other than life and the world

The soul, God(s), Brahman, Aliens, Spirits, Purgatory, Heaven, Hell, Nirvana etc...

Why does humankind keep thinking and developing these things which we can't perceive objectively? Most folks allow them to affect their lives to a great extent. Why?

Is it because they''ve managed to hyper-extend the scope of survival to make us feel concerned about life AFTER death? Or continuing on another world other than this one?

Did we simply give real, mundane, existing things fanciful names and abstract colorings to make them more "appealing?"

Is everyone nuts?

Which one is it? What are the other possibilities?
thanks
fluff

 

i think we can perceive our soul. Some of the most important things in my life, and maybe in yours also, things like love are not physical. Happiness, tolerance, liberty, knowledge. I think we can say that these are all things that our five senses cannot apprehend. You can't smell knowledge and love doesn't have a shape. Science can't really say anything about them.

Pleasure as well. You can't really measure it by physical standards. You can measure it in neurological activity. But how do you know which activity correlates with pain and which with pleasure. You can't do it by looking at a machine from the very beginning. Someone has to tell you if something feels good or hurts. Sometimes people even get pleasure from pain.

Science might probe the sense of smell or sight but it can't tell us anything about the sensation of smell and the sensation of sight. Someone on the inside has to do that. science is on the outside. It has to be a first person report, science being a third person activity. For science to work, we first need a soul.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make science void. I'm just saying it measures the physical and not the nonphysical.

So, should we say that all of these important things don't exist and are not significant because they can't apprehended by the five senses? Because science cannot speak to them?

 

Nope, it's as you said, everyone is nuts.

 

Fluff

Which one is it? What are the other possibilities?

Well what do consider possible?

Occam

 

That does not disprove the souls existence. I came to see souls as real, not from any desire to, nor from anything I read, but from the things that have happened in my life. Finally, enough supporting events and occurances built up so that I felt souls are more than just a construct of the mind. There is more to us than thought... feelings are far stronger, and our hearts are what I would guess is our link to the soul. Hearts always symbolized love... why? Love is a soul thing, not a logical thing, though it is pretty logical to love.

 

one thing is for sure JLPMGHRS is nuts
Learn and read more so you understand how scientists know what they know. Reading bible simply restricts you from gaining more knowledge and possible "eyes opening" doesnt matter ifur gonna be 25 or 75, its a progres and its always good.

 

BG13

Yes indeed.

Without love, compassion, empathy.. reason/logic is has no place to go and nothing worthwhile to do.

Purpose.. is a thing of desire.

Occam

 

people keep brainwashing each other into wanting there to be more then what they see in their everyday lives. and indeed there almost certainly has to be.

we live in a very big universe and our entire planet is a very very very small place in it.

awairness without substance, that is the question.
if we look at our own awairnessess the possibility arrises that there is something here
more then the opperation of our physical substance
and if our selves, why not other kinds of awairnessess also
some perhapse greater, even much greater, then ourselves.

there is certainly no reason to assume none of this to be possible.
to immagine so is a sort of procustian simplifacism that only superficial simplifies anything.

what we face in reality are these two things:
that there is no infallable proof of limitation to what we can observe
and that what we cannot observe (or surmise from measurment of what we can)
we quite simply do not know.

=^^=
.../\...

 

There are a whole list of non-objective "things" whose existence often gets taken for granted: Time, space, velocity, consciousness, memory, democracy, meaning, sympathy, harmony, co-operation, etc. But of course they do exist.

You never hear anyone say "I don't believe in velocity," or "no one can prove the existence of consciousness" or "harmony is just a convenient explanation for a bunch of things vibrating at the same time," or "I'm too intelligent to believe in something as intangible as time." most sane people don't need "proof" before they believe in these things.

Of course, some will come back with the idea that they also don't need proof in the nonexistence of such things as hobbits, elves, and orcs. But of course, one's thoughts about these things can still develop as they grow older, wiser and more experienced until they realize that these obviously nonexistent "things" actually do represent very real things like innocent simplicity, enlightenment and mindless violence.

So what does your understanding of God represent?

Peace and Love

 

Varuna...
Actually space seems to be an objective 'thing'
So are velocity[a state], time[a process], memory and consciousness.

The others u mention are constructs of the human mind. As u point out.

The question 'undertanding of god' means nothing.
U do not use that term before this question...

What does it mean?

Occam

 

the assumption of obviousness in an error not limited to one side of any argument.

you raise and ask several seperate and distinct questions with an "obvious" lack of clarity as to their distinction.

my understanding is that i have met and communed with something big, friendly and nontangable and that it bears no discernably close resemblence to the claims of any organized belief i have as yet encountered.

that is my SUBJECTIVE "understanding".

OBjectively i can only reiterate that there are no absolute, final and irrifutable proofs of anything. nor do there need to be.

only greater and lesser preponderances of objectively observable evidence.

if you live long enough, there is nothing you will not hear someone say thy don't believe in, or do believe in as the case might be. this includes your examples of velocity and conscousness.

it is also my belief, based largely on confermable observation, that the only reason we have ever not had a world in which no one ever robbs anyone else of their calmness is the denial of the connection between priorities and probabilities.

each of these statements deal with a SEPERATE issue raised in your (varuna's) post.

=^^=
.../\...

 

doesn't this depend on what we accept as as final, conclusive proof? What our source of authority is.

 

Yes. Even though it doesn't fulfull any of the objective requirements of existence, even if it is nothing other than the positional relationship between things that do exist, even if it is literally nothing, a vacuum, a void, I accept, as you probably do, the simple idea that space "exists."

So, it is easily arguable that states of being, processes, and the constructs (and other contents) of the human mind also "exist." Yes?

I realize I may not have picked the best examples, there are countless others, but the nature of these "things," their essence, their existence, is an intangible reality no one ever seems to question or doubt.

And that is my first point. It is actually very simple. So simple that putting it into too many words makes it appear far more complicated than it can ever actually be. But it addresses one of the primary cognative blocks that prevents one from "seeing" God.

It seems many people never question, much less transcend, their childhood thoughts and beliefs about God. Because these thoughts and beliefs may be so unrealistic or fantastic that they eventually cannot be believed, they are often abandoned altogether rather than re-examined and expanded.

What does your understanding of God represent?

If you ask an eight-year-old about God you might hear some version of "sky-daddy."

If you ask the same question of a Jesuit Scholar, a Chassidic Rabbi, a Sufi Mystic, a Hindu Rishi or an Enlightened Buddhist master you will probably hear a far more sophisticated response.

It seems one's thoughts about God have a lot of influence over what one perceives.

I am inclined to think God is the thought that transcends all thought. God is all of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) inter-relationships between any two things, between all things. God is the inherently undefinable entity that is "being" all of this . . . You know, the universe, consciousness, you, me, everyone, everything, peace, love, creativity, unity, transcendence and all those other intangible "constructs" that sometimes visit the human mind.

I am always willing, however, to reconsider the way I understand things.

What do you think?

Peace and Love

 

In the presence of eternity the mountains are as transigent as the clouds. Ingersoll

We are totally unaware of 99.9999% of what affects us. B Fuller

I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't matter. Einstein?

Regarding space, I have read that it contains 3 hydrogen atoms per cubic mile and that most of the matter in the universe is dark matter and can't be seen.

Sometimes the most real things are the things we can't see. Oren Lyons

 

no. what evidence of anything being any sort of 'source of authority' is there other then evidence? and what would constitute even valad evidence of any authority other then evidence itself?

how can anything ever be accepted as final and conclusive proof or ever need to be? it is in our nature to explore, create and learn. and in learning, new evidence is always discouvered, always in motion therefore is every 'conclusion' and thus none ever absolute or final.

gods there may be. "sources of authority" there are not. only evidence which is always in flux, and thus any honest and objective conclusions can only be likewise.

i really think that's the whole point that fanatacism adamantly denys. that there are no "sources of authority". at all, what so ever, period.

but there are or may be, all sorts of big, friendly and nontangable forces and beings.

(sure maybe they or it might be, but we don't have THEM to refer to (sure we have our gut feelings about them, may even have had personal experiences, but these are personal within ourselves, not evidence of anything that we can reasonably expect to mean anything to anyone other then each of our own individual selves). all we have are two things, objective evidence, and books, written primarily as well intended speculation)

we can observe the desirability of the avoidance of causing suffering though. (NOT as a question of "authority", but of natural cause and effect)
and we can observe the connection between priorities and the probability of doing so. and we can observe these things entirely sepperately and appart from whatever else may or may not also exist.

=^^=
.../\...

 

i'm not sure i understand this question. I think the question that we have to ask is what evidence would we accept as absolute and final proof for what we believe. What is our source of authority for our beliefs.

on what authority do you make such a claim?

i think we all have sources of authority that we depend on to make sense of things, what we believe, whether they are reliable or not.

 

I disagree - I would say that if you smell something you will have knowledge of it - you need not rationalise that knowledge if you have prior knowledge of the smell. Let me just explain that - If someone smells apple pie and with their eyes open links the smell that they experience with the pie - next time they might have their eyes closed and smell something which is apple pie - they may instantly say "I know that is apple pie". Precluding that they may be mistaken - I am saying that if you know what apple pie smells like you will have knowledge that you smell apple pie when you smell it. smelling apple pie then ipso-facto is the knowledge of what apple pie smells like.
Just to conclude - dont miss the point that you cannot have knowledge - unless it is KNOWLEDGE OF something and that knowledge may come in the form of a smell.
quite apart from which to smell something is the instant knowledge that there is something that you can smell - you have knowledge of the smell

I dont know how you rationalise that space is an objective "thing" since for you to understand "space" objectively you would have to know it from every conceivable angle from all points - If I tell you that I see clouds of radiation in space - you will not see them unless I show you the results of my observations through scientific instruments - If I now tell a blind person what the stars look like - they may get an impression but could never actually be said to have objective knowledge of what I am seeing - similarly even if two sighted people stand side by side making observation about what they see - they will never experience space of any kind with objectivity - colours may be different - sounds will reach one trillionths of a second before the other etc etc etc - nothing within the human condition is objective (however I hesitate to say that neither is it a totaly solipsist world)

 

Yes!

It is simple.

There is always far more mystery than anyone is prepared to comprehend.

Peace and Love

 

No doubt knowledge may come in the form of a smell. We can use all of our five senses to gain knowledge. What I was saying is that you can't smell "knowledge". In other words, i could ask you "what does knowledge smell like?" I think this is a category mistake. Knowledge and the other things I mentioned are not physical.

 

thank you.

that really does sum it up quite well.

it's such a big universe out there, compared to all of human knowledge, that how can there ever not be?

no matter how much knowledge, of any and all kinds, however many of us aquire, it is still a big universe out there and all us togather are one grain of sand on one beach of one ocean of it.

=^^=
.../\...