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InvisibleRevelation

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Registered: 08/04/01
Posts: 6,135
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If they found definitive proof of an afterlife....
    #823720 - 08/17/02 01:32 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

Would it make you more inclined to believe in a "god"?


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InvisibleSclorch
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Registered: 07/12/99
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Revelation]
    #823813 - 08/17/02 02:08 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

A big "IF". (but I'll play along)

Since you only said "inclined", then I'd say yeah. However, my answer would still be largely dependent on the nature of this afterlife (assuming the evidence was compelling enough- it would have to be for me to accept it) AND the definition of this particular "God". And, as I've said before to Zahid, if s/he's a dick, then s/he can fuck off and I'll take my place in hell.


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Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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OfflineZahid
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Sclorch]
    #823869 - 08/17/02 02:28 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

A big "IF". (but I'll play along)

Since you only said "inclined", then I'd say yeah. However, my answer would still be largely dependent on the nature of this afterlife (assuming the evidence was compelling enough- it would have to be for me to accept it) AND the definition of this particular "God". And, as I've said before to Zahid, if s/he's a dick, then s/he can fuck off and I'll take my place in hell.


Jahannum is surely your destination Sclorch if you die with your current beliefs. When the fire burns, when your heart is screaming out to God, the Compassionate, the Merciful will forget you, since you forgot Him. All you had to do was believe.

If you could but see when they are set before the Fire (Hell) and say, ?Would that we might return (to the world)! Then we would not reject the verses of our Lord, but we would be of the believers!? (Quran, 6:27)

And no Sclorch, you would never accept that you are in Hell when you arrive there. You would curse God, and you would be filled with most overwhelming, indescribable regret you have ever felt, and the presence of God will be so lacking you'll feel like a lost child. Don't you see the faithful don't just believe in doctrines as truth, we see the truth.


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OfflineBrukan
a dead gnome

Registered: 08/06/02
Posts: 430
Last seen: 21 years, 4 months
Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Revelation]
    #823918 - 08/17/02 02:48 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

> If they found definitive proof of an afterlife, would it make you more inclined to believe in a "god"?

I don't see how the two are connected? If there exists a connection and definitive proof of an afterlife, then yes I would be more inclined. If there does not exist a connection and definitive proof of an afterlife, then no I would not be more inclined.

This is a tricky item to discuss because it's rather theoretical and it's ramifications are so immense and vast. I don't believe there is a correct answer, but pure speculation that can't be discredited.

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Anonymous

Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Sclorch]
    #823959 - 08/17/02 03:09 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

The Bible says, "Judge not lest you be judged."

I think someone here should switch religions at the very lest.

What thinkest thou, mon ami?

Cheers,

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Offlinemr freedom
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Registered: 02/25/01
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Revelation]
    #824013 - 08/17/02 03:36 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

I'm sorry, you fail to include, in your question, that the afterlife in question would be related to a god of any kind. I believe in UFO's (unidentified flying objects) but I don't necessarily think that UFO's are related to aliens.

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OfflineBrukan
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Registered: 08/06/02
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: mr freedom]
    #824072 - 08/17/02 03:55 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

> I believe in UFO's (unidentified flying objects) but I don't necessarily think that UFO's are related to aliens.

Well said.

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OfflineEarth_Droid
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: mr freedom]
    #824084 - 08/17/02 04:04 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

I think the question depends on peoples idea on what god is. I beleive in god now, but my view of god sure isn't a magical creature in a cloud or something. I prefer to call it the ultimate reality. I beleive in incarnations, and death and rebirth. I see life as a serious of death and rebirths as each person evolves. If my idea is true, and my ego died, when I was reborn I guess I wouldn't be able to prove it anyways.

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OfflineTraveller
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Zahid]
    #824252 - 08/17/02 05:06 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

so buddha is burning in hell, since he believed that he had seen the truth: that there is NOTHING permanent, that the only truth is constant change, arising and passing away, that there is no way to prove for sure the existence of one supreme god.....

but you know what? if that guy really did reach the mindstate he so beautifully spoke about, he could very well be burning in hell with a quiet little smile on his face (although i guess you don't have a face in hell since you've left your body behind, in which case the fires won't be hot, but then isn't the whole thing about the fires of hell - sorry, Jahannum(names are very important) a story meant to scare us into obedience?), perfectly balanced, quietly observing the rising and falling of the flames....

What do you think of the Sufi, Zahid?

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OfflinePhred
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife [Re: Earth_Droid]
    #824286 - 08/17/02 05:23 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

I beleive in incarnations, and death and rebirth. I see life as a serious of death and rebirths as each person evolves.

I have a problem with the concept of reincarnation, and it's not even a philosophical one, it's simple arithmetic.

There are how many people on the planet? Six or seven billion? That's six billion souls available for reincarnation. Today, that's no problem. If you die, there'll be another body available right away for your soul to move into. But this wasn't always the case.

What about a few centuries back, when the number of humans was only a few tens of millions? Or a few millenia back, when there were maybe a million humans total, or even less? If there have always been six billion souls around (and there obviously must be at least that many), what were those souls doing to kill time while waiting for a new empty body to appear?

Let's do the math. At six billion souls and one million bodies, a soul would have to wait around for six thousand lifetimes before getting its first crack at inhabiting a human body. Even though the average lifespan of a Neanderthal might have been fairly low (let's assume twenty-five years), that means a wait of 150,000 years. And Neanderthals only appeared about 100,000 years ago. Homo sapiens as a species are thought to be no older than 250,000 years. And 250,000 years ago there were for darn sure less than a million of them, so the waiting time would have been even longer.

pinky



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Offlinemr freedom
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Earth_Droid]
    #824300 - 08/17/02 05:27 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

Good point Droid. One must define "a god" for us to make a rational answer.

HEY SCHLORCH!!! You, me and Buddha, rockin' the underworld; LET THE BODY'S HIT THE FLOOR.

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Offlinetps
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Registered: 06/22/02
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: mr freedom]
    #824305 - 08/17/02 05:30 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

if that was confirmed... Id find an amount of shrooms that matches my body weight and pig out. then see what happens. hehe


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Anonymous

Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife [Re: Phred]
    #824306 - 08/17/02 05:30 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

Let's do the math.

Quite.

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InvisibleSwami
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Registered: 01/18/00
Posts: 15,413
Loc: In the hen house
Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Revelation]
    #824344 - 08/17/02 05:50 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

First I want to know who "they" are...


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The proof is in the pudding.

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OfflineTraveller
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife [Re: Phred]
    #824406 - 08/17/02 06:07 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

the buddha, doing his scientific lab research inside his own mind, talked about his search for "the builder of the house". he talked about witnessing countless past lives and whatnot and was trying to work out if there was a self, or some part that remained unchanged throughout the process of reincarnation - what is called the atman in hindu philosophy, another term could be "soul". apparently he didn't find any such thing. what he did observe (just chuck in the words "apparently" or "i have heard that" or whatever in the appropriate spaces, i'm not trying to pass this off as truth) was what we can call a "karmic stream of consciousness". karma being the law of one-thing-leading-to-another, thus a karmic stream of consciousness is like a wave, or a whole mess of waves where each new thought or emotion adds energy to these waves so they never seem to end - only the perfectly quiet balanced mind which adds absolutely no energy to any thoughts or emotions, eventually letting them all run their course and become still (like if you shake a bowl of water, then stop shaking it, it will eventually settle) -- only a mind in this state of absolute stillness, with all the past waves of emotion gone, will truly disappear upon the death of the body. so any body that dies while the mind is still active will leave behind a stream of consciousness that is not yet finished and then somehow moves on to inhabit another body.

he talked about various mindstates which can also be thought of as different planes of existence: the major ones if i remember correctly were

the mind state of an ANIMAL: the state where you try to get what you want regardless of the feelings or needs of others. like a pack of hungry dogs fighting over food, or pure sexual desire.
the mind state of a HUMAN: experience of duality, love hate pain pleasure etc.
the mind state of a GOD: pure bliss, often mistaken for enlightenment.
the mind state of an ASURA: or fallen god, an extremely high level of developement by one who has achieved extremely deep, blissful states but then believes theirs is the only true path...or something.
the mind state of a HELL: any feeling of hatred for oneself or any other being. "a hell" because there is not just one, but many different forms of hatred and anger.
and last the mind state of a HUNGRY GHOST: these hungry ghosts are drawn as sad grey ghosts with very large bellies but ridiculously thin necks! always hungry, never satisfied, any moment you are thinking of how the next thing will make you happy - be it a house or a girlfriend or a stronger body - of how this moment right now is not good enough, this is the state of a hungry ghost.

so while these can be talked about as planes of existence in themselves - meaning that there are GODS, or beings whose state is that of constant bliss lasting for thousands or millions of years (like the daoist immortals, boddhisattvas or the devas of the hindus), and of course animals and humans - it is normal for humans to be constantly moving in and out of all or any of these states. whatever state the mind is in at the moment of death supposedly results in the stream of consciousness progressing to inhabit the most appropriate realm - a mind filled with anger might be reborn in the body of an animal while someone dying in a meditative state of pure bliss might become a god. only the perfectly still mind can dissapear entirely and never be reborn, the stream of consciousness is finished and can never start again - nirvana. apparently the human state is the best for attaining this liberation since we are painfully aware of duality and are inherently unsatisfied - a god has no desire to escape its life since it is in a state of constant bliss, an animal has no time to dwell upon duality since it is constantly seeking to satisfy the senses.

so if any being can be reincarnated in any of these forms, and there are more and more humans being born, would that suggest some sort of universal progression towards liberation? apparently that's the whole point of reincarnation...to eventually FINISH.

what the fuck? well, it's one theory and i think it's kind of cool.

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InvisibleMystical_Craven
mentally illpsychonaught

Registered: 06/16/02
Posts: 439
Loc: Earth
Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife [Re: Traveller]
    #824583 - 08/17/02 07:44 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

I'm not sure exactly how these various states of mind are connected with different carnation, so I can't really comment on that...but I can say one thing about reincarnations in general though: if the purpose of reincarnation was to continually progress until one reaches a sort of state of fullfilment, then surely populations would slowly deplete over time as more and more people eventually reached this 'finish' you refer to (whatever that may be) But as stated earlier - human population has been steadily expanding for some time now, so obviously this can't be the case. Or so it would seem anyways. If one were to consider the fact that it might just be possible for a soul to be present in an animal or a plant for that matter, then it seems much more likely that things very well could be equaling out on the reincarnation front. As people expand their territories and venture out into new frontiers (as was the case with humans expanding into the Americas) they slowly but surely remove whatever was there before them and start taking it's place (e.g. trees are cut down for housing, animals are hunted for food, etc) So as new humans are comming into this world, plant and animal life are also depleating. In that respect, if these 'things' we as humans consume really do (did?) have souls then surely they would leave their perspective containers (referring of course to the body of a deer, or the trunk of a tree, and so forth) and find a new place to reside...be that human or animal or plant or whatever.

And just to toss another little bit into the equation - why must we limit the soul to our planet? Just because we don't yet have any factual evidence about there being life elsewhere in the universe, that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. If we can imagine there being such a thing as a soul in the first place, then why can't we imagine there being souls in other areas of our existence? Who's to say that the population growth of our species isn't due to the fact that some other civilization out there is slowly becomming extinct and those souls need a place to reside? Not that I'm saying that's actually what's happening...I just thought I'd throw a few things up in the air to give people a few more options to choose from, cause I personally think it's silly to think of something like population growth as factual evidence that reincarnation isn't possible. But hey, what do I know?


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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go..." T.S. Eliot

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OfflineTraveller
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife [Re: Mystical_Craven]
    #824689 - 08/17/02 09:48 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

one of the fundamental discoveries of the buddha was that THERE IS NO SOUL. this goes against everything the hindus had been saying for hundreds or even thousands of years. no permanent soul, only a karmic stream of consciousness, which is present in every conscious being ie animals humans gods insects hungry ghosts! etc. i believe he did not include plants in this....something i am far from understanding.

thus the fact that there are more humans now than before could be taken as evidence that life on earth is progressing - animals are being reborn as humans? who the fuck knows, the buddha certainly didn't suggest that we waste our time thinking about this kind of stuff!! be still, observe the arising and passing away of mental and physical states and you will come to know the ultimate truth, apparently. but it's fun to think about so...

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OfflineMahakala
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Registered: 08/17/02
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife [Re: Traveller]
    #824721 - 08/17/02 10:34 PM (21 years, 7 months ago)

Perhaps humans subconciously believe that if they kill all other life on earth they have to be reborn as human. Either way, life is suffering none the less.



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InvisibleWhiskeyClone
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Registered: 06/25/01
Posts: 16,509
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Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife.... [Re: Revelation]
    #824902 - 08/18/02 04:38 AM (21 years, 7 months ago)

You didn't state any connection between a god and an afterlife. In fact, I believe in some sort of afterlife but I don't believe in God.



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Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.  For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.  Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it.

~ R.W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

:heartpump:

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InvisibleMystical_Craven
mentally illpsychonaught

Registered: 06/16/02
Posts: 439
Loc: Earth
Re: If they found definitive proof of an afterlife [Re: Traveller]
    #824907 - 08/18/02 04:47 AM (21 years, 7 months ago)

Roger that...I see what you're getting at now.
I thought you were trying to show that those various states of minds were the same as different types of carnations...which of course, didn't make any sense at all. I guess I need to spend more time paying attention to what's actually be written, and less time simply passing over the words.


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"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go..." T.S. Eliot

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