Atheists - how did you come to be?

[Willamena]

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

Unless someone did for a reason.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

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.

It sounds to me like that bicameral dualism you refer to is by and large granting an important utility, except when it malfunctions. That however, to my current thinking, is not exactly the kind of dualism I'm thinking about. However, that being an instinctual device, I would argue all of its advice comes from the body, and is as thoroughly physical as it is.

Though we categorically are symmetrical organisms, the argument ought to be made that there is a single seat of perception. Though I have two nostrils, there is only one smell, two eyes, one vision, a bicameral brain, one thought at once, one concentrated noise for two ears. The matrix of my being appears to condense to the singular, there are no other perceivers or perspectives or occupiers here. Only one.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

How are you defining 'metaphysical'?

Whenever I see the greek prefix 'meta' I know to prefix that word with the word 'beyond', that keeps it very simple for me. So that's how I'd define it, 'beyond-physical.'

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

It's a whole other thread, but something that is 'just a philosophical approach' is highly pertinent - and to my mind an atheist must select a philosophical approach - for one saying one is an atheist is like one saying one is a theist. It does not tell you anything. Now by and large many atheists just say they are 'atheists.' That says nothing. Are you a dualist, a physicalist or a naturalist a positivist, a nihilist, one of those things is what their title ought to be.

 

[Bunyip]

Whenever I see the greek prefix 'meta' I know to prefix that word with the word 'beyond', that keeps it very simple for me. So that's how I'd define it, 'beyond-physical.'



It's a whole other thread, but something that is 'just a philosophical approach' is highly pertinent - and in to my mind an atheist must select a philosophical approach - for one saying one is an atheist is like one saying one is a theist. It does not tell you anything. Now by and large many atheists just say they are 'atheists.' That says nothing. Are you a dualist, a physicalist or a naturalist a positivist, a nihilist, one of those things is what their title ought to be.

Why would it be beneficial to select a single philosophical aaproach and then cantilever it into a worldview? I see no advantage in doing so.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Why would it be beneficial to select a single philosophical aaproach and then cantilever it into a worldview? I see no advantage in doing so.

To be very honest with you, it is not a matter of being beneficial or not, and we aren't talking about a cantilever here but the foundation to a building. In my view, for an atheist to remain simply an atheist and not tell you more - is like a theist telling you they are a theist and not telling you more. It is copping out, I'm sorry to say, and the agnostic is the only one who gets a pass. But the atheist like the theist must pick a platform, otherwise I really don't know at all what I'm dealing with and neither does anyone else.

 

[Bunyip]

To be very honest with you, it is not a matter of being beneficial or not, and we aren't talking about a cantilever here but the foundation to a building. In my view, for an atheist to remain simply an atheist and not tell you more - is like a theist telling you they are a theist and not telling you more. It is copping out

Who are you talking about here? I'm confused - who are you refering to? I don't know any atheists who would define themselves as atheist alone. Is this a specific person, interaction or conversation you had? [/Quote]

Naturalism, physicalism and so on are not 'platforms' in the sense you mean - and a person's atheism reflects only their position in regard to a single claim , it does not I any way define that person's worldview or philosophical approach.

 

[Bunyip]

Indigenous Mover

If you want to know what you are 'dealing with' when conversing with any person, atheist or otherwise - just ask them. The term 'atheist' refers only to a single point.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

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 hesitate to call it "my" theory. Though I also hesitate to define "consciousness". There is a tendency we have of thinking that conciousness is some amazing spiritual thing that defines us beyond what we are. Duality kicks in and there is this seperation between "body" and "me". I am still me even if every single cell in my body were to be replaced. I am me.

But is that true? What if, and a lot of people have difficulty with this, we are not "me"? What if we are just the accumulation of our components that will be in this form for a little while?

One of my favorite quotes says the following;

My dear,

You are stardust that’s beaten the odds and combined perfectly. You are both the moon you walk under and the ground you walk on.


You are a part of it all, neither big nor small.

Falsely yours,
Eckhart Tolle

 

[The Neo Nerd]

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.

No i do not think the chances are fair and your hypothesis as it stands is in no way, shape or form scientific.

For this hypothesis to be even remotely scientific you must first:

A. Demonstrate that there is some kind of energy that can exist outside of the individual.

B. Demonstrate that this energy is in some way full of information from the original host

C. Demonstrate a mechanism by which this energy can be absorbed, integrated and translated by its new host.

Basically you need something testable and falsifiable. Until then you do not have science, just wishful thinking.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Naturalism, physicalism and so on are not 'platforms' in the sense you mean - and a person's atheism reflects only their position in regard to a single claim , it does not I any way define that person's worldview or philosophical approach.

Let's put it in terms of analogous terms for a moment here. Say someone is a theist. Well, they never stop at that, right? You've never seen or talked to someone who just said they were a theist, and if you did wouldn't you be taken aback? So as to the analogous terms, to my mind you might say that for example a positivist is to a catholic as a theist is to an atheist.

It is that act of further definition that really gets you to the real existential definition of what you are. For theists, it is a religion, for atheists it must therefore be a school of thought. This just isn't widely known to be how it should be, simply because there aren't really that many atheists.

 

[Willamena]

Indigenous Mover

If you want to know what you are 'dealing with' when conversing with any person, atheist or otherwise - just ask them. The term 'atheist' refers only to a single point.

Yes. The point is "god."

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I am still me even if every single cell in my body were to be replaced. I am me.

Ah but you see therein lies the Cartesian rub. Every single cell in your body changing is the same as switching bodies, you remain the 'me,' not in any way an accumulation, but clearly a nexus of sense experience, a singularity, a phenomenon merely sent in the way of these objects of heart and brain, respiratory rhythm, the myopia of an eyeball. There is no limit to how far you could see. You see, you could see extremely far. There is no limit to how finely you could hear, you could hear a breadcrumb drop a house over. The only thing that's stopping all of this, is the dim bulb of body that all this Cartesian electricity is settled upon.

 

[Willamena]

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?

The only one who counts.

 

[gsa]

Ah but you see therein lies the Cartesian rub. Every single cell in your body changing is the same as switching bodies, you remain the 'me,' not in any way an accumulation, but clearly a nexus of sense experience, a singularity, a phenomenon merely sent in the way of these objects of heart and brain, respiratory rhythm, the myopia of an eyeball. There is no limit to how far you could see. You see, you could see extremely far. There is no limit to how finely you could hear, you could hear a breadcrumb drop a house over. The only thing that's stopping all of this, is the dim bulb of body that all this Cartesian electricity is settled upon.

A somewhat significant limitation: Neurons are, by and large, not replaced. Tellingly, neuron turnover is much higher in birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians than it is in adult mammals.

 

[Willamena]

Whenever I see the greek prefix 'meta' I know to prefix that word with the word 'beyond', that keeps it very simple for me. So that's how I'd define it, 'beyond-physical.'

But there's no reason given here that "beyond" should be eliminative.

Edit: I look through binoculars and I see the river and trees, and the mountains beyond. There's no sense in the eliminative 'beyond.'

 

[Bunyip]

Yes. The point is "god."

No, that would be meaningless. You need to specify the god.

 

[Bunyip]

Let's put it in terms of analogous terms for a moment here. Say someone is a theist. Well, they never stop at that, right? You've never seen or talked to someone who just said they were a theist, and if you did wouldn't you be taken aback? So as to the analogous terms, to my mind you might say that for example a positivist is to a catholic as a theist is to an atheist.

It is that act of further definition that really gets you to the real existential definition of what you are. For theists, it is a religion, for atheists it must therefore be a school of thought. This just isn't widely known to be how it should be, simply because there aren't really that many atheists.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you are saying.

 

[Willamena]

No, that would be meaningless. You need to specify the god.

Unless you're talking about just god.

 

[Bunyip]

Unless you're talking about just god.

In which case you may as well be blowing smoke or for that mater not speaking at all.

 

[Willamena]

In which case you may as well be blowing smoke or for that mater not speaking at all.

...to you.

You haven't defined god, but others have.