Comments

  • Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
    I'd be happy to hear any interpretations of why an afterlife if it exists is so well hidden. I recently had a close relative pass away and have been in a bit of an existential crisis. I appreciate any concepts on this subject — TiredThinker
    My condolences, TiredThinker.

    I have speculated on a number of other threads about 'reincarnation', 'immortality', 'life extension' (e.g. immorbidity tech), 'transhumanism', etc but as a thorough-going naturalist, "spiritual after-life" (i.e. super-naturalism (e.g. ghost-without-the-machine)) makes absolutely no sense to me. That said, however, I've speculated about a 'concept of divinity – understand, I'm completely agnostic about this – wherein "eternal life", so to speak, is to live on (somehow) in the omni-memory of (the) deity-to-come at the end of all things (à la Frank Tipler's "Omega Point"). This concept, as I've interpreted it, is pandeism. Austere and remote, even cold, as it seems, I hope you can get something from it you may need in order to get through your crisis.

    :death: :flower:
  • How Atheism Supports Religion
    Atheism supports religion? — Art48
    Only insofar as many, maybe most, of the organizers, fundraisers & high officials of many, or most, religions tend to not practice what they preach as if 'g/G doesn't exist' to punish them for their frauds and other abuses. After all, what's a "religion" anyway? IMO, a conspiracy cult-driven pyramid scheme that feeds on an inexhaustible supply of earnestly gullible dupes &their brats.

    :pray: :eyes: :mask:
  • Progress: an insufferable enthusiasm
    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:

    I’d recommend Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything. It is a critique of Darwinist progressive accounts of anthropological change as seen in Pinker, Diamond and Harari. — Joshs
    :100:

    In 2018 Steven Pinker published his book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. — Jamal
    "Progress" towards what? and for whom (and not for whom)?

    Btw, I haven't read this book. Also, like Nietzsche, I think h. sapiens is merely a means and not an end; thus, I'm pessimistic about the future of our species yet optimistic about the future of intelligence. "Scarcity" seems the fundamental driver of dominance hierarchies and imperialism that no amount of "progress" has put an end to or significantly diminished, so the title of Pinker's book doesn't recommend itself to me. That said, Jamal, why do you think I should read it?
  • Time and Boundaries
    ↪jgill
    :up:
  • Spinoza’s Philosophy
    ↪Gnomon
    That's you: Bart Simpson, The Great Enformer. :rofl:
  • The “Supernatural”
    ↪ItIsWhatItIs
    Given that the premise of your question does not convey what I've stated, I have no idea how to answer.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2
    :lol: Denial is a helluva drug!
    It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. — Mark Twain
  • Wonder why I've been staying away?
    How can you guys stand it? — god must be atheist
    Sometimes, for some of us, boredom with ourselves is worse. Also, thc gummy bears & pots of Darjeeling.
  • Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
    They say dark matter exists despite not interacting with light, but it does interact with gravity? — TiredThinker
    True, and that's because 'dark matter' is physical.

    Can't something be hidden even if it doesn't leave obvious clues of its possible existence?
    If it's a physical phenomenon, then sure. I don't understand how a "nonphysical afterlife" can be physically "hidden" from direct or indirect physical observation.
  • Our relation to Eternity
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:

    Does it not sometimes make one feel powerless or at worst nihilistic in the face of it?
    — invicta

    Only if you're inclined to disturb yourself with what's entirely beyond your control. I'm too much of a Stoic to do that. What could be more pointless?     — Ciceronianus
    :fire:
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    ↪EnPassant
    I don't follow any of this. Maybe incomprehension – misreading – goes both ways.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    @NOS4A2 & others MAGAs who love to be lied to
    We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can't wait.

    I hate him passionately.

    That's the last four years. We're all pretending we've got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn't an upside to Trump.     — Tucker Carlson, the FOX Noise paid actor, Jan. 4, 2021, from Dominion defamation lawsuit
  • The “Supernatural”
    Do you mean presently-known laws of nature or known and unknown laws of nature. — Art48
    In principle any (mathematized) laws of nature. Remember: 20th c Conservation Laws are not significantly inconsistent with 17th c Newtonian Laws of Motion.
  • Our relation to Eternity
    ↪invicta
    Whenever 'nothing matters' crosses your mind remember that thought also includes 'and it doesn't matter that "nothing matters"' and then go on making yourself matter in your own eyes by mattering to someone else.

    Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

    :death: :flower:
  • Refute that, non-materialists!
    ↪Tom Storm
    I'm a philosophical naturalist (paradigm) which includes both m-physicalism (models) and m-materialism (data), and I have no bleepin' idea what the OP is about.

    Almost 4am here. Zzzzzz :yawn:
  • The “Supernatural”
    ↪Tom Storm
    "Blessed are the gullible ..." :smirk:
  • The “Supernatural”
    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:
  • Arguments for why an afterlife would be hidden?
    ↪TiredThinker
    It couldn't be "hidden" from us because a "nonphysical afterlife" is, by definition, imperceptible to physical perception, otherwise it would be physical enough to reflect photons and/or generate sound waves.
  • The “Supernatural”
    ↪Bylaw
    Interesting, but I'm not proposing 'elimination by induction' in the post you cited.
  • Spinoza’s Philosophy
    ↪Gnomon
    I wasn't responding to a post with any philosophical content, so I gave back what I got, sir. And no surprise, again you decline the opportunity to engage in philosophical dialectic by addressing the questions put you about your speculations. It's not an ad hominem when an argument wasn't made and the subject actually confirms the criticisms. Nice job. :clap: :lol:
  • The “Supernatural”
    ↪Art48
    Well, what do you think of my criterion for "proof" of the supernatural in my previous post just before yours, Art?
  • Time and Boundaries
    ↪jgill
    Don't hold me to this but I vaguely recall that Heisenberg et al's matrix mechanics (re: possible-states of observables) provides a non-mystical, though experimentally equivalent, alternative to Schrödinger's wave mechanics (re: particles as classical waves). Something about Feynmann's path-integrals plays a decisive role in extending the scope of matrices, doesn't it? Yeah, I don't know wtf I'm talking about, jgill, but somebody with real QM chops is bound to come along who can talk mathematical physics to a mathematician. :sweat:
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    ↪Janus
    :up: :up:

    What do you think?
    By transcendental realism I understand 'the inquiry of how reality must be in order for scientific models to be possible'.
  • Time and Boundaries
    ↪ucarr
    After I posted. It's clear as mud to me.
  • Time and Boundaries
    forward-flowing of history — ucarr
    "Forward-flowing" is a cognitive illusion and intuitive way of talking about asymmetric change. "History" represents time-as-past-tense-narrative (i.e. a ghost story). Particle physicists refer to worldlines (or many-worlds branchings) and statistical mechanics refer to entropy gradients. I still don't see what your musings, ucarr, have to do with philosophy. What's the philosophical itch you're trying to get us to scratch? State it plainly.
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    ... the distinction of 'what exists' and 'what is' has to be discerned. — Wayfarer
    Here's where I depart from philosophical convention (tradition): anachronistic "what is" (or "to be") is merely a sentence fragment – placeholder – that does not say anything. I find Epicurus' void (or even Spinoza's substance) a more intelligible concept than "being" and that atoms (or modes, respectively) correspond to "beings" (i.e. things, events, facts) which exist in particular.
  • Time and Boundaries
    This is all arse-about. — Banno
    :smirk:
  • The “Supernatural”
    How's it known that something is "inconsistent with the laws of nature"? — ItIsWhatItIs
    I think that to observe a change in nature which – within the constraints of the 'laws of nature' – could not be caused, even in principle, by any natural event, force, or agent, this would imply that that causal "something" is inconsistent with – not constrained by – the 'laws of nature'.
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    God and nature are not identical — EnPassant
    So theists and deists, acosmists and pandeists belueve.
  • Spinoza’s Philosophy
    What little I know of Spinozas worldview is second-hand, not directly from the source. Nevertheless, I often note the similarity of his Deus Sive Natura god-model to my own PanEnDeistic model — Gnomon
    As someone who has studied Spinoza for decades and has also read hundreds of your posts (as well as snippets of your verbose blog), I assure you, sir, Spinozism (re: acosmism) and your "PanEnDeistic god-model" (i.e. "Enformer"-of-the-gaps) are not "similar" in any non-trivial way.. :sweat:

    TO BE CONTINUED . . . . . .
    :roll:

    'Your answers' to the wrong (uninformed) questions, Gnomon, don't matter and never will, mostly because, as you confess
    What little I know ... is second-hand, not directly from the source ...
    which applies not only to Spinoza but also, as discussions with you by myself and others incorrigibly make clear, to both modern philosophies and contemporary formal & physical sciences.

    Of course, you can disabuse me / us of this "bias", Gnomon, by raising your game (which, apparently, you can't :smirk:) and answering these old questions ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/709894

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/718369

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/742056     — 180 Proof

    @universeness @Janus
  • Time and Boundaries
    ↪ucarr
    I can't say because I reject your premise (for reasons I've already given) so the rest of the OP doesn't matter to me.
  • External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism? Poll
    ↪Janus
    :up: :up:
  • Consciousness is a Precondition of Being
    ↪Wayfarer
    Not only TPFers but also according to that ontological mfer Martin Heidegger. :victory:
  • Time and Boundaries
    As I understand you, you're telling me cause and effect is not a temporal phenomenon. Am I reading you correctly? — ucarr
    Yeah; also that "time" is neither "temporal" nor a "phenomenon". (I think you're confusing (your) maps with the territory.)
  • Consciousness is a Precondition of Being
    Note that Heidegger singles out 'human beings', because they alone are able to encounter the question of 'what it means to be'. No other beings - particles and planets, ants and apes - are able to do this. To all intents, that is the same distinction I was seeking to make. — Wayfarer
    Yet Heidegger uses Dasein, not Sein, to distinguish 'humans' from 'mere beings' (i.e. Seiendes) as pointed out here
    ↪180 Proof
    on p. 2 of this thread. So unless you're disputing the very authority you have appealed to, Wayf, concede the point that the contemporary philosophical "distinction" is between Dasein and beings, n o t "beings and things". :roll:
  • Time and Boundaries
    Are you guys telling me time and cause and effect are either: a) separable; b) separate? — ucarr
    With respect to contemporary fundamental physics, I don't see what one has to do with the other. Even in Kant, these concepts are not directly related.
  • Thinking different
    Do you live in a very religious social environment? — bert1
    Not really. Due mostly to illness the last several months, I spend a lot of time with my mother at her place in a senior citizen community. She's devoutly Catholic and my younger brother and sis-in-law are quite "spiritual but not religious". All of my old friends live in different time zones and most have "aged into" religiosity and "virtue-signaling" suburbanity. FWIW, the Trappist "vow of silence" has always appealed to me. :halo:
  • Time and Boundaries
    ↪ucarr
    I don't see what "time" and "cause & effect" have to do with one another. IIRC, the equations of QFT lack time variables and those of GR, SR, etc are time-symmetric (suggesting a "block universe"), yet 'causal relationships' are described (or observed). Maybe I'm just missing the point of your post, ucarr.
  • How old is too young to die?
    Any age is too young. At no point is a person's potential exhausted. On the other hand people need to get out of the fucking way and die. — bert1
    :smirk:
  • The Dialectic of Atheism and Theism: An Agnostic's Perspective
    What matters is the fact that there is existence. Existence is not a property of things. Things are properties of existence. Existence is not a property of God. Existence is God. Existence is that which is. All contingent/created things are properties of existence and are made out of existence. — EnPassant
    Deus, sive Natura :up:
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