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Ok, hell!
Topic Started: Mar 29 2009, 10:35 PM (3,363 Views)
Moonbat
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Pisa-Carp
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But people do self mutilate. And they do so freely. So they must presumably have some desire to do so. And either they do so under the aspect of choosing some perceived good or what? People do all sorts of things that you might not. From my model, it does not matter whether they choose to hurt another or choose to self mutilate or choose to put vinegar on their chips -- they do so as choosing some perceived good. Your model limits human behavior in order to "save" God as described in Christian theology (of course, not that such would be your project). My model needs no such thing, and takes the world/universe/human condition on the term that we actually observe it to be.


My argument is that the world as we actually observe it to be is not an ideal world, that that's incompatible with a tri-omni designer and that "free will" doesn't change the argument at all. The focus with Klaus has been this third element of the argument. His link tried to argue that "free will" does offer a defence; that it's logically impossible for god to have built a better world without taking away our "free will" (which is taken as having some special value)

I'm arguing that isn't the case, that a better world - one where people don't do horrible things to one another can be just as "free" as our one. Hence that the "free will" defence fails.

If current observable humans who have no drive to do X hence don't do X are considered free, then hypothetical humans who have no drive to harm one another hence don't harm one another must also be considered free. Hence the reason that this universe is not populated with these hypothetically better humans cannot be "because they wouldn't have free will".

Further these hypothetical humans are not more limited than we are, or at least if they are limited, then we are limited by our drives too. Self-preservation and a drive to care for our loved ones become 'limitations' if one defines things that way. In fact if you consider what it would mean to be "unlimited" then you realise it would be to have no nature at all, to have no drives, to be either completely random or completely inert. It would mean to cease being a conscious agent at all.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Frank_W
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Resident Misanthrope
I don't believe in judgment, Hell, or even death, for that matter.

I find that karma makes a lot more sense than sin and judgment or Hell, and that reincarnation makes more sense than a single life, then death, and then hanging out in some far-flung mythical "Paradise."

I believe in Earth as a school, a refinery and educational institution for souls, where they learn how to use energy responsibly, they learn fundamental spiritual rules or laws (that are much like the laws of nature or physics, really), and they learn how to love and serve all of life. There are heavens... Limitless numbers of them. "Many mansions."

Lessons that remain unlearned, or karmic relationships that have not been disentangled, and issues that have not been addressed, are the reasons that souls return to this classroom, again. Others move on to other planes and other classrooms.

Consciousness doesn't die. Awareness doesn't die. Energy doesn't die.

IMHO.
Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin."
Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!"
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Moonbat
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Well energy is quite different from consciousness/awareness. The laws that the universe obey appear the same no matter where you are, or when you are. It turns out that the latter statement necessarily implies a certain quantity always remains the same - we call that quantity "energy". It's a number that you can calculate for any little bit of the universe at a particular point in time and then if you watch everything that happens to that little bit of the universe and then recalculate the number again you always find it's the same number as before. Thus the total energy content of the universe has been the same from the beginning (if there was a beginning) and will be the same forever.

I don't think the same case can be made for awareness/consciousness which ultimately appear to be properties of brains (or atleast brain like dynamical systems). From where I sit I can't see any more reason for thinking that consciousness/awareness is conserved (ultimately doesn't change) than there is for thinking that the number of storms always stays the same or the number of organisms always stays the same.

There is a strange consequence though of realising that many of our intuitive notions like freewill and in particular our concept of personal identity don't really hold together. That is that the reincarnation idea - that we somehow jump into a different head and see through a different pair eyes and have a different personality becomes in a sense no less false than some of the ideas that are completely ingrained into our way of thinking e.g. that we are the same person throughout our lives.

The poem you read at your father's funeral is my favourite poem (or atleast a variant of the poem you read is my favourite poem). For me it captures the illusionary nature of our existence and shows up a real inconsequentiality to death.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Frank_W
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I don't know... See, that's where it crosses into the realm of theology, transpersonal psychology, philosophy... Ego as being differentiated from consciousness or awareness.

What is a thought? Where does it come from? Where is it located? Where does it go? What is it that does the actual thinking? The brain is the repository for information, and it "knows" things by comparing them. But what about imagination? What is it that does the imagining? What is it that says, "I"?

I am not my thoughts, my opinions, or my emotions, although these things may be parts of my personality. Who is it that holds these things, picks and chooses between them, compares them against the backdrop of my life's experiences?

Who is it that chooses to detach and watch my body as it flops through a crash or a fall? Where does consciousness, awareness GO, when we are unconscious? Where do coma patients go, when their bodies are comatose? What about people who report out-of-body-experiences during surgeries, who are able to report verbatim, what the surgical team was doing, saying, and the procedure in intricate detail?

I've had dreams where I've "faded in," and immediately Known (literally) a thousand years of history about the place I was in and the tribe I was with. What part of me Knows this?

I've had other dreams and experienced other states of consciousness that simply defy any kind of explanation, articulation, or anything that human utterance could put into words. What part of "I" experienced that?

To what end? Only to wink out like a candle, or be erased like a chalk-mark in the rain?

What a waste. That makes no logical sense to me, that so much potential, (that human beings haven't even begun to tap into!), so much learning and wisdom and spiritual progress and struggle and grief and life itself, could just.... STOP.

That's utterly senseless.

There's more to this than sperm, egg, zygote, embryo, foetus, birth, and then all the stages of a single life. That is only the gross, coarse, and most mechanical portion of things. We are more than the sum of our parts, and that's something that I simply Know, and frustratingly, have no way of proving to anyone but myself.
Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin."
Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!"
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Moonbat
Apr 6 2009, 03:05 PM
In fact if you consider what it would mean to be "unlimited" then you realise it would be to have no nature at all, to have no drives, to be either completely random or completely inert. It would mean to cease being a conscious agent at all.
Well, actually you are not too far away from Aquinas' view of God. God does not have an intellect, he is (said to be) intellect. He does not have a will he is (said to be) Will. He does not have parts, he is (said to be) simple. He is not conscious, he is (said to be) consciousness. He does not have "a nature" since he is (said to be) Being itself. That does not mean either completely random or inert -- since again that would imply either motion or space or time or matter.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Klaus
Apr 6 2009, 10:01 AM
You are basically saying that omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive.
I brought this up at a Bible camp many years ago. In a group of more than a dozen, all university graduates as far as I was told, only one came close to actually grasping it.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Frank_W
Apr 2 2009, 09:42 AM
The Christian God's version of love seems to be an iron fist in a velvet glove, though. :tongue:
Be glad it's not a latex glove. :D
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
John D'Oh
Apr 3 2009, 10:22 AM
Frank_W
Apr 3 2009, 09:58 AM
Nor has there been a phlegmatic, dispassionate master painter, musician, sculptor, artist, or vocalist. :shrug:
No, but those guys can calms themselves down with various chemical solutions. Traditionally, the wild-eyed religious loon doesn't have this option open to him. Insanity loves company.
This reminds me of USAPT/Pianolicious... he shared with us before that he once suffered severe head injuries that led to his inability to feel passion for many years, yet during those years, he was still able to perform music that brought the audience to tears. The audience heard passion, yet the performer felt none.

While the work of a painter, musician, sculptor, artist, or vocalist may evoke passion and/or appear to be passionate, how can one tell that the worker himself was passionate?
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Moonbat
Apr 2 2009, 01:01 PM
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If there is any part of us or any force in the universe that is eternal, I know that it is love. All else fails in the face of it. Nothing else lasts. It is the gold left after the dross has been burnt away...


Which parts of us that are eternal? Well eternal is an awfully long time but if one has to choose then the mass/total energy locked up inside you is probably as good a bet as anything.
There is eternal supply of good beer and great sex in the afterlife. :cheers:
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Frank_W
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Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin."
Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!"
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
Axtremus
Apr 6 2009, 09:46 PM
There is eternal supply of good beer and great sex in the afterlife. :cheers:
Sounds like my life now. :D
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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