Let me clarify something that I said, and post a better reply to Terrapin Station:
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I’d said:
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What I mean to say on this matter can be said briefly:
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1) Can anyone show that this physical world exists or is real, other than in its own context (...in particular, in some absolute sense (whatever that would mean) as Materialists believe)?
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2)...because, if not, then this physical world doesn't exist in any sense or context other than that in which exists the setting of your life-experience-story, a hypothetical system of inter-referring abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things. ...which, too, exists and is real in its own context (if "exist" and "real" mean anything).
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3)...in which case, what reason would there be to believe that this physical world is other than the setting in that hypothetical experience-story, which is an inevitable logical system. ...which needs no existence or reality other than in its own context?

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I’d like to clarify that a bit:
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Any meaning for “real” or “existent” is contextual only.
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To say that something in principle describable by humans has reality or existence other than that, is nonsense.
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The notion of non-contextual (absolute in some sense) reality or existence for describable things has resulted in much confusion and befuddlement in philosophy, over millennia, and up to the present.
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Someone questioned the meaning of a thing’s “reality or existence in its own context”.
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Fair enough. Neither “Real” nor “Existent” has a consensus metaphysical definition, and anyone would be hard-put to suggest usable definitions for them.
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That’s why I don’t claim “reality” or “existence” for anything describable. And, anyway, I agree with those who wouldn’t apply “exist” to anything else either.
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But (only) if you don’t have a quarrel with something being real and existent in its own context, then I won’t deny that this physical world is real and existent in its own context, and that of our lives.
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Sankara has been quoted as saying that the physical world is real, in the sense that, whatever reality or existence it does or doesn’t have, it’s part of Reality, which could be defined as “all that there is” …which of course includes such things as abstract-facts and other hypotheticals. I wouldn’t disagree with that.
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The bottom line is, then, that it depends on what you mean by “real” and “existent”. I make no claims, in that regard, for describable things.
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As, ourselves, part of this physical world, of course our perception of it is within its context, and that of our lives in it. If it had other existence or reality, how would we know it anyway?
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When Terrapin Station replied, he quoted me, but left out a meaning-determining part of the sentence, thereby dishonestly changing the sentence’s meaning—quoting me as saying:
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1) Can anyone show that this physical world exists or is real, — Michael Ossipoff

Terrapin Station then continued:

Which is essentially asking whether it's possible to persuade someone of something when the person in question has psychological issues

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Well, which one of us is habitually on the attack, and posting messages consisting only of attack, only about another poster, instead of about the topic. Aggression results from having issues.
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, where either they're delusional

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…like someone who thinks that the quote of me that Terrapin Station posted, above, means the same thing as the sentence that I’d actually posted? Or someone who thinks that a question (in a recent other thread) about the experiences of a dying person is answered by referring to the time after death, when that person has no experiences? :D
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or they're stuck in an early stage of development

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…such as an infantile aggressive stage?
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…troubled people…

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Aggression is a symptom of a troubled person.
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But have people noticed that the most erroneous people on the Internet always seem to also be the most loudly assertive, and, behaviorally, the most troubled, the most disturbed, and the most aggressive people, with the most (seemingly) angry behavior? I didn’t make that up, and, in fact psychologists have found that same correlation in general. It’s called the “Dunning-Kruger effect.
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Why are the most mistaken people also the most assertive, loud and arrogant? Dunning & Kruger, and others have offered some good explanations.
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First, here’s a link to the Wikipedia article about it. Below the link, I’ve quoted some highlights from the article.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
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In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority comes from the inability of low-ability people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.[1]
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As described by social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the cognitive bias of illusory superiority results from an internal illusion in people of low ability
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The psychological phenomenon of illusory superiority was identified as a form of cognitive bias in Kruger and Dunning's 1999 study "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments".[1] The identification derived from the cognitive bias evident in the criminal case of McArthur Wheeler, who robbed banks with his face covered with lemon juice, which he believed would make it invisible to the surveillance cameras. This belief was based on his misunderstanding of the chemical properties of lemon juice as an invisible ink.[2]
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Other investigations of the phenomenon, such as "Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence" (2003), indicate that much incorrect self-assessment of competence derives from the person's ignorance of a given activity's standards of performance.[3] Dunning and Kruger's research also indicates that training in a task, such as solving a logic puzzle, increases people's ability to accurately evaluate how good they are at it.[4]
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In Self-insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself (2005), Dunning described the Dunning–Kruger effect as "the anosognosia of everyday life", referring to a neurological condition in which a disabled person either denies or seems unaware of his or her disability. He stated: "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent ... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is."
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In testing alternative explanations for the cognitive bias of illusory superiority, the study Why the Unskilled are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-insight Among the Incompetent (2008) reached the same conclusions as previous studies of the Dunning–Kruger effect: that, in contrast to high performers, "poor performers do not learn from feedback suggesting a need to improve
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the naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who said, "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
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Maybe these people can help someone who is suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect:

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/finding-help-when-get-it-and-where-go[/quote]

Michael Ossipoff

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(Maybe I should apologize that this reply couldn’t be brief. Often it just isn’t possible to adequately answer briefly.)
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Proof, or good reason to believe--we don’t significantly disagree.
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”The (as definitionally goes without saying) subjective nature of our experience, with experience being the center and source of what we know about our physical surroundings, suggests that there’s no more reason to believe in the Materialist’s inanimate and neutral Reality than in is his objective Realist metaphysics.” — Michael Ossipoff
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As I have said before, experience is inescapably both objective and subjective. There is necessarily both an experiencing subject and an experienced object. Materialists forget this -- focusing on the experienced object to the exclusion of the experiencing subject -- thus committing Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.

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Yes, the experiencer and hir (his/her) surroundings are mutually complementary.
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”But neither what I’ve just said, nor what you said, answers the question about why Benevolence would (in some lives) put us through a pretty horrible experience. …even though it’s temporary, arguably not real, and not-itself-created.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Yes. This is a profound question. The best I can come up with is, as you suggest, it is a small thing in the "big picture" -- a side effect that will be made up for in other ways. But, I claim no certainty here.

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I said it, but that answer didn’t entirely satisfy me.
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Can major injury, misery and horror, followed by early death be “made up for”?
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It can certainly be argued that risk, and sometimes hurt, suffering, loss and the most extreme suffering and horror, are an inevitable aspect of life.
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Who’s to say whether the good things about life mean that we should be conceived and born, when, for many persons’ and animals’ lives, that means undergoing tremendous injury, loss, and sometimes the worst misery and horror.
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Is it necessary to be in a life? Only for enjoyment and (sometimes intolerable) suffering. Someone who wasn’t in a life in the 1st place wouldn’t care a bit. Of course it isn’t even meaningful to speak of someone who isn’t in a life, and whether they’re worse off than someone who is conceived and born.
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I’ll repeat the Mark Twain quote that I mentioned in a previous thread:
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“Before I was born, I was dead for millions of years, and it didn’t inconvenience me a bit.”
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I agree with Barbara Ehrenreich, who said that death doesn’t interrupt life; life interrupts sleep. Sleep is the natural, normal, rightful, incompletion-less, discomfort-less, dis-satisfaction-less, state-of-affairs.
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Someone who comes into being is always getting something overall net-positive? For one thing, it isn’t a meaningful question, because there’s no such thing as someone who isn’t conceived and born. But many lives are very prematurely cut short, and filled with horror, injury and misery. Need I supply details? Check out current-events. Benevolence didn’t make there be those lives.
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But would it even mean anything to say that what’s happening to those people is somehow later (if there’s reincarnation) “outweighed” or “cancelled-out”? How does that change anything when it’s happening to them? When it’s there, it’s there, and that isn’t a good thing.
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Is there any such thing as “making up for” or “canceling out” horrors like that?
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(But I emphasize that I don’t agree with those who complain about having come into being, because 1) There’s no such thing as someone who doesn’t come into being, making it meaningless to speak of hypothetically being better-off if not conceived and born; and 2) I believe that it was inevitable (not made-to-be by intention), and therefore complaint about it is meaningless; and 3) Most such people don’t know what a bad life is, and have nothing to whine about.)
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Anyway, no, I don’t believe that Benevolence made there be those lives of extreme injury, misery and horror.
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…which leads to the next quote:
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”…hence the Gnostic position, which I agree with, that God didn’t create the physical universes, or make there be them.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I see this solution as ruled out by the need for a sufficient explanation -- which must terminate in one, self-explaining source.
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You’re saying that it’s necessary to attribute (and blame) everything on the First Cause, Reality’s Intention.
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It can be shown that it’s a tautology that there is no true-and-false proposition. Likewise, there couldn’t not be the logical relations that I’ve spoken of, among abstract implications and the propositions that they’re about, and the hypothetical things that those propositions are about. …and the complex systems of them that are our life-experience stories.
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Never mind whether or not the abstract-facts, propositions and hypothetical things “exist” or are “real”. That’s irrelevant. Whether they exist or not, they have inter-referring logical relations among them, and that’s what our experience-stories consist of.
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So, just like the fact that there is no true-and-false proposition, our lives were/are inevitable too.
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So don’t blame that on God.
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The role and relation between Reality’s Intention and our lives is subtle and not obvious. You’ve heard the saying that God works in strange ways. Well, we can’t expect to understand or judge that relation that I mentioned in this paragraph. We all (Theists) agree that there’s Benevolence. As Scholastics and Apophatic Theists have said, there’s really nothing else to be said about the matter. No details or detailed explanations.
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I suggest that there’s Benevolence, meaning that things are as good as could be, given the logical inevitabilities.
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(I suggest that that includes the fact that everyone’s sequence-of-lives ends well, with final and timeless well-deserved rest with no such thing as adversity, lack, or incompletion, with increasingly deep sleep--and that, before that end, in that sequence-of-lives, there are (as you suggested) good lives.)
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Those conclusions were called heretical when the Gnostics said it, in mediaeval and earlier times, and they still aren’t welcomed by most Theists.
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Perhaps the answer is that we see things too anthropocentrically -- as though everything needs to be judged in terms of what is good for us, instead of what is good for creation as a whole.

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Do you mean “Tough luck for the unfortunate war-maimed civilians, because what matters is the greatest good for the greatest number?” That doesn’t sound like a situation that Benevolence made there be.
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It isn’t about anthropocentricity, because the same misfortunes happen to the other animals too.
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[/i]”Isn’t continuation inevitable for each timeless, inevitable logical-system?” — Michael Ossipoff[/i]
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No, I don't think so, for two reasons. First, from an Aristotelian perspective, the persistence of a being through time…

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Time is only within a physical world, a property of a physical world. I’m talking about inevitable timeless logical relations and inter-reference among timeless abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things.
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… is the ongoing actualization of its potential to exist in the next instant. As it does not already exist in that instance, it can't act to actualize its own potential. From the perspective of a space-time manifold, just as existence here does not imply existence there, so existence now does not entail existence then. Thus, we need something outside of the space-time manifold to effect the continuity we observe.

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Referring to the situation _within_ a physical world:
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First some brief background:
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A set of hypothetical physical-quantity values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a “physical law”) comprise, together, the antecedent of an abstract implication.
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…except that one of those hypothetical physical-quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that abstract implication.
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Our physical universe, in our experience, seems to have some conservation-laws, such as:
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Conservation of mass-energy
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Conservation of momentum
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Conservation of angular-momentum
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…and some newer conservation laws regarding quantities observed in more recent modern physics.
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Additionally, Newton’s laws of motion (though they’ve been shown to only approximate a more general physics) include a first-law-of-motion that says that a moving object will continue its same motion unless and until acted on by a force.
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(…and let’s not have a relativity-quibble here. Newton’s laws only approximate, under special conditions, a more general physics.)
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So, within this physical universe, there are a number of laws that require the continuations that you referred to.
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…and the whole system, a physical world that’s the setting for your hypothetical life-experience-story, is inevitable because your life-experience-story, as a complex system of inter-reference and relation among abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things, is inevitable.
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Those relations and inter-reference in those logical systems are inevitable in the same way as it’s an inevitable tautology that there’s no true-and-false proposition.
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Michael Ossipoff

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To answer the question in your subject-line: No, but, where you live, it isn't a good idea to say things like that, because it could get you in trouble with the government there.

I believe in avoiding trouble with the government. ....ignoring politics, and completely staying out of the way of the rulers.

(By the way, I commend you for writing in English, a foreign language to you. Not many people here can write in a foreign language.)

I've flagged Terrapin Station's most recent post for two reasons:

1, It uses a falsified quote:

Can anyone show that this physical world exists or is real, other than in its own context (...in particular, in some absolute sense (whatever that would mean) as Materialists believe)? — Michael Ossipoff

...becomes:

Can anyone show that this physical world exists or is real, — Michael Ossipoff

2. After that, the message consists only of negative characterization of another poster...for having allegedly said what Terrapin falsely quoted.

Terrapin Station is a habitual repeat-offender who didn't learn anything from his recent message-deletion, and didn't wait long before doing the same thing again.

Michael Ossipoff

...but I've just noticed that I left a word out of a recent posting, and that should be fixed, as I do below, writing it as I intended it. (I erased the previous version, replacing it with an announcement of this corrected version):

This isn't a reply to anything since posted by Station. It's just a correction of a word-omission in this recent post of mine:

Your consciousness ceases and you have no experience any longer. — Terrapin Station

"...have no...any longer" unmistakably refers to a not-having that is ongoing during a passage of time.

In other words, you experience passage-of-time in which there' s no experience? That's what Mr. Station seems to be saying.

...reminding that this discussion, and the OP's question, are about the experience of the dying person, and NOT of his survivors (...who of course experience the complete shutdown of the dead person's body, and could experience its eventual decay.)

I'll repeat here that I won't be replying to Terrapin again.

Michael Ossipoff

What I mean to say on this matter can be said briefly:

1) Can anyone show that this physical world exists or is real, other than in its own context (...in particular, in some absolute sense (whatever that would mean) as Materialists believe)?

2)...because, if not, then this physical world doesn't exist in any sense or context other than that in which exists the setting of your life-experience-story, a hypothetical system of inter-referring abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things. ...which, too, exists and is real in its own context (if "exist" and "real" mean anything).

3)...in which case, what reason would there be to believe that this physical world is other than the setting in that hypothetical experience-story, which is an inevitable logical system. ...which needs no existence or reality other than in its own context?

Michael Ossipoff

No metaphysics is provable. Lots of contrived metaphysics can be irrefutable, in the sense that they're unfalsifiable. Various metaphysicses have been suggested to explain our physical world and describe something that allegedly underlies it. Any sort of metaphysics can be contrived to unfalsifiably be consistent with the physical world that we observe. An unfalsifiable proposition, by definition, is irrefutable, and would remain irrefutable whether true or not.

What can be shown is that a particular metaphysics (...like Materialism) requires an unsupported assumption or posits a brute-fact.

There are reliably-true things that can be said about metaphysics, but no particular metaphysics can be proven, for the above-stated reason.

Michael Ossipoff

Note to moderators &/or administrators--

I flagged Terrapin Station's recent post in this thread because it consists entirely of namecalling, with no discussion-content, in clear and transparently-flagrant violation of these forums' guidelines for conduct.

I mean, if that doesn't violate guidelines, then what would?

Michael Ossipoff

No more replies for Terrapin Station.

When don't reply to Terrapin Station, it won't mean that he's said something irrefutable. It will just mean that he doesn't merit a reply, and I won't continue wasting time replying to him..

Michael Ossipoff

best case scenario we rest dreamlessly. — Rhasta1

That's the eventual final outcome and state-of-affairs.

Michael Ossipoff

.This post has been replaced by a new version that fixes a word-omission, and adds perhaps-needed clarification.

No, I'm describing what happens to you. Your consciousness ceases. No more experiences. — Terrapin Station

No more waking experience. Eventually no more experience or knowledge about worldly waking-life, with all its concerns, or time or events, or even that there could be such things. Ever-deepening sleep.

In what sense does Mr. Station believe that there will be "no more experience", from his point-of-view, if he won't experience it? What would unexperienced absence of experience even mean? It's a nonsense phrase.

Michael Ossipoff

Mr. Station is describing the experience of his survivors...their experience of the eventual already-shut-down condition of his body, and its eventual decay.

No one denies that experience by your survivors.

What the OP was asking about was one's own experience.

Can't Mr. Station read?

Michael Ossipoff

That's what I answered. Your consciousness ceases and you have no experience any longer. — Terrapin Station

So Mr. Station believes that he'll have the experience of no experience. :D

Michael Ossipoff

You die. Your consciousness ceases. Your body decays. That's it. No good reason to believe anything else, as much as we might like to fantasize about other stuff, as much as we might like something else to be the case. — Terrapin Station

...simplistic confusion between your own experience and that of your survivors.

From the point of view of your survivors, your body will entirely shut down, and you soon will genuinely no longer be, and will be dead, and your body will decay.

That's your survivors' experience, not yours.

So, what's your experience at the end-of-lives? Ever-deepening sleep. As I said in my previous post (and elsewhere too), you never reach a time when you aren't. You'll never experience that, though your sleep will become ever deeper.

Of course it's well-known that dogmatic Science-Worshippers firmly believe that they know all about how things are, as they apply their pseudoscience to everything ...but I suggest that others have no reason to take their word for it (...however assertively it's expressed.).

Michael Ossipoff

I believe that once you pass away you are gone for good. — outlier

Eventually the sleep at death is final (...at the end of this life, if you don't believe in reincarnation, or at the end-of-lives if you believe in reincarnation.)

It's final, but, for one thing, what's wrong with that?

You said that you've been looking at other discussions here, on this topic. Maybe you've seen some my posts about it. Let me just briefly repeat a few quotes:

Barbara Ehrenreich said that death doesn't interrupt life; life interrupts sleep.

...which is the natural, normal and usual state-of-affairs. A life can be likened to being awakened by an alarm-clock because there are things that you wanted to do. As Jake pointed out, then at the end of the day, you welcome some rest from it.

Mark Twain said:

"Before I was born, I was dead for millions of years, and it didn't inconvenience me a bit."

But I do often wonder whether there is some other dimension, or place for the dead.

Yes, there's more to it than you're assuming.

For one thing, from your own point of view (as opposed to that of your survivors), you don't cease to be. Though the sleep at the end-of-lives is increasingly deep, you never experience Nothing. There's no such thing as "oblivion".

I'm not saying that your perception continues forever in the same way. Obviously, in the ever deepening sleep, there will be relief from the concerns and hassles, the needs, wants, lacks and incompletion of worldly-life.

Other dimension? Well timelessness could be called dimensionally-different from your worldly-experience. As I've mentioned in other threads, you eventually won't know that there is such a thing as time or events, or even that there ever was or could be such things.

Aside from that, I suggest that, if you're in this life for a reason (and I say that you are--your subconscious needs, wants, proclivities, predispositions, inclinations), then if, at the end of this life, that reason still remains, then you'll again be in a life, for the same reason as you're in this life.

So death might not be as simple as you think. Shakespeare said, "To sleep, perchance to dream."

and then:

"Aye, there's the rub." ...for suicides and life-rejecting nihilists.

Michael Ossipoff

That's fine. You see it necessarily as religious. Dfpolis does not. So when Dfpolis says that in his view there is evidence of teleology, and then I ask what he considers evidence of it, I ask him to point at the stuff in question, and he doesnt doesn't bother, from our perspective, not yours, it's not a matter of getting into a religious debate or not. — Terrapin Station

Whatever you call the topic, you might have gotten discussion if you'd approached the matter with a lot more humility and modesty, and a lot less arrogant assurance that you're right.

I don't (continually or otherwise) ask Atheists why they believe as they do. Why should I care? Why should I take the time to start threads to ask them? (...and spend more time complaining if they don't answer me.)

I have nothing against Atheists or their beliefs. Some of my favorite people are Atheists. Some Atheists aren't preachy or aggressive about their beliefs. I have no complaint about them.

Michael Ossipoff

Again, Dfpolis said that this isnt necessarily a religious thing in his view. — Terrapin Station

It isn't a matter of objective correct and incorrect. It depends on what someone means by "religious".

To me, intentiionality, teleology, in Reality is a religious matter, by definition. I suggest that that's what is meant when people speak of God.

That, itself, would be a good definition for the religion topic. A broader definition, suggested by Merriam-Webster, would be anything about Reality--all that is (...about which, many agree, very little can be said.). Of course that broader definition would encompass the matter of intentionality in Reality.

So Dfopolis is including in philosophy and not in religion, discussion that I'd call religious.

No one is wrong. Definitions can differ.

Michael Ossipoff

For example, if someone says "there are no trees" you can point out a tree to them. That thing you're pointing at is that thing that you're calling a tree.

We can worry about people who say "I dont see any tree there" later. Let's at least do some pointing first — Terrapin Station

Evidently you can't find any Theists who are interested in debating Theism with you.

Congratulations! You win your debate by default.

Oh wait--I already said that :D

Michael Ossipoff

Should I repeat what I said again, too? Would that be helpful?

Here you go:

Of course, since empirical claims can't be proved in the first place. No one is asking for proof. Just any evidence — Terrapin Station

1. No one is claiming that all evidence will appear to you as evidence. Evidently it's necessary to repeat to you again that the convincingness of evidence is subjective, individual, and a matter-of-degree.

...and likewise for non-evidence justifications for faith.

2. And maybe it's also necessary to repeat that, from what you say, for some reason, Theists aren't interested in debating Theism with you.

Evidently Theists have forfeited the debate to you, and you're the default winner of your debate.

To repeat what I already said:

Congratulations!!

Ask for evidence all you want. I suggest that, when you next ask for evidence at some other forum where you aren't known yet, you might try asking a with a bit more modesty and humility, and with a lot less arrogant assurance that you're right.

Has this discussion devolved to pure repetition? Are we done with it yet?

Michael Ossipoff

Likewise, the realist's claim that "we can only experience our own minds" cannot be proved is irrefutable. — Terrapin Station

...but guess which one unparsimoniously assumes something not experienced.

...and Materialists pride themselves on being "empirical" :D

Michael Ossipoff

Wouldn't it be redundant to live again and go through the same process of learning and such? — Posty McPostface

But there's no reason why you should. People usually don't live exactly the same kind of life again. At the end of a life, your subconscious attributes, level and nature of needs, wants and inclinations, is different from how it was at the beginning of this life. Each life is different. Each life is influenced by the previous one.

The person you'll be in your next life is the person whose subconscious attributes are those of you toward the end of this life.

And the world that you'll be born into is one that is consistent with that person that you are then...a world, for example, consisting of people who'd beget the kind of person that you (then) are.

Which leads me to believe that it's a never ending process...

The sequence of lives ends eventually, because the needs, wants and inclinations ("Will To Life") that started this life will no longer be there. ...as each life is influenced by the previous one.

Michael Ossipoff

Barbara Ehrenreich said something to the effect that death doesn't interrupt life. It's just that life temporarily interrupts sleep.

Sleep, because of the final and timeless nature of sleep at the end-of-lives, and its presence at the beginning of this life too, is the natural, normal, rightful and usual state-of-affairs. Waking life, worldly-life, with all its situations and problems, is the exception and the interruption of how it really is and should be.

Mark Twain said, "Before I was born, I was dead for millions of years, and it didn't inconvenience me a bit."

Michael Ossipoff

Yeah; but, what if you could achieve life-perfection in one life? That would seem like the optimal solution. — Posty McPostface

Then there wouldn't be a next life. And that would be as it should be.

I emphasizes that it isn't a matter of personal choice. It isn't up to the individual. If you aren't life-completed and lifestyle-perfected, then there will be a next life, because the subconscious needs, wants and inclinations will still be there.

Anyway, if there are more lives (which I believe there to be until the completion and perfection that I spoke of) that's good. If there aren't, due to life-completion and lifestyle-perfection, that, too, is as it should be.

What if I were mistaken about reincarnation? What if there weren't really reincarnation? Well, what's so bad about sleep? We sleep each night. Regarding that final, increasingly deep sleep, there's nothing about that to dread or fear.

But there's good reason to believe that there are a sequence of lives, and that none of us at these forums will be at the end-of-lives, when we reach the end of this life.

Michael Ossipoff

For one thing, if for no other reason, I wouldn't want it because it isn't natural.

In Eastern traditions (which I agree with on this), we live, in successive lives, until we're eventually (inevitably, eventually) life-completed and life-style-perfected. ...at which time, at the end of the life during which that is achieved, there isn't another life.

(The successive next-lives happen because, if there's a reason why you're in a life (and there is), and if that reason remains at the end of this life, then you'll again be in a life, for the same reason why you were in this one.)

In my interpretation, at the end-of-lives, there's just final, increasingly-deep sleep, of course with no more awareness that there ever was, or could have been, any such things as need, want, lack, menace, or incompletion...or time or events. In other words, timelessness. So that state-of-affairs is final and timeless.

Anyway, my point there is that, even among those of us who believe in reincarnation, there is only a finite temporary amount of life (a finite number of temporary lives), because the need or inclination that started the sequence, eventually no longer remains.

Michael Ossipoff

Of course, since empirical claims can't be proved in the first place. No one is asking for proof. Just any evidence. — Terrapin Station

What did I say about evidence? Let me repeat it yet again:

As I've said several times, evidence isn't, and needn't be, proof.

The convincingness of evidence is subjective, individual, and a matter-of-degree.

Convincingness for Terrapin Station isn't a requirement for evidence. It might not be evidence for you. that doesn't mean that it isn't evidence--Michael Ossipoff

If someone wants to debate the matter with Mr. Station, then they can tell him about some evidence.

Station can demand evidence all he wants to. He'll get it from such Theists who want to debate Theism with him. That doesn't include me. I don't care what Station believes, and I'm quite willing to let him win his debate.

Is this necessarily a religious idea, by the way?

Teleology in Reality? What else would that be other than a religious question?

Although if some people are seeing it that way, the assertion that there's evidence of intentionality in natural laws...

I guess it will be necessary to, again, repeat what I'd just finished saying:

By the way, I don't think anyone has said that the laws-of-physics are evidence in support of Theism [or intentionality of Reality itself]. --Michael Ossipoff

...in conjunction with the complete avoidance of providing any of the supposed evidence

Then evidently other Theists, other than just me, are not willing to debate Theism with Mr. Station or other attack-Atheists

So yes, maybe there's a complete lack of Theism evidence (or faith-justification) provided to Station.

Alright, then the conclusion is simple. If Theists aren't providing any evidence to attack-Atheists, then attack-Atheists win their debate by default.

Congratulations!

Subject closed?

Michael Ossipoff

There is no evidence of intentionality in "natural laws." — Terrapin Station

As I've said several times, evidence isn't, and needn't be, proof.

The convincingness of evidence is subjecttive, individual, and a matter-of-degree.

Convincingness for Terrapin Station isn't a requirement for evidence. It might not be evidence for you. that doesn't mean that it isn't evidence.

By the way, I don't think anyone has said that the laws-of-physics are evidence in support of Theism.

Michael Ossipoff

Yes, because we’re used to things happening for inanimate reasons in the physical world, some people have a natural tendency to want to assume the same, or at least call it the default or parsimonious assumption about Reality too. But of course theres no justification for such a claim.
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Of course a Materialist is committed to that claim by his belief that the physical world is all that there is.
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”Of course such matters, on the scale of how things are, overall—the matter of the nature or character of Reality--aren’t provable or meaningfully assertable or debatable.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I must disagree. I think we can both reason by analogy and make strict deductions leading us to an understanding of the existence and general character of God.

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Sure, there are valid discussions about reasons to believe that there’s good intent behind what-is, and that Reality is Benevolence. …reasons that suggest an impression about that. I like the general idea of the Scholastic arguments, though I prefer the word “discussion” to “argument”, and though their reasons, from their discussion, aren’t the same as mine.
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But I don’t think matters regarding God are a matter of logic or proof. That’s why I always refuse to debate it with attack-Atheists (…well, there’s also that I don’t like talking to them).
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I agree with Aquinas, and people long before him, about there being nothing (or at least pretty-much nothing) that can be said about God, other than Benevolence.
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”I define faith as trust without or in addition to evidence. The convincingness of reasons or justifications for faith are at least as subjective and individual as is the convincingness of evidence.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I agree in a general way. I see faith as justified by worthiness, not evidence.

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Yes, there’s evidence (“outward-sign”, or reason-to-believe something based on influence or effect on something else). There’s also reason for faith--trust without or in addition to evidence.
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I suggest (It’s my impression…) that there’s reason to believe that what-is is, overall, good, and that there’s good-intent behind what-is.
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That impression comes from metaphysics, but also from considerations (...at least some of which are suggested in some Buddhist writing) that would apply even under Materialism.
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That’s “outward sign”, also called “evidence”.
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Evidence and reason for faith are individual and subjective. No person can validly say that something called evidence isn’t evidence unless it’s evidence to that person. …or that something called a reason for faith isn’t a reason for faith unless it’s a reason for faith to that person.
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One reason for faith that Reality is Benevolence is this:
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Arguably, benevolence is good. Arguably, good is right. Arguably best could only be good.
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Within a physical world, a thing (of which there are many) can randomly be good or bad, obviously right or otherwise. If “Reality” is defined as “All that is”, then there’s only one of it, and so there’s only one way that it can be. Reality reasonably would be of some character or nature. Would its character or nature, the way that it is, be other than good? In fact, would it imperfectly be other than best? …when there’s only one of it, because it’s all that is?
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As I said, the notion that parsimony calls for Reality being neutral and inanimate, as the parsimonious default assumption, because we’re used to that attribute in a physical universe, amounts to an unjustified conclusion. …because Reality isn’t a physical universe (…except to a Materialist, of course.), so why expect it to be like one?
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The (as definitionally goes without saying) subjective nature of our experience, with experience being the center and source of what we know about our physical surroundings, suggests that there’s no more reason to believe in the Materialist’s inanimate and neutral Reality than in is his objective Realist metaphysics.
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I emphasize that these reasons for faith, as well as the “outward sign” that I’ve spoken of above, are a matter of subjective personal impression, and needn’t be evidence or reason-for-faith for anyone else, and I don’t claim that they are or should be.

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To be worth of belief, a doctrine cannot contradict what we know for a fact, it needs to resonate within us, and it must issue in virtuous behavior.

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Fair enough.
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”But what about those bad parts, temporary though they may be? Do you really think that Benevolence would make there be those?” — Michael Ossipoff
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Without responding in depth, evil, like darkness, has no positive existence. That does not mean we don't encounter it. It only means that it is a void where there should be some good. So, it is uncreated.

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Okay, and I’m not saying that it’s created either. And all the bad parts are temporary, and Nisargadatta pointed out that what’s temporary isn’t very real, overall in the long-run. Arguably what isn’t real can’t really be very bad. Anyway, I’ve been admitting that I don’t claim any reality or existence for the physical worlds, each of which is a temporary part of a temporary sequence-of-lives, which is a blip in Eternity. Increasingly-deep sleep at the end of lives is final and timeless.
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…which is why it can be said that what-is, is good, in spite of the bad parts in lives (which can sometimes mar and become the nature of entire lives).
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But neither what I’ve just said, nor what you said, answers the question about why Benevolence would (in some lives) put us through a pretty horrible experience. …even though it’s temporary, arguably not real, and not-itself-created.
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That isn’t part of Benevolence.
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Benevolence wouldn’t do that.
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It’s something that sometimes happens in lives in worlds, making it arguable that Benevolence didn’t make there be those lives or those worlds.
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…hence the Gnostic position, which I agree with, that God didn’t create the physical universes, or make there be them.
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Just as there can’t be a true-and-false proposition or a pair of mutually-contradictory facts, so there couldn’t not be the inevitable logical systems that are the lives and the physical worlds that are their settings.
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Well, it could be argued that the lives can be justified because their protagonists want them. …but, when those lives are sometimes extremely bad experiences, why would Benevolence want there to be those protagonists and their wish for life, in the first place?
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I’ve been proposing a metaphysics that uncontroversially explains our lives and this physical universe as inevitable and self-generated …but things are still as good as they can be, given that inevitable system’s inevitable bad-parts. — Michael Ossipoff
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The problem is not how the universe originated, but that its continuing existence is not self-explaining.

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Isn’t continuation inevitable for each timeless, inevitable logical-system? …and for the experience-stories in time, and the universe-chronology implied by that experience.
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Michael Ossipoff

why not? Can´t a person deduce that, if a universe can form for no good reason, anything else can happen too? Including entities capable of producing new universes. — DiegoT

Sure. But I didn't say that this universe formed for no good reason. I said, instead, that this universe consists of the setting in your life-experience-story, which is an uncontroversially-inevitable complex system of abstract-implications about propositions about hypothetical things.

Abstract-implications don't need an explanation. I didn't even say that an inter-referring system of them "exists" in any context other than its own.

Someone suggested that it's meaningless to speak of something existing in its own context, because....what doesn't exist in its own context??? Good point. Of course.

But the existence of this physical universe in any other context is unsupported.

Michael Ossipoff

The country of France exists in the larger context of Europe, to give a spatio-geographical and cultural and historical example. — Michael Ossipoff


That looks to me like you're simply observing that contexts can be nested. France exists in its own context, and within Europe (...the world, solar system, galaxy, etc :wink: ). I don't think anything can exist outside its own context. — Pattern-chaser

But you agreed that France exists within Europe. France's history and culture can meaningfully discussed in the context of overall European history and culture. So doesn't France exist in the European context, in addition to its own context?

Michael Ossipoff

Can something - anything - exist outside its own context? I can't parse that, I'm afraid. — Pattern-chaser

Of course it can. The country of France exists in the larger context of Europe, to give a spatio-geographical and cultural and historical example.

MIchael Ossipoff

Maybe you mean that it's meaningless to speak of something's existence and real-ness in its own context, because anything is real and existent in its own context.

Of course. But I was talking about a claim that this physical universe is real &/or existent in some context other than its own. ...a claim that Materialists, but not I, make about this physical universe.

Michael Ossipoff

Materialists claim that this physical universe has (in some unspecified sense, by some unspecified meaning) existence and realness other than in its own context (or that of our lives). Is their claim about that meaningless?

Fine. If "more than contextual existence or real-ness" doesn't mean anything to you, then you won't claim that this physical world has existence or real-ness other than in its own context. ...since, according to you, such a claim would be meaningless.

Then any previously-perceived disagreement was just a misunderstanding.

Then it isn't clear how you think this physical universe is other than or more than the setting of a hypothetical experience story consisting of the uncontroversially-inevitable logical system that I've described, a system of inter-referring abstract-facts about propositions about hypothetical things.

By the way, at a different thread, you agreed that there are no things, just facts. How does that reconcile with a claim that this physical universe consists of more than the setting in an experience-story consisting of a system of inter-referring abstract-implications?

Michael Ossipoff

Yes, though that was considered heresy when the Gnostic were saying it, all the way back to Medieval times, and maybe before, and of course is still resisted by many Theists.

If someone tries to come up with some rationalization for why God would make there be lives that end early, and with excessive suffering, in the belief that God must be omnipotent, then ask them if they also want to blame God for the fact that there can't be a true-and-false proposition, or a pair of mutually-contradictory facts.

Michael Ossipoff

I just mean that though likes can be called preferences, that word sounds unnecessarily neutral. "Likes" more fully expresses their positive nature.

Michael Ossipoff

I mean "preferences" is true, but it doesn't sound like as much fun as "likes".

Michael Ossipoff

You mean preferences?
— Posty McPostface

Yes, but, there are things that we like, and that stronger word is appropriate too. And I suggest that likes are what our life is really about and for..

I mean, there's a tale in the realm of economics that asserts that diamonds are more valuable than water; but, not at all times.

Quite so.

Michael Ossipoff

we have shared needs, maybe not wants. — Posty McPostface

Sure, there are broader requirements that people have in common (...such as survival and its requirements), to achieve their diverse likes. ...but ultimately it comes down to likes.

Michael Ossipoff

Yes, but succinctly what's your point here? — Posty McPostface

The first brief answer that occurs to me is to quote Kentucky Buddhist Ken Keyes...his statement that we have likes, which needn't be called "wants" or "needs".

That's the short version, and you asked for a very brief concise statement.

Michael Ossipoff