Sorry, I don't follow. I've been trying to wrap my head around the idea of existence for as long as I can remember with nothing to show for it. — TheMadFool

Existence = made of atoms.

That you mentioned about how god could be nothing is pertinent to the problem I'm grappling with because god, majority opinion says, is immaterial and the sticking point here is that existence is defined in material terms. — TheMadFool

"Existence" is a human concept which is useful in our everyday lives at human scale. A pencil exists on my desk. Even though the pencil overwhelmingly consists of non-existence, at human scale we need not concern ourselves with such details.

The problem would seem to arise when we attempt to map these local scale human concepts on to vastly different scales. And so we argue for centuries whether God exists or not, as if God is or isn't a thing, equivalent to a pencil.

Observation of reality seems to offer a way out of this very tired box. Space illustrates that a phenomena can be real without meeting our definition of existence. At the least this might teach us that we can stop clinging stubbornly to the widely shared assumption that a God is required to exist, or not exist, one or the other.

In other words, existence = material for all intents and purposes. This is a serious setback for someone who wants to claim that god is both immaterial and that god exists for it's a contradictio in terminis. The same difficulty arises when we say god is nothing. — TheMadFool

Who cares about contradictions in terms? These are rules created by infinitely small half insane creatures, so it's not likely they are binding upon all of reality including any gods that may be contained within.

What do I think? If there is something such as God, human thought would be unlikely to be able to grasp such a unifying phenomena, given that human thought operates by a process of division. As example, the word God is a noun, and like all nouns it presumes some phenomena which is separate from other phenomena. So every time we type the word God we are reinforcing our built-in bias towards thinking of God as a thing. And so we argue for centuries regarding whether that thing exists or not.

I believe the modern scientific understanding of space is not that it's nothing - it has properties and, according to relativity, it warps around extremely massive objects like stars and black holes. — TheMadFool

Generally agreed, and this is why I often include the alternate descriptor of "relative nothing" to describe space.

Anyway, the point is that space doesn't have the properties we usually use to define existence. And yet it is real. Thus, any conversation which assumes that the only options for God are exist vs. not-exist would seem to be blatantly ignoring evidence from the vast majority of reality. It seems useful to observe a few things here.

1) First, blatantly ignoring observations of reality would seem to be a serious heresy for atheists.

2) Second, we might observe how almost all of the leading "experts" on all sides of the God question have long assumed without questioning that a God can only exist or not exist. And we might observe how we blindly follow them in to what seems an obvious error.

Offer me a third option then. — TheMadFool

Space. The vast majority of reality. Does not neatly fit in to either the "exists" or "not exists" category.

Explained this now about 100 times in a number of threads across the forum.

I look at it differently. If intentionality could be ascribed to nature, it's pinned all its hopes on humans. Humans are endowed with an intelligence that's, as far as we know, unprecedented in the history of life on Earth. — TheMadFool

Oh my....

I'm open to nature maybe having intentionality. But...

Pinned it's hopes on humans? Hopes for what? Violent suicidal nature wrecking madness?

Humans are the most intelligent creature only if we define intelligence as being of a human nature.

If we define intelligence as survival, as nature seems to do, we are the species with thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down it's own throat, an imminent self extinction threat we typically find too boring to discuss, even in a presidential campaign. Yes, that again.

Why does such strong evidence have to be relentlessly ignored by those who pride themselves on their ability to perform logical analysis of observable real world data? Here's the answer. We ain't intelligent!

My guess is that humans are just one in a long series of experiments nature is conducting in a process that will span millions of more years.

As Coben pointed out for our benefit God, if he exists — TheMadFool

For the 99th time, I would like to respectfully suggest we try dropping the "does God exist or not" paradigm. The vast majority of reality does not tidily fit in to the "exists or not" paradigm, clear evidence suggesting that a God would not necessarily be limited to "exists or not".

My own guess is that the simplistic dualistic "exists or not" framework is our mind's way of trying to map it's own limitations on to all of reality.

The question doesn't make sense. — TheMadFool

Right, it doesn't make sense to because 1) our minds have been trained by evolution to focus on things, and 2) thought works by dividing reality in to conceptual objects (ie. things).

The fact that a theory that God is perhaps not a thing doesn't make sense to us is not a very important piece of evidence given our built-in bias for things, and how incredibly small we are in relation to reality as a whole. The Internet doesn't make sense to your dog. So what??

God has to be something, right? — TheMadFool

If the overwhelming vast majority of reality can be a nothing (or perhaps relative nothing) why would God be required to be a something?

The alternative to something is nothing and if god is nothing, it's just a fancy way of saying god doesn't exist. — TheMadFool

Does space exist? Space is very clearly real, but to our knowledge it has none of the properties we use to define existence such as mass, weight, shape, form, color etc. Math is also clearly real, and also clearly does not exist. According to science all of reality arose from nothing, or something very close to nothing. So, sorry, no. A theory that God is nothing does not automatically equal atheism.

I would ask the following of readers:

1) The Nature Of Thought: Shift much of your focus from the content of thought (this idea vs. that idea) to the nature of thought, how it works. When you see that thought operates by dividing reality in to conceptual objects, it will become clear that this is an important form of built-in bias which affects all observations.

In this case it may be that thought insists on turning God in to a conceptual object, a thing, because that's how thought interacts with all phenomena, divide and label. The division we presume to be between "God" and "non-God" may be a property of the tool being used to make the observation, and not a property of what is being observed. As example, if we look at the world while wearing tinted sunglasses, everything we observe will appear to be tint colored.

2) Space: The overwhelming vast majority of reality at every scale is space. If our goal is to develop understandings grounded in observation of reality, then space should be our primary focus. It's not our primary focus because of the built-in bias for division and "things" referenced above in item #1.

It seems reasonable to consider whether God may not be a thing in reality, but instead reality itself. If true, then God would be real, while being overwhelmingly what we typically refer to as nothing.

If so, the problem I see with a publishing model which is moderated is that it restricts the freedom of users. — zimti

If democratic inclusion and freedom for users is the priority for a site, ok, that's a choice which can be made. The price tag for that choice is mediocre to worse content.

I’ve demonstrated that caring in this topic. — praxis

You've demonstrated that you like other people to type things you can object to.

Online discourse will never be improved so long as almost all sites use a publishing model where almost anybody can say almost anything. That model can be celebrated for it's democratic inclusiveness, but it's also a formula guaranteed to generate lowest common denominator level content. Lecturing users and giving them tips etc is largely pointless, because it's the publishing model which is the problem.

The idea of nothing seems germane to my thesis; after all, trial and error as a method seems closer to an absence of a creator than a presence of one. — TheMadFool

God, creator, supreme being, supernatural entity. These are nouns. Like all nouns they presume the existence (or non-existence) of some separate phenomena, a thing, with properties which define that thing, and thereby divide it from other phenomena.

Centuries of debate arise regarding what the properties of such a thing called God might be. Such discussions are almost always built upon an unexamined assumption that a God should be considered a thing with properties, even if the only property is non-existence.

What if God is not a thing?

I said nothing about being bored by those topics. I said nothing about cheering posts. If you're going to be purely reactive, you could perhaps react to things I've actually said.

It looks like you've started 3 threads over the last 3 years. If you are indeed interested in those subjects, and have anything interesting to say about them, why not start some new threads where you outline your perspectives on those topics.

Should I cheer whatever someone posts because they merely participated — praxis

I said nothing about cheering. What I did say was, develop and share your own ideas. Start some threads. Present your thesis.

Or not. If you prefer to be boring and predictably reactive, ok, they're your posts.

Surely, while philosophy is involved in looking at beliefs and values it cannot be in ivory tower blockaded from the pressing concerns facing humanity. — Jack Cummins

The most dramatic and imminent pressing concern are the thousands of large (way bigger than Hiroshima) hydrogen bombs aimed at major population centers around the world. Philosophers at every level are utterly disinterested. See this forum or any philosophy website for evidence.

Philosophy is dead, a joke, just a nerd mental masturbation game with little relationship to reality. As a hobby, ok, I like to masturbate too. It's a scam that anyone gets paid to do it.

Your claims are oddly contradictory — praxis

Your posts are predictably of the gotcha flavor. Try developing your own ideas instead of just waiting for someone to post something you can object to.

I wonder though, if nothing is simple, why do people have difficulty discussing it? — TheMadFool

I've been trying to explain that. 1) It's because evolution has trained our minds to focus on things, the predator, the potato. 2) It's because thought operates by dividing reality in to conceptual parts. Nothing is not a part, nothing has no parts, it can't be subdivided, categorized and labeled etc. So our mind doesn't know what to do with it.

Indeed, once we begin to look beyond our planet and our solar system, we must think twice before we bring our earth-centric perspective to bear on matters that are galactic in nature. — TheMadFool

Ok, but the God question is beyond galactic. It's a collection of theories about the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere. So it's kind of absurd to try to take a very local concept like intelligence, which is useful for comparing humans to donkeys, and map it on to phenomena the scale of gods.

However, the very absurdity of such an operation is useful in that it reveals how hopelessly flawed the God debate is. And, how hopelessly inept are those considered expert on the subject. When this is seen and faced, the entire structure of the God conversation including all arguments for and against etc collapses in to a pile of pointless dung. And then we have nothing. Which as it turns out, is perhaps the best representation of reality we can get.

I only ask that you embrace the inherent anthroporphism, be human, be an earthling, be who you are instead of trying to view the issue from a galactic perspective, a perspective of which you haven't the slightest idea. — TheMadFool

I'll pass on the anthropomorphism, and have already agreed I haven't the slightest idea. Not having the slightest idea, and knowing that to be true, is not a defeat. Once all the fantasy knowings are off the table that creates an opportunity to approach such issues with an open quiet mind, a psychological state which is more like reality than any philosophy. This should be appealing to those, like many atheists for example, who want their perspectives to be grounded in observation of reality. If one is trying to understand reality, and reality is overwhelmingly nothing....

Ergo, isn't it likely that life elsewhere in the universe will evolve in a manner similar to that on earth? — TheMadFool

I have no idea. And anyway, the God concept typically has nothing to do with species on other planets.

Here's the kind of event I'm arguing will be necessary to change the sleepy status quo group think on nuclear weapons. The following video briefly describes the time the Air Force accidentally dropped two nukes on North Carolina. One of the bombs came very close to going off, a single cheap switch preventing the detonation. Something like this is likely going to have to happen again, and the bomb will have to detonate, for us to focus on the danger we are in.

You can study it all you want after you have a decent job — BitconnectCarlos

Casting my vote here.

I must clarify that the simplicity I'm going to discuss is god's intelligence. — TheMadFool

A few thoughts in reply, hopefully relevant...

1) I like a theory that space is God, that everything arises from nothing, for reasons unknown. In one way of looking at it, nothing is about as simple as it gets.

2) I'm quite skeptical of discussing God's intelligence.

First, that presumes that God is a "thing" which would thus have properties, a phenomena divided from other phenomena. I prefer a "God as Everything" theory, which suggests God is not a thing, but a container of all things. In this theory, God would not have a particular set of properties, but would contain all properties. We can see this in the Jehovah character for example, who seems quite contradictory as a result.

Next, our understanding of intelligence is derived from an extremely small sample of reality, life on a single planet in one of billions of galaxies. I think we're making the usual human mistake of trying to map this very local phenomena on to the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere, probably a spectacular logic failure.

To me, the most promising method of investigating God theories is to shift the focus to that which is generating the theories, thought. We are observing all of reality through the medium of thought, so whatever the properties of thought may be will have a profound influence upon the observation. As example...

Thought operates by dividing the real world in to conceptual objects. So for example, we see the noun as the building block of language. Because we are not only using thought, but are ourselves made of thought, we assume reality is made up of things (ie. divisions), and thus assume God is one of those things. And then from there we attempt to define the God thing, assigning it particular properties as we would any thing.

My guess is that the divisions we perceive everywhere we look are a property of the tool being used to make the observation, not a property of what is being observed. Almost all of theology may be built upon such an error.

Here's a good description of the time somebody at NORAD mistakenly put a training tape in the computer, which convinced the national security apparatus that a Soviet first strike was incoming.

The crazy part is WWIII was almost started by accident. — Outlander

Yup, that's already happened more than once. Here's a quick 6 minute story of one such event. The Soviet early warning system mistook sunlight on the clouds for rocket boosters and signaled an incoming attack.

So what's the solution to the threat posed by nuclear weapons?

A nuclear weapons accident. Something like this:



In this case the rocket exploded (when a workman dropped a wrench) destroying the silo and ejecting the bomb from the silo, but the bomb didn't go off. If it had much of Arkansas would now be uninhabitable.

It seems focusing the attention of the public on nuclear weapons will require an accident where the bomb does go off. As harsh as that sounds, an accident would obviously be far preferable to snoozing along in denial until a nuclear war erupts, which given human history seems a sooner or later near certainty so long as these weapons exist.

Somebody will have to pay the price to awaken us from the denial dream. The world's largest nuclear submarine base is just a few hours from our house. Maybe we'll get the honor?

I heard on NPR yesterday that both Bolsonaro of Brazil and Johnson of the UK saw their popularity rise after they recovered from the virus. Who wants to place money on Trump emerging victorious from the hospital a week before the election?

All Christians — Gregory

Any statement which contains the phrase "all Christians" reveals the author to be an incompetent commentator on the subject.

So, as I guessed would be the case, not a single of mention of nuclear weapons in the recent presidential debate. Not such an amazing guess really, given that they've hardly been mentioned during the entire campaign. Here's a question that might be asked at the next debate, should there be one.

"Dear candidates, if you are elected you may be called upon to incinerate hundreds of millions of people based on limited information and almost no warning. Are you prepared to do that?"

If a candidate answers no, they simply can not be Commander In Chief.

If a candidate answers yes, they are insane. How else to describe any person who would spend years seeking a job where they may be forced by events to kill hundreds of millions of innocent people???

The perfect gotcha question. And yet, no one will ask it, and no one will answer it. Life in the fantasy bubble will remain undisturbed.

Yet another philosophy forum thread on Christianity which makes no mention of love.

Waste of time.

don't just passively experience the pain, be the pain — Gnomon

Be the pain. In other words, don't think about the pain, experience the pain. To the degree we are able to do this we eliminate the thought generated distance between "me" and "pain". Or to use fancy language, between subject and object. It's that division which is the source of suffering. That division is auto-generated by thought, because that's how thought works, by generating conceptual divisions.

It seems key to grasp that suffering arises from the nature of thought itself. The evidence for this is that human psychological suffering is universal. Suffering exists in every time and place and in every person, whatever the culture, religion or philosophy of that time, place and person.

These modern therapies don't require any religious commitments, but simply a buy-in to a "philosophical" perspective on suffering, similar to Buddhism and to Stoicism. — Gnomon

I suppose such a buy-in might be necessary for some to be willing to experiment with "be the pain", especially we philosopher types. But if it's true that suffering arises from the nature of thought, then the less analyzing we do perhaps the better. Really no philosophical anything is required. One can simply do the experiment by trying such techniques and then proceed from there.

But otherwise I agree with everything. — khaled

Well, ok, maybe we can explore that a bit...

Do you agree that suffering is made of thought?

Do you agree that thought is a mechanical function of the body?

Why are we complicating suffering? You know, to my knowledge, there is no sophisticated philosophy or religion which addresses itself to constipation. :-) Instead, we see a mechanical problem, and reply to it with mechanical solutions. Simple, direct, practical, serious. If we take such an approach to other mechanical problems of the body, why not suffering too?

Would looking at suffering in such a simple practical manner be in the spirit of some flavors of Buddhism? If so, which flavors?

Let's try to put things in some perspective....

First, this isn't The New York Times, but one of a million tiny forums on the Internutz.

Maybe 12 people will read your comments. They will all probably be anonymous strangers whom you'll never meet. Few of them will care anything at all about you, because you are an anonymous stranger to them too. When you leave the forum for the last time some day, you'll be forever forgotten in about 10 minutes.

Many times readers will scroll right on by your comments, whatever the value of those comments may be. When they do read your comment, they will often just be power scanning so as to most efficiently find something they can disagree with. Some readers won't be able to get what you're saying, or will prefer not to, and will read anything they'd like in to whatever you've said.

Should you by some miraculous accident happen to say something truly insightful and original it will probably go right over our heads, and your typing will have been wasted. More likely, we'll all keep saying things that have already been said a million times before, while claiming the ideas as our original insight personal property.

Whatever you type, whether it is published or not, it's only a matter of time until we blow up modern civilization and you and whatever you've said will be lost forever.

Why should you post at all then???

Because you've learned to enjoy the sound of the keys on your keyboard going clickety clack, clickety clack.

I like these two quotes...

I think a better question would be “Do you think the answer to our suffering is primarily fixing the world or primarily configuring our mind?” — khaled

The main thing a Buddhist hopes to do by meditating is to understand how his/her own mind is constructed. — khaled

It seems the broken world is created by our broken minds. So the Buddhist meditates to better understand the internal suffering which is the source of the broken external world. Perhaps what some Buddhists discover in their meditations is...

1) Suffering is made of thought.

2) Thought is a required mechanical function of the body, like eating and sleeping.

3) Thought, and thus suffering, can be managed by simple mechanical means, just as it true with eating and sleeping.

Thought, eating, and sleeping are required for survival. So there is no permanent solution to physical hunger, tiredness, or suffering. There is nothing we can eat which will end all future hunger. There is no nap we can take which will end all future weariness. And there is no philosophy, theology or psychology which will end all future suffering. That's the bad news, no permanent fix.

The good news is that just as the mechanical functions of digestion and sleep can be managed for enhanced health by simple mechanical means, so can thinking. And thus, so can suffering.

Do you need a fancy abstract philosophy to tell you what to do when you're physically hungry? No, you recognize a simple mechanical problem, and you solve it by simple mechanical means.

And you're way to sensible to spend years looking for some food you can eat which will end your need to eat again, right? You don't waste a minute on that. You know you're going to have to eat pretty much every day for the rest of your life, and you don't make that in to a problem. When you're hungry, you eat something. Simple.

Because suffering arises from a mechanical process of the body it can be addressed and managed (but not solved) by simple mechanical means.

This is really good news for everyone, except....

Philosophers. :-)

I'm in the space coast - any specific recommendations, within a couple hours? — Kevin

Apologies, but I don't really know that part of the state, but here's a good resource that should get you started.

https://floridahikes.com/

How about this?

https://floridahikes.com/?s=space+coast

While not claiming to speak for any Buddhist....

My take is that Buddhism is an experience which transcends philosophy and religion. The philosophy and religion parts are props people are using to try to talk themselves in to the experience.

The same might be said for Christianity for example. Jesus said, "Die to be reborn". Die is a verb which suggests an act of surrender. An act. An experience. All the other junk piled on top of that is supposed to help people make their way to the experience, though I'm guessing the piled on junk is as much obstacle as asset.

According to my wife who watched the entire debate, nuclear weapons were not mentioned once.

Presidential debate. One of these guys will have the power to destroy the world. We can't be bothered to talk about that, and neither can they.

I get my news on NPR pretty much exclusively, so I hadn't seen Biden in the flesh for some time. He seemed sharp enough (only watched first half) but wow, looking pretty old there fella. Not that I should talk. Trump looked even more satanic than I recalled, which surprised me as I didn't know that was possible. Gotta say, out of 300+ million people it's sad that this is the best we can do. Where's the ban button when we really need it?

To those of you who watched the whole thing, did they mention nuclear weapons even once?

Tonite is the first presidential debate of this election cycle. It will be interesting to see if nuclear weapons are mentioned even once.

Thousands of weapons stand by to erase modern civilization within minutes and...

That typically doesn't qualify as an interesting enough topic to discuss in a presidential campaign.

Yup. No doubt about it.

Insanity squared.

Florida has hiking? — Professor Death

You bet! I hike pretty much all day everyday for about 6-8 months of the year. Wonderful state park just 4 miles up the road from our house. 7350 acres. Once you get off the main trails, I typically have it all to myself.

July through September gets kinda dicey, very hot, very humid, very buggy. So I hide out on the Internuts, and get a bad case of bat shit crazy cabin fever.

Many philosophers seem to believe that their purpose in life is to find fault in other people's reasoning --- to be the annoying gadfly. — Gnomon

Personally, I don't seek to be annoying, but that is often how one is experienced if you successfully find fault in other people's reasoning. Just making the attempt can often be welcomed, as the gadfly is providing the group consensus with an opportunity to chant their slogans. But if one is talented at finding fault, popularity will not be one's reward.

I doubt most gadflies are really motivated by a sincere desire to provide a useful service to society. I'm guessing that's mostly a cover story. I suspect there are typically deeper emotional reasons driving the bus, which I don't yet understand clearly enough to articulate in a useful manner.

You doing OK in these days of plague (one kind or another)? — Bitter Crank

Thanks for asking Crank. How about you?

Yes, doing ok here. We're the lucky ones so far, the pandemic has not changed our lives too much.

And, tomorrow is the launch of the winter hiking season here in Florida, a HUGGGGGE day in my personal religion. So doing more than ok at the moment.

But at least the Russian leaders in charge of their nuclear weapons are serious responsible professionals, right? Um.....

The first time Yeltsin and Clinton met was when Yeltsin traveled to Washington and stayed in the White House for a few days. In the middle of the night they discovered Yeltsin out on Pennsylvania Avenue, drunk as a skunk, in his underwear, trying to hail a cab so he could go get some pizza.

But he wasn't dating Marilyn Monroe, so nothing to worry about really.

Another story recently heard on NPR....

During the Cuban Missile Crisis the Kennedy administration had decided to invade Cuba on the following Monday unless a solution to the crisis was found first. On the Friday before that Monday Khrushchev suggested that they would remove their missiles from Cuba if Kennedy would remove our missiles from Turkey.

Everyone in the Kennedy administration was against that plan. All the generals, all the cabinet officers, even Bobby Kennedy, they all wanted to reject the Russian offer. Only JFK wanted to accept the offer, and he was President, so he over ruled everyone else.

What they didn't know at the time was that not only were some of the Cuban missiles armed, the Russians had also snuck 40,000 Russian soldiers in to Cuba too. If JFK, a single person, had not accepted the Russian compromise, if the group consensus had prevailed and the invasion gone ahead, it would have immediately led to a direct confrontation between American and Russian forces, mass deaths on all sides, and a global nuclear war destroying Western civilization at the least.

A single person, a single decision, saved the world.

So Kennedy's the hero of the story, right? Not quite. It was Kennedy's primary responsibility to persuade all enemies that America could not be bullied and bluffed, an all important job he totally failed at, or the Cuban Missile Crisis would have never happened in the first place.

=============

Also been watching a documentary on Amazon Prime about "Kennedy's Women". Wow, while Kennedy was typically an intelligent sober rational actor in his job, he was wildly reckless in his personal life. He continually rode the razor's edge of scandal exposure and collapse of his administration.

Please recall the Camelot image of the handsome young man, his beautiful glamorous wife and happy children with which Kennedy seduced the entire nation. Now imagine the headline that reveals Kennedy is routinely cheating on his wife, dating a mob gal one day, a likely East German spy on the next, and Marilyn Monroe too. According to the documentary, one theory at least, the only thing that saved Kennedy from career ending scandal was his assassination.

And yet, he's the guy who saved the world.

The following is just a guess, totally open to challenge of course. The guess is that it would take around 50 nukes to kill America as that would destroy all the major cities, which would seem likely to collapse the food distribution system, leading to mass starvation, and social and political chaos.

The following fat little @#%#$ either has 50 nukes, or likely will before long.