Anything goes, no-holds-barred, free-for-all, if there is a law, it's the law of the jungle — Agent Smith

Yeah but most of us now advocate for much more civilised behavior than was required under the Darwinian laws of the jungle. In fact, more and more people insist on it.

they very often give them human characteristics — TiredThinker

For me, human portrayals of ancient gods are strong evidence that humans created gods and gods never existed. Whether gods are portrayed as humanoids, human/animal merges, animal, or human/object merges. Here is an image of an ancient sun god with a human face!

https://static1.bigstockphoto.com/0/3/2/large2/230140.jpg

Human, si! — Agent Smith

Does that "we" include women? — Noble Dust

Well, I think theistic women do want to see themselves fully represented right beside god, behind every great god there has to be a great goddess. I am sure this was a missed line in:

Your suggestion of Mary meaning a rebellious female is something which I was not aware of. That is because in the representation of the idea of Mary which I came across the concept of Mary is often of someone who is obedient to God, and pure in the sense of being a Virgin, or the idealised image of motherhood. — Jack Cummins

Atwill suggests that your imagery of the 'Mary's' was what the real authors of the gospels intended, whilst hiding the truth behind the stories in the gospels, that they were in fact satirical parodies of the real rebel Jewish leaders who fought so continuously against Rome. He suggests all the characters in the new testament are satirical inventions, including JC.

Perhaps our fascination with art (beauty), which is to a fault, is a sign that we yearn for a female deity, the Goddess who sits next to God. — Agent Smith

Which is just so........human, isn't it.

How about meaningful data is fundamental? — Watchmaker

But meaningful data = information
Meaning and data only constitute information when they are combined and that which is a combination cannot be fundamental

If meaning is fundamental, wouldn't that imply a mind?

Not an 'external' mind, no I don't think so because any 'meaning' may only be meaningful to lifeforms like us due to how humans perceive the Universe. I think 'meaning' is fundamental to making any sense of our existence. But it may just be human arrogance to suggest that the Universe had no purpose or meaning, at all, before lifeforms such as humans evolved. This 'meaningless' era for the Universe may well be the majority of the proposed 14 billion years. But I don't see any scientific need to invoke god here or an external mind/purpose. I can understand a human emotional, almost irrational need to invoke such an external mind but I see no scientific demand for it.

Why do you feel the need to add "consciousness" as some further reified being that sits above and beyond the brain processes of attending and habit-emitting — apokrisis

This is the situation of 'me' trying to identify what 'myself' is, by asking 'myself,' whilst also trying to identify where the question is coming from. Are all of the actions described in the previous sentence, simply part of the functionality of the human brain that humans have labeled as containing their 'consciousness.'
That's the kind of complicated question Neuroscience is trying to answer, yes?
I currently think that individual human consciousness exists wholly in the human brain and no aspect of it exists externally to the human. So, I don't conceive of consciousness as a particularly concrete entity that exists above or beyond the brain. I think IT IS a brain process that controls focus level when driving and the day-dreaming distraction.

Why do you say that consciousness "employs" various habits and automaticisms, while it goes off to "focus" on the day-dreaming and not on the road?
What extra work does invoking some further spooky and homuncular Cartesian regress – the "display that is also being watched" - do here?
I prefer a naturalistic account where consciousness just is the sum of everything involved in responding intelligently to the world — apokrisis

I like the questions you are asking me here because I can then ask 'myself,' well why do 'you?'
I 'seem' to have to reference 'me/myself/I.' by some means so when I am describing one of my brains functions, It seems reasonable for me to use a reference like 'my consciousness employs.' I agree that this is a system referencing itself as if it was viewing its functionality from outside of its domain but I think that is an illusion and that in truth, the brain is quite capable of internally referencing and perceiving its own functionality and individual existence. Possibly, 'employs' was the wrong word to choose as it is too 'deliberate.' Reduction of focus on 'the job at hand' and entering a day-dream state but still managing to perform the job at hand because you have 'built-up' a long term experience of doing the task is simply something the brain can do but it is a less secure situation for the human(s) involved.
I agree with your naturalistic account, I am just trying to find better ways to describe such to others using exemplification and lay terminology. I am obviously not doing so well at this as you have concluded that I have some kind of spooky, homuncular, dualist viewpoint about consciousness.

But my definition of consciousness includes all that which is ignored, forgotten, emitted without further thought. In fact - as neurological theory, the Bayesian Brain story - it is based on that — apokrisis

I have watched online offerings from Sam Harris and Dan Dennett discussing some of the issues in neuroscience and you seem to know quite a bit about the area, much more than I. I was very interested in the Bayesian methodology/probability they described.

So consciousness has this structure, this dynamic, of attention~habit. And each explains the other. To the degree you can ignore, you don't have to attend. To the degree you can't ignore, you then must attend.
And now we have a proper connection between the phenomenological experience of being a mind in the world, and a neuroscientific account in terms of the necessary structure of any useful world-model — apokrisis

I can't think of any objections that I have to what you are typing here.

Consciousness as a Cartesian substance - a mysterious extra glow that attaches itself to all the physical processes - fails so spectacularly to connect with any neuroscientific account that it is no surprise that folk want to chase it all the way down to "quantum information" or "psychic atoms".
But starting the story with a dichotomous structure of attention and and habits, differentiation and integration - the logic of the processing that would be needed so to act as a self in a world - can halt this slithering down the slope of the physicalist fallacy.
We can see how panpsychism isn't even the right kind of thing before we start debating what might be its best theory. — apokrisis

@Garrett Travers was a strong advocate for the findings of neuroscience as the most reliable source for explaining human consciousness and I found his arguments on the topic quite compelling but I am not convinced that there is NO POSSIBILITY that consciousness is a composite affect of smaller quanta all the way down to 'fundamental ingredients,' as posited by panpsychism and that some future ability to network/collectivise/merge/coalesce individual lifeform consciousnesses into a panpsychism may happen.

I don't think technology and transhumanism will ever be able to guarantee immortality but I think it will offer more and more longevity of individual human lifespan. I think our best hope for now, is in the development of anti-aging drugs, based on knowledge of the human genome.
From my limited reading on the subject based mostly on articles in New Scientist, I think that the current claim is that the first human to live to and age between 125 and 170 is alive today.

I think we actually have to turn to the sci-fi shows to get projections of what kind of technologies might exist in the future. I found the one in the remake series of Battlestar Gallactica, interesting.
The idea was that the Cylons were created by humans and then rebelled and destroyed most of humanity but they also became able to create Cylons who were just like humans. If one got killed then its 'conscience' was downloaded to a new cloned body. There were 6 main human models, so lots of identical versions of you would be walking around but they would all be living quite different lives.
If an individual unit was killed when it was too far away from its 'resurrection ship,' then it would truly die.
I simply projected this onto humans with, well, if the Cylons can do this then why can't humans in the very very distant future.
I like the idea that humans might eventually have death reduced to a human rational choice.

So much is human construction and interpretation. — Jack Cummins

For me this is vital to understanding the good and bad aspects of what the human storytelling tradition has brought us to. From the first moment, our ancient ancestors told the first story about the big shiny that moved across the sky and how they once saw it fight against the shadow which tried to eat it and how the shiny won the fight in the end and how it chases away the dark and warms us etc.
From here to the god posit seems a very small step. So-called 'Chinese whispers' will do the rest to go from theism to doctrinal religion. It's very basic 'human construction and interpretation,' art and music are just ways to embellish the storytelling.

What do you think of the following two suggestions, one is pure conjecture and completely from 'human interpretation.' and the other is based on 10 years of research by the author of 'Caesars Messiah,' Joe Atwill.

If you do bad things, you don't answer to god, you answer to satan. It is satan who administers your punishment not god. Satan is therefore not an enemy of god. It is gods enforcer, it works with god to punish transgressors.

In Greek the name 'Mary' means 'sea of bitterness or rebellious female'. Atwill suggests that based on his research, the name was used by Roman soldiers for any female relatives or wives of male Jewish rebels, in the same way that, nancy was used to refer to homosexual males or 'butch' for homosexual females or 'Sheila' for any Australian female etc. The gospels are written in Greek and that's is why so many of the female characters in the gospels are called Mary.

I am not suggesting that these two suggestions above are true and cannot be refuted. I am just demonstrating my agreement with your comment regarding 'human construction and interpretation.'

You speak of art's lack of ability to explore beyond beauty — Jack Cummins

Sorry Jack, I don't know how my typings on this thread, gave that impression. I was going for the exact opposite. I was typing about art and/or musics' ability to promote that which is NOT related to beauty in any way. The paintings I was suggesting would not be generally considered beautiful.

but there is not simply visual art but literature and music in particular. There is the whole notion of the gothic fantasy and horror, which also gives scope for questions about metaphysics and an arts based approach to the concept of God. — Jack Cummins

As I am sure you know, art and music can be treated as mere aesthetics by individuals or they can be supportive towards theism/atheism/revolution/political doctrines etc.

In the OP, there is:

To what extent is arts, a basis for understanding the symbolic aspects of the God question, rather than simply asking about the existence of God from a scientific approach. Is science and art completely divided here, or is it about juggling different models to understand the nature of reality? — Jack Cummins

I took this to mean that you were suggesting that all of the quite stunning and awesome religious art (for example) produced by Rembrandt, Michaelangelo etc can act as a basis for understanding the human need for/tendency towards/attraction to the god posit. They glorify the image and idea of god and its subordinates and I thought you were suggesting that this 'human effort' towards manifesting god pictorially has meaning and value towards understanding the 'human need,' for god.

If I am correct towards your intention in the OP then I disagree and I firstly suggested paintings of Dante's 9 circles of hell to suggest that art has also used THREAT to try to enforce submission to the god posit. I then tried to suggest how art could be used by the atheist side to counter the 'glorification' art used by religions now and in the past.
Same in music, I can counter glorification praise hymns with songs that glorify and praise humanism.
So I don't think that art or music's is a way to understand the human need for gods. I think it's further evidence of religion's stealth tactics to maintain the power/position/personal wealth of its main human leaders. Just in the same way that the pope attempts to 'tickle the aesthetic pleasure centers of humans,' when he appears in all his finery with gold accents and a version of a druidic pole (a.k.a Shepards/Gandalf/Merlin's staff) with a symbol of the crucified JC stuck on the top (probably also gold).
In my opinion humans still need god due to their inherited primal fears and fear/dissatisfaction with the oblivion that science suggests occurs after death.
It may well be Jack that I have just misunderstood the main intentions or your OP and I have deflected at a (as @Agent Smith states as my tendency) tangent. :smile:

Fair enough, but I think it's important for all of us to continue to struggle to combat inaccurate generalisations even though, as I type this, my inner referee is shouting at me 'practice what you preach mate!' :smile:

Something has to explain how I can both drive a car down busy streets, and yet do so completely automatically to the point I can't even remember the experience if I am too happy in my own day-dreaming — apokrisis

After this, you went on to type about certain workings of the brain. All good stuff. Consciousness seems to be able to employ un/sub/conscious automation of bodily actions whilst 'focussing' on the 'day-dreaming' state you describe in your example above but is this not in fact 'a lesser attentive' brain state compared to a non-daydreaming state and full focus on the driving. Your day-dream state creates more chance of a car crash occurring compared to your consciousness being more 'focussed' on the busy traffic. So human consciousness is a system with very definite limitations/flaws/capability to make mistakes. For me, these vulnerabilities, provide further (anecdotal) evidence of either limited design ability or the absence of any god.
Do you think a full understanding of the workings of the human brain will be achieved by Neuroscience?

But consciousness is neither an object, a substance or a property, but a relational activity. — Joshs

Does this definition prevent consciousness from being a result of the combination of smaller quanta?
If it's a relational activity then what are you relating the action too? Brain functionality? and if so are we still not left with brain quantisation?

Panpsychism attempts to get around this by making the mind (or 'consciousness') an attribute of simple material particulars (presumably atoms or their constituents) - as if it's something that is there all along, like velocity, mass, and the other primary qualities of objects. They interpret the idea of 'consciousness everywhere' in a literal sense - literally distributed throughout the Universe in latent form, existing in a very rudimentary manner even in atoms themselves.
So that kind of makes panpsychism sound naturalistic - but at the cost of introducing an attribute or quality for which critics will say there can't be any direct evidence.
That's what I see as the state of play. — Wayfarer

I think this is pretty accurate under the heading of your last sentence.

The problem is that this runs up against the naturalist taboo against anything that sounds theistic - a divine intelligence or intellect or whatever, which is more or less verboten in secular philosophical discourse. — Wayfarer

For all scientists who would declare themselves as naturalist however, I would defend against the position you suggest immediately above. I think you are being too harsh here. You almost suggest an irrational theophobia from naturalists towards theists and such generalisations are always at best inaccurate on a case-by-case basis.

What I think I mean, is that there is an objective truth that A=A, that things are what they are, and that would be true in any possible world that came into existence through random happenstance.
A=A, the law of identity, a thing is what it is, is an immutable truth. There are objective truths in this universe, in this reality.
I may have gotten lost there. The content of this thread is way over my head. I'm not really sure if I answered anything or contributed anything valuable to our exchange. — Watchmaker

I agree with the general concept of objective truth but I also think its very useful to move from the general to specific examples before attempting to form any 'conclusions.' The law of identity is very old but certainly has value but few systems of logic are built purely on that law alone.
Objectively, colour or sound would be experienced BY THE SAME INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING in exactly the same way no matter where they were in the Universe. So the law of identity applies and A = A, for humans when A is colour or sound. It would not matter if god created humans or they came to be due to random chance. But if you think about the proposal above a little more, it suggests 'placing humans as they were formed here,' to any other place in the Universe.'
But A=A would fail for colour and sound if the 'Humans' evolved not here, but in some other place in the Universe. Evolution and natural selection applied at 'some other place in the Universe,' for 14 billion years would produce a lifeform which we would not label 'Human,' if we encountered it.
If they evolved on a planet with a completely different chemistry and biology to the Earth then who knows what different perceptions they would have of WHAT WE LABEL, colour or sound.
They may not be carbon-based lifeforms even. How would a silicon-based lifeform experience what we call colour or sound. So A=A may be an 'objective truth' for humans made here and then placed anywhere else in the Universe but that could almost be a 'well obviously!' comment but its probably not at all true that A=A for colour or sound for A here after evolution and natural selection and A there after evolution and natural selection.

It's the ingredients of consciousness that is said to be fundamental. Someone here offered another perspective, that information is fundamental. I think information would be more accurate, or it least it reduces it a little more — Watchmaker

So what about my comment that I posted near the top of Page 2, part of it pasted below:

"I find it interesting that information is suggested as being fundamental. In Computing, information is a composite of the labels data and meaning. Raw data has no meaning. 25 is raw data, 25 apples, is data with meaning, and is therefore information. Data is unlabeled, so how can information be fundamental if it is made up of 'parts.'
Perhaps 'data' is fundamental and 'meaning' is fundamental"

So by "we" do you mean panpsychists? — Daemon

No, I am not a panpsychist or a cosmopsychist but I have a tiny eyebrow twitch towards them.

The idea that the totality of all the individual consciousnesses which exist in the Universe at some time in the very very distant future COULD network/collect/unite/merge/converge/coalesce into a single 'Universal conscience,' has a modicum of plausibility for me. The possibilities of transhumanism add a little more weight to the idea. If human brains could be placed in cybernetic bodies or/and if human conscience can eventually be 'downloaded' to a cloned body or into an electronic existence, then the idea of merging consciousnesses becomes more plausible.
This is no more than my own personal musings based on current sci-fi projections of current technologies, and although I 'give it room' in my head, It is in a space labeled meh! interesting but probably unlikely. Such ability to merge or join individual consciousnesses would have to be demonstrated to turn me panpsychist.

So I'm wondering what is gained by losing the distinction between conscious and not conscious — Daemon

I conceive a range such as:

Not capable of self-generated movement(dead or a rock for example)....capable of self-generated movement...some measure of awareness.....greater measure of awareness..... sentience/consciousness ....distracted ..... tranced/hypnotised(maybe)...dreamstate/sleeping/unconscious ..... comatose....dead

I dont think this is a very good progression, at all but I just mean that rather than a clear state of 'difference' between conscious and not conscious there is a group of 'states of being' which could all belong in the same 'range.' I am not sure if such has any significance or meaning towards the 'bigger picture,' however. I am just musing as I type a response to your interesting line I quoted above. I don't think we are losing the distinction between the terms I think it's more about attempting to categorise correctly/convincingly.

Let me think about that and get back with you. I appreciate your time. — Watchmaker

I also appreciate your time and your effort.

But fear of what? We can boldly push and go where no man has gone before, but space being the final frontier "but it's made in a Hollywood basement", as you know the song goes — EugeneW

Primal fear of the unknown/misunderstood/things which seem much bigger and stronger than you.

Attempt an imaginary mindwalk for a moment, in the shoes/or lack of shoes of a very early ancestor of our species. I imagine language/communication with our fellows would mostly be grunts and hand/arm gesticulations at that time.
Consider being one of the first consciousnesses to comprehend that the sun seemed to rise up from one side of the sky, move across the sky and fall down the other side, and then all is dark and you can barely see ten feet in any direction and all you hear is a terrifying cacophony of roars, screeches, hisses etc.
If you can do that then you will begin to understand primal fear/terror.
How happy you will be to see the light rise again and feel its warmth. You can leave your dark cave and hunt and gather. You can see the big scary beasts and can avoid them, you can run, climb, swim or work with your fellows and spear the ba******. But then the Sun goes down again. Run to the caves!

When I mindwalk in those 'feet,' by F*** I am a theist. I love that big light in the sky! I worship it.
One time during the time it moved over the sky, something started to eat it, a shadow, we all screamed and screamed. The end is nigh! but after a long time, the shiny came back. There must have been a fight and our shiny light won. We must give thanks to the shiny light. Give thanks to the........ggggod!

Primal fear still controls or at least has a major influence on many many people, it runs so very very deep in the human psyche. I think it can be utterly conquered, eventually. I don't want to lose the fight or flight instinct but I do want to defeat primal fear and our need/yearning for supernatural protection/responsibility/guidance.

Then why you're so eager to go to the planets? We have everything here. — EugeneW

I don't think there is much chance of me getting the opportunity EugeneW, so it's a moot point.
My projection of humans living outside of our planet and eventually somewhere like Mars and maybe then a terraformed Mars and then on to the rest of our solar system and then on to an interstellar existence, will take us thousands of years to achieve I think. It's about our distant future needs, not our current needs, but the latter does 'speak to' the former.

Thats about 6250 trillion dollars... Not million, not billion, but trillion. Dream on universeness... — EugeneW

Money is a human invention, we can dispense with it altogether. You need resources, human ingenuity, human labour and human willpower, money is just unnecessary capitalist BS.

That's my hat! The difference between my god fantasies and your fantasies is that your fantasies will remain fantasies, while the gods sre real. — EugeneW

:rofl: You do love that panto response EugeneW

Even then we will go extinct soon. What you prefer. Going extinct for sure on all planets within 1000 years or surviving on Earth until the end? — EugeneW

Not only are you a big fearty but you are a pessimistic one. I don't subscribe to 'The end is nigh' sandwich boarding or screams of "We are doomed, we are doomed we are all just doomed!"

I don't put a limit on your fantasies. You can fantasize whatever and how much you like. Just keep an eye on what's fantasy and what's real. — EugeneW

Right back at you and your interesting but very personalised version of theism EugeneW!

We get extinct not that easily. But if on all these planets we introduce the western way we'll get extinct easily even there. — EugeneW

You're stretching/straining that logic elastic to the limit again EugeneW. Extinction on one planet won't matter so much if we exist on thousands of them.

A would still equal A in any possible world that could have arisen by random chance. — Watchmaker

An example of what you mean would help. If algebraic A is instantiated to 'the existence of gravity' then yes, I agree. If A is assigned 'consciousness' then perhaps not. I just choose these two examples as an attempt to illustrate my point.

Where did I say or suggest that? — EugeneW

What??

I have to admit, you have a wild fantasy, uni! — EugeneW

Don't get carried away by a little too much fantasy though! — EugeneW

Dream on spacer! What if we have arrived on that faraway planet? Will we mess it up again? What if every planet is colonized? — EugeneW

You miss the main practical point I made. The more planets/space stations etc we exist on, the harder it is to make us extinct. If we are all on one planet then we can be made extinct quite easily.

A fearty farty forty! What fear? — EugeneW

The primal fear which I am convinced is the substrate of all theism that you display in your typings.
I push our species to boldy go where no man has gone before. You advocate we stay on Earth and huddle together back in our caves with artist impressions of god(s) talisman's hanging around our necks, for protection against the noises outside the caves at night.
Okay, I know I am caricaturing your viewpoints a little but I have become very used to the windup aspect of debate. Such a tendency can annoy others but can also be fun for those who are like-minded to me.

I meant, why is it? — EugeneW

We are talking past each other again. You suggested my suggestions for paintings were mere fantasy and I was basically saying so what? are you suggesting that only theists can fantasize? That's all I was saying.

If distance doubles every generation you would be right. But it doesn't — EugeneW

Again I don't know what you mean here. Lost in translation somewhere between Dutch English and Scots English!

In how long? And then? To Mars? And then? Pluto? And then? Then it gets reaeaealy hard... — EugeneW

Don't worry ya big fearty, we have lots of time, we like reproducing. Maybe after we exist outside our planet and inside our solar system we can build generational ships or many many hops between space stations that we built between here and Proxima!

:smile: Very magnanimous of you. To me, when they type their depressing viewpoint, they add to the suffering they claim they wish to prevent/terminate but I know that's not how they see it and I hope I have just not given them an opening into this thread! :scream:

Rationality sprang from irrational forces. Minds that seek truth emerged from forces that know nothing of truth — Watchmaker

I agree and think that what you describe above must be quite possible. I find it much more plausible than god or even g*d.
It's the basis of the chaos...combination....assembly....order...entropy....disassembly....chaos....bounce suggested by Roger Penrose. At least that's my very basic attempt at a summary of the stages he describes.

That's not true. If the gap is closed no more then no more gods of the gaps are needed. Then the gods are true gods, not serving to fill gaps, say between inflation and time zero. — EugeneW

There are more gaps in our knowledge than there are bits filled in.
Newtons I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. This was true when he is supposed to have said it and it's still true today.

These pushes are the causes of our future extinction. We could prevent that extinction by stop pushing. What if we arrive on another nest? An Earth-like planet. Then the pushing starts all over? — EugeneW

Don't be such a big fearty, ya big fearty! :rofl:
Oh, laughing at my own joke attempts is never a good thing :scream:

Turn it into something else - music, art, drinking water and patting the dog as has been mentioned. — Cuthbert

Best to do that then or we might let the horrible antinatalists in.

I find it interesting that information is suggested as being fundamental. In Computing, information is a composite of the labels data and meaning. Raw data has no meaning. 25 is raw data, 25 apples, is data with meaning, and is therefore information. Data is unlabeled, so how can information be fundamental if it is made up of 'parts.'
Perhaps 'data' is fundamental and 'meaning' is fundamental.

I think the problem is simply 'the current limiting factors of human consciousness.' Current human consciousness is quite limited in its scope.
I don't think that the natural evolution of human consciousness has yet given us any ability to decipher the origin story of our Universe. I think this is one of the main reasons why most people take the very easiest and laziest of roads possible to scratch that annoying itch to know, they become theists.

Evolution has not stopped, It continues. Give the humans another few million years. The dinos had somewhere between 77 million and 165 million years according to my google search, and they never even tamed fire! Push for merging humans with technology to extend lifespan. Push for global unity of our species. Push for developing technology that will allow us to leave this planetary nest as a prudent policy of further protection against the possibility of our extinction.
This is only my very humble opinion of course, regarding the ways in which YOU personally could be MOST useful to OUR human species, in your and my, currently, very short lifespan.

Wouldn't there have had to be something like a mind that knew how to arrange these ingredients in such a away to give rise to awareness? — Watchmaker

I think there is a point in the emergence of consciousness where a mind is needed to create a cream cake. cream cakes and cars or guns cant evolve they are invented by conscious minds but I think it's THIS intuitive logic that human consciousness 'projects' from the origin of cream cakes onto the origin of the Universe. The possibility that the origin of the Universe and the origin of consciousness was down to random chance is at least not impossible and is therefore possible and we might eventually be able to demonstrate that it's highly likely, on the way to knowing that it really did happen that way. Knowledge is not fundamental, I agree. Knowledge is acquired by consciousness but I don't see why knowledge has to exist before random happenstance.

Im a theist. They didnt create that planet. It evolved. — EugeneW

This sounds like a very familiar road for you and I EugeneW. You don't match or come close to any theist I know, you know I remain unconvinced of your theism.

What makes you question that? — EugeneW

What do you mean?

I just say that the fantasy will always remain a fantasy. — EugeneW

Yeah, especially your fantasies of god(s).

Let's face reality with a proper dose of realism. — EugeneW

Doctor, heal thyself first!

Where have we been in almost 70 years? On the Moon, 1 lightsecond away... — EugeneW

70 years is hardly a single human lifetime, a spacetime blink! There will be a moon base soon enough. Easier to launch from there as opposed to Earth.

What would an Aussie know. They are all limpwrists anyhow — Gregory A

These are such lowbrow words Gregory A, you shame yourself.

Racists are rea — Gregory A

Yeah, you just showed that with your comment on all Australians

All LGBTQ activists being homosexual would not make all homosexuals LGBTQ activists. The activist faction is on the left. Got it. LGBTQ activists, not all being on the left would not mean LGBTQ activism is not on the left. Got it. — Gregory A

More words from the twisted world of Gregory A. You are a bigot and a political vacuum.

Or perhaps a painting of Jesus and his whole family getting chopped up by 10 ethnic cleansers who burst through their door and are killing every Jew in the room?
— universeness

I have to admit, you have a wild fantasy, uni! Apopstasist? — EugeneW

I could have went much further, for example, the artist could include different versions of such a painting and have the 10 ethnic cleansers painted as chopping up Jesus and every arab/black/gay/gerry/jap/pomme/asian/indian/slave/yankee/rebel/frenchie/irish/jacobite/heathen atheist in the room but, its a lot of work for one artist and I think I've missed too many groups from our 10,000 years of tears.

How about a painting of the prophet Mohamed? Can that still get you killed?

I have to admit, you have a wild fantasy, uni! Apopstasist? — EugeneW

Don't get carried away by a little too much fantasy though — EugeneW

Is fantasy currently under theistic ownership?

And art that would offer a bridge? — EugeneW

Theists and atheists can both enjoy an 'artist's impression' of a new, perhaps even Earthlike planet, discovered orbiting around a distant star due to the 'wobble' it causes in the star it orbits. But the theist will still suggest god created it and the atheist will still suggest 'no god required,' and the beat goes on and the artist moves on to his/her next 'impression.'

Panpsychism does not propose that quarks are in themselves conscious or neurons are conscious but that the 'ingredients' of consciousness exist naturally in the Universe due to vast variety and vast combination over an evolutionary period of natural selection of around 14 billion years. Consciousness has now evolved to the manifest stage that is exhibited in the animal world and most successfully within lifeforms such as humans. Panpsychism suggests that individual consciousness may at some point in the future, be able to act as a collective or a combined single Universal consciousness.
Perhaps this could be 'speeded up' by scientific progress in transhumanism.
I am not a panpsychist but I currently raise a very skeptical eyebrow of interest toward it.

I think art as a depiction of beauty ignores art's ability to depict or even celebrate evil and how art has been used by religion to depict the consequences of apostasy, for example. Arts depictions of Dante's 9 circles of hell are not beautiful in my opinion. Who would buy a really good, technically accurate oil painting of Adolf Hitler other than a neo-nazi?
What about an oil painting of the baby Jesus in its manger about to be lasered in the head by a time-traveling agent from the future? What would be the intent of such a painting? could such a painting be justified?
Or perhaps a painting of Jesus and his whole family getting chopped up by 10 ethnic cleansers who burst through their door and are killing every Jew in the room?
I am sure I could come up with far worse if I put my mind to it. Can an angel make love to a devil and enjoy it? They certainly can in art. Art like music are tools that can be used for almost any purpose, good or bad.
I cant see art as offering any bridge between religion and science by means of the fact that Richard Dawkins can enjoy the same piece of classical music or like the same painting as a theist might. They can also cite examples of both that one likes and the other thinks is crap.
I don't think the common ground between theism and atheism will be found in art.
I think the common ground will be found in time! We are a fledgling consciousness, we have yet to even leave our planetary nest.

I don't talk to other people because I'm a very solitaire person. This can be but I think is not the reason for my depression, although may have worsen my ability to understand it. I'm just not good at making friends in the real, "Physical" world. And as I don't usually do, I also lack most of the "Social abilities", so to speak. However that is not important to me. — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

Do you think something like 'that's just who I am and who I choose to be and I am perfectly happy with the advantages of being a more 'solitary' person,' or 'I accept these as shortfalls and I have tried to combat this but I have been unable to, I would like to be less solitary,' or 'I suffer from SAD, social anxiety disorder' Do you think that named medically recognised conditions such as SAD help or do you think they are medically contrived for the sake of political correctness?