For me, the label 'worship' is akin to irrational religious need or a rather obsessive aspect of human love or/and addiction. — universeness

But why should gods be irrational if they offer reason, meaning, or purpose of life? The cosmos can't offer such reason, as science can't explain the very existence of that cosmos. And the aim of science is to rationally explain.

What is 'purpose' got to do with 'sacred?' Sacred is another label that relates to the god posit. — universeness

Well, you don't use the terms sacred and worship, but in practice that labels are justified.

It is backward thinking nefarious humans in global positions of power and influence that has brought the human race to the brink of extinction — universeness

No. It's the application of scientific knowledge which is the cause. You can sing arias about a balanced approach, but in reality the world has been brought in a state it hasn't been in before, because of a way of thinking cooked up a few thousand years ago by a few Greek thinkers, rediscovered in the Enlightenment. In a few hundred years, humanity has managed to turn paradise in a barren, clorless reflection of hezven.

Part of the human experience so far results in a so-called 'winners' and 'losers' system — universeness

Indeed. And I blow mr. Dawkins under the table with a few arguments. His attitude sucks and he is a pityful lost human being, trying to compensate his inferiority complex by cowardly hiding behind science about which he doesn't know shit and by only by his dogmatic thinking he thinks he made a contribution. His books are even worse than the bible, which means they are pretty dogmatic! "I wanna be a good scientist, mummy, All the boys bully me! And by being a good scientist I can take revenge!" I know these kinds of boys. There was one at university like that. He was already scared if I even looked at him! And meanwhile picking on others he thought were even weaker than him! A future Dawkins!.

You are free to think what you want but you cannot action your imperatives if you have no mandate to do so. — universeness

Neither can scientists! But they are in power and even force people by law to absorb their woowoo. You were one of the refined slavedrivers yourself! Don't tell me about mandated enaction! Science has power without it having asked for it!

Meantime, believers are becoming nonbelievers at an ever-increasing pace. Especially when those who are rather lost in life begin to understand the SCIgodian mirror of their belief system and they are offered adequate secular humanist help in their lives. — universeness

And there are non-believers becoming believers too! Im one of them. Precisely because I know about the fundamentals of modern physics.

The Cosmos is full of wonders that I don't understand but I don't 'worship,' it. — universeness

Still, you write it with capital c. Now it could be me, but that looks like worshipping, or at least respecting. Like you spell names, Brother Uni. Why can't you worship something you're a part of?

Again you conflate religious labels with scientific pursuits. Knowledge gathering is a natural process of being human, there is no worship involved. Wonder, happiness, frustration, satisfaction yes but not silly labels such as worship. It certainly has nothing to do with knowing that which does not exist. — universeness

Don't tell me knowledge gathering and sacred to you! You even see it as the purpose of being human. But what's so important about Knowledge? It has brought the world at the brink of extinction! You can say humans did that but that's the same as the theistic argument that humans are responsible.

Well you will find no final contentment in polytheism, if you did you would come across as a much more contented individual rather than one whose wife lovingly considers you a nutter. — universeness

Haha, indeed. But still, I find final contentment because they endow the universe with wonder. I know you dont need them fir that, but for me it's different.

eh.......No. — universeness

My paranoia surfaces... :smile:

IMHO, you are losing, and Dawkins et al, are kicking your ass up and down the streets of free-thinking humanity. — universeness

Then it's no free thinking street at all! I just kick back on his pompous ass! "Oooohh, love it! Kick again! On the other side now! A supersymmetric kick, if I only knew what that meant. But it feels good! Do it again!" :lol:

The base IQ is set by the genetic makeup of the brain — Christoffer

Genes don't wear make-up. Even no basic one. They just deliver proteins.

Damn Plato — Wittgenstein

That's the spirit!

You miss the point, I have no theology, I am an atheist! — universeness

Yez, but the point is, you follow a theology just the same. You have a sense of wonder in walking through the material universe, which makes the universe itself god or something you worship. Especially the so worshipped knowledge gathering, which is just wanting to know god. But how can something so wondrous exist in the first place. A mindless spark seems to render life mindless just the same. Mindless stuff stays mindless, no matter how much you combine of it. Mind is no holistic property od death.

You probably see this as a clever trick to convert you, but that's not gonna happen... I just defend my "theology" or religion from Dawkinskian attack. If the guy knew a bit more physics, he would realize science has no answers, as he thinks. And his silly selfish memes and genes even less! I guess I know it... He's a frustrated physicist, bullied at school and taking revenge!

I haven't experienced anything like that but l have come close to experiencing annihilation in the remembrance of God. — Wittgenstein

Must have been a scary feeling. Being absorbed by the whole? Or was the feeling a great one?

If you think Richard Dawkins is one of the nefarious, — universeness

I don't personally know the guy, and dont know if he's nefarious. What I do know is that he doesn't llike religion. Which is his good right, but you can't argue against something because you don't like it.

All YOU have to do my poor lostboy is join the SCIgodians they will help you much more than your polytheistic gods. :death: — universeness

The point is, your SCIgod is no god but a real entity in my being already. Science offers no secrets for me. The SCIgod has nothing new to offer and all his knowledge can be punctured. You project the lust of scientific power intk an unrational being with omnipotent features, a feat exposed by people like Dawkins who like science to be all powerful and powerfully instate it as a global culture. I think he would actually like your Scigod! :lol:

Well, it would be silly to ignore a potential revenue stream wouldn't it! — universeness

Yes, but it will probably be the only group interested. Your theology is incoherent, incomprehensible, completely random, directed to power and money, threatens with a terrible afterlife, morally superior towards other gods, and scientifically dubious, to say the least. In short, a theology like most at the moment. It shows the shortcomings of modern theology (of which Dawkins rightly says that a university degree in it doesn't mean shit!).

Theism (or more specifically religion) has not been called pernicious by the like of Richard Dawkins for nothing. — universeness

Indeed. They make even more miney from atheism than the woowoo salesman of gods. Instead they offer another woowoo under the so-called objective guise of scientific woowoo. Dawkins books are all based on the dogma of molecular biology... More woowoo it can't get. Life being controlled by selfish genes and memes? Ooookaaaaay!

The second degree is the self-display of very being in an epiphany containing in itself all the active, necessary and divine manifestations, as well as all the passive, contingent and mundane manifestations. This degree is named the * First Emanation " because it is the first of all the manifestations of the Very Being , and above it there is no other degree than that of the ' Unmanifested ' — Wittgenstein

The first emanation of the eternal gods in eternal heaven appear in the First Grand Epihany in the dream or conscious mind, through which the message is sent of the reasons of the collective divine creation along with an epiphany on the basic structure of the fundamental nature of the divine matter used. Consider this as a sign of gratitude that the gods could use your dream or mind to receive the divine message. The epiphany of the nature of the basic material of the universe is a scientific landmark which in the whole history of science hasn't been experienced before. Einstein longed for it, like every true physicist should: "The contemplation of this world, beckons, like a liberation". And, fully according to the guidelines of the idol image of Einstein, the epihany experienced can be explained to a six year old. Eternal gratitude to the gods, who made me see the wonder of the structure of the fundamentals of the physical world. Wow, what a trip!

Biological evolution is not sentient and has no conscious plans; in this example, it yet has a telos, hence purpose, that is independent of sentience and its conscious planning. — javra

If you mean biological evolution as a scientifiç principle, then indeed it is not sentient nor does it consciously plan. In it's ultimate form, based on the, get this, central dogma of molecular biology (!), teleos is incorporated into selfish(!) genes, a most extraordinary theory of life and being.

Considering the actual evolution, sentient beings are actually on the scene, and these beings have actual plans. If these are in service of some higher ideal as dogmatized in evolution theory, is highly questionable, and the new dogma is probably an attempt by lack of better or inability to understand truly.

:up:

Yeah, basically they say laissez faire nous, let us do as we please.

The recognition of an end consequence by means of an exploded view — Rocco Rosano

An exploded view of gods, how you imagine that?

Much the the Principle of Uncertainty (Quantum Mechanics - Heisenberg) or the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Logic - Leibniz), I thought we would approach the topic from the perspective of the outside observer and moving towards the Proof that had the greater probability. — Rocco Rosano

Why has the uncertainty principle offer a perspective on a proof that has greater probability? Do you mean a greater probability being true than the gods being true,?

I was thinking about the causes of some health conditions. But even in regard to the idea we might have that neural activity causes thoughts, we still cannot connect particular thoughts with specific neural processes. — Janus

We in fact can connect particular thoughts and feelings with particular processes. A thought is a collective, coherent, parallel, massive running around of spiked, localized bundles of sodium ions rushing in through small channels on the long neuron axons, wich, coupled to other neurons at the synapses by neurotransmitter releases which are gap width dependent, form an incredibly complex network. Considering that there are hundred billion of these damned neurons, and each can be connected to more than 10 000 other neurons, we shouldn't be surprised that every process in the physical universe can be simulated. A simple and fast back of the envelope calculation shows that about 10exp(10exp20) patterns can run on it. That'll do...

No, I personally, and other readers in their analysis carry truth from memories. — Varde

To carry truth from them, memories must contain truth. But memories have proven poor truth reminders.

A claim itself is not a true-courier, in fact — Varde

So this claim carries no truth?

I just spent 10 mins conjuring creatures and fables, sorry, truths, in my head. I started easy, from the 'duocorn' (two horned flying horse) to the 'bistat,' (a humanoid which can be in any one of two states, whenever it chooses, male or female). I will employ them in my 'creation revelations' at some point. — universeness

Ten minutes to conjure up a coherent consistent heaven are not enough, brother Uni! You'll have to come up with something better than bistat fantasies, entertaining as they might be. The human gods, especially your god counterpart, will laugh about it in amusement! But I think the public sees through your trickery! But who knows... In the lhbtg community, your bistat god will be embraced!

I also started to commlink with the 'first one!' I have just received this signal, It's been traveling for 26 billion years of our perception of linear time. — universeness

How can that be if the universe is no older than 13.8 billion years?

The both have this one in common too:

"The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies, and his rule commences"

Coincidental?

There are more users having this quote in their favorite section! And rightly so!

My dear god, brother Uni... SCIgods? If you want to write a book about them and tell people that who don't want to believe in them are doomed, be my guest. It would only show that you prefer your own god and want everyone to accept them. It would expose tyrannical tendencies. "We all should believe in science, and all that don't are doomed!". We all have our dreams, stories, beliefs, etc. Your musings about the future, transhumans, endless pursuit, ad nauseam, of knowledge, extended lifespan, etc., is no different from my gods musings and cosmic models and dreams to prove them. You might say that your beliefs are in touch with the real world but so are mine. I don't need transhuman gods or extended lifespan to obtain a godlike status. So you as well as me, as well as everyone, crawls along in a magical life, provided to us by gods, whatever reasons they got. We can come to know heaven and the gods in it. The non-material heavens and the unphysical eternal gods, by examining the dual materialistic projection of it we see around us.

Consider this. Unicorns, dualcorns, pentacorns, etc. are nice fantasies but gods are no fantasy, which exist because we believe in them. We can project beliefs into the material world, like projecting a value belief into the the euro coin. The coin gets an intrinsic value in relation to these beliefs. The 10 euro coin is something different than a stone because of that. Would you throw a 10 euro piece in the river. Dunno. I would, but most won't. The piece has inherent value to some. Likewise for gods. With one difference. It's not our belief that brings them into existence. I know that's your vision, the gods being a fantasy. What's the problem if they are real? There is even a way for them to communicate with us. They can't appear in the flesh. The universe would collapse. But QM offers a subtle means to communicate with us mentally. The can project themselves onto the material world like that. You could see them in cloud shapes, for example, or see them in dreams, like I did. Why is that so hard to believe?

(Btw, great name from a great novel (& 1972 film adaptation)) — 180 Proof

In both versions it remained unclear what the mechanism was used by Solaris. Lem offered some half-baken, immature, almost childish means, but we can't really blame him. Neutrinos were new and still ghos-tlike. The second version offered a similar proposition, based on physically more recent fantasies. It was shown to us in the so-called objective context of the knowing scientist, but in the heart of the matter and in hindsight this was just a propagand move.

Didn't Friedrich Nietzsche say something about this:

"A man's maturity is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play."

We could, in modern approach, add the woman to this.

The reality of the first pig heart transplant was heralded with an overload of bells and gigaphones. When the beating stopped shortly after, a minor article on the last page mentioned it. Two realities. One fabricated to be more real than the other.

How do we know reality, and even our simulating brains themselves, are not a simulation? Can a simulation be simulated? When I dream, I see a simulated world. Can you dream in your dream? Wake up from a dream and thank god it was a dream, after which the nightmare continues. Will we finally wake up from the nightmare of life when we die? Or will we enter the next nightmare instead.

Basically, there are two versions of a simulated world, which I call the weak and the strong simulation hypothesis. The weak simulation hypothesis assumes our simulation device, the brain, already there, in a vat, as you wish, or in our body, while being unconscious, for the sake of keeping it alive. We then stimulate the senses to let us experience the world we would have experienced in the case we were truly walking around in the world. We need to be made conscious again, and the senses should be stimulated in a coherent way, as if they came from our sensory devices of our body actually walking around in the real world. We effectively need a real world to accomplish this fate, and stimulating the senses as presented by a computer, needs a computer simulation of the real world, and the simulation appropriately reacting to our mental reactions to it. This is the kind of simulation as pictured in The Matrix. Neo is stimulated by means of a fat plug and play device on his nerval spine on his back, which makes the visual stimulation questionable. You can put a VR helmet on, but then you stimulate the brain by real means. No virtual reality is presented in VR helmets. The hearing illusion or the skin sensations and smell sensations idem dito, although the skin sensations might be presented by the spinal tap (phantom limbs!). All in all, a technically quite difficult feat to achieve, and in our dreams, the brain actually does it for us!

Then we arrive at the strong version. Even the brain is simulated here What can I say? Megalomaniac visions of the computer addict? Can the dream be simulated?

People fear laissez faire because they think it unjust. It's only sociopaths like you who think hoarding all the capital you can get your hands on is 'just'. The rest of us think justice is about what people deserve to get, not what people can get. — Isaac

Ha! Great comment! :grin:

Laissez faire: a great principle for those who want to produce, produce, build more to produce more, and more, and even more, freely ordering the loan slaves for as small salaries as possible, to gather even more and more and more. Until lost at the boundary of heaven.

I play video gym every morning. Half an hour at least I let that guy on the screen sweat a bucket full! My condition is great and my IQ over 160! But what shall I do with such an IQ? How it helps me?

. I believe it's called the Socratic method — Agent Smith

It's called, the method of the child. Look at its bafflement when it exams, still without method or well defined aim, the small piece of shit it finds on the street. "Don't touch that! Leave it there! It's dirty shit!" "It siiiiit, geat sit mama!"

Krishnamurti is apropos here. He claims, in one of his lectures, take life seriously, — Agent Smith

The big secret is to take nothing seriously.

Forest Gump was great! He even showed the president his bitten bottom, when he went on that holiday to Vietnam! Great movie. It was, coincidentally, two times on TV here. Both times, I loved it. He had some influence! Shit happens! The firm with that fruit logo, Apple... And the shrimp guy! His brother! :grin:

The reason for your choice is the existential void you experiences? No pain, no happiness, no pleasure. Is you self-chastiding religion-inspired? Are you on the edge of accepting the damned gods?

Aren't we all creatures from the mud? The pussins are crawling on my head! Mud is real. But without us, does mud exist? Of course, if I touch myself tomorrow, the mud is still there. Persistent stuff. But does it really exist independently of us, even if we are made of it? If the mind is made from mud, is mud mind-independent then?

Every well-educated citizen knows the vacuum is filled with "virtual" (a very unlucky and inconsequential misnomer) interacting Planck geometries. If these are part of a 4d bulk vacuum, and 3d space and TD-time emerged on it, the question obviously becomes: who the fuck brought thát on the scene? There's only one answer possible, and you bloody well know it. So free your thoughts and let the magic in. Who cares they made it?

Actually, there is an "essence" underlying perceived reality : I call it "Information". Unfortunately, materialist scientists have ruthlessly dissected reality looking for its fundamental substance. The problem is that they imagined that substance as tiny balls of hard stuff. But eventually, Quantum researchers have been mystified to find that the foundation of material reality is mushy Mathematics (Fields of intangible potential ; invisible WaveForms ; mind-stuff). Their "substance" is essentially the Information necessary to describe the statistical probability of their physical existence at a particular place & time. So, it seems that Reality is based on illusory gambler's odds. — Gnomon

A small defensive word in favor of the scientist... Quantum mechanics is the same small hard ball approach. Even worse, as it treats particles as geometrical points that move according to the laws of chance within the confines of a wavefunction, thereby probing space. Scientists have done a fairly good job figuring this out, and any attempt to use quantum mechanics and it's big brother quantum field theory, in some great scheme of consciousness, or an underlying informational computation leads us nowhere.

It could even be argued that the wavefunction constitutes space. It's the notion of the particle being a point that is problematic. The notion robs the particle of its true identity. An identity which entails more than a lifeless, dead point particle.

True, scientists tend to dissect material reality, thereby stripping it from complicated interaction effects between parts. It are the naturally occurring interactions and patterns and forms and shapes emerging from them that molds the magical particle contents into life and it's magical, quasi-divine content.

So, if mind is part of matter, can there even be a reality independent of mind?

I agree, though I also think that medicine shows that physiological causes can also be quite obscure — Janus

What's obscure about them? The causes are raging through my brain, pushing and pulling ideas along or resonating with the outside, creating a colorful and noisy world with their mental load, while I between them, on the edge of reason and madness...

Reasons provide clarity about personal causes.
— Hillary

Or obscurity. — Janus

The strange thing is, I don't understand why I wrote that up and what I meant by it! I think I meant physical causes, as that's what the thread is about. Personal causes can indeed be quite obscure...

Well, in real life, cause always precedes effect. But imagine what it feels like if we time reverse you playing the guitar (it requires some stretch of the imagination, to say the least...). Let's say you have hit an accord and let it the sound die out. Now reverse time. The strings magically start to vibrate, out of the thin air (litterally!). The sound waves all reverse and even come from your ears and inner experience! Instead of hearing a dying accord, you hear one increasing in volume, after which you feel your hand absorbing the energy of the vibrating strings and gone is the sound. And this could be the case for the whole universe. There are no laws forbidding this to happen! But it didn't happen like this. Weird! :smile:

The Word? Hmm. Causation isn't made up of words, never mind a word, no? — javra

I can see your concern for The Word. Not my cup of tea either! I was again referring to the modern version of the word, just the words of the language we speak, not realizing that Logos actually means the "Word of God" ( whatever he might have said). I'm a believer too, but my vision on heaven and gods stands a zillion miles away from the standard inhuman super omnimonster, with his roots in ancient Greece (at least, the western version), and theists probably like me even less than atheists!

So, I was talking about words. I read that Hitler used words like small doses of a lethal poison. Provide them one small dose at the time, and power is yours before noticed... (don't think I'm a fan of the guy!). Words can be powerful and maybe even change lives, though of course it takes more than them aline.

It could be though that matter and mind are two properties of the same stuff, which is a kind of unified dualism, contrary as that might seem. The inside of matter can be called the mindside, like electric charge, and the outside the matter side. In our inside, the mental resides (brain world) and on the outside, we are our body, which again lies between our inner mental world, and the outer, matterside of the physical world around us, and the other living bodies we encounter. We, being our bodies, are the connection between our inner world and the matterside of the physical world (containing a mindside).