My Little Theory (That I'm Not Sure Makes Me Crazy Or Not)

Okay....

I'm not sure i beleive this (though the more i think about it the more it makes sense), and i can't explain it that well.

Tell me what you think, with any modifications and your own views n stuff

Let's see... I don't believe the 'soul' is seperate to the physical world as such. I don't think there's something special about the fact that this consciousness hovers around our brains. So I've decided that EVERTHING must have a consciousness of sorts, though very simple. Every little partical. It's almost like experiance, or awareness of experiance. It's not exactly physical, i think, it's like energy, it exists but you can't touch it.

So what makes us different is the fact that all the little bits in our brains communicate, so that they are experiancing what all the other parts are experiance. Not always to the same extent. this gets the more complicated consciousness, the mind. (animals have a simpler version - less complicated communication etc).

Also, every kind of messaging we get from other particals means we can and are experiancing it, if only a part of them. Sound, light, touch, electrical signals, any way possible. So in a way, what you see, hear, feel, tast etc is a part of you. (The part of a thing you're not experiancing - can't hear etc, isn't a part of you).

I think that's about it, but it's a bit more complicated.

 

I believe the word you are looking for is "panentheism," though I'm not completely sure.

I am a Gaian-panentheist, for one. Panentheism is the same thing as pantheism (not to be confused with it) except for one crucial difference.

Pantheism basically says that the universe and God are the same thing; that each of us is a part of God, God exists everywhere in the universe, and that God is not sentient (at the very least).

Panentheism believes the same, except it also believes that God IS sentient, and that there is a latent sentience that exists everywhere within the universe.

You may be looking for that idea. =)

 

WeaslePop

Be more specific...
Dont worry if you think no-one will see your specific questions..
Occam will hear them

Occam

 

No - i don't beleive in God. And i'm not sure whether this thing is sentience or not - that's up to you in you interpretation. I just don't think that the 'soul' or whatever is part of a different world - i don't agree with mind-body dualism

 

So then, what do you believe happens to the soul when we die. It dies too?

I believe in something, I just can't say exactly what It is. I am convinced death is not the end. Here is one reason why from my past.

I used to work with a fellow who's wife died of lung cancer, though she was a nurse who never smoked. It was less than a year from diagnosis till she was gone. Around a month before she passed on she told him that she was going to send him some kind of a sign. He is a very honest, family-oriented, devout Catholic. Then, from her hospital bed a week before she passed on, she told him she knew what the sign would be....lightning.
I have only been to one funeral in my life, hers, and it was at 1PM at St. Anne's Church. As we arrived it was pouring out, really hard, the sky was low overcast thick clouds, and it was dark like twilight. We sat down, and got settled in, and then boom, thunder, and the lights in the church went out for a couple of minutes. Kelvin told me that when the thunder struck, he looked at his watch and it was 1 o'clock on the dot.
After the funeral, we came outside to find that there was not a cloud in the sky, I swear. Everything was soaking wet, and dripping, and the sun was shining in a clear blue sky.

 

blackguardxiii, thats a lovely story but it doesnt make me think twice about the non-existence of god... so it rained then stopped... im sure the old guy felt nice and fuzzy afterwards, but its no miracle. happens all the time.

weaselpop, so what you're saying is that everything in the universe is connected? simply put?

Hikaru_zero ive seen you state in many of your posts that what people are referring to is panentheism, only to be told that it isnt. give up, love. this is a hippy forum, many people are going to have rather spiritual beliefs...

 

I must apologize, then ... though I don't know what posts you are referring to ... could you please point them out? I only remember talking about pan/en/theism in a post with one other person, and it ended up describing what he believed accurately.

I realize many other people are going to have spiritual beliefs, and I have them too (if you haven't realized that yet) ... but many people also end up using terms that don't accurately describe what they believe in. I realize that labelling isn't the best thing in the world, but I aim not to label everyone, but rather to make it easy for people to explain the archetype of what they beleive in by using the correct definitions, and expanding from there in more personal cases.

 

Not exactly die... but the thing that connects your mind together stops working, so it's not what it was and is working on a smaller, uncomplicated level. It exists in a certain way, but not as it was, so it doesn't really anymore

 

That's not really what i was saying... it's a part of it, though everything isn't connected to everything else in a direct way, only to a finite number of things. It's too simple a way of putting it - ignores what i'm trying to say.

 

Actually, Hikaru is pretty much right. The basic idea that weasel is supporting is very much in tune with panentheism.

Only problem is, he - as with many panentheists and those impressed by White and other philosophers - commits a fallacy of division. One cannot infer that all forms of energy or matter hold the property of consciousness - however simple - from the fact that we ourselves hold the property of consciousness. His argument may also suffer from a backward's fallacy of composition - as properties of the part need not be properties of the whole, and vice versa.

Example:

Humans are made of chemicals
Chemicals can't talk
Humans can't talk.

this is false. It is realized that a property supported by the whole may not be supported by the part, nor a property by the part supported by the whole. Another example is the main flaw of various Cosmological arguments, where they seek to push causality upon the universe itself, by observing things within the universe. While things comprising the universe may be subject to causality, it does not follow from there that the universe as a whole does.

Panentheism seems to pop up now and then as a more liberal "be-hippie-be-nice" alternative to materialism. Yet, it's criticisms of materialism amount to silliness, and it's own ideas amount to numerous fallacies - like the couple discussed above.

- Laz

 

You are describing something very like the Holographic Universe.

There are lots of links to it, here's a couple.

http://www.avellunau.com/vortex/holographic_universe.htm

http://www.crystalinks.com/holographic.html

.

 

Well, first of all, it's as bizarre that only humans have consciousness, as much as the idea that everything has it, and the latter makes more sense to me.
Secondly, I'm a materialist, and think that this consciousness isn't on another level/dimension etc, as i pointed out. This consciousness is along the same line as energy. I mean, we can't actually see it, don't think it's on another level of existence, but we know it exists and can see our hands moving.

 

Well that would certainly be a bizarre idea, since no one supports that and we all know better. Consciousness is not unique to humanity - we realize through observation that many other animals share the same attribute - and much more. But we still cannot infer from the set of animals that have consciousness that all forms of matter and energy have the same - in varying degrees or not.

We can also see that things are of different substance - that is, different primary attributes, than we are. To observe us, or to observe a set of living things, and see that we have pigmentation, would certainly not be sufficient evidence to conclude that all forms of matter and energy have pigmentation. Wrong move. Same goes with consciousness. There are a set of living things which we can observe as having that particular property - but to move from these living these and declare this attribute a property of all things, would be fallacious.

- Laz

 

Interesting. Panentheism shows up in "Christian" theology as well, under the name "Process Theology." But again, it doesn't amount to much; just an attempt at reconciling the existence of evil with a benevolent being, by robbing God of divine foreknowledge.