forgot sex

in dreams,
to a lesser extent in sustained silent meditation and
near death experiences,
and to an ever lesser extent
in orgasm during intercourse (le mort)

okay, gotta go

[Rob Instigator]

hahahahah! too funny


dreams...

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

hahahahah! too funny


dreams...

There is no scientific interpretation for why we dream, Rob, only hodgepodge.

Why do you suppose that is? Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. Countless scientists have studied it, and still, to this day, nothing really conclusive. I hardly think my remarks deserve a laugh of mockery, although you're doing pretty well with earning some big laughs with your posts, you know, since you sound like every piss-ant wannabe anarchist I have ever known; you even read the same hippie burn-out new age charlatan conspiracy theory huckster, Robert Anton Wilson, that they did.
But yes, (going back to your posts) it is all about the mammon...the money. That's why I have developed ideas like a consitutional amendment to end repeat terms of office. Haven't read about any of your ideas about how to fix anything. All I've read from you are complaints and grievances against the human race. As an "Instigator," you're of the penny-ante variety.
click for an illustration

The latest theories on dreams offer that studies have shown the humans tend to repair damaged neuroreceptors and connections in dreaming.

But the real phenomenon goes way beyond that.

In orgasm is the little death, as the French say, "Le mort." In near death experiences, people expose their unconscious contents. In silent meditation, unconscious contents can be somewhat grasped. But in sleep, in deep rem cycles, humans have their waking consciousness completely extinguished for a sustained period of time. We spend around a third of our lives in this state.

Obviously, something profound goes on in our dreams. Hawking wrote of "knowing the mind of God." It seems to me that the logical propostion is that we know the mind of God every single time we dream. Our conscious minds cannot remember what we actually dreamed. Instead the dream is assembled into a symbolic language of vague concepts, ideas and images, and most often, never even remembered at all.

So how you could laugh just belies your own ridiculousness. And the thing is, you're one of the more intelligent people here. I really have to stop wasting my time.

As to your propostion about humans and animals, my thoughts follow. Humans are animals. We are a particular type of animal though ("the human animal") that has developed complex thought, speech, the ability to use complex tools, and lastly but not leastly, language.

a formal scientific paper by David Premack:
Is Language the Key to Human Intelligence?
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...y/303/5656/318
(reminds me of Tokolosh's "How old is language" thread.)


Everyone should already know that we are incredibly similar to primates genetically, so what accounts for the huge leap in intelligence (or more correctly stated the possibility for higher intelligence) in humans?
This is a question that has proved difficult to answer for artists, writers, philosophers, psycholgists, poets, research scientists, and theologians alike.
Many seem to feel we are part divine and part animal. There's something to this. Our ability to ponder our own death (although our ego rarely lets us dwell on it very long) and the fact that we have a will (the degree to which our wills are free, of course, is debatable) seems to point towards the notion that we are part-divine, creative beings.

Simply stated, it seems entirely probable that in human reproduction, mates are chosen by too superficial of a value system and a premium is not placed on intelligence. It seems to be the unwritten law of human history that powers that be seek to control women as much as possible and always have and this is perhaps a key reason we have not evolved to a significantly higher level of consciousness than primates.

Let's continue on this point.

Originally Posted by Rob

I think our brains are much much farther beyond animals than our human understanding is.
I think humans are actively trying to catch up while a LOT of humans are actively trying to keep them from doing so.

I am on the side of the former.

those in power support the status quo.

Rob...still raging against that machine, eh?

In the last section, I related postulates concerning why we are different from primates and animals. Let's look at another aspect of this a bit. And this addresses how we have not caught up with how far advanced beyond animals we should be.

In Waking Life, former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, Robert Solomon, extemporaneously says many brilliant things. Yes, I realize it is only a movie but bear this out; after all, one cannot deny that the man is an esteemed professor in his field. (He died about a year ago. He was a devotee of Kierkegaard like I am.) In the film, he affirms that the two major reasons why consciousness has not evolved are fear and laziness, and Solomon also remarks that there is a bigger differential gap in the intelligence threshold between a person of average intelligence and a genius person than there is between a person of average intelligence and a chimpanzee. There have actually been studies that tend to indicate that his assertion is correct. Ponder that, simians.

[✌➬]

http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.a...4-3a3f94bfa964

[Rob Instigator]

dreams they complement my life (dreams they complicate my life)

[atari 2600]

Not a quote, but I think my favorite lie perpetuated by "Christians" is the one where they tell people that dinosaur bones were put here by the devil to make us believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, which, by association, was spawned by none other than Satan.

haha

These days, many "Christians" are backing down from this silly notion which is good to see.

But back to the debate about the existence of God.

No one knows what dreams really are. After all this time there are only vague scientific descriptions.

And like I also mentioned before, there is no point in asking "who or what created God" because God, whatever it may be, is obviously of Eternity and not Time.

But most importantly, I want to leave you to think about just why no one knows why gravity exists. Gravitational attraction basically orders the whole chaotic universe, yet it's a big mystery. Sure, we of course understand gravity wonderfully through Einstein and are able to predictively determine its effects. And there are some (as is the case with light) wave/particle theories with gravitrons, but again, it's only a description and doesn't answer a question of exactly why gravity exists.

So, you see, when you examine the extreme unlikelihood that life ever began on this planet in the first place and start to wonder why no one knows or indeed will ever know exactly how gravity came about, then it's absolutely bullheaded to insist there must be no God, because when one weighs all the evidence, God, (for lack of a less toxic term perhaps) is a lot more probable than improbable. Call it the "Tao" like they did 10,000 years B.C.E. if the term "God" is so poisonous to you. But know that it exists. Every single system has a wholeness and is part of a related whole. The universe is borne from Eternity into Time and will one day collapse again into Eternity. The universe is One per the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy.

[Rob Instigator]

no way man. "god"'s a load of shit
humns made up the gods to help explain what we could not understand.
that's all there is to it.

discovery of true alien life would not negate any beliefs in god or gods, but they would automatically negate the Bible, The Torah, the Q'uran, and all these earth-centric dogmas.

that will be SWEET

everything you are saying in your last paaragraph is true, exceopt for the "god is more probable than improbable" nonsense. just becausde the universe, as we know it, is a closed system, of nearly infinite variety and expansiveness, does in no way imply that there is or are any supernatural creator/s

[atari 2600]

no way man. "god"'s a load of shit
humns made up the gods to help explain what we could not understand.
that's all there is to it.

discovery of true alien life would not negate any beliefs in god or gods, but they would automatically negate the Bible, The Torah, the Q'uran, and all these earth-centric dogmas.

that will be SWEET

everything you are saying in your last paaragraph is true, exceopt for the "god is more probable than improbable" nonsense. just becausde the universe, as we know it, is a closed system, of nearly infinite variety and expansiveness, does in no way imply that there is or are any supernatural creator/s

There is no such thing as the supernatural; as a term, it is completely a misnomer. All is natural. For reference purposes, we employ degrees of "naturalness" when describing something, but that doesn't apply here. All comes from God, which is Eternity. And Eternity is a concept that humans cannot ever decipher because we are finite beings in this state confined by Time.

Again, Rob, you've managed to miss the point entirely. Your argument stems from an objection to the abuses of religion via people with bad wills, not God.

Your last point is of particular interest to me. I feel that most people that (via a wish fulfillment fantasy) are into the whole aliens nonsense do so because of a rabid hatred of religion.

[m1rr0r dash]

 

[atari 2600]

Nice, the perfect ending to an abysmal thread.
I was wondering when somebody would reprise the noodle-monster pic.

[Rob Instigator]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

There is no such thing as the supernatural, as a term, it is a misnomer. All is natural. All comes from God, which is Eternity. And Eternity is a concept that humans cannot ever decipher because we are finite beings in this state confined by Time.

Again, Rob, you've managed to miss the point entirely. Your argument stems from an objection to the abuses of religion via people with bad wills, not God.

what I am trying to tell you is that if YOU decide to define "god" as Eternity, Infinity, EVERYTHING, then you are not defining a creator god deity at all. you are just naming the whole of existance as GOD. Do you dig? that is NOT the "god" of ANY religion. That is deism, which even the so called "good" religious people would have had you killed or at least excommunicated, as being a HERETIC!
while humans cannot "decipher" eternity, as you put it, we are definitely more than capable of understanding it, defining it, and exploring it's implications. we are HUMANS. as far as we know, we created the concept of eternity.

[atari 2600]

Yes, and even if aliens visited today, (they won't haha) it still would not disprove God. It would only disprove a lot of notions people have had about God in their religious orientations. And I've already, like yourself, stated that I too have problems with organized religion in many cases.

I really don't feel I'm just attributing some other name to God as you imply. I do admit that I'm not writing as clearly as I perhaps could; it's a difficult subject.

To me, our modern understanding of astrophysics proves God. Feel free to call it a quirk, but know that Einstein himself believed in God. "God does not play dice!" I guess I should feel privileged to have your online company. After all, you're someone that claims to know more than Einstein about this ultimate question. You also know more than these folks apparently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Deists

explore further:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_by_belief#Lists_of_people_by_religi ous_belief

[Rob Instigator]

belief is NOT about knowing! it is about self-delusion!

if god were PROVEN then no belief or faith would be necesary.

noone "believes" in gravity. no one "believes" in nuclear fission. it just EXISTS.

proving that a creator existed would also negate all faith

either way that would rule.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by atari 2600

Your last point is of particular interest to me. I feel that most people that (via a wish fulfillment fantasy) are into the whole aliens nonsense do so because of a rabid hatred of religion.

I agree with this; I'd also extend it to say - the belief in aliens, and more loosely, 'conspiracy theories' manifests precisely the same psychological impulse towards the grand 'Other' of God - that is, a being, or beings, who are 'in control', a father-figure whose presence remains felt but eternally tacit.

This in turn relies upon another personal understanding of mine, that of the spiritual domain (itself in a precarious relationship with the post-enlightenment notion of intellectualism manacled to Aristotelian logic) being firmly distinct in sort and type to what is understood (but invariably not practised) by 'science'. Atari is right to point out that a great many 'great men' were theists with issues with religio-political organisations; it is my belief that they understand that the spiritual domain and the scientific domain are not, primae facie [sp?], commensurable. This by no means is synonymous with the idea that either dialogue (the religious or the scientific) is sovereign (which is where I draw myself in line with Derrida's criticism of Hegel, but that's a much, much longer post) but that each must carefully observe the edicts, the benefits, the frauds and the other contingencies of the (small-o) other. Religion is certainly flawed, but that does not mean that science is without its difficulties (anyone with a passing awareness of Popper, Feyerabend, Lakatos etc will know what I mean here).

[!@#$%!]

what the fuck is "eternity"?