What is Your Story?

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Dark Matter
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What is Your Story?

Post by Dark Matter »

Physics and the math supporting it tells us that the universe should not exist. Yet, here we are. I have previously stated that, in a sense, nothing really does exist, that everything balances out in the end. My story, the one that informs me, is one of unity and ultimate oneness, a wholeness within which boundaries are artificial constructs and indefinite at best.

What is your story?
Namelesss
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Namelesss »

Dark Matter wrote: April 1st, 2018, 4:43 pm Physics and the math supporting it tells us that the universe should not exist.

Quite the assertion. Care to back that up one single widgeon of evidence/logic?
I was under the impression that physics studied that which they find to exist?
They certainly cannot study what doesn't exist (which is not anything).
(And math can tell us that we are all flying unicorns, because flying unicorns exist the same place that math does, in the imagination. Like formal logic proving that lies are truth.)
Yet, here we are. I have previously stated that, in a sense, nothing really does exist,

And yet everything that we experience exists for us to experience it!
Perhaps it is not ultimately as things appear to exist, but the definition of existence is appearances, things that 'appear' to the senses.
Mirages exist, thought exists.
Even if all is 'Thought', it still exists as we know the term.
that everything balances out in the end.

No 'end', Here! Now!

"Every kind of partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute towards the great equilibrium of the whole.." - Rene' Guenon
My story, the one that informs me, is one of unity and ultimate oneness, a wholeness within which boundaries are artificial constructs and indefinite at best.
That is a story that can be experienced/Known to the mystic.
Read about, by others. Perhaps intellectually known before experientially Known.
Don't denigrate the 'artificial boundaries' imposed by the duality of thought/ego, that is the only wat that the transcendental, unconditional Omni- Self! can be Known!
It is like 'make-believe', to truly 'believe' is insanity!
What is your story?
All being One, to Know 'your' story is to Know all stories! *__-
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Sy Borg
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Sy Borg »

Dark Matter wrote: April 1st, 2018, 4:43 pm Physics and the math supporting it tells us that the universe should not exist. Yet, here we are. I have previously stated that, in a sense, nothing really does exist, that everything balances out in the end. My story, the one that informs me, is one of unity and ultimate oneness, a wholeness within which boundaries are artificial constructs and indefinite at best. What is your story?
Not quite. More accurate would be "headline-hungry science journalists tell us that the universe should not exist". It's a bait, like Krauss's "universe from nothing", which he admitted was a tease for theists (he seemingly cannot help being annoying). Of course his book discussed the quantum foam and how so-called empty space is actually replete with energy.

It's not that the universe should not exist, it's that we don't know all the mechanisms that brought it about - there are still mysteries to solve. It's clear that the universe does exist (either that or this is a helluva dream) so there must be some drivers to the state change known as the big bang that are not yet known. This is situation normal, just that we know a bit more than we did before, and that's opened up more lines of inquiry.

Situation normal: various hypotheses and speculations, sometimes irrationally presented as fact - or embellished so as to gain attention. The embellishment of stories to gain people's attention has been a device used by humans for millennia - the ignoble but much-honed art of bull faeces :)
Dark Matter
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Dark Matter »

Dualism is dead, but most people cling to it like a heroine addict clings to heroine. They are afraid to let go of their addiction, afraid to explore the alternative to its fullest. Their minds are corrupt with ideas, so many ideas that there is no room for genuine thought.

Hence, they avoid contemplating reality by deluding themselves into believing that reality can be contained in ideas — including the idea that they cannot know what IS.
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Vivek7
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Vivek7 »

What we know is hypothesis only and we do not know the truth about the universe. Physics has gone into one realm or reality and beyond that we have yet to know and thus it has been a mystery. We do not know how big the universe is and it is said it is expanding. There are theories, numerous hypotheses about the origin of the universe and yet the final one, most satisfying is yet to arrive at. It is not unusual to think there is a driver who drives the universe and yet what that driver is could be a big question, indeed a philosophical question.
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Sy Borg
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Sy Borg »

Dark Matter wrote: April 7th, 2018, 3:26 am Dualism is dead, but most people cling to it like a heroine addict clings to heroine. They are afraid to let go of their addiction, afraid to explore the alternative to its fullest. Their minds are corrupt with ideas, so many ideas that there is no room for genuine thought.

Hence, they avoid contemplating reality by deluding themselves into believing that reality can be contained in ideas — including the idea that they cannot know what IS.
Which "dualism" is dead? The dualism of the majority of humanity, who are believers? Or the dualism of stuff and its form?

If you do know what IS - what actually is it? Don't keep us in suspense.

If you are referring to the visceral nature of being, then you make the classic mistake of confusing people's words on a screen with their actual presence of being
Dark Matter
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Dark Matter »

[ comments removed. Ad hominem]
Fooloso4
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Fooloso4 »

Dark Matter:
My story, the one that informs me, is one of unity and ultimate oneness ...

[ comments removed. Ad hominem]
Just as I said on the other thread your “oneness” does not extend to human beings.

You claim that dualism is dead and Greta asks a reasonable question in response. We know from other discussions that you favor your own form of dualism. That is part of your story, but apparently not the one you wish to tell yourself at the moment.
Dark Matter
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Dark Matter »

Fooloso4 wrote: April 9th, 2018, 7:59 am Dark Matter:
My story, the one that informs me, is one of unity and ultimate oneness ...

[ comments removed. Ad hominem]
Just as I said on the other thread your “oneness” does not extend to human beings.

You claim that dualism is dead and Greta asks a reasonable question in response. We know from other discussions that you favor your own form of dualism. That is part of your story, but apparently not the one you wish to tell yourself at the moment.
[ comments removed. Ad hominem]
Steve3007
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Steve3007 »

OP:
[ comments removed. Ad hominem]
Physics and the math supporting it tells us that the universe should not exist.
No it doesn't. (But this part of the OP has aleady been addressed by several earlier posters.)
What is your story?
My story (in this context) is that boundaries are useful concepts and that they therefore, in every sense that matters, exist. And you wouldn't be here talking about them if you didn't share that belief. You would have mistakenly eaten the plate on which your food sits, and died. But if it makes you happy to talk about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, I see nothing wrong with that. It does nobody else any harm and it presumably makes you happy, so there's nothing to which to object. I quite like the fundamental interconnectedness of all things too. But that doesn't stop boundaries from being useful things. As long as you don't try to make someone else pay for them.
Dark Matter
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Dark Matter »

Steve3007 wrote: April 9th, 2018, 2:10 pm I quite like the fundamental interconnectedness of all things too. But that doesn't stop boundaries from being useful things.
That’s your story? The belief that underpins and informs all other beliefs? That’s cool. That’s all I was asking. These are things that can be discussed. Not everything is a debate.

Many people are fine it’s questioning the beliefs of others, but refrain from telling others what beliefs underpin and informs all their other beliefs.
Fooloso4
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Fooloso4 »

DM,

We learn more about you from your attacks on others than from the stories you tell yourself and others.

Here’s my story:

We live on one of billions of habitable planets in one of billions of galaxies. We are of significance to no one and nothing other than ourselves. And so, we should learn to take better care of ourselves and each other. It may be that in the not too distant future ours will no longer be a habitable planet for life forms such as ourselves, and so, we must learn to take better care of it as well. And no one lived happily ever after.
Dark Matter
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Dark Matter »

Cool. That’s all I was asking.
Dark Matter
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Dark Matter »

To elaborate on the OP, my story includes a First Source whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. No thing or being, no relativity or finality, exists except in direct or indirect relation to, and dependence on, the primacy of the First Source and Center so dualism, at least in the strictest sense, is not open to consideration as far as I’m concerned.

I’m sure people will disagree and have arguments against this rather dogmatic point of view. I don’t want to debate. I want to learn from what others believe.
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Sy Borg
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Re: What is Your Story?

Post by Sy Borg »

My story is one of an effective Flatlander, pootling over the surface of the world from which I was spawned. Other Flatlanders like me are transforming the surface of this world, seemingly moving from a high consumption "larval phase" to a low consuming, information rich "reproductive phase", with delivery systems to distribute the biosphere's genes and memes (spores?) to other worlds, out through the "extra dimension/s" of space.

The Earth has had an extraordinary story thus far and it would be pleasing to think that the story could continue in some way into (relative) perpetuity. Still, in nature, nothing is guaranteed. Caterpillars can run out of food and not all butterflies will reproduce.

If DM's First Source idea accords with reality, then maybe nothing is lost anyway. Given that our atomic nuclei are probably about as close to the stuff of the big bang as anything outside a black hole, one might say that a bit of the first source resides in every one of our atoms.
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