Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Ozymandias]

Greta,

I understand now that Felix and I fundamentally differ from you in our conceptions of how a sentient being should be allowed to think- while we believe that growth by struggle is most meaningful, you view struggle as unnecessary. Yes, it would be possible for a god to create a being that wouldn't have to feel pain, and I suppose that that being could also grow as such. But, to put a pathos narrative in here: imagine two people in the gym- one who has been fighting obesity and heart disease and is working hard to get healthy, and one who has been healthy all his life and is just working to get more chiseled abs. Neither is wrong, and both of them are growing and improving, but I do believe the one whose growth comes out of struggle is far more inspiring and moving (no pun intended).

So perhaps God was wrong to make us all have to struggle in order to attain peace? It's a plausible theory, I'll definitely give you that- it makes just as much sense as mine. But I think this is actually being shown to be a subjective matter, and one would have to know God to understand why he created us as he did (and I like the depiction of God as a two year old- it's quite humorous and actually plausible ;P ). This is working under the assumption there is an all-creator, of course. Under secular belief it makes perfect sense why we are in so much struggle- the universe is chaotic and unforgiving. I think if I wasn't religious I would be a nihilist...

[Sy Borg]

So perhaps God was wrong to make us all have to struggle in order to attain peace? It's a plausible theory, I'll definitely give you that- it makes just as much sense as mine. But I think this is actually being shown to be a subjective matter, and one would have to know God to understand why he created us as he did (and I like the depiction of God as a two year old- it's quite humorous and actually plausible ;P ). This is working under the assumption there is an all-creator, of course. Under secular belief it makes perfect sense why we are in so much struggle- the universe is chaotic and unforgiving. I think if I wasn't religious I would be a nihilist...

These are obvious errors. We simply take for granted that adversity and struggle are the means by which our character is forged. Pardon my French, but what a sh1tty system

Of course, there is much joy as well - but always terminated by suffering and death. I have some sympathy for theists who claim Earth is a level of Hell. We start out screaming, clueless and desperate and too often finish up similarly. No one would ever mistake Earth for heaven! Yet, up to a point, the "gates to heaven" are in the mind, in our interpretations.

Dan Gilbert showed that just about any situation can be "spun" to seem wonderful to us, and the happiness produced by this positive manipulation is physically and hedonically real, as is the placebo effect. So we can, if we like, "spin" a story of the Earth where it is potentially an ocean of bliss that just needs a change of attitude - to let go of fear and negativity. Not so easy to be positive for, say, starving refugee mothers, shaded by a rag on a stick in 45C, watching their babies conceived of rape die of heatstroke and thirst, unable to extract fluid from her cracked nipples.

[Felix]

Greta: So we can, if we like, "spin" a story of the Earth where it is potentially an ocean of bliss that just needs a change of attitude - to let go of fear and negativity.

Sure, but the gnostic will reply: stop spinning (unless you're a whirling dervish) and become the loom. Or as one of them put it: "When the artist loses himself in his art, the art comes to life." Be the Artist.

[Ormond]

If there is something like a god which created all of reality...

It seems hilariously absurd to try to evaluate and judge the actions of an intelligence of such unimaginable scale.

Whether we call reality "God" or "Nature" our situation is the same in either case, so the debate between believers and secularists is pointless. In either case we face the challenge of making peace with something immeasurably larger than us and far beyond our control.

Theists are being logical in finding a method for falling in love with reality, a process made easier by personalizing reality in a character called God.

As example...

The mods on this forum are a kind of god, they rule over every word we write. Sometimes the mods are wise, and sometimes they are foolish. What as a poster can I do about any of this? Nothing! Thus, it's not logical for me to pound my fist on the desk. It would be logical for me to make peace with the fact that I am not in control of my own destiny on this forum. It would be even more logical for me to love the mods, even as they delete my best posts, because love then becomes my own state of mind.

Nature/God is a gloriously beautiful giver of life, and a ruthless killer of the innocent. And there's nothing we can do about it.

What we can do is shape our relationship with this situation in to a form which gives us as much peace as possible. That would be logical. And it really doesn't matter a bit whether we call the situation "God" or "Nature".

[Ozymandias]

So perhaps God was wrong to make us all have to struggle in order to attain peace? It's a plausible theory, I'll definitely give you that- it makes just as much sense as mine. But I think this is actually being shown to be a subjective matter, and one would have to know God to understand why he created us as he did (and I like the depiction of God as a two year old- it's quite humorous and actually plausible ;P ). This is working under the assumption there is an all-creator, of course. Under secular belief it makes perfect sense why we are in so much struggle- the universe is chaotic and unforgiving. I think if I wasn't religious I would be a nihilist...

These are obvious errors. We simply take for granted that adversity and struggle are the means by which our character is forged. Pardon my French, but what a sh1tty system

Of course, there is much joy as well - but always terminated by suffering and death. I have some sympathy for theists who claim Earth is a level of Hell. We start out screaming, clueless and desperate and too often finish up similarly. No one would ever mistake Earth for heaven! Yet, up to a point, the "gates to heaven" are in the mind, in our interpretations.

Dan Gilbert showed that just about any situation can be "spun" to seem wonderful to us, and the happiness produced by this positive manipulation is physically and hedonically real, as is the placebo effect. So we can, if we like, "spin" a story of the Earth where it is potentially an ocean of bliss that just needs a change of attitude - to let go of fear and negativity. Not so easy to be positive for, say, starving refugee mothers, shaded by a rag on a stick in 45C, watching their babies conceived of rape die of heatstroke and thirst, unable to extract fluid from her cracked nipples.

I'm operating under the premise that pre and/ or post- death, we do not have the same bodies we have now; would you agree that that is reasonable, under theistic belief? After all, our bodies and minds rot or turn to ashes after we die. It should follow that as we abandon our bodies, we also abandon our brains, yes? If we abandon our brains, we abandon the chemical occurrences that define "happy", "unhappy", "pain", and "joy". That all resides in our brains, physically.

What then is left? When we die, our bodies and brains and all traces of dopamine, adrenaline, etc. turn to dirt. What's left (under most beliefs in one way or another), is our souls. The collection of our ideas, thoughts, and memories. I don't think it stands to reason that we have any need to keep our chemical thoughts after we die, I think it makes most sense that death transcends human biology, and we keep our thoughts and ideas- what makes us "us".

So then, what use is "happiness" in life anyway? I think what matters is what our lives mean, on a philosophical and spiritual level. I think that a logical god would be willing to give us pain, even in the extreme, in order to attribute significance to our lives. As Bob Ross put it, you gotta have some dark to bring out the light. If humans are not capable of evil and suffering, we are also not capable of true good and joy. Only the empty shells of it. If we lived in a world without horrors, we would have no understanding or appreciation for our happiness. We need to see and feel the difference between warm and cold.

Forgive my conjecture on which parts of our selves remain when we die- I don't have undeniable proof that any of us lives on, but I'm assuming method by which I would logically create a universe, so don't take my argument as ill- founded. I'm going for deductive reasoning here rather than inductive.

[Dark Matter]

Wow, Greta. I almost feel sorry for you. You seem oblivious to how physicists and cosmologists (showman Neil deGrasse Tyson notwithstanding) struggle to avoid what you casually dismiss -- some kind of Mind undergirding the material universe.

If a mind produced all this, then that mind is either sadistic and cruel or robotically uncaring. A being utterly indifferent to the mind-boggling level of pain and suffering meted out to humans and other animals through history.

Your Overmind scores an F for this universe for carelessly allowing extreme and prolonged suffering in its creation. While my own life has been a lucky one, all in all, matter would have been better off not awaking at all than coming into this nightmare world (for most).

BTW, please feel free to make a post that does not denigrate my intellect and/or character. It would make a pleasant change. My ego is not a massive rock that can endlessly take wave after wave. I know I am a secularist, which you seem to consider to be mindless and heartless robot beings, but I am actually a frail human being capable of feeling who finds repeated insults wearing after a while.

I don't have to denigrate your intellect and/or character. I need only to once again defer to Descartes to show how you anger is misplaced: In general, “all which the atheists commonly allege in favor of the non-existence of God, arises continually from one or the other of these two things, namely, either the ascription of human affections to Deity, or the undue attribution to our minds of so much vigor and wisdom that we may essay to determine and comprehend both what God can and ought to do." Your emotional ranting about how terrible things are does both. Your small-minded vitriol "will occasion us no difficulty, provided only we keep in rememberance that our minds must be considered finite [which you admitted to], while Deity is incomprehensible and infinite.”

-- Updated December 14th, 2016, 12:18 am to add the following --

I'm curious, why would anyone consider Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who dismisses philosophy as a useless enterprise, their favorite philosopher/

[Whitedragon]

Hi Greta, would it be fair to say the universe is the closest thing to the Lord’s age we can find? You wish for a universe where there is no suffering and do not believe in the Lord. If the universe has been around and is like some authority over what should be, why has the universe not gotten it right? If the universe could create thinking living breathing creatures, why did it not also eliminate pain?

Has science ever failed you, Greta, or has our will to control science and the cosmos failed us? A curious question; will there be any rap music or metal music in your perfect world; what about opera, or Shakespeare? Please allow one quote.

“Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace. And, lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death.” Romeo and Juliet

It seems with the eliminating of all pain and suffering, we might lose most of our poetry and literature; music and drama. It seems science has failed us as much as the Lord has “failed” us; yet both the Lord and science existed for longer than the lives here on earth combined. So why is it okay if science “fails” us, but not the Lord? Perhaps the universe needs a voice here as well, because we pretend we know better than it does as well.

[Sy Borg]

I need only to once again defer to Descartes to show how you anger is misplaced: In general, “all which the atheists commonly allege in favor of the non-existence of God, arises continually from one or the other of these two things, namely, either the ascription of human affections to Deity, or the undue attribution to our minds of so much vigor and wisdom that we may essay to determine and comprehend both what God can and ought to do." Your emotional ranting about how terrible things are does both. Your small-minded vitriol "will occasion us no difficulty, provided only we keep in rememberance that our minds must be considered finite [which you admitted to], while Deity is incomprehensible and infinite.”

I'm curious, why would anyone consider Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist who dismisses philosophy as a useless enterprise, their favorite philosopher/

Angry? Who would I be angry at? The hero of an Iron Age mythological tome? Not much point in that.

I just think the current system is exceptionally harsh and could be improved upon, and I made my suggestion - a reality that is all about creativity without suffering from the get go. People don't seem to like the idea because they believe suffering is absolutely necessary to growth. We are so conditioned by both evolution and culture to think that way that we cannot imagine anything else. This is a recent area of interest - all the cultural conditioning we take for granted, the beliefs that both theists and secularists unthinkingly adopt.

Why NdGT? He has explained aspects of nature and culture in ways that have inspired me.

[Ormond]

What then is left? When we die, our bodies and brains and all traces of dopamine, adrenaline, etc. turn to dirt. What's left (under most beliefs in one way or another), is our souls. The collection of our ideas, thoughts, and memories.

What is left when a leaf dies and falls to the ground? The leaf slowly rots and becomes nutrients in the soil. The nutrients are drawn back up in to the tree to create new leaves. The form of a individual particular leaf is entirely erased. But what the leaf is made of continues. Einstein said that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it only changes form.

If you got a face transplant and a name change you would still be you, because you is not the exterior form presented to the world but something deeper. If your ideas, thoughts and memories were to vanish, you would still be you because you is something deeper. I think that's what at least some of the theists are saying, and I suspect they are in some way right, just as the form of the leaf vanishes but the essence of the leaf continues.

It comes down to what we mean by the concept of "me". As we sit on the beach looking out to sea we can think of "me" as a particular wave moving towards shore, a form which has a beginning and an end. Or we can think of "me" as being the ocean, which is relatively eternal. While it seems more human to identify with the impermanent wave, it's perhaps interesting to observe that the wave doesn't actually exist as a "thing", it's just an observable pattern being driven by an invisible energy. I suspect we are much the same ourselves, a pattern in matter being driven by energy.

What "me" really is seems to be an illusion created by the inherently divisive nature of the information medium we are made of, thought. When you look out in your yard and see a tree, your mind gives the observed phenomena a name, thus conceptually dividing it from the rest of reality. While this is a useful human convention we should keep in the mind that the tree is not actually divided from reality, it's not a separate thing, but is instead one with a single holistic reality extending out to the edges of the universe. The separate "things" we see are not a function of reality, but of the nature of the tool we use to observe reality. "Me" is likely no different, a useful illusion.

Thus, don't worry about dying, because you don't actually exist as a separate thing to begin with. Jesus may have been trying to say something like this with his advice "die, and be reborn". In those moments when we are able to completely surrender "me", in those moments when we are psychologically dead, nothing bad happens. In fact, these are some of the most joyous moments of our lives.

If you observe very closely and carefully you will see that we are seeking such a psychological death on an almost moment to moment basis throughout our lives. It is these moments of death when the tiny little prison cell of "me" vanishes that makes life worth living.

But, agreeing with this is of little value, one has to do the homework and patiently observe, and see it for oneself.

[Whitedragon]

Okay, so it appears some bloggers have an issue with the fact that we have no immortality. One simple question is; is a benign personality part of the package? It seems without the right mind-set an immortal life serves only to be hurt emotionally. Let us go along with this immortality concept, how do we insure emotional security?

[Fooloso4]

Dark Matter:

[Descartes]: “all which the atheists commonly allege in favor of the non-existence of God, arises continually from one or the other of these two things, namely, either the ascription of human affections to Deity, or the undue attribution to our minds of so much vigor and wisdom that we may essay to determine and comprehend both what God can and ought to do”.

In the Meditations Descartes ascribes both perfection and goodness to God. These ideas, according to Descartes, are to be found in our minds. In other words, they are human affections that he ascribes to Deity. As to what God can and ought to do he claims that he cannot be deceived about everything because that would contrary to his goodness. He goes on to construct his Deity from the fact of his own existence, that is, with the vigor and wisdom of his own mind. He goes on to prove the existence of God based on the ascription of perfection, the idea of which he claims can only come from a being that is perfect. A philosopher of his stature surely knows how weak and unfounded this claim is. If we reject the claim that the idea of perfection must come from something that is perfect and see through his necessary defensive rhetoric we are left with Descartes’ veiled declaration of his own atheism.

[Ozymandias]

What then is left? When we die, our bodies and brains and all traces of dopamine, adrenaline, etc. turn to dirt. What's left (under most beliefs in one way or another), is our souls. The collection of our ideas, thoughts, and memories.

What is left when a leaf dies and falls to the ground? The leaf slowly rots and becomes nutrients in the soil. The nutrients are drawn back up in to the tree to create new leaves. The form of a individual particular leaf is entirely erased. But what the leaf is made of continues. Einstein said that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it only changes form.

If you got a face transplant and a name change you would still be you, because you is not the exterior form presented to the world but something deeper. If your ideas, thoughts and memories were to vanish, you would still be you because you is something deeper. I think that's what at least some of the theists are saying, and I suspect they are in some way right, just as the form of the leaf vanishes but the essence of the leaf continues.

It comes down to what we mean by the concept of "me". As we sit on the beach looking out to sea we can think of "me" as a particular wave moving towards shore, a form which has a beginning and an end. Or we can think of "me" as being the ocean, which is relatively eternal. While it seems more human to identify with the impermanent wave, it's perhaps interesting to observe that the wave doesn't actually exist as a "thing", it's just an observable pattern being driven by an invisible energy. I suspect we are much the same ourselves, a pattern in matter being driven by energy.

What "me" really is seems to be an illusion created by the inherently divisive nature of the information medium we are made of, thought. When you look out in your yard and see a tree, your mind gives the observed phenomena a name, thus conceptually dividing it from the rest of reality. While this is a useful human convention we should keep in the mind that the tree is not actually divided from reality, it's not a separate thing, but is instead one with a single holistic reality extending out to the edges of the universe. The separate "things" we see are not a function of reality, but of the nature of the tool we use to observe reality. "Me" is likely no different, a useful illusion.

Thus, don't worry about dying, because you don't actually exist as a separate thing to begin with. Jesus may have been trying to say something like this with his advice "die, and be reborn". In those moments when we are able to completely surrender "me", in those moments when we are psychologically dead, nothing bad happens. In fact, these are some of the most joyous moments of our lives.

If you observe very closely and carefully you will see that we are seeking such a psychological death on an almost moment to moment basis throughout our lives. It is these moments of death when the tiny little prison cell of "me" vanishes that makes life worth living.

But, agreeing with this is of little value, one has to do the homework and patiently observe, and see it for oneself.

I really like that definition of "me", I've never thought of it that way before. When I die the, according to that viewpoint, does my consciousness manifest itself somewhere else? Because in one way or another, human consciousnesses do appear from "nothing"; our population has been growing, so at some point one's consciousness began. Thus, that consciousness had to have A) come from nothing, or been built, or B) come from something else. In accordance with the law of conservation, it must have been B, right?

I fear I may be drastically misinterpreting what you said, either way I'm going to post this and think about it, and I may come back and say "oops, was totally wrong". But that's my question for now: does consciousness live and die? I think consciousness/ thought has less to do with how we conceptualize, and is more of a part of the universe itself, same as the tree; consciousness is an ocean in and of itself. I think consciousness, like the tree, is manifested in a physical way, in the only things strong enough to contain it: the human mind. Thus, does consciousness reincarnate into another mind? I don't believe so, as human population is growing, so consciousness would have to also grow, and it cannot. Matter and energy cannot grow. So I think consciousness has some other vessel in which to reside when we die, i.e. heaven, purgatory, something like that. Thus, my consciousness must live past me in some way.

Again, forgive me if I've misinterpreted. I'm a bit busy today thinking about a lot and my mind is finding it hard to keep up with all the abstract thought.

[Sy Borg]

So then, what use is "happiness" in life anyway? I think what matters is what our lives mean, on a philosophical and spiritual level.

If you are a refugee caring for your starving dying children who were the products of rape in a refugee camp, then I think a little happiness would be more than welcome. This isn't a matter of "first world problems" but the kind of suffering that destroys.

I think that a logical god would be willing to give us pain, even in the extreme, in order to attribute significance to our lives.

I do not place any value in the "significance" of our lives. Significant to whom? Other post apes, most of whom wouldn't know their backside from their elbow. Any deity that placed high focus on idiot humanity is a small-minded deity indeed, a long way from the deity of the universe, just a demigod.

All lives are equally significant or insignificant IMO, with death the "great leveller". Doing "important" or "significant" things simply involves being connected and valued in post-ape society. We have long assumed that what's good for post-ape society is objective good, because it's us.

Thus, don't worry about dying, because you don't actually exist as a separate thing to begin with.

Since we are not separate could forum members please deposit all of your money into my bank account? Don't worry about it - we are all one.

Thank you. I promise to enjoy it and, since we are not separate, you will also enjoy it!

[Dark Matter]

Angry? Who would I be angry at? The hero of an Iron Age mythological tome? Not much point in that.

I don't know. You tell me. You come across as someone who had bad experience in life and decided to blame God.

I just think the current system is exceptionally harsh and could be improved upon, and I made my suggestion - a reality that is all about creativity without suffering from the get go. People don't seem to like the idea because they believe suffering is absolutely necessary to growth. We are so conditioned by both evolution and culture to think that way that we cannot imagine anything else. This is a recent area of interest - all the cultural conditioning we take for granted, the beliefs that both theists and secularists unthinkingly adopt.

This is what I mean. This is "the undue attribution to our minds of so much vigor and wisdom that we may essay to determine and comprehend both what God can and ought to do.” It's a kind of conceit.

The idea that suffering is "absolutely necessary to growth" is not held universally. Inevitable? Yes, but not necessary. IMV, the greatest tragedy and apostasy in the history on monotheism is the resurgence of theistic personalism. Because of this superstition, atheists everywhere hold the so-called problem of evil over the heads of every theist as irrefutable evidence against the idea of a benevolent and all-powerful God, even though in classical theism the “problem” is quite irrelevant.

Why NdGT? He has explained aspects of nature and culture in ways that have inspired me.

This is the person you find inspiring? Or this?

[Dclements]

Hi Greta, would it be fair to say the universe is the closest thing to the Lord’s age we can find? You wish for a universe where there is no suffering and do not believe in the Lord. If the universe has been around and is like some authority over what should be, why has the universe not gotten it right? If the universe could create thinking living breathing creatures, why did it not also eliminate pain?

I don't know exactly what Greta is thinking, but IMHO it is foolish to blame the universe (if there is no 'God') of duhkha/'nature 'evil'/etc. because the universe just exist as it is just as we exist as we are. As I have said before, it isn't a given that there is a 'good' or 'evil' (or really any rhyme or reason to why thing are the way they are) and our tendency to think of things in terms of 'good'/'evil', as well as make up gods and 'God', is merely for our own reasons and in order for our narrative to make any sense; 'We do what we do, because that is the way we do it".

In reality what we perceive is 'good' is really just something that seems useful for us and that which is 'evil' is something that is 'evil' is something that threatens it; however since 'good'/'evil' are two sides of the same coin how we perceive them can easily switch when circumstances change. Or as Friar Lawrence put it "Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
and vice sometimes by action dignified".

Has science ever failed you, Greta, or has our will to control science and the cosmos failed us? A curious question; will there be any rap music or metal music in your perfect world; what about opera, or Shakespeare? Please allow one quote.

“Eyes, look your last. Arms, take your last embrace. And, lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death.” Romeo and Juliet

It seems with the eliminating of all pain and suffering, we might lose most of our poetry and literature; music and drama. It seems science has failed us as much as the Lord has “failed” us; yet both the Lord and science existed for longer than the lives here on earth combined. So why is it okay if science “fails” us, but not the Lord? Perhaps the universe needs a voice here as well, because we pretend we know better than it does as well.

Science is merely a tool to allow us to better understand the universe and for us to use such understanding to try and make our lives better. It really isn't meant to be a religion/narrative/ideology/ or system of beliefs, and it is only the ideologies/ religions/narratives/etc that try to pretend they are based on science that fail. As Hume put it "You can't get an 'ought' from an 'is'". so basically there is no easy way to make the facts (that we derived from science) tell us what we 'ought' to do or what our opinions should be. The 'Enlightenment' and 'Modernism' failed in some (or many) ways but since they greatly underestimated many of the problems of the human condition but since the idea that they really could improve things was more of a sales pitch then an honest attempt at fixing things, it really can as no great surprise either time. In reality each time a new ideology or narrative is invented in the Western world it is really about maintaining the status quo while making the disenfranchised think that things might get better so they are actually designed to eventually fail from the beginning.

Also if duhkha/'nature 'evil' is part of the same coin as I said, then they are a fundamental aspect of our existence; or at least an aspect of the universe we live in. So more or less fretting over the problem of what might happen if we get rid of duhkha/'nature 'evil' is kind of silly because any problem that can exist happens because of it is part of duhkha/'nature 'evil'. Or in other words, as far as we are concern problems and duhkha/'nature 'evil' are one and the same.