Atheists - how did you come to be?

[Rick O'Shez]

So we're really all just lock socks in the laundromat of oblivion?

 

[amorphous_constellation]

So we're really all just lock socks in the laundromat of oblivion?

As far as I can tell? Yep, we are stuck in the fractal laundromat of oblivion.

 

[LuisDantas]

What a weird subject.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Ok, count me out of that idea.

You were born once. Isn't it a bit pretentious of us to assume this can't happen again? Who says you only get born once?

 

[Sha'irullah]

I must be crazy to understand them, or they must be crazy to understand me? This stuff isn't too far out when thinking of the bigger picture, I think.

Your diction must be soooooooooo amazing

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Your diction must be soooooooooo amazing

For better or worse, I am a far better writer than speaker. Good writing requires copious amounts of deliberation, speaking does not. If I was heavy into talking I'd be elsewhere, vlogging the ideas.

 

[Sha'irullah]

For better or worse, I am a far better writer than speaker. Good writing requires copious amounts of deliberation, speaking does not. If I was heavy into talking I'd be elsewhere, vlogging the ideas.

You are like me then. I have social skills equivalent to a kitty cat (hence my fondness towards the creatures). My ability to express myself through writing is very profound though.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

You are like me then. I have social skills equivalent to a kitty cat (hence my fondness towards the creatures). My ability to express myself through writing is very profound though.

Maybe I will write myself a script before trying any vlogging, it might look lame, but then again it might work.

 

[The Neo Nerd]

It's called scientific reincarnation. Simple reincarnation without karma.

How is the idea of reincarnation scientific?

 

[Monk Of Reason]

There is an illusion of a sense of self that is apart from what we really are and this is a result of our imperfect sentience. There is no point in time where I "came to be" from something that was not me. I suppose if you had to have an answer of conception but then I was a cell that was developed in each of my parents that was in turn developed from cells from their parents all the way back to basic chemical compositions that were a matter of hodepodge created in the aftermath of the big bang and prior to that (if there was a prior time) who can guess?

 

[Willamena]

Atheists - how did you come to be?

Oh, I know this one. There's a mommy... and a daddy... and they crawl under the bed covers, and then there's me.

Now honestly if you think about this hard enough, something about the fact that you came to be at all will strike you as bizarre. You know not what occurred before you became, nor do you know how this occurred, why, or ultimately where you are going. However, you can now definitively say that you are, you have become the singularity, your individual telos has found residence in the flesh of an animal. Here you sit, reading this, converting light and color, shape and sound, sending a will to magically type your response. Fingertips and hands, to you alone they are enslaved. Your attention if divided can be trained into submission. You read this and wonder immediately what you can say to ameliorate the sudden existential discord, the fact that the curtain can be pulled on your certainty.

So how did you come to be? Was it karma, the negative and positive energies of your soul swirling in the firmament to reside in a host, was it a slighted god, molding you like craft-work. Was it a random conflux of hidden energies that happened with a probability never to be repeated, a quarky buildup of matter so random it would take a trillion dice? Who's to say you will not immediately occur again when a new pilot is required for some random new brain in the universe. Most likely that is what will happen. Once you land in an immortal coil as opposed to a mortal one, you might not have to keep reincarnating. Though I would argue at this stage that you are clearly constantly incarnating. You can say with certainty that you most likely had a long string of failures to find an immortal host, or if you ever could not age, you must have accidentally died.

None of that. It's just me. Me with learning. Me that learned 'me.'

The only way you could stop coming to be is if there was never again a seat to be filled. You clearly were not in the very beginning, or most likely were not, but no vacant seat is left open when they are built. If there were a trillion situations where consciousness could reside and over time that was subtracted to nine hundred ninety-nine billion nine hundred ninety-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine, perhaps one less soul that kept recycling could exist, or their incarnation would be put on hold. Of course no time would pass for the soul once it is waiting. And to finish, I myself am a atheist/agnostic, but I know this cannot be the first time I was, or is it likely it will be the last time I will be.

I learned me. I learned seat. I learned filling. I learned not. Then I learned not me, and not seat, and not filling. I learned subtraction. I learned patience. I learned to trust, and to distrust. I learned to distrust expectation. I learned the nature of the world.

Ultimately I am here without a because.

 

[Sapiens]

Dualism exists solely as the result of timing problems between the two sides of the brain that create the illusion of being able to talk to someone else inside your head. That's what a PhD psychologist friend tells me.

 

[Bunyip]

Alright, so none of you believe in any transcendent element, any kind of dualism, if I understand your all of your perspectives correctly here? You would all name me a theist perhaps, well if so, in that case I would say that you all prescribe to physicalism.

Now, the Merriam-webster dictionary states that what is physical "relates to the body of the person instead of the mind."

By not believing anything whatsoever is transcendent, you render the word "physical" null and void, it does need to indicate anything. Yes that means your thoughts are physical, your mind is physical, anything existing in any form, perceptible or imperceptible, measurable or not, experiential or mental, everything is physical. So the very dictionary definition of that word you might as well scrap, along with the word itself. The word was originally put in place to actually delineate certain things as being physical, but no longer need it, it covers every available space.

Sorry, but I don't follow the reasoning there. If everything is physical, then the word still has meaning.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Alright, I suppose I can field some more questions. We're only trying to unlock the puzzles of the universe here.

How is the idea of reincarnation scientific?

This is the question I've spent the whole thread, from the Op until now trying to dig at. If failed before, well I suppose I will keep trying to explain it from infinite angles.

We believe that we are uniquer than we are. That all this matter came together just to make this one conception of self that we behold. But to answer the question - reincarnation is easily scientific, behold: if there were one person on earth, that void of space between the ears would undoubtedly be filled - with a beholder, a wonderer, a thinker, an end-user. This man dies, but sequentially another man becomes. Perhaps you think it preposterous, but aren't the chances fair that the occupant of the new sense experience vehicle gains a possibility to capture that which was previously freed, i.e. the person who ceased existing before had freed a certain energy - that being the perceiver.

There is an illusion of a sense of self that is apart from what we really are and this is a result of our imperfect sentience. There is no point in time where I "came to be" from something that was not me. I suppose if you had to have an answer of conception but then I was a cell that was developed in each of my parents that was in turn developed from cells from their parents all the way back to basic chemical compositions that were a matter of hodepodge created in the aftermath of the big bang and prior to that (if there was a prior time) who can guess?

So, in your theory, perhaps the reality you experience now is like the flowering of basically a plant - that the previous stages leading up to now of seed and seedling or amoeba to walking fish were just that, but were to develop into the orange eventually - this culmination being the highest point and being that which you now experience? That consciousness rode along dimly and linearly along in all that until finally now, when it has flowered? But how is the cycle broken, for that orange then falls and feeds the earth, which feeds another plant, which feeds a bird or animal, whereupon matter recycles until there is built another conscious mind.

I learned me. I learned seat. I learned filling. I learned not. Then I learned not me, and not seat, and not filling. I learned subtraction. I learned patience. I learned to trust, and to distrust. I learned to distrust expectation. I learned the nature of the world.

Ultimately I am here without a because.

However, because the possibility of educational relativity exists, that all learning is not necessarily there solely for attainment, that metaphysically a mind could know all without the filter of a brain, it calls into question the idea that the data defines through elucidation. Platonic spheres of knowledge are there before and after me, whether I learn greatly of what is there or not. If I cease learning, it does not cease to be there to be learned. If I learn all of it, it is not altered, nor necessarily am I. Pure mind may know all instantaneously and without effort, even so what has it gained? The 'because' of the thing rests not in where it becomes, but the nature staked within itself of where it became.

Dualism exists solely as the result of timing problems between the two sides of the brain that create the illusion of being able to talk to someone else inside your head. That's what a PhD psychologist friend tells me.

If you understand anyone clearest, let it be your own self. For man is led astray the farther he treads out into the illusive language of others, mentally the exactitude of your meanings for phrases, syntax, diction, grammar, and overall language most likely are going to be the most exact ones possible for you? However if you are talking about one who hears voices, a schizophrenic, that's not what I'm talking about, I've never heard voices. Just now I tried your experiment and it did not work. Not the kind of dualism I was thinking of.

 

[Sapiens]

...

If you understand anyone clearest, let it be your own self. For man is led astray the farther he treads out into the illusive language of others, mentally the exactitude of your meanings for phrases, syntax, diction, grammar, and overall language most likely are going to be the most exact ones possible for you? However if you are talking about one who hears voices, a schizophrenic, that's not what I'm talking about, I've never heard voices. Just now I tried your experiment and it did not work. Not the kind of dualism I was thinking of.

You're stuck in binary thinking, on or off. "Voices" range from the "other" voice that reads to you as you run you eyes across the page, the gentle voice that you mull things over with when planing a minor purchase, the loud voice that crys, "Danger! Danger!" often shortly after the actual danger has passed, all the way to the kinds of "voices" that religious zealots hear and claim is some supernatural being to the sorts of voices that become separate personalities and argue with those that suffer from schizophrenia. I suspect that they are all rooted in the same thing, timing issues of the bicameral mind, and where you fall in that spectrum ... e.g., how off is the timing.

 

[Yerda]

Tell me more. How do you picture a dualist atheist?

A beard and a smoking jacket. Old fashioned whiskers. Blabbering about substance while drinking whiskey surrounded by fellow pretentious sorts doing their very best to ignore him at a philosophy conference. Fun game.

How do you picture everything happening at once?

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Sorry, but I don't follow the reasoning there. If everything is physical, then the word still has meaning.

It is no longer a phenomenon. If everything is physical, nothing can be metaphysical. It would be a serious excess of language if one were then to say "the physical nature of the universe." You only need say "the nature of the universe." Or to say, "a feat of physical strength," for all human feats, mental and physical, would merely be feats of strength. I could go on a bit more on that, but for now I'm starting to research the school known as physicalism, which is an actual school of thought, which a good majority of atheists seem to subscribe to and which I deny. I deny basically at this point that they'd even have a use for the word.

However, in looking at a concern of the strawsonian physicalism shade, it was noted that "experiential phenomena cannot be emergent from wholly non-experiential phenomena," meaning to my mind that mental activity is not in the domain of rocks. There are many other divisive concerns and schools within the domain of physicalism, in debating for duality I'll be sure to forward those concerns as I encounter them.

 

[Bunyip]

It is no longer a phenomenon. If everything is physical, nothing can be metaphysical.

How are you defining 'metaphysical'?

It would be a serious excess of language if one were then to say "the physical nature of the universe." You only need say "the nature of the universe." Or to say, "a feat of physical strength," for all human feats, mental and physical, would merely be feats of strength. I could go on a bit more on that, but for now I'm starting to research the school known as physicalism, which is an actual school of thought, which a good majority of atheists seem to subscribe to and which I deny. I deny basically at this point that they'd even have a use for the word.

However, in looking at a concern of the strawsonian physicalism shade, it was noted that "experiential phenomena cannot be emergent from wholly non-experiential phenomena," meaning to my mind that mental activity is not in the domain of rocks. There are many other divisive concerns and schools within the domain of physicalism, in debating for duality I'll be sure to forward those concerns as I encounter them.

Not sure what you are getting at I'm sorry.
Rocks do not engage in mental activity, unless you include silica crystals as rocks.

Physicalism and Naturalism by the way are just philosophical approaches, they are not worldviews, theologies, ideologies or belief systems of any sort.

 

[Willamena]

Physicalism and Naturalism by the way are just philosophical approaches, they are not worldviews, theologies, ideologies or belief systems of any sort.

They could be, if one made them such.

 

[Bunyip]

They could be, if one made them such.

Sure, I guess they could. Would be a pretty pointless exercise though I should think.