I don't follow how the poll follows the substance of the post. But to the question posed in the post, if instead of insisting that every event has a cause, you state that every event has a purpose, you are setting forth the basis of religious doctrine. It inserts meaning into life as it indicates higher purpose and a reason for our being in existence.

We are minds within minds within minds - as there are waves, within waves within waves.

Consciousness and unconsciousness are exactly as they are experienced. It flows in cycles. Memory is embedded in the fabric of mind/universe and it is constantly evolving as it creates and learns. One only needs to observe.

you state that every event has a purpose, you are setting forth the basis of religious doctrine. It inserts meaning into life as it indicates higher purpose and a reason for our being in existence. — Hanover

Purpose is the essence of Life. The purpose is to create, observe, learn, and evolve. To have fun.

There is no religion here, just simple observation of Life. I dare say that suggesting there is no purpose, given all the evidence that is easily observed, would be some sort of religion.

Why do you capitalize "Life"?

To give it the emphasis it deserves. I use lowercase for things like rocks and particles. Too much religious worship of dead things like computers like Apple and Microsoft, not enough feeling for Life.

What's your purpose for being on this forum? Is it religious in nature? You do have a choice to do otherwise, right?

Is this the answer?

I've never heard of this guy before... Did this article only appear because I went 'looking' for it? This seems to point to Question 1 & Option 1 plus Question 2 & Option 3 - where I am the only truly self-aware entity in my version of reality, and I'm slowly figuring out what I really am... :s

Is this the answer?

I've never heard of this guy before... Did this article only appear because I went 'looking' for it? This seems to point to Question 1 & Option 1 plus Question 2 & Option 3 - where I am the only truly self-aware entity in my version of reality, and I'm slowly figuring out what I really am.. — CasKev

If that's the answer, then the question is the wrong question. Sadly brilliant scientists like Robert Lanza often go off the deep end and believe they can pronounce on Great Matters.

Your intuition that the universe show evidence of design, or at least seems to indicate design is correct. However, that doesn't mean that any particular religious world view is correct. All it means is that there is a designer or designers, probably the latter.

There is plenty of evidence of intelligent design in the universe. In fact, I would say it's overwhelming.

Overwhelmingly, the vast majority of the Universe cannot support life. And where life manages to survive and reproduce, it remains exceedingly fragile and precarious. 99% of all species that have ever lived have become extinct. It is ludicrous to think humanity can transcend an indifferent Universe. Even assuming (without justification) that the Universe was designed, there is nothing intelligent about it.

Even assuming (without justification) that the Universe was designed, there is nothing intelligent about it. — Maw

You do know that you are stuck to a giant spinning round rock that is flying around a big ball of fire, right? X-)

We are a collection of self-aware entities sharing different realities. Everything is conscious. To be honest I cannot understand anesthesia.

If the universe has been around for over 14 billion years, why wouldn't it be more than likely that some civilization now has the ability to create realities for us to experience; and that we are also part of that creation process. Moreover, it may be that they even have the ability to move from universe to universe. We couldn't even conceive of how advanced such a civilization could be. To say that there is nothing beyond the physical is just too dogmatic for me. It's similar to religious belief.

For me, consciousness is much more than what goes on in the brain, which is what I attempted to explain in my thread on NDEs.

Overwhelmingly, the vast majority of the Universe cannot support life. And where life manages to survive and reproduce, it remains exceedingly fragile and precarious. 99% of all species that have ever lived have become extinct. It is ludicrous to think humanity can transcend an indifferent Universe. Even assuming (without justification) that the Universe was designed, there is nothing intelligent about it. — maw

Well maybe creation is really hard work and that is why God seems to rest and be absent a lot of the time. :-|

If the universe has been around for over 14 billion years, why wouldn't it be more than likely that some civilization now has the ability to create realities for us to experience; and that we are also part of that creation process. Moreover, it may be that they even have the ability to move from universe to universe. We couldn't even conceive of how advanced such a civilization could be. To say that there is nothing beyond the physical is just too dogmatic for me. It's similar to religious belief. — Sam26

From a philosophical perspective I try to stay, as much as possible, as close as possible to actual observations.

Life can be of many forms, we know this. We discover new forms of life all the time. There may be forms of the type that we simply cannot recognize or sense at this time in evolution.

We are limited in what we can observe and sense. Other forms of life have different abilities and can sense what we cannot.

As our abilities evolve we learn to observe and sense more - even in line lifetime. Differences in color may be one small example.

I believe excellent training for philosophy is anything that increases or abilities to sense and observe. Who knows where it may lead? But, in moderation. Not everything we can do is necessarily healthful.

You wrote:

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I sometimes find myself baffled by the absurdity of everything that exists. How can it be possible that little quarks somehow not only hold themselves together, but organize themselves into groups, which then organize themselves into atoms. Oh, and by the way, these atoms form all kinds of materials that have different colours, smells, consistencies, even though they are made of the same subatomic materials, just in different combinations. And if that's not baffling enough, some of these atoms know how to organize themselves in ways that allow for movement and reproduction. And the complex biological organisms that exist - somehow programmed by DNA to produce life-sustaining systems. Throw in brains and self-awareness just to make matters more complicated...

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It's hard not to compare the behavior of quarks and such to the bits and bytes in the computers we program. How could these quarks assemble and organize without some sort of outside guidance? A computer could never have been created - never mind programmed - without some sort of intelligent designer.

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If we can accept that our world has been intelligently created in some way, what do you think would be the most likely implications, and why?

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Though I’m a Theist (not fashionable here), I think we should explain things ourselves whenever possible, at the lowest explanatory level possible, without invoking higher.

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(I clarified that I’m a Theist so that this won’t be taken as an Atheistic argument)

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I don’t think that it’s necessary to invoke Intelligent Design (which amounts to Theism) at the metaphysical level, to explain how there could be a metaphysical world, including living beings like ourselves. It seems to me that the “existence” of the metaphysical world can be explained, within itself, without outside or higher invocation.

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I’ve posted, today, a long explanation of my metaphysical proposal, at a discussion-thread called “Is Logic Fundamental to Reality?” It's on page 2 of that thread.

Here is a direct link to that page of that thread:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/2795/is-logic-fundamental-to-reality/p2

.I’d gladly paste a copy of it here, but maybe others would prefer that I just refer you to that other thread—a currently-active thread at the Metaphysics & Epistemology forum, or the General Philosophy forum.

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One thing I left out of that post was this statement:

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You’re in a life by virtue of being the protagonist in one of the infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories. So you couldn’t have not been in a life.

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…a statement that will make more sense in the context of that post.

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But, just briefly, in keeping with that metaphysical proposal, of course it goes without saying that, when physicists investigate and examine matter, what they find is going to be consistent with our being here. That’s because your life-experience story has to be consistent, because it consists of abstract facts. Inconsistent propositions aren’t facts. Facts aren't mutually-inconsistent.

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That’s why all of those things that you referred to are just right for life. That’s why the constants of physics are just right for life. I’ve read that if those constants were even a little different, there wouldn’t have been life (like us, at least).

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For example:

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Life (our at least our own form of it) requires stable atoms of consistent distinct kinds. For that, it would help to have discrete-valued quantities. And that, in turn can be achieved by standing-waves.

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…hence wave-mechanics, matter-waves, quantum-mechanics.

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Those atoms are a way of making chemistry, and life, possible.

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A few comments on the census questions:

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My positions didn’t fit into any of the answer-categories, but I answered the census as best I could, and my answers were the ones that were nearly unanimous.

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But let me answer better this time:
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1. What is the nature of self-awareness? (3 votes)
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I am the only truly self-aware entity in my version of reality
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We are a collection of self-aware entities sharing the same reality
100%

For each one of us, hir (his/her) individual life-experience possibility-story is set in a possibility-world, and of course for all of us, it’s the same one. That isn’t surprising: Of course you must be a member of a species, and of course, in your world, there must be other members of that species. That’s the rest of us.
That suggests answer b). But there’s something to be said for answer a) too:

Your life-experience possibility-story is specifically about your experience. Everything that you know about this world, including the other people, is from your experience, and is part of your own personal individual life-experience possibility-story.
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2. What is the nature of consciousness?

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Consciousness is the property of being a purposefully-responsive device.
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…such as an animal (like us humans), or a mousetrap, a refrigerator lightswitch, or a thermostat.
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Of course we humans differ from a mousetrap in a number of relevant ways. We’re more complex, and we’re the result of natural selection.
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Yes, because of our animal-chauvinism, we don’t like to use the word “consciousness” in reference to a mousetrap, a refrigerator lightswitch or a thermostat.
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Depending on how chauvinistic we want to be, we reserve the word “consciousness” to biological organisms, animals, vertebrates, mammals, or humans.
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Before anyone objects, I have no objection to a (explicitly acknowledged) chauvinistic definition of “consciousness”.
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3. (3 votes)
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Consciousness arises as a result of existence, and ends with death
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Answer a) is incorrect. Your consciousness never ends. You never experience a time when there’s no experience.
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In the physical story, yes you’re the result of your surrounding world. But, more accurately, you and your surroundings are the two complementary halves of your life-experience possibility-story.
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So it wouldn’t really be right to call you a result of your surroundings.
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On the other hand, it would be right to say that you’re in a life because of who you are. You’re in a life by virtue of being the protagonist of a life-experience possibility-story.
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Consciousness is assigned to an entity upon birth, and is reassigned upon death
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There’s probably something right about that.
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The “entity” that you are, is the protagonist of a life-experience possibility-story. You’re that, and that’s why you’re in a life. But it was the reason for your birth, not a result of your birth.
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I say there’s probably reincarnation (a very unfashionable thing to say here), because it’s metaphysically implied (by the metaphysics that I propose).
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I’ve told why you’re in a life. If the same reason that obtained previously, still obtains at the end of this life (because you still have subconscious wants, needs, inclinations, feelings that predispose you to life, making you the protagonist of a life-experience possibility-story), then the expected presumption is that the same result will happen, and you’ll again be in a life.
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Michael Ossipoff

I don’t think that it’s necessary to invoke Intelligent Design (which amounts to Theism) at the metaphysical level, to explain how there could be a metaphysical world, including living beings like ourselves. It seems to me that the “existence” of the metaphysical world can be explained, within itself, without outside or higher invocation. — Michael Ossipoff

Michael, I don't see how intelligent design is Theistic ("or amounts to Theism"), even at the metaphysical level. I know that Theists use the argument to support their belief that the universe was created by God, but all the intelligent design argument concludes is that there was a designer or designers. The argument says nothing about the nature of the designer, or even the character of the designer.

My own view is that the universe does show evidence of design, so I do think it's a good argument in spite of it being used by Theists, and in spite of how much ridicule the argument invokes.

Just as an aside, I'm not religious, although I do think consciousness survives bodily existence.

How could these quarks assemble and organize without some sort of outside guidance? A computer could never have been created - never mind programmed - without some sort of intelligent designer. — CasKev

'Outside', in what sense? I think the question is, can the existence of life be understood in terms of known, current science. And I think it's still an open question. But I think ID errs in believing that the existence or otherwise of a God, is something that can be proven - or disproven! - by the science. It is, and I think should be, an open question - out of scope for science. Not seeing that strikes me as a fundamentally confused understanding.

The second point is that the scientific account doesn't provide any sense of why life occurs in the first place. It is sometimes said to be a consequence of thermodynamics, but I think such arguments are philosophically threadbare. But the fact that science doesn't consider there to be a reason, doesn't amount to any kind of evidence that there isn't one.

It's interesting to note that the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox churches don't support or buy into ID arguments at all. It is almost exclusively the domain of American Protestant fundamentalism, (although unfortunately it is now being picked up by various anti-Western social movements in the Islamic world.)

If we can accept that our world has been intelligently created in some way, what do you think would be the most likely implications, and why?

The implication is Pantheism:

I sometimes find myself baffled by the absurdity of everything that exists. How can it be possible that little quarks somehow not only hold themselves together, but organize themselves into groups, which then organize themselves into atoms. Oh, and by the way, these atoms form all kinds of materials that have different colours, smells, consistencies, even though they are made of the same subatomic materials, just in different combinations. And if that's not baffling enough, some of these atoms know how to organize themselves in ways that allow for movement and reproduction. And the complex biological organisms that exist - somehow programmed by DNA to produce life-sustaining systems. Throw in brains and self-awareness just to make matters more complicated... — CasKev

Wouldn't an intelligence with the power to create all this be even more complex?

I sometimes find myself baffled by the absurdity of everything that exists. How can it be possible that little quarks somehow not only hold themselves together, but organize themselves into groups, which then organize themselves into atoms. Oh, and by the way, these atoms form all kinds of materials that have different colours, smells, consistencies, even though they are made of the same subatomic materials, just in different combinations. And if that's not baffling enough, some of these atoms know how to organize themselves in ways that allow for movement and reproduction. And the complex biological organisms that exist - somehow programmed by DNA to produce life-sustaining systems. Throw in brains and self-awareness just to make matters more complicated...

It's hard not to compare the behavior of quarks and such to the bits and bytes in the computers we program. How could these quarks assemble and organize without some sort of outside guidance? A computer could never have been created - never mind programmed - without some sort of intelligent designer.

If we can accept that our world has been intelligently created in some way, what do you think would be the most likely implications, and why? — CasKev

If you are baffled by the absurdity of everything that exists, wouldn't an intelligent designer qualify as something that "exists" and you should be equally baffled by it's existence? Everything you ask about quarks and atoms would need to be asked about the intelligent designer too. Why doesn't God need a creator?

If you're going to say that God is eternal, then let me just stop you right there. The universe, or the multiverse (everything in it's entirety), could be eternal and without a designer. So your whole point for questioning the existence of everything could be equally applied to your belief in the existence of a God.

some of these atoms know how to organize themselves — CasKev

And the complex biological organisms that exist - somehow programmed by DNA — CasKev

It is no wonder you are confused. The way you ask the questions already has intelligent design locked in as an assumption.

Adding an intelligent designer into the mix, simply makes your case even harder to argue and you then have all your work to face ahead of you. Since a designer is more difficult to explain that the shit he has made, you only have managed to shoot yourself in the foot.

Quark might not even exist as anything more than a model to try to explain what the hell is happening. Atoms are similarly a model that cannot fully represent reality. So rather than get all het up about asking how can an atom "know" what to do, simply accept that things behave to their nature. Ultimately there is no explanation to this nor can there ever be an adequate explanation; this goes for bosons and 'designers' too.

But I think ID errs in believing that the existence or otherwise of a God, is something that can be proven - or disproven! - by the science. — Wayfarer

Could it be said that science's inability to explain the reason for the seemingly intelligent behavior of subatomic particles and the nature of consciousness supports the idea that there is some sort of ID at work, perhaps one that is still becoming aware of its own nature? The ever-increasing known complexity of the universe seems congruent with elements of biocentrism and quantum mechanics - where things only exist when observed. Did atoms exist before we were able to see them, or is that just the universe's attempt to explain all of the wondrous things it has unwittingly created in a vastly intelligent semi-aware state?

Could it be said that science's inability to explain the reason for the seemingly intelligent behavior of subatomic particles and the nature of consciousness supports the idea that there is some sort of ID at work, perhaps one that is still becoming aware of its own nature? The ever-increasing known complexity of the universe seems congruent with elements of biocentrism and quantum mechanics - where things only exist when observed. Did atoms exist before we were able to see them, or is that just the universe's attempt to explain all of the wondrous things it has unwittingly created in a vastly intelligent semi-aware state? — CasKev

This is pretty much it. Daoism in a nutshell.

We are here to create and take joy in our creations. And we share our creations in art galleries, music concert, poetry slam, football games, philosophy forums. The more we learn to observe the more creative we become. Some take it too far though and start identifying themselves in their creations, computers, mathematics, words, etc. It is the mind that is doing the creating.

If you are baffled by the absurdity of everything that exists, wouldn't an intelligent designer qualify as something that "exists" and you should be equally baffled by it's existence? Everything you ask about quarks and atoms would need to be asked about the intelligent designer too. Why doesn't God need a creator?

If you're going to say that God is eternal, then let me just stop you right there. The universe, or the multiverse (everything in it's entirety), could be eternal and without a designer. So your whole point for questioning the existence of everything could be equally applied to your belief in the existence of a God. — Harry Hindu

Right, it would make much more sense if nothing had ever existed... but here we are! Knowing that there are currently unexplainable paradoxes (e.g. infinite space, infinite time, infinite regression), I would guess that humans are currently incapable of understanding their own existence, never mind the existence of some creative intelligent force. But there is one true answer, whether it is one or a combination of the current philosophies, or something as of yet unconsidered. Unless biocentrism is part of this truth, I will likely never know the true nature of the universe.

Although given the acceleration of scientific advancement, we may come closer to figuring out the nature of consciousness, and the inner workings of quarks and such, in my lifetime. Or will anti-aging and cell regeneration somehow manage to extend my life indefinitely, so that this consciousness will never cease to exist... :-O

Right, it would make much more sense if nothing had ever existed... but here we are! Knowing that there are currently unexplainable paradoxes (e.g. infinite space, infinite time, infinite regression), I would guess that humans are currently incapable of understanding their own existence, never mind the existence of some creative intelligent force. — CasKev

Why would it make more sense if nothing had ever existed? Why does that make more sense than something existing?

So what if humans can't currently explain everything? Maybe that's a good thing. It would probably be very boring. Thinking about how much we've learned since we started is an indication that we will continue to learn more. It just takes a little effort and a new way of looking at things. The great scientific discoveries came about as a result of looking at things from a different perspective - usually a more objective one.

Purpose is the essence of Life. The purpose is to create, observe, learn, and evolve. To have fun. — Rich

You'll have to explain this further.

You'll have to explain this further. — Buxtebuddha

Observe the patterns of life, from baby to adult. Observe what everyone is doing from the moment life springs until it is extinguished. Observe what we are all doing and what is guiding it all.

If you wish, extend your pattern observations beyond human life. Keep extending it as far as you wish to go.

Why would it make more sense if nothing had ever existed? — Harry Hindu

Because nothingness wouldn't require all of the perfect variables that make our existence possible. Because there would be no paradoxes to explain away.

What lots of people do doesn't equate to purpose.

To each his own.