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Invisiblesilversoul7
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Belief and Afterlife
    #3442403 - 12/03/04 01:50 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

Christianity and Islam both include a belief that those who believe their particular mythology will be rewarded in the afterlife, while those who don't will suffer. Well, it seems to me that belief is a form of thought, and since thought is the result of chemical reactions and signals in the brain, I fail to see how such a reaction would affect the outcome after that organ(the brain) has ceased to function. The human brain is indeed a powerful thing, but once it ceases all functions, I don't understand how its previous functions would have any effect on the events transpiring after that. Now, I realize that this is where the soul(whatever that is) is going to come in, so despite a complete lack of evidence for such an entity, let's assume it exists. How does it affect the functions of the brain, and how do brain functions affect it? What sort of reaction would have to occur in order to have that soul either ascend, disappear, or go to hell?


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"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire

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Offlineskystone
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: silversoul7]
    #3442610 - 12/03/04 02:53 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

Well we can't even begin to discuss the technical side of all the religious stuff if we can't even say what soul is, so there is no point in talking about it.

Before there were antenas, nobody knew about all the different radiation floating around us.
Our science is not even near its ending. There must be a lot of different forms of existence (other than matter, energy, radiation etc.) that our sensors can not pick up.
There must be all kinds of different particles that we haven't discovered yet.

If there really are souls and afterlife and etc. , then we just don't have the tools to see them.

So untill we do, there is no point in discussing that, but
as an answer to your question, It is probably a misunderstanding of the source, or a medival add-on or whatever.


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"..and suddenly it began to rain"

Edited by skystone (12/03/04 02:56 PM)

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: silversoul7]
    #3442853 - 12/03/04 03:46 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

Your assumption is the materialistic assumption that Mind is synonymous with body. I say body, because the brain and nervous system does not exist separately from any other system of the body - skeletal, muscle, digestive, circulatory, endocrine, etc. The brain 'may' modulate, it may create computer-like from all the data its ever received - much of which comes NOT from external sensory imput - but, while we are a mind-body, we may well be thought to derive from a third more fundamental substratum of Reality. Some ancients called this 'Nous,' the Highest level of Mind, others called it Spirit.

Those people who have had out-of-the-body experiences - either simple 'astral' projections, or more formless 'causal plane' experiences of pure consciousness; or those people who are blessed with a high degree of intuition about Reality or those with profound faith, Know. What they Know is the Experience of Knowing, which sounds tautological, but it is THE mystical Experience of Absolute Reality, of Pure Consciousness, of GOD, in a word. In such an Experience, Eternal Life is Known in certainty. In Christian theology it is referred to as 'assurance' and is a most desired blessing.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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InvisibleFreakQlibrium
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #3442900 - 12/03/04 03:54 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

GR8 post as usual Markos, nice to see you here :smile:


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"Being crazier than a shithouse rat is not sufficient grounds for banishment"


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InvisibleAutonomous
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #3444225 - 12/03/04 11:31 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

"...or those with profound faith, Know. What they Know is the Experience of Knowing, which sounds tautological, but it is THE mystical Experience of Absolute Reality, of Pure Consciousness, of GOD, in a word."
Correction, they believe or think they know, they do not know. You're laying it on thicker than I do with my Mayonnaise. All they really know is the meaning that they assign to their internal mental processes. It's like a blind man with no sense of smell telling everyone else the color and scent of a flower that no one has seen or smelled, he has only felt it's stalk and heard a multitude of stories about it from generations of visually and olfactorily challenged ancestors.


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"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain

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InvisibleRavus
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: silversoul7]
    #3444255 - 12/03/04 11:45 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

I agree with Markos, in that the fatal flaw of your assumption is that the material existence is all there is, and there it ends. This is the assumption of many scientists and "logical" thinkers, yet they cannot explain the major discrepancies in their theories, such as the origin of consciousness, how cells developed instructions to develope cells before they even existed, and why all life bothers to exist at all when it is going to end soon thereafter. Perhaps there is more than just the body, perhaps even the body is just passing container to hold something higher than itself, in which case there would be something more after all life died

Science never learns from the past. It constantly assumes that it knows all the information on a subject and draws a conclusion from that, while looking disdainfully on the past science who did the same thing and came out with more "primitive" answers, yet the future science will do the same to us, and so on. You should not assume that everything is just chemicals in the brain when we barely understand a miniscule fraction of what is going on around and inside us


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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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InvisibleAutonomous
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: Ravus]
    #3444288 - 12/03/04 11:58 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

"This is the assumption of many scientists and "logical" thinkers, yet they cannot explain the major discrepancies in their theories, such as the origin of consciousness, how cells developed instructions to develope cells before they even existed, and why all life bothers to exist at all when it is going to end soon thereafter."
A lack of an explanation is not a discrepancy in a theory, nor is it a reason to blindly believe something else. I get the impression that a great many people frequenting this forum, had they existed before Galileo and Newton, you would have readily embraced the notion that the sun was a flaming ball pulled by chariots of the gods across the sky. There is no reason to embrace myths when we do not know something, there is no reason to be afraid of saying "I don't know."


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"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain

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InvisibleAutonomous
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: Ravus]
    #3444304 - 12/04/04 12:07 AM (19 years, 3 months ago)

"Science never learns from the past."
The principles of the scientific method, properly applied, equip people to learn from the past.

"It constantly assumes that it knows all the information on a subject and draws a conclusion from that,"
Science assumes nothing, you are attributing human characteristics to a methodology. This is wrong. No scientist worth his weight in helium assumes that he knows all information. The body of scientific knowledge grows on a daily basis. Where have you been?


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"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain

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InvisibleRavus
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: Autonomous]
    #3444309 - 12/04/04 12:09 AM (19 years, 3 months ago)

When science knows so little, and is constantly growing, why does it seem those that embrace that way of thinking never admit that they don't know? They gather some subjective observations, fit them into a report, and make a final statement, saying, "Everything humans experience is chemicals in the brain." Yet we constantly gather new information, and the fact that there are discrepancies says that it is not the whole story, and it may be wrong. As long as something is not absolute, which is everything, then everybody must realize that they truely do not know, and that there is always more possibilities than we have numbers, and that there may be more to reality than subjective facts could ever write in a lab report

I never claim to know anything objectively, and underneath all that I think I may have a comprehension of is the thought that I really only assume this. But most people do not, and will try to tell others objectively what there is and isn't, when they are just as much hairless apes piecing what they have seen as any other human on this planet


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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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Invisiblesilversoul7
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: silversoul7]
    #3444323 - 12/04/04 12:15 AM (19 years, 3 months ago)

For the record, I believe that we have a consciousness which is independent of the brain, despite the lack of supporting evidence. However, it is our brain which allows us to conceptualize ideas such as belief or God or doubt. So how does belief, a brain function, affect consciousness? Without the brain, belief would be impossible, because we couldn't conceptualize such an idea.


--------------------


"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."--Voltaire

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InvisibleRavus
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: Autonomous]
    #3444353 - 12/04/04 12:27 AM (19 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

The principles of the scientific method, properly applied, equip people to learn from the past.




It learns information from the past of course, but I was talking about the lessons. What Einstein thought of the universe, he thought was final and drew conclusions about it that stayed fixated in his head, and then when quantum physics came along he resisted, saying that his method was the right one and quantum physics was ridiculous. "God does not roll dice." Modern science assumes that because it has found chemicals in the brain responding to their environment, that is all there is. The science community as a whole discredits the concept of a soul and energies beyond the material body, not realizing assumptions like these have been the dangerous ones of the past that have slowed progress tremendously.

Quote:

Science assumes nothing, you are attributing human characteristics to a methodology. This is wrong. No scientist worth his weight in helium assumes that he knows all information. The body of scientific knowledge grows on a daily basis.




Science is a field of human observations that can be graphed, written, that can be put through a mesh that we assume is beyond humans and then get a human bias conclusion that we also assume is beyond humans. The science methodology was created by humans, it is a way for humans to try to learn from their environment. You can't separate the art from the artist, the bias of humans reflects on their science

No scientist will claim to know all the information, but the community will still draw final conclusions from it. This is not a bad thing. But they have just found a human conclusion drawn from observations of our limited senses and the machines we make based on our limited sense, and then assumes it applies within us and beyond us until it is proven wrong. They are just guessing, making theories that are waiting to be proven wrong, but they rarely say, "We don't know."

Quote:

  Where have you been?



I don't know?  :smirk:


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So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: Autonomous]
    #3445080 - 12/04/04 07:50 AM (19 years, 3 months ago)

Your "correction" utilizes only sensory similies. As far as the schools of PCE's (Pure Consciousness Events) are concerned, you belong to one of the Constructionist schools, whereas I belong to the school which posits the PCE. Therefore, your comment is not a "correction" of my position, but an opinion belonging to an opposing school of thought. Our positions are described in depth in the book The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy Edited by K.C. Forman.


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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InvisibleAutonomous
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #3445496 - 12/04/04 11:20 AM (19 years, 3 months ago)

No, my correction points out that you are pontificating about interpretations or meaning ascribed to psychological states. You seem to take these interpretations as a universal truth. Another correction, I do not belong to the constructionist school I just happen to take pious readings of mental constructs with a very large grain of salt. Dressing up your explanations in theo-babble and presenting them as higher truth does not hide the fact that they are only opinions (which are believed sincerely) buttressed by nothing but the opinions of those you agree with.


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"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain

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OfflineMarkostheGnostic
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: Autonomous]
    #3447876 - 12/04/04 10:03 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

"Pontificating"? Your reading comprehension comes into question. I have not 'presented my personal views with authority,' only comparisons of comparative religion or systematic theology, not "theo-babble," which is cute, if unoriginal (intended to parallel 'psycho-babble' I suppose) and suggests that I am creating nonsense, which is also incorrect on your part. What is more evident is that your response seems more revealing of your emotions than of any critical analysis of my post. Additionally, if I describe an inner state of my own with as much phenomenological accuracy as I can, it is not an "opinion" but an introspectionist method of reporting experience. What difficulty are you experiencing with this?


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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OfflineLightningfractal
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: silversoul7]
    #3448102 - 12/04/04 10:58 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

since thought is the result of chemical reactions and signals in the brain




Ye doth greatly err....

chemical reactions most assuredly are the result of thought, not the other way around.

You uber-scientists never ceace to amaze me with your empty theories and false logic. :crazy:


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InvisibleSwami
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: Lightningfractal]
    #3448311 - 12/04/04 11:49 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

chemical reactions most assuredly are the result of thought

So when I mix an acid with a base a whole lotta thinking is going on, eh?


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The proof is in the pudding.

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OfflineLightningfractal
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Re: Belief and Afterlife [Re: Swami]
    #3448323 - 12/04/04 11:52 PM (19 years, 3 months ago)

Not really, mixing an acid with a base isn't the wisest idea. :smirk:


--------------------
Hi how's it going, wanna kick Heroin basically painlessly on your own, in your own house, without any government "help" ,or the "help" of a crazy condescending, judgmental medical doctor? Read this:

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