Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. [1 Timothy 6]

i was talking to pbradley man!

sorry!

dude, I quoted you.

I think our brains are much much farther beyond animals than our human understanding is.
I think humans are actively trying to catch up while a LOT of humans are actively trying to keep them from doing so.

I am on the side of the former.

those in power support the status quo.

oops, forgive me, I forgot sex

in dreams,
to a lesser extent in sustained silent meditation and
near death experiences,
and to an ever lesser extent
in orgasm during intercourse (le mort)

okay, gotta go

hahahahah! too funny


dreams...

There is no scientific interpretation for why we dream, Rob, only hodgepodge.

Why do you suppose that is? Freud wrote The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. Countless scientists have studied it, and still, to this day, nothing really conclusive. I hardly think my remarks deserve a laugh of mockery, although you're doing pretty well with earning some big laughs with your posts, you know, since you sound like every piss-ant wannabe anarchist I have ever known; you even read the same hippie burn-out new age charlatan conspiracy theory huckster, Robert Anton Wilson, that they did.
But yes, (going back to your posts) it is all about the mammon...the money. That's why I have developed ideas like a consitutional amendment to end repeat terms of office. Haven't read about any of your ideas about how to fix anything. All I've read from you are complaints and grievances against the human race. As an "Instigator," you're of the penny-ante variety.
click for an illustration

The latest theories on dreams offer that studies have shown the humans tend to repair damaged neuroreceptors and connections in dreaming.

But the real phenomenon goes way beyond that.

In orgasm is the little death, as the French say, "Le mort." In near death experiences, people expose their unconscious contents. In silent meditation, unconscious contents can be somewhat grasped. But in sleep, in deep rem cycles, humans have their waking consciousness completely extinguished for a sustained period of time. We spend around a third of our lives in this state.

Obviously, something profound goes on in our dreams. Hawking wrote of "knowing the mind of God." It seems to me that the logical propostion is that we know the mind of God every single time we dream. Our conscious minds cannot remember what we actually dreamed. Instead the dream is assembled into a symbolic language of vague concepts, ideas and images, and most often, never even remembered at all.

So how you could laugh just belies your own ridiculousness. And the thing is, you're one of the more intelligent people here. I really have to stop wasting my time.

As to your propostion about humans and animals, my thoughts follow. Humans are animals. We are a particular type of animal though ("the human animal") that has developed complex thought, speech, the ability to use complex tools, and lastly but not leastly, language.

a formal scientific paper by David Premack:
Is Language the Key to Human Intelligence?
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...y/303/5656/318
(reminds me of Tokolosh's "How old is language" thread.)


Everyone should already know that we are incredibly similar to primates genetically, so what accounts for the huge leap in intelligence (or more correctly stated the possibility for higher intelligence) in humans?
This is a question that has proved difficult to answer for artists, writers, philosophers, psycholgists, poets, research scientists, and theologians alike.
Many seem to feel we are part divine and part animal. There's something to this. Our ability to ponder our own death (although our ego rarely lets us dwell on it very long) and the fact that we have a will (the degree to which our wills are free, of course, is debatable) seems to point towards the notion that we are part-divine, creative beings.

Simply stated, it seems entirely probable that in human reproduction, mates are chosen by too superficial of a value system and a premium is not placed on intelligence. It seems to be the unwritten law of human history that powers that be seek to control women as much as possible and always have and this is perhaps a key reason we have not evolved to a significantly higher level of consciousness than primates.

Let's continue on this point.


Rob...still raging against that machine, eh?

In the last section, I related postulates concerning why we are different from primates and animals. Let's look at another aspect of this a bit. And this addresses how we have not caught up with how far advanced beyond animals we should be.

In Waking Life, former Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, Robert Solomon, extemporaneously says many brilliant things. Yes, I realize it is only a movie but bear this out; after all, one cannot deny that the man is an esteemed professor in his field. (He died about a year ago. He was a devotee of Kierkegaard like I am.) In the film, he affirms that the two major reasons why consciousness has not evolved are fear and laziness, and Solomon also remarks that there is a bigger differential gap in the intelligence threshold between a person of average intelligence and a genius person than there is between a person of average intelligence and a chimpanzee. There have actually been studies that tend to indicate that his assertion is correct. Ponder that, simians.

dreams they complement my life (dreams they complicate my life)

Not a quote, but I think my favorite lie perpetuated by "Christians" is the one where they tell people that dinosaur bones were put here by the devil to make us believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, which, by association, was spawned by none other than Satan.

haha

These days, many "Christians" are backing down from this silly notion which is good to see.

But back to the debate about the existence of God.

No one knows what dreams really are. After all this time there are only vague scientific descriptions.

And like I also mentioned before, there is no point in asking "who or what created God" because God, whatever it may be, is obviously of Eternity and not Time.

But most importantly, I want to leave you to think about just why no one knows why gravity exists. Gravitational attraction basically orders the whole chaotic universe, yet it's a big mystery. Sure, we of course understand gravity wonderfully through Einstein and are able to predictively determine its effects. And there are some (as is the case with light) wave/particle theories with gravitrons, but again, it's only a description and doesn't answer a question of exactly why gravity exists.

So, you see, when you examine the extreme unlikelihood that life ever began on this planet in the first place and start to wonder why no one knows or indeed will ever know exactly how gravity came about, then it's absolutely bullheaded to insist there must be no God, because when one weighs all the evidence, God, (for lack of a less toxic term perhaps) is a lot more probable than improbable. Call it the "Tao" like they did 10,000 years B.C.E. if the term "God" is so poisonous to you. But know that it exists. Every single system has a wholeness and is part of a related whole. The universe is borne from Eternity into Time and will one day collapse again into Eternity. The universe is One per the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy.

no way man. "god"'s a load of shit
humns made up the gods to help explain what we could not understand.
that's all there is to it.

discovery of true alien life would not negate any beliefs in god or gods, but they would automatically negate the Bible, The Torah, the Q'uran, and all these earth-centric dogmas.

that will be SWEET

everything you are saying in your last paaragraph is true, exceopt for the "god is more probable than improbable" nonsense. just becausde the universe, as we know it, is a closed system, of nearly infinite variety and expansiveness, does in no way imply that there is or are any supernatural creator/s

There is no such thing as the supernatural; as a term, it is completely a misnomer. All is natural. For reference purposes, we employ degrees of "naturalness" when describing something, but that doesn't apply here. All comes from God, which is Eternity. And Eternity is a concept that humans cannot ever decipher because we are finite beings in this state confined by Time.

Again, Rob, you've managed to miss the point entirely. Your argument stems from an objection to the abuses of religion via people with bad wills, not God.

Your last point is of particular interest to me. I feel that most people that (via a wish fulfillment fantasy) are into the whole aliens nonsense do so because of a rabid hatred of religion.

Nice, the perfect ending to an abysmal thread.
I was wondering when somebody would reprise the noodle-monster pic.

what I am trying to tell you is that if YOU decide to define "god" as Eternity, Infinity, EVERYTHING, then you are not defining a creator god deity at all. you are just naming the whole of existance as GOD. Do you dig? that is NOT the "god" of ANY religion. That is deism, which even the so called "good" religious people would have had you killed or at least excommunicated, as being a HERETIC!
while humans cannot "decipher" eternity, as you put it, we are definitely more than capable of understanding it, defining it, and exploring it's implications. we are HUMANS. as far as we know, we created the concept of eternity.

Yes, and even if aliens visited today, (they won't haha) it still would not disprove God. It would only disprove a lot of notions people have had about God in their religious orientations. And I've already, like yourself, stated that I too have problems with organized religion in many cases.

I really don't feel I'm just attributing some other name to God as you imply. I do admit that I'm not writing as clearly as I perhaps could; it's a difficult subject.

To me, our modern understanding of astrophysics proves God. Feel free to call it a quirk, but know that Einstein himself believed in God. "God does not play dice!" I guess I should feel privileged to have your online company. After all, you're someone that claims to know more than Einstein about this ultimate question. You also know more than these folks apparently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Deists

explore further:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_by_belief#Lists_of_people_by_religi ous_belief

belief is NOT about knowing! it is about self-delusion!

if god were PROVEN then no belief or faith would be necesary.

noone "believes" in gravity. no one "believes" in nuclear fission. it just EXISTS.

proving that a creator existed would also negate all faith

either way that would rule.

I agree with this; I'd also extend it to say - the belief in aliens, and more loosely, 'conspiracy theories' manifests precisely the same psychological impulse towards the grand 'Other' of God - that is, a being, or beings, who are 'in control', a father-figure whose presence remains felt but eternally tacit.

This in turn relies upon another personal understanding of mine, that of the spiritual domain (itself in a precarious relationship with the post-enlightenment notion of intellectualism manacled to Aristotelian logic) being firmly distinct in sort and type to what is understood (but invariably not practised) by 'science'. Atari is right to point out that a great many 'great men' were theists with issues with religio-political organisations; it is my belief that they understand that the spiritual domain and the scientific domain are not, primae facie [sp?], commensurable. This by no means is synonymous with the idea that either dialogue (the religious or the scientific) is sovereign (which is where I draw myself in line with Derrida's criticism of Hegel, but that's a much, much longer post) but that each must carefully observe the edicts, the benefits, the frauds and the other contingencies of the (small-o) other. Religion is certainly flawed, but that does not mean that science is without its difficulties (anyone with a passing awareness of Popper, Feyerabend, Lakatos etc will know what I mean here).

what the fuck is "eternity"?

It's an aftershave you smelly fucker.

i thought so. does god rule over it?

anyway


that' a false dichotomy right there. "but science"? what's the relation? they are 2 different things.

That's a fair point - I'm pretty sure that false dichotomies are not immediately logically improper though. And besides which, we're dealing in rhetoric here, survival of the most slippery.

There's a relationship; terse, but present.

because science is another organized religion.


....in that it requires blind faith in the scientific method and belief in the superiority of empirical evidence and precludes the validity of other investigative methods and certain types of knowledge...

How do you pull an internet spazz-face when someone says something spazz-like? You know the one, when someone has their lips jammed and they can't spit out what they are trying to say.

hmphphphhmmm...

sophist!

fine...


new-age postmodern fool :p

...oh, like the poststructuralists aren't prone to rhetoric and sophistry...


slippery relationship; terse but present? ...sounds more like derrida than protagoras to me.

i want my money back

sorry, but this is the single stupidest most ignorant ting on the board all day

if science really depended on blind accpetance and belief of the scientific method then why do refridgerators work? why does incandescent lighting work? why does flouresecent lighting work? why does nuclear fusion work? why does space travel work? How come the scientific method works whether or not the scientist BELIEVES IT WILL? why do scientists seek to prove their hypothesis wrong instead of right?



so IGNORANT. "other investigative methods and certain type sof knowledge" are NOT in the realm of science, nor does science ever claim it is. keep on feding yourself yr bullshit man!!!!

ridiculous!

I don't pretend to know what Eternity is, but one thing is clear to myself. And that one thing is that Eternity was the state of our universe before the Big Bang and will once again be the "state" of the universe after the Big Crunch. As for the now, it's a very mystical enterprise haha, but as the poets remind, eternity is in every moment.
Using mathematics, one can endlessly bisect one second of time forever. Let's look at an analogy involving geometry. Imagine a line with a point A and point B. If a team of researchers decided to keep splitting the distance from point A to a new point halfway inbetween A and B, they could pass this task down to endless generations, and still never reach point A.

As to God, the unconscious, which, as I already proffered, knows everything, is the wellspring that has been tapped into for our entire history that has produced art and science, and our cultures. True art has a certain "aesthetic" (a word, which like all these other concepts, is nearly impossible to fully define), and is more than simply a sum of its parts and processes. Fine art or sound science have a visionary aspect. Essentially, poo-pooing God is like taking a big shit on Art.
And although it's certainly true that a lot of bad art (most "art") comes from the contrivances of the human ego, Art finds its origins in the degree of connectiveness to the unconscious (both individual and collective), to natural law, to God.

you just said the same thing i was saying... that certain types of knowledge (and not necessarily esoteric mysticism... something as simple as aesthetics or poetics) are NOT in the realm of science, AND science explicitly preculdes their validity.

all i am saying is that, true i was exaggerating by claiming that the scientific metohd requires faith to work, but... scientific inquiry will yield scientific knowledge, paranormal inquiry will yield paranormal knowledge, psychoanalytic inquiry will yield psychoanalytic knowledge... that's all...

unless the total force of gravity overcomes the total force of dark energy, this will never happen.

as it stands, everything is red-shifting faster and faster.

some day, the only stars in the sky will belong to the milky way.

are you saying God lies in the Freudian unconscious, or referring to Platonic anamnesis, or both?

pictures or it didn't happen


so your unconscious knows everything huh?

it's a nice personal theology you've built yourself there with bits and pieces of jung and plato and mystical scienticism, and i'm glad if it helps you in your travels, but when you prophesize in such grandiose tones i can't help to giggle. we don't know fuck about "before" the big bang or if there was such thing as "before". we just don't know.

and the unconscious schmonscious.

we know very little about anything, and shouldn't need to use grandiose fantasies as a mental crutch, but as it happens we seem to have an instinct for it and some people need it more than others. fine..

ha ha ha ha.

damn...

http://hubblesite.org/

BEFORE. BEFORE. BEFORE.

this board sometimes...

lol @ cosmic images in braille... one time at the moma, i noticed they had the painting titles in braille... so i asked a museum guard if they let blind people touch the paintings after they read the title. he said no. ....seems like kind of tease...