What am I?

[Ranklyfrank]

Originally Posted by Laughing Crow
Recently I have encountered a problem. I am atheist, I do not believe in a god or gods, but I do believe in the human soul, afterlife etc. So what does that make me? The literal definition of atheist is a lack in the belief of God, but in modern society it is used by those who believe in nothing spiritually (no heaven/hell/afterlife, no soul etc). I am hesitant to call myself an ‘agnostic’ as, one of my favorite reviewers said, ‘are usually atheists with commitment issues’ but agnosticism seems to be more ‘im not sure’ or ‘ill see when im dead’. I am sure that I have a soul/spirit, call it whatever you wish, so i dont feel ‘right’ in that group of people.

ugh first primary school, then high school and now religion, I just DO NOT fit in

Well, at least you are laughing! And it’s not that you don’t fit, it’s juts that you haven’t found where and how yet.

It fascinates me that you don’t believe in “God” and yet feel you have a soul. that may be a great ticket for an excellent ride! I say that because the “God” question is usually presented as an either/or. Yer fer 'Im er yer agin 'Im. You know what I mean? But heres a thought: most atheist are atheists relative to the Christian description of “God.” I use parenthesis in a sort of agnostic way, because even those who protest up and down that there is a God don’t know what that means except as a personization fitting a tradition that may very well have another meaning entirely.

So it may not be something actual that you are atheist about. And there might be another standpoint that might click for you. Here’s a hint: God cannot be intellectually known as an object. What is known that way is a hypothesis symbolic of an unknown Unknown.

Q’plah! Crow.

 

[Madaglan]

Originally Posted by AntiTheist:
Perhaps it raises the question, but reasonable inquiry immediately dismisses the idea.

For one thing, no one has ever had an out of body experience where they received information that could not be gleaned through the senses of the body or good guessing. That is, OBEs always feature people “hearing” things that others say around them or “seeing” things that the mind would likely expect to be there – no one has ever had an OBE and managed to read what was written on a card concealed on the other side of the room.

The OBEs I’ve read include people who describe in detail surgical instruments they had not seen before, and relate dialogs that occurred while they were clinically brain dead. I have read of the “card test”, though I am not immediately familiar with the results of the study. As OBEs are frequently personal events surrounding a traumatic event, I would think the awareness of the individual experiencing the OBE would be centered on objects or conversation surrounding the event.

If OBEs were really “out of body,” you could do experiments that confirm it easily. The fact that this cannot be done seriously suggests that it’s all in the head. There’s no good evidence that consciousness can be projected outside of the body.

There are some scientists who have re-created certain aspects of the OBE (e.g. sensation of being outside the body), yet even many of these scientists qualify that what they induce lacks aspects of an OBE as we understand it from the interviews of persons who have had one naturally.

Further, NDEs almost universally feature god-images derived from the culture in which a person has been raised. Someone raised in a Christian culture tends to see Jesus, and someone raised in a Hindu culture tends to see the Hindu gods. If NDEs were really the spirit of the (nearly) departed encountering some real afterlife, we would expect consistency of the accounts. The fact that they see what their brains probably expect to see strongly implies that the brain is making it all up.

That’s one possibility. Another is that the other side, the spiritual world, relates in a personal rather than mechanical way with incoming souls.

Further, many of the features of NDEs (particularly the white tunnel of light) correspond to features of the brain shutting down, such as the field of vision narrowing. In short, there’s no reason to suspect that NDEs are anything other than the brain tripping out because it’s shutting down. Let’s not forget that the brain isn’t used to processing death, so it’s likely to do some pretty weird things in that situation.

At this point, there is no firm agreement amongst scientists as to the exact causes of the tunnel of light, angelic messenger, meetings with family members, life review, option to stay or go back, etc. that are common to NDEs. The NDE accounts I have read strike me as much more coherent, ordered and less panicky than one would expect from a brain unused to processing death quickly losing its functions.

No. It’s not “greatest awareness and increased consciousness” – it’s trippy psychadelic visions. Incidentally, when the brain is shutting down, it releases all these feel-good chemicals to ease the process of dying, so it probably does feel really good, but it’s not “greatest awareness” by any means, unless you think an acid trip represents some kind of great awareness.

People who return from NDEs often have radical changes in their relations with other persons, and indeed their whole outlook towards the meaning of life often changes. I do not see the same kind of parallels in acid-tripping.

Not “everything” ceases to exist with bodily death – just we do. The universe will get along just fine without us, just as it had for 13 billion years before we showed up.

How did you like the universe before you were born? Do you think you’ll like the universe as much after you die?

Of course after you die the universe would still be here, for me and everyone else still living. My point is more existential than strictly metaphysical. You would be no more. The vantage of the eternal universe in your mind would die with you, and so there would be no “will”.

Just as there would be no projected consciousness “ahead” into the spiritual world, there would be no projected consciousness into the universe. You would not continue vicariously through the universe or any person.
.
This is the case if one ceases to exist at death.

 

[OrdinaryMelkite]

Recently I have encountered a problem. I am atheist, I do not believe in a god or gods, but I do believe in the human soul, afterlife etc. So what does that make me? The literal definition of atheist is a lack in the belief of God, but in modern society it is used by those who believe in nothing spiritually (no heaven/hell/afterlife, no soul etc). I am hesitant to call myself an ‘agnostic’ as, one of my favorite reviewers said, ‘are usually atheists with commitment issues’ but agnosticism seems to be more ‘im not sure’ or ‘ill see when im dead’. I am sure that I have a soul/spirit, call it whatever you wish, so i dont feel ‘right’ in that group of people.

ugh first primary school, then high school and now religion, I just DO NOT fit in

I Would Say Basically A Non-Theist.

 

[GEddie]

The OBEs I’ve read include people who describe in detail surgical instruments they had not seen before, and relate dialogs that occurred while they were clinically brain dead. I have read of the “card test”, though I am not immediately familiar with the results of the study. As OBEs are frequently personal events surrounding a traumatic event, I would think the awareness of the individual experiencing the OBE would be centered on objects or conversation surrounding the event.

There are some scientists who have re-created certain aspects of the OBE (e.g. sensation of being outside the body), yet even many of these scientists qualify that what they induce lacks aspects of an OBE as we understand it from the interviews of persons who have had one naturally.

That’s one possibility. Another is that the other side, the spiritual world, relates in a personal rather than mechanical way with incoming souls.

At this point, there is no firm agreement amongst scientists as to the exact causes of the tunnel of light, angelic messenger, meetings with family members, life review, option to stay or go back, etc. that are common to NDEs. The NDE accounts I have read strike me as much more coherent, ordered and less panicky than one would expect from a brain unused to processing death quickly losing its functions.

People who return from NDEs often have radical changes in their relations with other persons, and indeed their whole outlook towards the meaning of life often changes. I do not see the same kind of parallels in acid-tripping.

How did you like the universe before you were born? Do you think you’ll like the universe as much after you die?

Of course after you die the universe would still be here, for me and everyone else still living. My point is more existential than strictly metaphysical. You would be no more. The vantage of the eternal universe in your mind would die with you, and so there would be no “will”.

Just as there would be no projected consciousness “ahead” into the spiritual world, there would be no projected consciousness into the universe. You would not continue vicariously through the universe or any person.
.
This is the case if one ceases to exist at death.

While everything you say is true, it is also true that non-“afterlifers” (for lack of a better term) are for the most part at peace with the headful of darkness they expect to receive at their life’s end, and so your last 4 paragraphs aren’t an argument to them.

It doesn’t really matter how hideous an idea is to us as human beings, what matters is if it is true or not.

AT has a point that the testimony from OBE and NDE is rather suspect. A great deal of evangelical testimony is based entirely on these accounts, which science could disprove next year. There is no way to prove that such testimonies derive from anything but a head drained of oxygen. Christendom needs a “human eschatology” that is non-dependent on dubious accounts such as these.

That said, one would not expect the mirages in a breath-deprived head to be at all comforting or life-transforming, since such a condition would be stressful and terrifying. And those whose eyes “gray out” or “black out” due to unconsciousness do not usually report seeing their narrowing visual field as a tunnel or bright light. Such a vision seems to be unique to the NDE circuit.

ICXC NIKA.

 

[Oldtimer_7]

Laughing Crow, you have stimulated some interesting conversation. See, there are a number of folks like you right here. Some of us have come down on the God side and others have not. Listen to all the voices. Though I may disagree with Anti-Theist on particulars, he makes important points on the process.

Having been an atheist was not a negative experience. I gained some valuable things that I still carry with me. Skepticism is a valuable thing to have. So is rational thinking. Like any tool, there are proper and improper uses. The same is true of faith. The goal is to know how and when to use them well.

I did not recommend a church because the point is not denomination. If you asked me to recommend one, big shock, I would say, all things being equal, a Lutheran church. Would I have you drive 100 kilometers to go to just any Lutheran church if there were, e.g., a perfectly good Catholic church in your neighborhood? No, because the point is getting into that part of the Christian experience that you don’t get just from reading, the life of a congregation. Giving assent to Christian ideas is only the beginning, living it is what separates us from hypocrites. The basis of Christianity is community, not the individual believer.

 

[Laughing_Crow]

Thank you all for your responses, in truth ive always had my midn turn to the ‘big’ questions when im bored or not doing anything. Originally i was a protestant but stopped due to my parents attitudes and the fact i had trouble believing a God was ‘all loving’ yet at the same time made people suffer horribly. After that I became what id call militant atheist, i wouldn’t blow up churches or such but i would go out of my way to screw with religious people (yes i was an utter prick as a kid and teenager). Around this time i began martial arts (aikido and Tong Long) which used meditation and ‘mind over matter’ techniques. While in a chat with my friends (primarily atheists or agnostics) someone joking sad ‘maybe god exists because we believe he does’. This was kind of the set of to my ‘soul’ searching as if people can train there minds to block out pain and push their bodies far past the limit they should break down, why couldn’t a collection of minds with utter faith in a god create it? I turned to Nietzsche for a while, I personally loved his 'Hammer of the gods" where it opens up with the idea of a crazy man claiming we have killed god with our own hands.

I stumbled between skimming faiths for a long time. For awhile i believed in a ‘dumb’ god. To put it simply ill quote a game I love playing “God isn’t some old magical man on a cloud, a god, a real god, bends and shapes the world without even thinking about it or wanting to, it just does” or somethign to that extent. Basically our creation wasnt out of love, but instead just somethign that happened.

As to my beliefs on the soul. I believe a soul creates life (ie, for life to exist it must have a soul). We only live because our souls seek mortality to experience pleasure and pain, somethign we only feel faintly as a spiritual body. This idea came to me after reading Freud’s ‘Death drive’ theory, making me think perhaps we experience life so we can experience death. I also believe our souls punish themselves after death for horrible crimes we committed (murder,rape etc). When we commit these acts our souls are basically weighed down or ‘shackled’ and in death our souls suffer due to this by being born into a low state (kind of like karma, good actions are rewarded with better luck in the next life, bad actions lead to suffering and pain) . As to ‘where’ the soul comes from, i dont know. Maybe we do come from a ‘source’ like God or the Wheel of Life. Maybe we were god and shattered into separate entities when the big bang occurred. I could counter your questions of ‘where did the souls come from?’ with ‘where did god come from?’ but that will just lead us to running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

I know my idea of faith kinda sounds like a mash up of certain ideas, but in the end I accept the fact no living being knows the secrets of death and I think thats best. Makes death both frightening and interesting as you have no idea what is next. I just try to live a good life with no regrets. Im a good person (at least as good as most people can be). Id like to find a lovely woman, marry, have some kids and spend my life helping people (im studying psychology and want to rather become a criminal psychologist to help catch criminals or to be a child therapist, as I had to witness my fathers break down I want to help other children to deal with and move on from their pain).

 

[Laughing_Crow]

Oh and slightly off topic, is anyone else having trouble loading these forums? For me its rather slow or I get a page telling me the servers are busy. Just wondering if its my end or if the actual forum is having issues

 

[Madaglan]

While everything you say is true, it is also true that non-“afterlifers” (for lack of a better term) are for the most part at peace with the headful of darkness they expect to receive at their life’s end, and so your last 4 paragraphs aren’t an argument to them.

It doesn’t really matter how hideous an idea is to us as human beings, what matters is if it is true or not.

AT has a point that the testimony from OBE and NDE is rather suspect. A great deal of evangelical testimony is based entirely on these accounts, which science could disprove next year. There is no way to prove that such testimonies derive from anything but a head drained of oxygen. Christendom needs a “human eschatology” that is non-dependent on dubious accounts such as these.

That said, one would not expect the mirages in a breath-deprived head to be at all comforting or life-transforming, since such a condition would be stressful and terrifying. And those whose eyes “gray out” or “black out” due to unconsciousness do not usually report seeing their narrowing visual field as a tunnel or bright light. Such a vision seems to be unique to the NDE circuit.

ICXC NIKA.

I was pointing in the direction of the absurdity and meaninglessness that is suggested in this understanding of death. There are non-afterlifers who say they are at peace in losing existence. Ok. There also are philosophers who apply this understanding of death to the meaning of life and to human values in such ways that many anti-theists express objection (as where they find an undermining of their humanist values). To me, the applications of these philosophers seem the rational corollaries of the cessation of personal existence, as well to a determined understanding of human action.

As you mention, the NDE circuit is distinct from the experiences of those blacking out due to unconsciousness. Even those who are oxygen deprived do not encounter the same experience as an NDE. I do not see NDEs as scientific proof of the afterlife, but I do believe they raise the important question of why. As I mentioned earlier, the NDEs share common features (e.g. tunnel of light, heavenly messenger, life review, meeting with family members, sometimes family members not seen since childhood or only by one’s parents, and the option to return or stay). The skeptic says they are merely therapeutic bio-chemical responses related to the process of dying. For many cases this may make a certain degree of rational sense, but this does not explain, for one, the minority hellish NDEs (equally profound but of a different set of commonalities); and it also seems to gloss over the profoundly eschatological, ordered and super-sensory dimension of the experience as a mere illusion, a flat lie, induced only by bio-chemical reactions in the brain.

 

[Texas_Roofer]

Just for fun how about we review the evidence? ( atheism is on temporary ban)

“Atheist” is the word for people who don’t believe in gods. An atheist is free to believe in other supernatural things, though. For example, some forms of Buddhism are atheist and yet believe in things like souls and reincarnation.

several of your comments seem rather contradictory as this one does. Can you explain how a supernatural can exist however a deity cannot?

………….Myself, I’m a skeptic – I don’t accept claims unless I feel that there is sufficient evidence. My atheism follows from my skepticism: I don’t accept any god claims because I don’t feel that any of them have met their burden of proof sufficient to convince me. For the same reason, I don’t believe in anything supernatural because there is no evidence at all going for those claims and a lot of evidence against (for example, the findings of contemporary neruoscience strongly suggest that consciousness emerges from brain activity, further suggesting that what we call the “self” ceases to exist when the brain stops working).

How does one conclude “conscious” is not a supernatural ?

For all of the above reasons, the poster who told you that “it takes more faith not to believe in these things!” is laughably wrong. For a skeptic, these issues aren’t matters of faith – they’re issues of what we can determine to be true or not.
The real issue you should concerned with is not what you should label yourself so that you can feel good about fitting in to a neat category: you should be concerned with what’s true, and the only way to determine what’s true – given the fallibility of our individual senses – is to use evidence to determine whether or not a claim is supported and to not accept claims that are not supported by sufficient evidence.

Good luck.

but latter you claim you know love exists?, and earlier you talk of conscience? Which physical sense proves those?

As it turns out, you are wrong. I mean insufficient any kind of evidence.

People often make the mistake of thinking that “evidence” is always something physical. It’s not. There’s not “physical evidence” that I love my family members – the evidence is my awareness of my internal state, which is all the evidence that is sufficient for a claim about my internal state.

but now wait a minute, a minute ago it was laughable that someone had an internal awareness? How can their awareness be laughable while your internal awareness is evidence?

On the other hand, awareness of my internal state is not sufficient to confirm claims about the external world. No matter how badly a person “feels in his heart” that he’s the victim of a conspiracy and that he’s being spied on, such feelings, in and of themselves, cannot be evidence that a real conspiracy exists outside of his head. Similarly, no matter how warm and fuzzy your feelings are when you pray or think about whatever god(s) you believe in, your feelings cannot be evidence for things that exist outside of your head in the real world.

So your love does not exist? And would not all conspiracies be only mental states?

All of us have our own standards of evidence for accepting claims

I think this may be more true than most realize.

, which we build up over time. And while each of our standards to evaluate claims might differ a little from person to person, they are sufficiently similar that we can have a discussion about them and whether or not they’re reasonable.

For example, I think we could all agree that it would take a considerablely greater amount of evidence to convince us that our neighbor owns a flying car than it would take to convince us that he owns a car. How much exactly might be up for debate, but I think we can all reasonably agree that hearing your neighbor talk about it and having warm feelings about the idea of a flying car are not sufficient pieces of evidence for accepting the claim that he owns a flying car.

. When a scientist looks at statistical evidence he quickly learns the evidence never, ever, ever answers the question, yet he learns a lot without the actual answer. Will the sun rise tomorrow?. How far is the moon? No one knows yet we do fine and even predict the tide. All you need to do is prove he has no flying car right, but how to prove the universal negative and proof is the suggested standard?

…………….Further, NDEs almost universally feature god-images derived from the culture in which a person has been raised.

I wanted to skip this section as I largely agree with you on it but please think about this……those same people speak the language of their home, not any of the other languages know around the world. So maybe their vision and the language share the same principle, being they work at a level they understand. Said another way for the scientist, can you really build something which humans do not understand?

Hope you play along

 

[Contarini]

Originally i was a protestant but stopped due to my parents attitudes and the fact i had trouble believing a God was ‘all loving’ yet at the same time made people suffer horribly.

Yes–there’s been a lot of Christian reflection on this subject of various kinds. Are you familiar with any of it? Many Christians today would say that your way of putting the issue is wrong from the start–God doesn’t “make people suffer.” Of course, some of the traditional concepts of God seem to imply that in some sense He does.

After that I became what id call militant atheist, i wouldn’t blow up churches or such but i would go out of my way to screw with religious people (yes i was an utter prick as a kid and teenager).

A lot of us were, one way or another I was a religious jerk, myself. . . . maybe I still am!

Around this time i began martial arts (aikido and Tong Long) which used meditation and ‘mind over matter’ techniques. While in a chat with my friends (primarily atheists or agnostics) someone joking sad ‘maybe god exists because we believe he does’. This was kind of the set of to my ‘soul’ searching as if people can train there minds to block out pain and push their bodies far past the limit they should break down, why couldn’t a collection of minds with utter faith in a god create it?

I don’t see a logical argument here at all. Saying that the mind can have power over “its own” body is very different from saying that it can create reality outside the body–unless you want to argue that external reality isn’t really external at all.

And there’s a huge difference between “a god” and God. The word “god” might refer to any superhuman being. It’s conceivable that some kind of mental activity might produce some sort of force which took on attributes that resembled consciousness, and that one could call this a “god.” But that wouldn’t be what traditional monotheism calls “God.”

I would suggest familiarizing yourself with some Aquinas (if you have not done so already)–of course he isn’t necessarily right, but he thinks clearly about these things.

Essentially, the monotheistic conception of God is a single, eternal source of reality, which is non-material and yet possessed of all the perfections which are found in material things (including something analogous to our intellect and will, in opposition to your “dumb god” theory). If we are going to talk about whether God exists, that needs to be the starting point. Otherwise we aren’t talking about what Aquinas and the Church Fathers and most of the Western theistic tradition has meant by “God” at all.

I stumbled between skimming faiths for a long time. For awhile i believed in a ‘dumb’ god. To put it simply ill quote a game I love playing “God isn’t some old magical man on a cloud, a god, a real god, bends and shapes the world without even thinking about it or wanting to, it just does” or somethign to that extent. Basically our creation wasnt out of love, but instead just somethign that happened.

That is certainly a possible view.

I presume that your reference to “an old magical man on a cloud” was intended as tongue-in-cheek–or were you seriously taught such a picture of God?

As to my beliefs on the soul. I believe a soul creates life (ie, for life to exist it must have a soul).

I’m a bit confused by this. Are you saying that physical, biological life is brought into existence by a pre-existing immaterial soul?

 

[Contarini]

We only live because our souls seek mortality to experience pleasure and pain, somethign we only feel faintly as a spiritual body. This idea came to me after reading Freud’s ‘Death drive’ theory, making me think perhaps we experience life so we can experience death.

But what are your reasons for believing this? Or do you not think that you need to have reasons? (This isn’t intended as a snarky question–at least not entirely–the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that he doesn’t need reasons to believe in God, since belief in God is a “properly basic” belief–but he does engage in a rational discussion of what a “properly basic belief” is and why he thinks belief in God is such a belief.)

As to ‘where’ the soul comes from, i dont know. Maybe we do come from a ‘source’ like God or the Wheel of Life. Maybe we were god and shattered into separate entities when the big bang occurred. I could counter your questions of ‘where did the souls come from?’ with ‘where did god come from?’ but that will just lead us to running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Well no, it will lead to my pointing you back to the classic monotheistic definition of God, which makes your question nonsense. “God” is by definition the word we use for the “non-material, perfect source of all existence.” Now it’s possible that no such source actually exists. That we can argue about, but asking where such a source came from doesn’t make any sense. If it exists, then by definition it didn’t come from anywhere–it just is. The question of God is precisely the question of whether there is a reality that just eternally is.

You can of course argue that there are souls that just eternally exist. I wasn’t so much arguing against your position as trying to figure out what you mean. I can make an argument against the eternal existence of plural souls, but this would boil down to a discussion of God’s existence, since I believe that it makes more rational sense to say that all reality proceeds from one source. However, I would claim that this is more obviously true of spiritual than of material reality. Perhaps that’s because of my essentially medieval presuppositions–I see matter as by its nature plural and chaotic, so while I don’t see how pure matter could become ordered on its own, I don’t necessarily have a problem with it existing on its own. I find the concept of several limited minds existing eternally a bit more counter-intuitive.

But as I said, the Jains seem to believe this, and the Jains have a serious philosophical tradition, though it’s little known in the West and I myself don’t understand it at all. I find the Buddhist or Vedanta conceptions (either an eternally changing flux that is both material and non-material or an eternal source which also exists under the “veil of maya” as individual beings) more interesting and compelling. But that may just be my ignorance of Jainism.

Edwin

 

[Laughing_Crow]

Yes–there’s been a lot of Christian reflection on this subject of various kinds. Are you familiar with any of it? Many Christians today would say that your way of putting the issue is wrong from the start–God doesn’t “make people suffer.” Of course, some of the traditional concepts of God seem to imply that in some sense He does.

A lot of us were, one way or another I was a religious jerk, myself. . . . maybe I still am!

I don’t see a logical argument here at all. Saying that the mind can have power over “its own” body is very different from saying that it can create reality outside the body–unless you want to argue that external reality isn’t really external at all.

And there’s a huge difference between “a god” and God. The word “god” might refer to any superhuman being. It’s conceivable that some kind of mental activity might produce some sort of force which took on attributes that resembled consciousness, and that one could call this a “god.” But that wouldn’t be what traditional monotheism calls “God.”

I would suggest familiarizing yourself with some Aquinas (if you have not done so already)–of course he isn’t necessarily right, but he thinks clearly about these things.

Essentially, the monotheistic conception of God is a single, eternal source of reality, which is non-material and yet possessed of all the perfections which are found in material things (including something analogous to our intellect and will, in opposition to your “dumb god” theory). If we are going to talk about whether God exists, that needs to be the starting point. Otherwise we aren’t talking about what Aquinas and the Church Fathers and most of the Western theistic tradition has meant by “God” at all.

That is certainly a possible view.

I presume that your reference to “an old magical man on a cloud” was intended as tongue-in-cheek–or were you seriously taught such a picture of God?

I’m a bit confused by this. Are you saying that physical, biological life is brought into existence by a pre-existing immaterial soul?

Well to be fair i was like…8 or nine at the time so my reasons were probably rather childish . I still do believe if there is a God he makes us suffer, but I dont begrudge the idea as I find that overcoming suffering is much more rewarding then having no obstacles to overcome (its better to work and achieve your goal then it is to have said goal given to you)

The idea of it came to me thinking of how restricting our bodies are. I think that the overcoming of our bodily limitations is tapping into our spiritual body to aid our physical one. Look at what humanity has accomplished over its history, if we didnt have bodies but instead a spiritual body that wouldnt age and wasnt restricted the way we are now, we could accomplish many things, perhaps even creating a ‘god’.

No the old man was from the game, not my actual beliefs

And yes, i believe life can exist but for it to achieve what we would call an ‘intelligent life form’ a soul must exist (ie evolution occurs so life can create a body that can contain a soul)

 

[Laughing_Crow]

But what are your reasons for believing this? Or do you not think that you need to have reasons? (This isn’t intended as a snarky question–at least not entirely–the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that he doesn’t need reasons to believe in God, since belief in God is a “properly basic” belief–but he does engage in a rational discussion of what a “properly basic belief” is and why he thinks belief in God is such a belief.)

Well no, it will lead to my pointing you back to the classic monotheistic definition of God, which makes your question nonsense. “God” is by definition the word we use for the “non-material, perfect source of all existence.” Now it’s possible that no such source actually exists. That we can argue about, but asking where such a source came from doesn’t make any sense. If it exists, then by definition it didn’t come from anywhere–it just is. The question of God is precisely the question of whether there is a reality that just eternally is.

You can of course argue that there are souls that just eternally exist. I wasn’t so much arguing against your position as trying to figure out what you mean. I can make an argument against the eternal existence of plural souls, but this would boil down to a discussion of God’s existence, since I believe that it makes more rational sense to say that all reality proceeds from one source. However, I would claim that this is more obviously true of spiritual than of material reality. Perhaps that’s because of my essentially medieval presuppositions–I see matter as by its nature plural and chaotic, so while I don’t see how pure matter could become ordered on its own, I don’t necessarily have a problem with it existing on its own. I find the concept of several limited minds existing eternally a bit more counter-intuitive.

But as I said, the Jains seem to believe this, and the Jains have a serious philosophical tradition, though it’s little known in the West and I myself don’t understand it at all. I find the Buddhist or Vedanta conceptions (either an eternally changing flux that is both material and non-material or an eternal source which also exists under the “veil of maya” as individual beings) more interesting and compelling. But that may just be my ignorance of Jainism.

Edwin

No I do have my reasons. Primarily, look at what we are doing, we are burning through fossil fuels despite the fact this is harmful to us, we tear down our forests and pollute the oceans knowing this will inevitably lead to our planet being uninhabitable. I think, subconsciously, we all seek death to escape the pain of life. In Freud’s controversial Death Drive, he remarked on how the mind would ignore the basic ID instinct which is to seek pleasure and avoid pain and instead reflect and even relive traumatic events, primarily on people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The mind would replay harmful events that could lead to the person wanting to escape the memories through death which completely contradicted the basic idea of the ‘life instinct’.

See, how can you say ‘god has always existed’ yet ignore the idea ‘the soul has always existed’ or ‘the universe and all reality has always existed’? Why does a ‘God’ have to be behind everything, yet when confronted with the question ‘where did god come from?’ you respond with ‘he has always been’? Im not trying to be belittling or attack your faith, its just i cant understand that reasoning.

 

[StrawberryJam]

Recently I have encountered a problem. I am atheist, I do not believe in a god or gods, but I do believe in the human soul, afterlife etc. So what does that make me? The literal definition of atheist is a lack in the belief of God, but in modern society it is used by those who believe in nothing spiritually (no heaven/hell/afterlife, no soul etc). I am hesitant to call myself an ‘agnostic’ as, one of my favorite reviewers said, ‘are usually atheists with commitment issues’ but agnosticism seems to be more ‘im not sure’ or ‘ill see when im dead’. I am sure that I have a soul/spirit, call it whatever you wish, so i dont feel ‘right’ in that group of people.

ugh first primary school, then high school and now religion, I just DO NOT fit in

You are a wishful thinker. No amount of wishful thinking will convince me that there is an afterlife as much as I would love for that to be the case.

 

[RosaryFan]

Recently I have encountered a problem. I am atheist, I do not believe in a god or gods, but I do believe in the human soul, afterlife etc. So what does that make me? The literal definition of atheist is a lack in the belief of God, but in modern society it is used by those who believe in nothing spiritually (no heaven/hell/afterlife, no soul etc). I am hesitant to call myself an ‘agnostic’ as, one of my favorite reviewers said, ‘are usually atheists with commitment issues’ but agnosticism seems to be more ‘im not sure’ or ‘ill see when im dead’. I am sure that I have a soul/spirit, call it whatever you wish, so i dont feel ‘right’ in that group of people.

ugh first primary school, then high school and now religion, I just DO NOT fit in

Hi, Laughing Crow and welcome!

If I understand correctly, you do not believe in God, but you believe you have a soul. Our soul possesses free will and intellect, which is what places us above the animals. I’m sorry I cannot answer your question because I don’t know what I would call you, exactly. But I am curious to know what kind of afterlife you believe in? Are you talking reincarnation, or spiritual afterlife?

And if you believe you have a soul/spirit, then how do you suppose you got it? I’m not trying to be argumentative, but the existence of a soul/spirit is indicative of a Supreme Being and your absence of belief in a Supreme Being seems to contradict your belief in having a soul. In other words, I find it hard to believe both ways.

 

[AntiTheist]

Just for fun how about we review the evidence?

Why, that does sound like fun!

several of your comments seem rather contradictory as this one does.

You have to be careful with those “seems.” Actually figuring out what I’m talking about – rather than just responding to what it “seems” to you I’m saying – tends to be a much better way of having a fruitful conversation and acquiring knowledge.

Can you explain how a supernatural can exist however a deity cannot?

You’re asking this in reference to the fact that there are atheists who believe in supernatural things? I mentioned, in the section you quoted, that some versions of Buddhism, for example, are atheist but still have belief in things like souls and reincarnation.

There is, of course, no contradiction in a person saying that he thinks souls exist but not gods. Now, I personally think that souls and gods are both in the same category – “completely unjustified stories people tell themselves to make themselves feel better” – but there are people who don’t believe in one supernatural thing and do believe in other supernatural things. Go figure. You’d have to ask one of these fellows to know what their reasons are.

How does one conclude “conscious” is not a supernatural ?

Consciousness is an emergent property of brains. Contemporary neuroscience demonstrates quite nicely that making physical alterations to brains – like, for example, passing a mild current over a part of the brain – triggers changes in consciousness (summons up memories, smells, feelings, or whatever that particular section of the brain is associated with). Similarly, making changes to your body’s chemistry – for example, getting drunk – causes extreme changes to consciousness.

Further – and even more problematic for people who think that consciousness is something ooky-spooky magical – there are quite a few cases on record where instances of brain damage cause changes and even reversals of personality. There are further cases of “split brains” on record: surgically divided brains in which – in some cases – each hemisphere of the brain acts with different personalities.

All of the above strongly suggests that consciousness emerges from brain functions.

but latter you claim you know love exists?, and earlier you talk of conscience? Which physical sense proves those?

I didn’t say that “love exists” in the sense of love being some super-duper magical force that powers the universe with pixie dust.

Love isn’t a “thing” that exists outside of human beings; love is a word for subjective feelings that we experience (feelings that, again, emerge from brain activity…you do know that we can detect and measure the brain activity, right?). I was saying that I know that I love my family, and the evidence for this is my observation of my inner state. That’s all the evidence I need for a claim about my inner state.

would not all conspiracies be only mental states?

No, some conspiracies actually are true. What I’m saying is that feelings alone cannot demonstrate that something exists outside of your mind. To confirm that the conspiracy is real, you would need evidence drawn from the world outside of you, not just evidence drawn from your observation of your feelings.

Will the sun rise tomorrow?. How far is the moon? No one knows yet we do fine and even predict the tide.

You’re getting confused here.

If by “know” you mean “know to 100% absolute certainty,” then sure, no one “knows” anything to an absolute certainty. But that’s irrelevant. When we say “know” in everyday speech, we mean “demonstrate to a reasonable degree based on evidence, always tentative and open to new evidence.”

We do indeed know how to predict the tides. We also know that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the moon is approximately 238,897 miles away from the earth, that the current president of the United States is named Barack Obama, that ice results from water freezing, etc, etc, etc.

It’s a trivial point that we know lots and lots and lots of things, and we know them on the basis of evidence.

Hope you play along

Hope you enjoy our parting gifts and consolation prizes, including a home version of the game.

 

[RosaryFan]

See, how can you say ‘god has always existed’ yet ignore the idea ‘the soul has always existed’ or ‘the universe and all reality has always existed’? Why does a ‘God’ have to be behind everything, yet when confronted with the question ‘where did god come from?’ you respond with ‘he has always been’? Im not trying to be belittling or attack your faith, its just i cant understand that reasoning.

No one can understand that reasoning. That’s why it’s a “mystery”. No one can grasp that God has always been. But if He hasn’t always been, then who created Him???

 

[Texas_Roofer]

Why, that does sound like fun!

[edit for total lenght]
You’re asking this in reference to the fact that there are atheists who believe in supernatural things? I mentioned, in the section you quoted, that some versions of Buddhism, for example, are atheist but still have belief in things like souls and reincarnation.

There is, of course, no contradiction in a person saying that he thinks souls exist but not gods.

The implication here is that one group can accept supernatural existence like a soul and the other group should not accept a supernatural existence as god. However my personal opinion is over and over the third group also believes in supernatural even when they say evidence only

Now, I personally think that souls and gods are both in the same category – “completely unjustified stories people tell themselves to make themselves feel better” – but there are people who don’t believe in one supernatural thing and do believe in other supernatural things. Go figure. You’d have to ask one of these fellows to know what their reasons are.

maybe all believe, maybe the difference in what they choose to say

Consciousness is an emergent property of brains. Contemporary neuroscience demonstrates quite nicely that making physical alterations to brains – like, for example, passing a mild current over a part of the brain – triggers changes in consciousness (summons up memories, smells, feelings, or whatever that particular section of the brain is associated with). Similarly, making changes to your body’s chemistry – for example, getting drunk – causes extreme changes to consciousness.

really, so if a doctor were to produce the correct electrical current on your brain you would be a religious believer? It would seem you would have no option if it is really just electrical activity

Further – and even more problematic for people who think that consciousness is something ooky-spooky magical – there are quite a few cases on record where instances of brain damage cause changes and even reversals of personality. There are further cases of “split brains” on record: surgically divided brains in which – in some cases – each hemisphere of the brain acts with different personalities.

All of the above strongly suggests that consciousness emerges from brain functions.

And here it is again, it occurs over and over, the evidence only crowd doesn’t need much evidence, not much at all, in fact practical none is perfectly acceptable. Can the same doctor run the same electrical impulse on the brain of the deceased and produce the same results? If the brain is inanimate we expect that. If the brain is inanimate we can expect no difference until deterioration occurs. Or is this just another example of operation without evidence

I didn’t say that “love exists” in the sense of love being some super-duper magical force that powers the universe with pixie dust.

Love isn’t a “thing” that exists outside of human beings; love is a word for subjective feelings that we experience (feelings that, again, emerge from brain activity…you do know that we can detect and measure the brain activity, right?). I was saying that I know that I love my family, and the evidence for this is my observation of my inner state. That’s all the evidence I need for a claim about my inner state.

And there it is again “my observation of my inner state” which is a correct answer for you but NOT a correct answer for any thiest, or a Buddhism. See this is the problem so many see with statements on non theists, over and over practical every conversion.

No, some conspiracies actually are true. What I’m saying is that feelings alone cannot demonstrate that something exists outside of your mind. To confirm that the conspiracy is real, you would need evidence drawn from the world outside of you, not just evidence drawn from your observation of your feelings.

Really, in the future should I use my sense of smell to detect conspiracy? Hearing? Taste?, Sight or Touch, you tell me, but be careful you may once again have that problem in which you can believe while believing is in itself unacceptable

You’re getting confused here.

If by “know” you mean “know to 100% absolute certainty,” then sure, no one “knows” anything to an absolute certainty. But that’s irrelevant. When we say “know” in everyday speech, we mean “demonstrate to a reasonable degree based on evidence, always tentative and open to new evidence.”

We do indeed know how to predict the tides. We also know that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the moon is approximately 238,897 miles away from the earth, that the current president of the United States is named Barack Obama, that ice results from water freezing, etc, etc, etc.

It’s a trivial point that we know lots and lots and lots of things, and we know them on the basis of evidence.

Yea, I guess I am confused please explain how you know the sun will rise tomorrow? And how you know the car will start, is the moon really 238,897 miles away, do you really know that, did you measure it, or do you believe that? Personally I believe the earth is moving as is the moon and Einstein claims the universe is expanding (personally I think expanding and contracting) however I guess he is wrong as am I and why? Because a total stranger posted on the web, now a total stranger posting on the web is evidence right, better evidence than my personal touch, taste, feel, smell and sight about an expanding or contracting universe.

Hope you enjoy our parting gifts and consolation prizes, including a home version of the game.

Thank you, and keep your eye on the silver!

 

[GEddie]

Can the same doctor run the same electrical impulse on the brain of the deceased and produce the same results? If the brain is inanimate we expect that. If the brain is inanimate we can expect no difference until deterioration occurs.

No one has said the brain is “inanimate”; or, if they did, they misunderstood the use of the term. In a human being, “animation” is life. The brain is alive as long as the human body holds life.

Life is mysterious, but it is definitely physical. If it were not, we would not predictably lose life once our bodies deteriorated beyond holding it (the human case of the law of entropy).

Really, in the future should I use my sense of smell to detect conspiracy?

Actually, your nose is the sense most closely linked to your mind; so not a bad idea

ICXC NIKA

 

[Ranklyfrank]

No one has said the brain is “inanimate”; or, if they did, they misunderstood the use of the term. In a human being, “animation” is life. The brain is alive as long as the human body holds life.

Life is mysterious, but it is definitely physical. If it were not, we would not predictably lose life once our bodies deteriorated beyond holding it (the human case of the law of entropy).

Actually, your nose is the sense most closely linked to your mind; so not a bad idea

That’s true about the nose.

What else fascinates me is that the thread title, along with the Path of Negation, is one of the most ancient ways of inquiry that leads to the mysticism that is actually at the clouded foundation of the Catholic faith.