If you replaced some water or air with a patch of nothingness, the surrounding body would undoubtedly collapse into the space. It creates a vacuum as we know. To create a near perfect vacuum takes a huge amount of energy. So if absolute nothing is no more than an impossible idea, why does it take so much force to create?

I believe nothing can always have at least two features. It's size and shape for instance (presuming it's in a frame of reference of something). Or nothing can have a direction relative to something. It seems odd I know but I believe without having these features, nothing wouldn't be able to form something and nothing would be all there is.

Then again I believe I'm an eternal universe without a big bang, so who knows?

If illegal drugs were legalized, numerous problems would disappear, not the least of which would be the drug cartels.
If free needles are made available, the problems of diseases transmitted through shared needles is eliminated.
Both high-functioning and low-functioning drug addicts would benefit from having easy access.
All the poison that makes its way onto the streets would be eliminated.

What would we do in a world without a war on drugs? The possibilities are limitless. — uncanni

Exactly.

I always had my faith in science. I was in secondary school when I first asked the serious questions and even though science doesn't have those answers I was under the impression that I just wasn't intelligent enough to understand. The big bang for instance is enough for most atheists to accept as a beginning. But, my trouble started when I questioned the standard model. Then I was left with the same issue of having this structure of thought where the answers are all now wrong in some way which shakes everything about. Now I've had to answer all the questions myself, for my sanity, coming to different conclusions and feeling like the biggest outsider, weirdo, annoying shit.

Don't know why I said party because I generally Dodge them. I meant, do the things you enjoy.

I agree. If I speak my mind I argue and disagree with everyone around me. When it comes to any philosophical topic. Which is the only kind of conversation that doesn't drain me and I enjoy. Whilst everyone seems to find it draining to even try and question anything interesting to me.

All the lies are hard to hear. But the honest ones, when people believe what they're saying and you KNOW it's wrong. Those lies are painful to see. But the ones we have to play along with take the biscuit. Like Christmas, Easter or my worst nightmare, someone who believes in ghosts and believes they saw the ghost of a loved one after they died.

How many lies do you need to tell yourself every day to believe you're happy?

I think all this misery I feel is a result of knowing enough to believe that all we see can be completely explained materially and that there is no real meaning, to anything, in a world where I see everyone running about enjoying themselves blissfully unaware, making me feel stupid for taking the time to learn what's going on. Like I'm no longer part of the group.

If you have enough time to sit about and think you end up depressed and want to kill yourself. If you haven't got enough time you're busy trying to make more time so you can afford time to just relax and think.

The only meaning to modern life I can see is to have fun and the people who have the most fun do less thinking. We are all meaningless sacks of meat and bits. Might as well party.

Novelty. Creativity. Do they really exist? Yes, but not if you are the person in which it came. You can't create with more than you have to create with and you can't be novel without already having the trivial building blocks in place to start with. It looks novel and creative to everyone else purely because they were missing the path of thought which took the author there. I don't think this is a depressing position at all. It just means that any one person is not responsible for any genius they're perceived to create on their own. Shakespeare would of been just another cave man if he was born 100 thousand years ago. Maybe the smartest and most adventurous of them but a primitive human. Just look what happens when a child gets raised by animals. They only develope as far as the intelligence around them allows.

Right and not worth arguing about

I say Captain Ahab was already there before he was thought into existence. For the same reason I can invent a random word at will, like fragalagadingdong and although it's never been heard in its entirety before, all the component parts were there, which I jumbled up together. The first words spoken by humans were a bridge between sounds they could already make and some action or object of reference.

Free will or original thought are illusions. I feel like I have free will but logically I know that cannot be. If I invent something new, which looks and seems new to everyone, it is only as a response to the need for said things invention to begin with.

We evolved. Life is all about satisfying yourself. There is no living creature that doesn't aim to satisfy itself, or their species would go extinct.

When you do it to hurt someone's feeling intentionally or course. But that doest necessarily mean the intended person is offended in any way. If they appreciate it instead for some reason and no injustice is felt, was said person being mean or simply trying to be? So you can seem mean without trying. You can seem passive whilst attempting to be mean and anywhere in between. What's more, if someone is being mean on purpose, and they succeed, assuming they are judging their own personality, would it not be considered as good? Justified in some way? Simply achieving a desired effect in anything is positive reinforcement.

Truth is meanness can be felt or dished out and it can be either just or injustice. meanness can be felt even when the intentions are good or vice versa. And when it comes to if its a personality flaw or not, again, relies mostly on the judge because what some see as simple retribution or maybe punishment for a wrong, looks to some as mean, others may find it immoral and some think it's all a joke.

Have you ever told a kid off about something and mid sentence realised you had the wrong end of the stick. Then you feel bad for being mean. Even though it felt completely justified a second ago? Therefore it wouldn't be fair for any judge to count meanness as something immoral, being as it pivots on understanding of a situation. My son is 7 now and he gets what mean is. Although many time he considers something mean because he can't see the good in it or he will not realise he's been mean because he couldn't see the bad in it. Meaning what's actually mean, doesn't mean anything.

It's more about the definition of mean. It's in itself not a moral issue. A child taking a toy from another because it wants it and feels jealousy for it, cannot be considered immoral in any way. it's only when it's intentionally meant to be mean that it becomes a moral issue. But even then, one person's mean, is anothers, just. The word 'mean' is too flimsy for a definitive answer about whether being it is moral, or not. I would say it's a perception of another more than a personal trait.

I'd like to see what a brain in a jar would be like. Taken from a normal person whilst alive. If you had just a brain, without ears and eyes, no senses at all but alive all the same. I think it would float there completely void of thought. It could respond to stimuli but with no incoming signals from any body part, no communication between brain parts would take place. Frozen in thought. So it would prove the uselessness of one without the other.

If you saw the living brain, separated from all inputs and it was void of all activity, would that assure you of a mind body duality to consciousness? It would me.

Further in the future it will be possible to upload a mind into a computer. At that point I think all this will become clear. The uploaded personality would begin acting different instantaneously.

All things exist in their entirety prior to the first report of them. — creativesoul

I would just reword it a little to;
Anything in existence is real in it's entirely, regardless of anyone/thing seeing or knowing about it.

I would disagree and say that any fiction is a compilation of prior reality, mixed up into something which only appears novel.

I'm English and our definition covers both being tight with money and being cruel in some way. I doubt the definitions are worth mentioning.

Mean is in the eye of the beholder. Most children think their parents are being mean. The animal kingdom seems rife with it. Being mean is something only another can consider a personal flaw. If it's in the culprits best interest, how could it be a flaw of their personality? It all depends on who answers the question. The supposed mean person, or the one (s) who they're doing something to.

This the problem though. When someone, who has obviously studied philosophy comes here to start a thread, the chances are it's a question that's already been asked. Then there is always someone like you spewing out what Google would come up with, after Denovo Meme Specifically said that they weren't interested in past rhetoric. Making your entire post pointless.

There is no point is having a forum if all we do is dwel on the past. Should we call it a pastrum?
Not that I think we should ignore the old schools, but at least assume we are all already fully aware and do not need a lesson in philosophy 101.

Well it works fine if you take away the prerequisite of perfect having to be complex in some way, or being out of reach for human conceivability.

I think that's where the difference lies anyway. As I see very simplistic things as being perfect. The greater the complexity the greater the removal from perfection. But if the end result is achieving some higher purpose, like a being, the question opens up to perfection of consciousness. As far as that's concerned, we are the best level of consciousness, still less than perfect of course.

What about a snow flake?

Someone has to pick up your rubbish and stock your food, cook your bread and make all your clothes, long in advance of the day when you have enough time and luxury to sit back and think, "Why should an individual matter when there are so many different people in this world?"

Didn't read the post, only the title. It's no, they're not compatible. Every time a new scientific theory is established an angel dies .

opinion? The only reason chemistry works is because atoms are quantised. You can't say they are anything other than perfect. Unless you disapprove of existing.

I would disagree and say every atom is technically perfect unless you're lumping it in with light. Every proton is exactly the same meaning all matter is a point of perfection. Anything made out of atoms is then capable of perfection, depending on which aspects one is addressing. Just because something is not finite, doesn't mean it cannot be perfect, only imperfect of form.

So, when you say ‘SOMETHING’ here, do you mean it must always be a physical, tangible something applying or receiving forces, or could it be a conceptual, abstract or subjective experience of ‘something’ that interacts with a physical something and in doing so effects an applied force? — Possibility

Matter/energy is real and very tangible. The idea that any effect on it can come from something that's neither is ridiculous. Do you really believe concepts or experiences have a physical weight to them somehow? Please expand.

I don't like this 'potential' idea. Things have potential of course, but potential is not a thing. Matter cannot consist of the shear potential it holds. It's two steps back as far as I'm concerned.

Gravity is created by matter and it only effects matter - it has no effect on space or time.
Time is a constant - it does not / can not, slow or stop. — gater

What is time dilation then? Clocks in different frames of reference tend to disagree. I'm assuming you have a different approach as it's not really debatable wether it happens or not.

We see thing on far more scales than just the standard human perception. Since the invention of the telescope/microscope, we see much deeper. Know more than our physiology would allow on its own. As we have become more and more technological, I believe our ability to conceive of thing is growing with it. Saying it's impossible is akin to giving up.

Is beg to differ. After all, there is no other way for a universe to be perceived. It can't be seen or experienced but it's within the reaches of thought surely. I don't claim to have an exceptional mind, far from it. Still I can imagine these ideas and conceptualise them. Even though I could never witness such a thing.

Why would there need to be a something preventing other universes from appearing? There only need be a lack of something which could cause another.

I like your views on religion. We should have moved past it years ago. Still, with regards to the evidence of the BB, I think it's not quite substantial enough. Then I consider the size of the universe and try to envisage how it could possibly of come from one single point? How it got there? How could it happen again? So I'm left with many new questions just because this answer solves a few other previous ones. Now I see it used like the implementation of dark matter and energy to fill in blanks.

It seems like a leap of faith to me. There are other explanations for expansion or the microwave background which I find more plausible. Not to mention most professionals now agreeing that General Relativity is incorrect or incomplete, yet it's used to work out the details of the Big Bang.

And yes I wanted to know how many people really think about bubble/multiverse theories in a serious manner.

Atheist, at your service. Reincarnation is a fantasy. And karma is an obvious no no.

I don't need to explain my reasoning because what PoeticUniverse∆ said covers it. The rest is common sense.

Intelligent principal of the universe ay. Guess I'm a little short of spirit.

I give up.

Perhaps it was the G-word that prompted you to close your mind all of a sudden? You won’t see much of anything that way, let alone any paradigm shift. Too bad. — Possibility

The philosophical definition of spiritualism; the doctrine that the spirit exists as distinct from matter, or that spirit is the only reality.

All you are doing is swapping spirit for potential so it sounds more scientific and less like woo woo. Sorry if I offend.

Yeah, I don't buy it. Also I can't see any paradigm shift in this direction. It's just fancy spiritualism.

In my own research on this, I’ve realised that there are far too many more intelligent and knowledgeable people and teams out there who are a hair’s breadth away from discovering this in their own fields of research for me think my philosophical ramblings can achieve anything except perhaps to nudge them over the lip, or point out connections or collaborations they maybe hadn’t considered yet. — Possibility

What influence would considering matter as potential have on the future?

You said this way of thinking allows the gaps in our understanding to dissolve away (for you). So how?

The way I see it, what exists is potentiality, because without it, nothing CAN exist. Does that make sense? — Possibility

Yes but what difference does it make? It's just a more complicated way of pushing the buck. I could say space is the only thing which exists because without it, nothing could. Or energy, time...

Stuff.

I still believe everything is made out of just empty space. However contradictory it is.

New question. Is empty space the same as nothing?

Empty is the same as nothing in most senses but space implies a size, a dimension. Or maybe the question is wrong.

stuff — god must be atheist

Best answer so far. Painfully.

I think matter is an interaction between different energy levels and directions, spins and size. But again, it still doesn't help. What's any energy, regardless of perspective, made of?