Philosophy Discussion Forums

Greta wrote:I am the wrong person to complain to - almost all art that I enjoy is supernatural or esoteric. I detest "sophisticated" human interest stories, especially the emotional manipulation. Ugh. Bring on the gods, vampires and the aliens, I say. Let's face it, we have created functional societies but they are incredibly sanitised and dull. The safety and cleanliness are wonderful, indispensible, but that still doesn't make it less boring.

As you put it, it's either magical adventure themes, or petite bourgeois sentimentalism, nothing else. And it's either shallow entertainment or socially-committed realism. The options are far more diverse than that. In any case, the point is not whether fantasy or realism are intrinsically boring or interesting. Two films can have vampires and one of them can be a piece of crap and the other a masterful worlk of art. I personally enjoy sacred art in music, painting and sculpture, perhaps even more than its secular manifestations. But that's not the point. The point is whether the realm of fantasy has not been explored enough already, in comparison to realism, and how it serves the purpose of escape and consolation from the problems of ordinary life. As I said, it's omnipresent.

Greta wrote: Consider what society prescribes for all - work most of your life, have a family, touch no intoxicants but alcohol, stay focused and sensible and grounded and, if you want a buzz, here are some acceptable deities you can worship. Live music is reduced to tribute and covers bands. Buskers are mostly cleaned from the streets. Street art is strictly commissioned.
It is simply sterile. How can you blame people for seeking some magic in their lives? It's going to be the media or religion. Perhaps vampires and aliens would be preferable?

What you depict is plain old conservatism and market averaging of cultural products. The market already promotes a lot of magic. Isn't that a Hollywood motto? The problem is not that modern society is full of spectacle, but as Debord accurately described, modern society runs like an spectacle, and modern manifestations of the religious spirit are not exempt. Ignorance is packaged and delivered as entertainment. So, when people say who can blame folks for seeking magic in their lives, I'm reminded of the dialogue between Agent Smith and Cypher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BuQFUhsRM

Greta wrote: My interpretation is that you have expanded on current knowledge to assume that gods are impossible, which by inference means that you figure there is nothing profoundly outside of our current conceptions that could be perceived as "God". Yet this is what is happening all the time, in peak experiences and NDEs, where people are experiencing things that they perceive as "God".

That so called "perception of god" is not a mystery to our current knowledge. Having a sense experience of gods, to perceive something "as a god" is subsuming that particular sensation into a general category of "godness", which is not an a priori, but a cultural, social construction. Gods have been and continue to be posited as part of our mundane experiences and available for reflection. It is posited that there's a relation of those entities and their supernatural domains with our natural world, and that this relation manifests in the events that we observe. Thus, the playing field to test the reality of existence of deities is our current knowledge, in other words, what is available for reflection, whether theists like to admit it or not. To move the game to the field of the unknown implies not having absolutely anything to assert, not even to speculate, because it will not be intelligible, available for reflection. But in the playing field where debates do take place, there's already a lot of precise knowledge about how things operate in predictable or unpredictable ways: we have reached many new certainties, which had been claimed before as owned by the advocates of superstition. We know nature doesn't behave arbitrarily and the causes behind its behavior are explainable without resorting to supreme consciousness, angels, ghosts, virginal mothers, etc., of which, on the other hand, there's nothing concrete to point at. Attempts through the empirical always fail and further reflection is typically groundless. Theism is left only with vague hints of what might be interpreted as godly intervention, believed with blind faith.

Greta wrote:Remember, science tells us the absolute baseline of what we are pretty sure is correct (not qualifier). Actual reality, with so much that is so complex that we can't yet measure or understand them, is necessarily much more interesting.

You assume there must be an "actual reality" which ultimately explains the reality we live in. We can look at this approach in two ways. One, that there is more to reality than what we know already, but what we know is the fundamental basis for what there is to know. Unlike me, this is not the road you want to take. Two, that what is left to know of reality MUST BE what explains this reality we live in, and ALL our certainties must be suspended until the knowledge of the WHOLE universe is completed. Even if we accomplished 99.99%, that 0.01% still would be necessary to explain all the rest. Needless to say, we know it's the opening of Pandora's box.

Gosh, with the new interface I thought I'd gone to the wrong forum for a moment :)

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑December 3rd, 2017, 9:14 pmAs you put it, it's either magical adventure themes, or petite bourgeois sentimentalism, nothing else.

:lol: well put and thoroughly accurate :)

Have we had enough of escapist fantasy nonsense? Probably so, but that "should" does not touch my and other's (poor) taste. Thus, there remains a huge market for the genres. Stepping back from the "shoulds n' oughts", what does it tell you as to why people would be increasingly tending towards fantasy adventures?

Count Lucanor wrote:What you depict is plain old conservatism and market averaging of cultural products. The market already promotes a lot of magic. Isn't that a Hollywood motto? The problem is not that modern society is full of spectacle, but as Debord accurately described, modern society runs like an spectacle, and modern manifestations of the religious spirit are not exempt. Ignorance is packaged and delivered as entertainment. So, when people say who can blame folks for seeking magic in their lives, I'm reminded of the dialogue between Agent Smith and Cypher:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BuQFUhsRM

Yes, economic rationalism. Rationalist thought in general - strict and Spartan. Dad loved that approach. Great for him but not necessarily for others - yet those busy rationalising societies don't much care that their one-size-fits-all approach is based on fallacious and unempathetic ideas.

Count Lucanor wrote:

Greta wrote:My interpretation is that you have expanded on current knowledge to assume that gods are impossible, which by inference means that you figure there is nothing profoundly outside of our current conceptions that could be perceived as "God". Yet this is what is happening all the time, in peak experiences and NDEs, where people are experiencing things that they perceive as "God".

To move the game to the field of the unknown implies not having absolutely anything to assert, not even to speculate, because it will not be intelligible, available for reflection.

That's more or less the situation. Nature is under no obligation to be comprehensible. I see everything as "nature", including some things currently thought to be supernatural but will be found to be part of nature's workings.

Count Lucanor wrote:

Greta wrote:Remember, science tells us the absolute baseline of what we are pretty sure is correct (not qualifier). Actual reality, with so much that is so complex that we can't yet measure or understand them, is necessarily much more interesting.

You assume there must be an "actual reality" which ultimately explains the reality we live in. We can look at this approach in two ways. One, that there is more to reality than what we know already, but what we know is the fundamental basis for what there is to know. Unlike me, this is not the road you want to take. Two, that what is left to know of reality MUST BE what explains this reality we live in, and ALL our certainties must be suspended until the knowledge of the WHOLE universe is completed. Even if we accomplished 99.99%, that 0.01% still would be necessary to explain all the rest. Needless to say, we know it's the opening of Pandora's box.

What you say here is untrue - I made clear that establishing a "fundamental basis for what there is to know" is required. I just readily accept those limitations and don't baulk just because some desperate theists might grab on to my words.

The issue is that what we know does not explain our reality, or even come close to it at this stage. We simply have no idea about consciousness or the makeup of 95% of physical reality, and even that 5% (energy) remains mysterious to us in essence.

Don't get me wrong, I personally prefer natural science to philosophy, but the amount that we don't know leads me to the relative speculativeness of philosophy.

First of all nobody knows what matter and energy truly is, we can just define it's measurement or estimation through other physical observables. The rest is your modelling of reality. The problem is, what is god, if god is assumed to be almighty? If he could predict all stopping turing machines , he would be out of our universe, due to the fact that this either would be contradictory or at least no true algorithm for god's decision would exist , right ?
But how about the laws of god , if no algorithm suffices to describe him, seems somehow that those laws although postulated as invariant, could be contradictory in itself. Another question, already mentioned ,could be , god does not exist all time through but just on certain time-points as controlling points, outside of these intervals god is not existent. Although the times do append in infinite. Could god be a non-constant control variable always switched on on certain stochastic times and be non-existent and non-controlling on others. This could explain the violation of gods laws during a certain time-span , and then the resulting punishment on other times. Who knows ?

...hopefully one HE can laugh at!

The reliance on a God existing in the sense that humans can perceive such an entity in itself is the fallacy. I'm aware of the ignorance involved in my answer so I'll attempt to elaborate in hopes to at least reduce that impression.

When you wake in the morning, is that an act of God or a biological response to the body and mind recharging itself and the brain functioning well enough to return your consciousness to you (not to say that consciousness is ever absent, but that your mind is not in a state of being consciously aware)? I'd argue the latter, and that's based on babies waking up in the morning, and they have no awareness of the possibility of God and have to be taught such things. Children wake the same, Adults wake the same, Animals wake the same. My argument here is one based on correlation. Action and reaction. One things existence can be supposed by the affect it has on things around it. The cycles of sleep/wake is independent of a God. There is no supernatural influence on the waking of the animal mind. There is no supernatural influence in the progression of hunger or love. We love for companionship and in the hopes of feeling understood. We eat to satiate our hunger. Every thing we do in our lives has a cause and desired effect, though it's all based on our ego. We are registered to this site in hopes to understand the world around us, and ourselves. There are ways to misinterpret facts and create fantastical arguments based on those fallacies. But God existing is a claim that could not be proven any more than the Spaghetti monster around a moon on Jupiter (R. Dawkins' analogy). So if there can be no cause and effect established from the existence of God, where does its relevance come from?

I'd argue the relevance comes from the need to validate our self entitlement on this Earth. Analogies are a poor substitute for a reasonable argument though at times it's the best we can offer without carrying out extensive research on every counter argument presented. If you asked me whether life exists on Neptune, I'd have to discover life on Neptune. That would involve a load of scientific research, funding, likely an exploration mission and very possibly expanding my definition of what is meant by life. However, could the possibility of life on Neptune affect our life on Earth? I'd have to say no at present, due to the lack of evidence of such a correlation existing. For that same reason, scientific minds have a problem accepting a God existing. Not only because you cannot prove a negative, but because there is no recognisable correlation between God and the existence of anything. Even religious texts are written by humans, so are the stories imagined (or interpreted if you'd like to be silly) by humans, so are the characters, etc. We sit here arguing about the existence of God because we would like to feel intelligent or knowledgeable or validated, but the truth is that we're arguing about what Jane is thinking when nobody knows who Jane is, whether she exists, or whether we can actually find THE Jane we're referring to.

And so it is with God. If a God did exist then does that validate your belief in God? Better yet, does the God in this example understand itself to be a God? Does it care whether we refer to it as a God? If it was responsible for creation, was it intentional or accidental? Does this God have a consciousness or preference to anything that happens in our lives? Is there more than one God or in other words, is this God a member of a species or an isolated entity? Does God know where God came from and if so, was it necessary to omit that from every religious text? ...
Those questions can go on forever, but the point remains that when it comes to God we can only speak from the ignorance of supposition and therefore one who disbelieves is as correct as one who believes. The difference with Non-believers (not atheists but those that consider the debate entirely theoretical and only entertains it as such) and believers is as Socrate's put it: the non-believer says "I know that I know nothing". Anybodies understanding of God is based on the same faith we have when playing the lottery. "These are my lucky numbers and I will win". The difference is that at least we know there is a prize to win, and there have been winners, so we know that although the odds are against us there is proof of winning. If nobody had ever won the lottery, nobody would play it. Nobody has proven Heaven, the onus of proof is on those making the claim that God exists and that cannot be done by deductive reasoning.

(Apologies about the lack of referencing and proper format. I'm new to forums and this is my first post. Future posts will have better formats).

Greta wrote:Gosh, with the new interface I thought I'd gone to the wrong forum for a moment

I feared the forum was gone forever...

Greta wrote:Have we had enough of escapist fantasy nonsense? Probably so, but that "should" does not touch my and other's (poor) taste. Thus, there remains a huge market for the genres. Stepping back from the "shoulds n' oughts", what does it tell you as to why people would be increasingly tending towards fantasy adventures?

Again, let me be emphatic that it is not about taste, artistic accomplishment, etc. I'm sure a genius artist could take the plot, characters and locations of a Harry Potter book and tell the same story in masterful ways, even revealing some wonderful insights about human society or the individual self, and still leaving the fantasy part intact. So, the aesthetic and ludic functions of artistic expressions are not in question, and for that matter content or genres are accessory; form is the real key issue there. But since art can also convey other functions, we can look at it from those other points of view. One is its formative, educational function and one aspect of it is how we cope with reality. Surely, fantasy plays a part in that, too, but as with everything, there should be a right balance. I don't mind anyone having an LSD trip, but being regularly on LSD and nothing else will lead only to being a junkie. No doubt there will be a huge market. And what does it tell you as to why people would be increasingly tending towards psychotropic substances?

Greta wrote: Yes, economic rationalism. Rationalist thought in general - strict and Spartan. Dad loved that approach. Great for him but not necessarily for others - yet those busy rationalising societies don't much care that their one-size-fits-all approach is based on fallacious and unempathetic ideas

I guess that by economic rationalism you mean instrumental reason, essential to the ethos of capitalism. I know how the story goes: by the hand and sword of instrumental reason, the Enlightenment project has turned against itself, so we must abandon it. Well, not really. While part of the critique is justified in terms of the ethical shortcomings of a purely technologically-minded society, the alternative is not to raise the flag of irrationalism. And consider that this is not anymore a theoretical construct in the mind of Nietzsche, but an appalling reality above which hover the haunting spectres of postmodernism, identity politics and so on. It really sucks, badly, and it's not only reason against itself now, but suicide.

Greta wrote:

Count Lucanor wrote: To move the game to the field of the unknown implies not having absolutely anything to assert, not even to speculate, because it will not be intelligible, available for reflection.

That's more or less the situation.

If the situation is not having anything available for reflection, nothing to say about reality, nothing to assert but the faith in absolute uncertainty, then anything is possible and there wouldn't be grounds to deny anything, not even the claims of truth from rational discourse. We would be at a dead end. But of course, we all know that such stance, instead of serving the purposes of skepticism, actually aims at undermining scientific knowledge to balance the weight and give equal space to theological dogmas. Skepticism as instrument for opening spaces to credulity.

Greta wrote:Nature is under no obligation to be comprehensible.

Comprehension is a faculty of sentient beings and things do not exist to be comprehended. They exist independent of sense, but that does not mean things cannot be comprehended.

Greta wrote:I see everything as "nature", including some things currently thought to be supernatural but will be found to be part of nature's workings.

But isn't that "supernatural" something supposedly out of scope of our knowledge? How is it that for this is OK to make assertions and even claim that it has something to do with our perceptions and representations of reality? How is it that someone becomes aware that these things out of touch with nature, do "touch" our natural world?

Greta wrote:What you say here is untrue - I made clear that establishing a "fundamental basis for what there is to know" is required. I just readily accept those limitations and don't baulk just because some desperate theists might grab on to my words.

I accept the limitations of knowledge, but I do refuse to give the safe pass of the Ad Ignorantiam fallacy to desperate theists.

Greta wrote: The issue is that what we know does not explain our reality, or even come close to it at this stage. We simply have no idea about consciousness or the makeup of 95% of physical reality, and even that 5% (energy) remains mysterious to us in essence.

What we know is what we explain as reality, what we don't know remains unintelligible. Making an assessment of the dimensions of reality (what is known and what remains "mysterious") is a clear indication of how much we understand that reality, otherwise you wouldn't say it's 95% made of this and 5% of that.

I simply disagree on having no idea about consciousness; we know a lot of consciousness, at least to the point of being certain where you can find it and where you won't.

Greta wrote: Don't get me wrong, I personally prefer natural science to philosophy, but the amount that we don't know leads me to the relative speculativeness of philosophy.

I prefer both getting along, because they actually depend on each other.

Greta wrote:I made clear that establishing a "fundamental basis for what there is to know" is required. I just readily accept those limitations and don't baulk just because some desperate theists might grab on to my words.

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑December 5th, 2017, 11:17 pmI accept the limitations of knowledge, but I do refuse to give the safe pass of the Ad Ignorantiam fallacy to desperate theists.

The call of dinner is great so I will need to answer in more detail later on but I think the above exchange encapsulates many of my disagreements with other secular-minded people on forums.

I'm okay with leaving theists with the Ad Ignorantiam option because it's true that we don't know enough to know what else might be "out there". I prefer truth to political expediency, which admittedly tends to make me about as popular as a far in a space suit. Maybe it's autism, I don't know - but I cannot say that "x is absolutely not possible" when I don't have enough information, even in the cause of discouraging superstition.

Still, the Ad Ignorantium argument manifests as the God of the Gaps and the GOTG is famously shrinking, so I see no issue with a little remnant mysterianism as long as education and political decisions aren't irrationally based on ancient Abrahamic culture and superstitions.

Greta wrote: The call of dinner is great so I will need to answer in more detail later on but I think the above exchange encapsulates many of my disagreements with other secular-minded people on forums.

I'm okay with leaving theists with the Ad Ignorantiam option because it's true that we don't know enough to know what else might be "out there". I prefer truth to political expediency, which admittedly tends to make me about as popular as a far in a space suit. Maybe it's autism, I don't know - but I cannot say that "x is absolutely not possible" when I don't have enough information, even in the cause of discouraging superstition.

Still, the Ad Ignorantium argument manifests as the God of the Gaps and the GOTG is famously shrinking, so I see no issue with a little remnant mysterianism as long as education and political decisions aren't irrationally based on ancient Abrahamic culture and superstitions.

By the same token, the exchange encapsulates my issues with agnostics. Dismissive of practical matters and for fear of error, they will readily surrender the spaces available for systematic rational inquiry to the religious troopers, as if the gambit were inocuous. If we were to preserve such intellectual purity, we should allow the possibility that right in that little corner of the universe still unreachable by science, lies the great pink unicorn, whose magical horn is the ultimate cause of everything. We will realize, of course, that this region could be populated by any imaginable or unimaginable creature, all of which would be claiming their rightful space in the minds and hearts of their believers. All are tenable under the premise that "x is not absolutely impossible", and yet in practice the free pass of the Ad Ignorantiam fallacy is not used to reaffirm passively a lack of knowledge, but to actively assert the knowledge of the ultimate truth, the one and only god and the true religion. The followers of major religions are not so willing to surrender some space to a little remnant mysterianism, if that mysterianism does not support their overall ideological interests, and so they feel entitled to impose their superstitions on education and state policies. When agnostics give away that ideological space, they're actually giving away the whole sphere of influence in public opinion to the woo-woo peddlers, which is the worst kind of commitment to truth one could expect.

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑December 7th, 2017, 11:13 pm

Greta wrote: The call of dinner is great so I will need to answer in more detail later on but I think the above exchange encapsulates many of my disagreements with other secular-minded people on forums.

I'm okay with leaving theists with the Ad Ignorantiam option because it's true that we don't know enough to know what else might be "out there". I prefer truth to political expediency, which admittedly tends to make me about as popular as a far in a space suit. Maybe it's autism, I don't know - but I cannot say that "x is absolutely not possible" when I don't have enough information, even in the cause of discouraging superstition.

Still, the Ad Ignorantium argument manifests as the God of the Gaps and the GOTG is famously shrinking, so I see no issue with a little remnant mysterianism as long as education and political decisions aren't irrationally based on ancient Abrahamic culture and superstitions.

By the same token, the exchange encapsulates my issues with agnostics. Dismissive of practical matters and for fear of error, they will readily surrender the spaces available for systematic rational inquiry to the religious troopers, as if the gambit were inocuous. If we were to preserve such intellectual purity, we should allow the possibility that right in that little corner of the universe still unreachable by science, lies the great pink unicorn, whose magical horn is the ultimate cause of everything. We will realize, of course, that this region could be populated by any imaginable or unimaginable creature, all of which would be claiming their rightful space in the minds and hearts of their believers. All are tenable under the premise that "x is not absolutely impossible", and yet in practice the free pass of the Ad Ignorantiam fallacy is not used to reaffirm passively a lack of knowledge, but to actively assert the knowledge of the ultimate truth, the one and only god and the true religion. The followers of major religions are not so willing to surrender some space to a little remnant mysterianism, if that mysterianism does not support their overall ideological interests, and so they feel entitled to impose their superstitions on education and state policies. When agnostics give away that ideological space, they're actually giving away the whole sphere of influence in public opinion to the woo-woo peddlers, which is the worst kind of commitment to truth one could expect.

I have no choice as an agnostic. My intuition and some subjective experiences suggest to me that there is "something more" than is currently believed by rational thinkers. However, to be sure of this "something more" would be naive, so I remain on the fence and that is the only honest position I can take.

So, I don't care even a bit whether the "God of the gaps" is given oxygen by my ideas is innocuous or problematic, or not. It is simply my honest view and, at this time in my life, I don't care to tailor my thoughts for political or social purposes or agendas. As far as I am concerned, there is ultimately only this reality that we find ourselves in - which is what interest me - and the guesses we make as to its nature. The rest is just politics.

Greta wrote: ↑December 8th, 2017, 2:55 am
I have no choice as an agnostic.

Well, if one thinks about it, is the same situation for atheists: we have no other choice. If we don't have anything suggesting to us that there's "something more", if we find nothing of interest or value in the tales of religion, if we think it is a pernicious force that hinders and degrades society, then we shouldn't be asked to tailor our thoughts to tolerate the dicta of religions in our everyday life. It's our honest view and why should we care a bit whether our stance cuts the flow of oxygen to ideas that potentially could discover other realities, perhaps transcendent, since we are concerned with this one concrete world we can touch and feel. Asking for more will be politics, I guess.

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑December 8th, 2017, 10:24 pm

Greta wrote: ↑December 8th, 2017, 2:55 am
I have no choice as an agnostic.

Well, if one thinks about it, is the same situation for atheists: we have no other choice. If we don't have anything suggesting to us that there's "something more" ..

Basically, like me, you are just giving an honest opinion without worrying overly about what others may think. I used to be a fairly militant atheist. The peak experiences have made me wonder, and the more I researched into NDEs and Ian Stephenson's work dealing with Indian kids claimed to be reincarnated, and there is a tremendous amount of weird stuff that is hard to explain via the usual means that is fully validated. The same goes for UFO sightings. The vast majority can be discounted but some remain genuinely unexplained.

Not that these unexplained things give the impression of God so much as what I suppose is an annoyingly vague "something more".

Remember, what we know is not reality, only the very most conservative estimations about the nature of reality based on our current information. Such thinking brought us geocentric systems, a single galaxy universe, and I am old enough to remember people laughing at the silly ideas of physicists, such as black holes.

Given that our conservative estimates over the last century have persistently been be blown out of the water by discoveries in actual reality, that suggests to me that there is much of interest to be found regarding the nature of reality, not only in the objective domain but also the subjective, due to our skewed perception of time (if Einstein was right).

Count Lucanor wrote:if we find nothing of interest or value in the tales of religion, if we think it is a pernicious force that hinders and degrades society, then we shouldn't be asked to tailor our thoughts to tolerate the dicta of religions in our everyday life.

Agreed. Nor should our taxes subsidise the ongoing tax perks enjoyed by religions, which appears to be simply be theist politicians giving taxpayer money to their mates, given that the money is provided both for lobbying (against some of the very people who subsidise their tax breaks) and charity.

Every religion is a heresy against the idea of god or Entity if such there be. It's one of the main ingredients which amount to psychosis in the human brain. The logic of religion is to subtract the animal from man and laminate him with some special purpose in alliance with his god. The human during his sojourn on this planet has turned out to be its single biggest piece of garbage who in turn has managed to grant the same honor to his god(s) and prophets.

Evolution has short-changed homo sapiens into the opposite of what that self-endorsed recognition implies which should properly be homo horribilis. It's perfectly reasonable to let nature's recycling plants remove every toxic vestige of human DNA forever and cleanse the galaxy by at least one loathsome creature.

Greta wrote: ↑December 9th, 2017, 5:09 am

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑December 8th, 2017, 10:24 pm
Well, if one thinks about it, is the same situation for atheists: we have no other choice. If we don't have anything suggesting to us that there's "something more" ..

Basically, like me, you are just giving an honest opinion without worrying overly about what others may think. I used to be a fairly militant atheist. The peak experiences have made me wonder, and the more I researched into NDEs and Ian Stephenson's work dealing with Indian kids claimed to be reincarnated, and there is a tremendous amount of weird stuff that is hard to explain via the usual means that is fully validated. The same goes for UFO sightings. The vast majority can be discounted but some remain genuinely unexplained.

I'm a strong atheist on Dawkins' scale and always opposed to referring to advocates of atheism as "militant". They would be rightly called so if they were trying to pass legislation to impose atheist views, which is rarely the case. Does anyone see William Lane Craig as a "militant" Christian?

I was once fascinated by all that stuff, too: UFO's, cryptozoology, ESP, etc. As most of these are explained as not supernatural, there will always be a "god of the gaps" to exploit in them.

Greta wrote: ↑December 9th, 2017, 5:09 am
Remember, what we know is not reality, only the very most conservative estimations about the nature of reality based on our current information. Such thinking brought us geocentric systems, a single galaxy universe, and I am old enough to remember people laughing at the silly ideas of physicists, such as black holes.

Given that our conservative estimates over the last century have persistently been be blown out of the water by discoveries in actual reality, that suggests to me that there is much of interest to be found regarding the nature of reality, not only in the objective domain but also the subjective, due to our skewed perception of time (if Einstein was right).

Scientific discoveries, as I see them, have mounted on top of previous discoveries. Newtonian science was not enough, but no one sent Newton's laws to the trash bin. It's more like fine-tuning our understanding of physical reality than blowing the whole system of knowledge out of the water. And perhaps the urge to find a new Theory of Everything relies on our previous experience on theories of everything. Unfortunately, the woo woo peddlers found again in the gaps of our knowledge the new Holy Grail, known as quantum theory. They'll hold on to it as they have done with their gods before.

God does exist but God is not what you imagine God to be.

Your God is pure Blasphemy.

The Reality of Everything owes it existence to God, is born of the Body of God.

In the Beginning was God; God existing as the totality of unformed matter, Chaos, the Reality of Everything that existed prior to the Beginning moment of the creative Process. Before the Beginning the Reality of everything existed as substance that had no mass, God existing as the Ether, consisting of the totality of unformed Matter; existing as a substance having no mass.

In the Beginning there was only Darkness upon the Deep.

God, the Reality of Everything, existing as a Single, Undifferentiated Big Black Whole.
God existing as a Transcendental (Metaphysical) Fully Random Quantum Singularity filled with an unspoken quantity, number of infinitely Finite Indivisible Singularities of Zero-0 having no relative Numerical Value, having a numerical value of Zero-0.
The Nature of the Heavens and the Earth, the Universe, the Reality of Everything that exists in the material sense of the Word is based upon Chaos Theory, is born of the Body of God, is born of Chaos, Unformed Matter, is born of a substance that has no Mass.

In order to speak of God without you yourself being Blasphemous, one must speak of, the initial Condition of Reality, of Everything that existed before the beginning moment of the Creation of formed matter, of a substance that has no mass, the Ether, Nothingness.

Count Lucanor wrote: ↑December 9th, 2017, 6:34 pm

Greta wrote: ↑December 9th, 2017, 5:09 amBasically, like me, you are just giving an honest opinion without worrying overly about what others may think. I used to be a fairly militant atheist. The peak experiences have made me wonder, and the more I researched into NDEs and Ian Stephenson's work dealing with Indian kids claimed to be reincarnated, and there is a tremendous amount of weird stuff that is hard to explain via the usual means that is fully validated. The same goes for UFO sightings. The vast majority can be discounted but some remain genuinely unexplained.

I'm a strong atheist on Dawkins' scale and always opposed to referring to advocates of atheism as "militant". They would be rightly called so if they were trying to pass legislation to impose atheist views, which is rarely the case. Does anyone see William Lane Craig as a "militant" Christian?

Well said. I concede :)

Count Lucanor wrote:I was once fascinated by all that stuff, too: UFO's, cryptozoology, ESP, etc. As most of these are explained as not supernatural, there will always be a "god of the gaps" to exploit in them.

The problem with the "God of the gaps" is it assumes that the only deeply spiritual aspects of life must pertain to a deity as defined by ancient superstitious cultures. However, there may be other extraordinary dynamics underpinning reality that are not "God" but could give that impression to some.

Re: interest in the occult ...

UFOs. My issue with most UFO reports is that, given that our spacecraft don't have airport signalling lights, I'm not sure why UFOs would. Still, respected analysts cannot explain a small percentage of reports. Based on probabilities there are probably numerous intelligent species in the universe, so the UFO question comes down to the feasibility of interstellar travel, especially since no civilisations are close enough for us to detect their radio waves. Long haul space travel would not suit biological beings since, barring stasis (which has its own problems), life on an interstellar voyage would be horrible. You would think such travel would be best done by AI with long working lives.

ESP. I'm still open to telepathy existing (https://www.thoughtco.com/twin-telepath ... ce-2593932), although the physics is unknown. Whatever, much can be gleaned from body language and voice tone and bona fide telepathy will be available to many people via technology in the future.

Cryptozoology. With today's interrogative methods new species are regularly being found, but they tend to be either very small or deep sea creatures.

So my "occult" interests are around peak experiences and NDEs. They are suggestive of other layers of reality - seemingly not material by our current definition but, if existent, there will surely be subtle, previously unrecognised or properly defined, physical processes involved.

So, while I don't believe in anything, I do think there are probably aspects of the nature of reality that would not render sophisticated theists ridiculous, despite the anthropomorphisation of their interpretations. By the same token, the "evil spirits" of the past turned out to be real, aka viruses and bacteria. When you think about it, they can function rather like evil spirits in a human body - an inhabiting, unseen hostile entity. By the same token, there may be natural processes that function somewhat in the way that people think of as God or godlike.

Count Lucanor wrote:

Greta wrote: ↑December 9th, 2017, 5:09 amRemember, what we know is not reality, only the very most conservative estimations about the nature of reality based on our current information. Such thinking brought us geocentric systems, a single galaxy universe, and I am old enough to remember people laughing at the silly ideas of physicists, such as black holes.

Given that our conservative estimates over the last century have persistently been be blown out of the water by discoveries in actual reality, that suggests to me that there is much of interest to be found regarding the nature of reality, not only in the objective domain but also the subjective, due to our skewed perception of time (if Einstein was right).

Scientific discoveries, as I see them, have mounted on top of previous discoveries. Newtonian science was not enough, but no one sent Newton's laws to the trash bin. It's more like fine-tuning our understanding of physical reality than blowing the whole system of knowledge out of the water. And perhaps the urge to find a new Theory of Everything relies on our previous experience on theories of everything. Unfortunately, the woo woo peddlers found again in the gaps of our knowledge the new Holy Grail, known as quantum theory. They'll hold on to it as they have done with their gods before.

I would not scoff at the quantum world so quickly, despite much questionable new age wishful thinking. Recent experiments showed that gravity does not affect quantum spin (http://www.ibtimes.com/gravity-not-link ... ng-2393506). The ramifications are that a TOE may not be possible, that we will always have two entwined worlds that sometimes operate by different fundamental rules.

So, while I have long been a monist, now I am favouring dualism. Just as the LHC has seemingly disproved the existence of ghosts (according to Brian Cox) it appears that this experiment disproved monism; apparently one domain of reality is material and the other domain is the configuration of that material - energy and information, body and mind.

Just as bacteria and viruses act rather like evil spirits, then dynamic patterning of the quantum realm may be what mystics refer to as "spirit". I do not believe that the ancients were complete idiotic dunderheads; it's easy to underestimate them with their seemingly nonsensical fantastic tales. Rather, without scientific language, the ancients spoke more in metaphors. Unfortunately, many since have taken those observations literally and thus, misinterpreted what was originally meant.

Gosh this is long :))