why i am agnostic...

"Earlier in your post you were saying God is the farthest from evil and no it's all one...

One big pile of rambling crap!!!"

I do realize how paradoxical this sounds, but it requires further thinking before it can be judged accurately. Evil exists as a PART of God, but it's furthest away from him, and evil is just the lowest form of GOOD; It's still good, but in a very mangled up state. I just recommend that you read into Plato's idea on forms to gain a better understanding of it. A lot of this is very difficult to articulate, so it leaves itself for the reader to try to make sense of it on their own.


"Or you can use COMMON Sense, logic, reasoning and scientific method to DECIDE what concepts work and which ones are BULL SHIT !!!"

Scientific method is a very misleading term. There is no single method. Biology would require a different method than psychology, for instance (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Psychology/Scientific_method for what I mean). Science is just the search for truth, and there are many venues to this. Do you believe certain things are immune to skepticism? Something to think on, definitely. Personally, I leave nothing immune to questioning; this is how truth is extracted from lies.


"Or it could be something called IMAGINATION!!

By your logic it is possible that the 9-11 terrorists are having an orgy right now with 40 whores in heaven!!"

Imagination is a very powerful tool for finding truth. Can you think of anything that doesn't require imagination to understand? Not likely, because if you just thought about it, then you were using your imagination. Think about this: Where did the idea of General Relativity come from? The imagination. Einstein was quoted to say that imagination is one of our most powerful tools for finding truth; it's a sacred thing.

That whole 40 virgin thing was used to get people psyched up enough to kill themselves. If that idea was openly discussed it would be clear that something like that wouldn't be guaranteed (duh). See, you are derailing from the argument, and it makes it very difficult to argue back because your arguments are going WAY off tangent. You must realize this.

"But it's all GOOD and that's why their KILLING each other and causing great suffering for this one wonderful GOODNESS!!"

Killing each other would be a lesser form of good.

If you have a police station that sets up its own creed stating that it'll uphold the law and protect its citizens from harm no matter the risk, and recruited cops, would those cops be good or bad? They would be neither, until they uphold their creed. If the cop becomes corrupt, then he isn't upholding the creed and he shouldn't be called a cop. Because in order to be called a cop, you first need to follow its creed - You are the intended purpose. And once your stray from it, you no longer deserve the title. If that police station became corrupt at it's core, it wouldn't be the fault of the creed, but its corruption and inability to uphold it. In other words, the message isn't wrong, it's the followers.

Look at Taoism, Confucians, protestants, quakers, Buddhists, Hindu's. If you look into what they actually believe in, you could find that their creed points to goodness, but its up to their leaders and followers to uphold it. I don't particularly like organized religion, because it leaves room for corruption, because its human nature to want to extract control (there are many exceptions to this, btw). But it isn't the fault of the creed, it's the fault of its unwise followers. In other words, they contradict their faith, and in return, should not be linked to these faiths. Because in order for there to be a link, there needs be those are actually believes what they say they believe through action.

"Truth, lies, fantasy, rape, torture, starvation, Sponge Bob Square pants....
It's All just GOD!!! OR GOOD !!

It's all Good"

It's pretty much impossible to reply to this because its is a tangent. All of this could have been avoided if you just thought calmly on these questions. You just aren't making sense. I used to go off on tangents as well, it passes eventually. Whenever I become to emotional, I stop myself from responding until it passes and I could answer with clarity.

I'll try to answer anyway:

Truth is a superior form of good than lies. Asking for sex is a superior form of good than rape. Massage is a superior form of good than torture. Sponge Bob is just a cartoon, but his show promotes morality, so it's a higher form of good. Imagine God as a radio tower radiating radio signals. The further away those signals stray from the tower, the weaker the signal. In other words, you are distancing yourself from the tower (God) and going further away from the purest point from that signal (Goodness).

 

Religion isn/t complex...its manmade. That/s legitimate though...I/m an atheist...or at least I don/t believe in any sort of conventional god because there is no force for good or evil...just you...and you are both good and evil...not even that, but yes, because not only are those in perspective, but the same thing that makes good makes evil...its the nature of the world...maturity is responsibility. Its nobody/s fault but mine.

 

You speak of the duality of man, to either choose responsibility (goodness) or irresponsibility (less form of good - Choosing irresponsibility because you believe it would be GOOD for you to do so, but it'll be soon be realized that it is a mistake and your life will suffer as a result). Goodness IS a real thing. It's a really difficult thing to understand, because people usually tend to over-intellectualize rather simple affairs.

Understanding all of this requires wisdom, and wisdom is coming to a certain realization through internal content connecting in such a way. Even that would sound meaningless to many people, and would just say "THAT'S ESOTERIC TRUTH; THUS FALSE". But everything is ultimately esoteric if that thought was further inspected... we just share in this esoteric truth with groups of people. When you learn of a scientific theory, and once it truly makes sense to you, then you acquired wisdom. If you are just repeating a scientific theory without first understanding it, then you are just parroting the information. Everything is ultimately esoteric truth... these groups of people could just expand to greater numbers.

 

I don/t believe in any sort of conventional god because there is no force for good or evil...just you...and you are both good and evil...not even that, but yes, because not only are those in perspective, but the same thing that makes good makes evil...its the nature of the world...maturity is responsibility. Its nobody/s fault but mine.[/QUOTE]

I agree with that. I think the idea of good and evil is a very false created to put fear into the hearts of people.
But then again, i don't think religion is a man made thing. if you take a deeper look into religion you may see a truth emerging from the distortion. Atleast i know i once did (but no i am not "religious").
I think it is sad because there is a good deal of people, most people, growing up believing or knowing only of the conventional God of which you speak. As a result most of the people who don't stick with religion in fear do something else...the despise it! they hate God and dismiss anyone who mentions the world because they think every truth will be linked back to religion.

 

"I think it is sad because there is a good deal of people, most people, growing up believing or knowing only of the conventional God of which you speak. As a result most of the people who don't stick with religion in fear do something else...the despise it! they hate God and dismiss anyone who mentions the world because they think every truth will be linked back to religion."

Yup. Although, I have a more eastern view on Good and 'Evil'. I mostly see it as an imbalance. No one is truly evil, just less balanced. But for the purpose good and evil can be helpful to describe harmful behavior.

 

thats true. obviously i believe in good and bad. pretty much everyone does to some extent. But it think bad is mainly a thing of humans who have totally become lost in ego (which is pretty much everyone), rather than the typical God-Devil concept.

 

I see God-Devil concept as a way to describe different levels of being. Being Godly is balanced and can bring goodness in your life and a lot of positive energy. The Devil concept can be used to describe what happens when you fuck yourself up... like Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars.

Overall, I think we have pretty similar views on the subject. We just have a different way of describing the same thing

 

Def,

Sorry if I came off all 'Lewis Black' on you but I really am not emotional. I can only take nonsense in small doses. I have absolutely no emotional attachment to my explanation of God. I'm open to anything that makes more sense.

But you need to be able to prove your God theory in no more than 5 logical sentences or I'm really going to loose interest in what your trying to say.

 

There are really no words that can prove the existence of God. Someone can go on for years trying to make people understand, but the people wont.
The only way to truely know is to experience this for yourself. Until then it doesn't matter how in depth someone can explain, you will never understand.

 

I understand perfectly clear, thank you. It is the God believers who are having all the trouble articulating their misunderstandings which only goes to affirm my understanding even more!

 

One of the requirements to realizing God's presence is to open yourself to the idea. I personally was an agnostic from 13-16 (being forced to go through communion and confirmation for the catholic church made me question the existence of God because everything didn't make sense to me and it did seem to be a controlling agent), then a 'soft' atheist from 16-20.

My best friend was the same way, but then he began to experience things like time slowing down, etc. When my friend told me of these things, it made me wonder and I decided "why not, I guess I'll meditate on these matters because nothing is so simple, maybe I'm wrong? Maybe I am the idiot? Maybe I assume too much in my thinking?" When I did this, I would find that many arguments are logical fallacies and I wanted to search for the arguments that assumes a lot less and would make more sense. Many God arguments seemed retarded to me, and many atheist arguments just assumed WAY too much for my liking (like the spaghetti monster argument). But when I opened my mind to the possibility I began seeing why the existence of God just made more logical sense, and it wasn't used to replace other possible explanations, either. After I realized this, I began to altruistically give of myself, then I would experience a great sense of connectedness with everyone and everything - It's an incredibly peaceful and calming experience. And at that point, you fear absolutely nothing - Fear based thinking can be very distracting.

I began to even question our perception of the world, and studied perception changing drugs such as DMT, LSD, Mescaline, et al. And realized that science isn't an understanding, it's just a tool with an illusion of understanding (still a very useful tool and should definitely be improved upon). After I realized that perception isn't exactly what exists in the universe I would feel rather peculiar, and it was something I felt before, when I was about ten years old. I would ask myself: "What is real? What exactly is this experience? Who am I?" and I would try to a reductionist approach to consciousness itself. But not so long ago I felt as if I was hitting a force field (mind you I wasn't taking any drugs, at all), and the experience itself spoke much louder than words ever could. It was a familiar feeling, and it felt as if there is another side to this universe, something higher. For instance, to better describe this experience, look back to what Neo from the Matrix experienced when he took the pill. I literally felt I was about to move outside of a matrix and wake up into another world. I realize how crazy that sounds, and I know what you are thinking as I am writing this. But just like the Allegory of the Cave, I can't successfully explain to you, or prove to you what I just experienced, because it is assumed that everything true is empirically measurable, and that assumes A LOT. It really just needs to be experienced on your own. You can measure brainwaves and say, "SEE, IT'S JUST A BRAIN WAVE!!"... so? Everything is a brain wave, and our brainwaves is what gave way to logic and reasoning and intuition. You can't ignore it as 'just an effect', because scientifically, our human perception would just be an EFFECT of fine tuning brain chemistry. Effect really doesn't mean anything.


But anyway, it all really requires opening the mind to these possibilities. And besides even if I am wrong about all of this, this changes absolutely nothing about the human experience. No God, no afterlife, whatever. None of that will change the very REAL human experience that we are all having. Many have the wrong idea that if you entertain the idea of God that you automatically become forgetful of scientific theories, or worst yet, don't understand it at all. But none of that really changes, you just question even more and more. That is the true attitude of a skeptic. Skepticism doesn't end at a certain point, even be skeptical of your own understandings.

But a lot of this will seem like rambling because you really just have to realize these things on your own. What are you worried about if you strayed from your habitual thinking, even for a weeks time? - Even as a personal experiment? - To be called an idiot? It doesn't automatically make you dumb, but you may be ridiculed by people. But so what, we are all gonna die and be dead forever (presumably) right? So why care what others think? Thinking these things won't make you go insane and turn you into the next Son of Sam. See, that's exactly how I thought when I was an agnostic, and I kept looking for hidden motives as to why I was thinking in such a way, but that's unhealthy, at least that's how I see it.

 

Each to their own. sorry if my post offended you.
I can prove to you nothing. I never said i could, i was only trying to help.
And guess what? there is no, "follow spiritawakening, or hell for you", or "read this post for the ONLY right answers". i am not trying to push my theory's to convert you, or any other rubbish. There is not threat to you here
what i am saying is that you have to find the answers for yourself.
This knowledge isn't aquired by learning from someone else, reading books etc. It is found by experiencing something yourself. But you can never experience something you do not accept. the only way to know is to open your mind up and hear what is being said, holding it as a possibility as opposed to an imposibility. Then you can begin to find seek knowledge.
Open your mind to the truth, allign your thoughts to find it. seek to know and knowledge will come.

 

Thanks. You have articulated that a lot better than I have.

 

I've experienced all kinds of crazy feelings just like anyone else.
I've had terrible headaches where when I move my head for a second it feels like my mind is still floating in the spot I left it.When I was a child I woke up one night, heart pounding crazy fast, my inner voice screaming and racing out of control. My body actually felt like it was shrinking. After about a half hour I got myself out this state and calmed down but it felt like I was doing a balancing act to keep from slipping back.

More than 20 years later I had all but forgotten that episode when I woke up in bed, I happened to be in just the right position, just the right frame of mind to trigger that same feeling of shrinking. I could have easily let my mind continue slipping into that state but I fought it away.

I don't believe it was spiritual or some connection with God. I could easily see how a religious person might think he was battling daemons who were trying to posses his body or something. I know consciousness is a fragile balance, our brains are a delicate cocktail of chemical reactions and neural pathways. I know it takes nearly two decades for these pathways to complete and produce a mature mind, an adult person.Sometimes in developing these pathways the wiring in a mind doesn't choose the best path or wiring gets crossed and we confuse dreams and fantasy with reality and physical sense.

Call me a skeptic or whatever but do not call me closed minded because all I do is accept the answer that makes the most sense.

Questions:
Do you believe in evolution?
Do you believe physical and mental traits can be passed to your children?
Do you believe mental illness can be hereditary?

Yes so far, great lets continue...

Is it a big leap to suggest that developing man needed to hang on to a little bit of his primitive madness. If it helped motivate him to work or kill off the "less motivated" for food and shelter.
So this little primitive ball of madness develops traits that benefit it's survival... Pats mans ego, helps him sleep at night, helps justify all the cruel things he must go through to survive, draws from his imagination and answerers all his questions without even realizing this validation is nothing more than this ball of madness, a touch of psychosis providing these illusions that his mind is in contact with something else when really its just part of his complex mind. This is the mental illusion that we have come to call God. It has been genetically programmed as a trait in mans DNA because it has been dominant for millions of years.

I ask you what makes more sense:

God and Spirituality are an illusion created within mans fragile chemical mind and consciousness is a delicate interaction between billions of cells that takes years to develop. The illusion of God is actually a lower old factory subconsciousness dating back to primitive ages.

Or

Consciousness exists all around outside our minds, it's in the light beams and sound waves and occasionally makes contact with people, especially simple people who typically have lower IQ's than the rest of us. It tells some people that it's OK to fuck little boys up the ass and others that it's OK to let other races die by the millions. This higher consciousness can also be sometimes reached with drugs or modified breathing meditations to alter the chemical composition of your mind. Some old women are so in tune with these external consciousnesses they make a living from doing talk shows and conveying messages from our dead loved ones! "No Lisa, Jh.. J..Jimmy doesn't blame you for the accident, he's happy now".

 

The experience that I had wasn't what you experienced. I can tell by the way you are describing it. I didn't see it as battling demons, as you put it. I gave it an explanation. But honestly, what I experienced doesn't really require one. That could be understood as a cop-out, but blargh, very difficult to explain.

What I experienced was kinda scary, but I saw it as an enlightening experience and focused on it further.

What exactly is dream and fantasy? Why would seeing one thing be dismissed as a miswiring of the brain? You can say that our brains right now is miswired which prevents us from seeing the world for how it truly is. Change this balance and you change what can be seen and experienced. One brain cocktail isn't somehow superior to another. It is too presumptious to make that claim, either way.

Man gives meaning to absolutely everything, even the meaning behind biology, brain, and consciousness, but it may not be exactly the way we see it as.

I never called you closed minded. If it sounded like that, then I am sorry. But cynicism may be getting crossed with skepticism, and what makes most sense is thought of as what sounds more depressing. What sounds depressing can just be interpreted as such, true. But I have noticed that if it sounds beautiful then it just MUST be bogus. The same can be said in the opposite direction.

Although this may not be true with you, there many that do confuse cynical thinking as logical thinking.

I believe everything ultimately requires faith, even evolution. Do I believe in natural selection? Yes, because it makes sense, but there could always be something that we just don't understand - something that has yet reached the fore of our minds.

Physical traits can be passed and so can mental, and so can illnesses. That is pretty clear. But let me ask you this:

Can man transcend his environmental and physical factors? People commit suicide because they fear life moreso than death. People die for their beliefs, yet there are genes that says that this should be impossible. If our genes or environmental factors don't control us completely, then what does? Does our brain control us or do we control our brain? It seems impossible to know for sure either way. Although Mindful Attention would suggest otherwise. Focusing on thoughts can actually change the structure of your brain. The brain isn't static.

I don't know what you mean by primitive madness, honestly.

I really don't know what you mean by killing off the less motivated. Bad people do bad things. There are many cultures that honored each other. Also, evolution, and 'primative madness' as you put it, has a deeper basis for logic. Just watch Korns music video of his song "Evolution" to see what I mean.

It's honestly very difficult to reply to these statements sometimes, because there seems to be a lot of mental confusion, and I don't mean that to be patronizing. I think a lot of these questions is something that you really need to start asking yourself...

As for IQ, I don't think it really correlates with violent behavior. There are plenty of people that have high or low IQs that are very peaceful and friendly. I don't think it has anything to do with intelligence. It could be said that Hitler was intelligent...

I just really recommend that you pick up and check out some books that helps to explain what I have been talking about, recently. I really can't articulate these things for you.

"Man's Search for Meaning", "Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning", both by Viktor Frankl. I would also recommend Aldous Huxleys writings on perception, and Emerson's selective writings.

Recommended movies:

Dark City, Blade Runner, Dogma, Equilbrium, Black Snake Moan.

 

We evolved large brains to help with our survival. The side effect of that is that we become caught up in our mental perception of reality. Yes this allows us to transcend our environment (although it did take quite a long time), but the other side is that if our perception of the world is screwed up and our mental 'software' has a bug in it we might commit suicide contrary to life's drive to protect one's self and procreate. These are rare anomalies though, otherwise we'd be gone by now.

 

The very fist line on this page reads,
"One of the requirements to realizing God's presence is to open yourself to the idea".

And the other requirement is to close the idea that the brains sensory perception processor is infallible and incapable of relaying incorrect or skewed information no matter how sick, tired or drugged up.

If your mind feels like it shifts outside your body for a second or any other supernatural feelings sweep your body it must be your soul and it must have really happened because your minds perception is flawless...

No, I don't think so. It is your perception processor loosing focus an skewing your sense of reality. You could fill the next ten pages trying to convince me otherwise but I know logic is on my side and you'd only be wasting my time and yours.

 

I never said perception is flawless. That's the exact opposite to what I am saying.

If perception were perfect, we wouldn't need machines to see what already exists. Imagine what else is there that we can't see or otherwise sense.

I just recommend reading up on Aldous Huxley's works.

 

And what machines show us that supernatural souls and consciousnesses exist outside our mind?

 

Who's to say machines could?

Our bodies are machines that could enable us to see what is and what isn't. People have experienced many things, and it could be invalidated as a "screw-up" in the mind, instead of valid.

Good example of what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e6GikOlQxE

I had shown that video to a buddy of mine that works at NASA and concluded that what he experienced doesn't break laws of physics. The man looks to remain sane throughout the experiment, so we can factor out the possibility of him being delusional.

We experience life in the third dimension, but our entire selves are included into the higher dimensions, so we truly live in all dimensions, concurrently. The lower the dimension the more inclusive it is to the higher. So it can be said that the part that truly makes us; us, exists at a point that really can't be analyized and may be eternal. That isn't exactly a proof, but it opens up many possibilities and gives credibility to the concept of 'soul'.