A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

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Gulnara
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gulnara »

To Gary Washburn:
I think person is not identified by honesty and completeness of his answers. The compulsive liar, illogical or ignrant person is still a person.
Why are there those separate entities, be them people or animals, or even different or individual plants? I think it is because orhanizm serves as reliable company, where the employees do not be late for work, lazy, quitting or getting sick. Mainly, not quitting the job and moving away. The conditions of organizm have to secure smooth singularity in the working of the multitude of parts. This formula of a good company, is winning combination for something to be presenting itself as separate entity, separate definite object. For example, even a diamond— it has to have particular elements safeguarding particular qualities in it to be identified as diamond. Remove one of those and it is just a stone, or it becomes somethig else.
Human being strives to live, so his actions are aimed at providing good conditions for each member of his company/ organizm to work to its best abilities. There are limits to the existence of this company. For example, if legs decide on their own that they will run so fast and so far, that they cause heart attack, that is not good correlation of actions. If brain will pull blanket to itslef, immersing person into the world of electronics, making him sedentary, he can develop a clot, or loose too much muscle for proper function of his body. :( Such misquided company/organizm will die before it's time. What about "scheduled" or inavitable death? Why does this happen? Because synergy among so many parts of very different functions has it's limit, and that determines longevity of the given company/organizm longevity.
Why then alligators do not reach old age, and if not for accidents, they can live on and on? I think alligators did not obtain ability to age because their surrounding is so dangerous to them, they inavitably die a pray to some circumstance. In case with people then it seems that death had even positive outcome for the descendants, who'd inherit material possessions sooner, or be able to become leaders, heads of households in place of the deceased. Human ability to age successfully means their existence reached level of not being so dangerous, so aging stepped in to give space to younger generation. If we beleave Bible that Adams family lived very long lives, that only means they lived immersed in a very, extremely dangerous for human beings environment, and only due to special qualities lived very long lives, may be being last such humans before people entered into a not so dangerous ways of life, reached overpopulation, and may be deluge or massive epidemic that wiped out people who were able to live extremely long lives, because extreme longevity can be sufficating to younger generations in their ways.
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

Longevity limits evolutionary adaptations. More rapid reproduction may bring adaptation that will outcompete. But throughout the ages there are plenty of signs of elderly humans, some of which could not possibly have lived so long without help from others. Kindness is very much in our genes. I'm almost seventy and can still run half a marathon in a little over two hours. Our ideas of getting old derive from a limited historical perspective. Our ideas of a violent and disease-ridden prehistory are influenced by a colonizing period in which indigenous peoples were inflicted with these problems by the activities of invaders. Humanity long before the historical era learned to keep themselves safe from wild animals of all sorts and how to provide sufficiently through lean seasons. Just because they were not prepared for a cash economy doesn't mean they led lives of desperation.

-- Updated November 11th, 2017, 3:29 pm to add the following --

Blinded,
Actually, thermodynamics does not apply at the moment of the Big Bang. Nor any of the other laws of physics, even as physicists know them, that's the whole problem. Further reading:

A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking.
QED (Quantum electrodynamics), by Richard Feynman.

Hawking is with me on cosmology, but might side with you, in his own way, at the sub-quantum scale. On that side he will not yield the prejudice of an ordered universe and from this prejudice derives his "String" theory. But to my mind it is a little like the gambler who insists he is "on a streak", reading patterns out of habit rather than based upon realities.

Tried to post this earlier, but got bumped out of the queue by Gulnara.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Count Lucanor »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:And where does the "Source" comes from? Since you said everything came from somewhere and the "Source" is everything.
To me it's simple. Exactly where the Source came from is irrelevant. It came from itself. It came from nowhere. Take your pick. Or pick something else. Something produced what we see today. Whatever you pick is the Source. If you want to call it something other than source, that is fine with me too. This is not the point.
I'd rather say the point is whether the so called "Source" has been established or not. There's no reason to accept its existence just because you say it exists.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:That may well make sense to you, but not to me. This conversation started with your claim that there was evidence of everything you had asserted.
I stated the evidence I use to base my assertion of a source which produced everything we see in the universe. This is evidence, not proof.
No, actually you didn't present any evidence, or proof. And if you want to take the Big Bang as the source of everything we see now in the universe, nothing would indicate that this so called singularity has anything to do with a conscious or purpose.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: Even if it were proof, it would not be proof to you if you decided to reject it. Sometimes absolute proof is not available, and we just have to go on hints and clues.
I'm always willing to accept what's reasonable, even if we have to hold it as a provisional theory, but still possible. Let's not confuse, however, a mere speculative approach with systematic thinking and true knowledge.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: That the universe may have been purely non-physical prior to the big bang is speculation, there is no real evidence. I am not really claiming to know the nature of the Source other than it is evil because produces suffering in living beings.
Two claims of which there's no empirical or rational support either. There's no evidence of something "non-physical" at this right moment. And for sure, there's less evidence of some spectral figure messing around with people's lives.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Gary_M_Washburn
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

I didn't catch that earlier. Nice! If reason, temporality, and causality are evil, we have every right to be inane!. But doesn't this make each of us a black hole? Reason, time, and experience pour into it, but nothing comes out but what is immaterial to any of it and so exerts no gravitational attraction? What Blinded may be missing is the question of scale. We are actually, and to a large extent, kind to each other. But in a complex society it is impossible to be kind to each other without creating social edifices that, with no direct personal connection, create unkindness, and even cruelty, for others. People instantly move to a richer community when their finances improve, impoverishing those they leave behind. Parents do everything they can to give their children a "good start in life", erecting obstacles to other children. Employers become so myopic about the needs of the company that they expect their employees to sacrifice their own needs, forgetting that our humanity is our ability to see to each other's needs, or at least to let them become known. Financiers get so caught-up in the flow of capital that they project and ultimate moral obligation in keeping the numbers current. Politicians, even if they recognize that their authority derives from the 'consent of the governed' are completely oblivious to the process by which such a "will of the people" develops, and so become obsessed, not with what people really need from them, but with devising systems of producing a phoney representation of a public sentiment that need have no correlate with what anyone actually feels or needs. And often will arrogate the powers received from a clearly corrupt system of elections even though we all can see through the deception. This, because none of us have any concrete way of explaining or throwing any light upon how public moods develop and evolve. Because we are free we tend to become enslaved by our own incapacity to devise a system to assure that freedom. We all know right from wrong in a rough-and-ready sort of way, but all our systems for establishing a system of morality go wrong. But none of this means that the universe is intrinsically evil. It only means we have a problem reconciling different scales of material and social interactions. Asymmetries arise, created or discovered, from the very effort to find symmetry, between the particular and universal, between the infinitely vast and the infinitesimal. The evil is not the symmetry, or asymmetry, but the failure to recognize the genesis of one from the other, and all the terms of the one in the other.

There is real evidence there was no reality 'before' the big bang, in that the criteria by which we know what is real we know did not apply.
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Thoughts Conquer »

*Looks at my post with next to zero-proof reading and unspecified definitions which I had the gall to call a "Theory"*.

*Looks at this piece*.

My ego can't take any more of this.
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

Gary_M_Washburn wrote:Blinded,

...the best way to prove yourself real to me is by proving me wrong... But lets leave Sumerians and aliens out of it.
Here is my thesis:
The most sweeping term of change is the last least and final term of a reductive process meant to preserve our convictions, but ultimately changing them comprehensively in the character of the very rigor of that effort to preserve them. It is in the change that we find our humanity, but it is in the preservation of an inhuman constancy that we confine all of our terms of deliberating and contemplating everything up to the moment of that change. The human is a progression meant for inhuman constancy but bound for change through which its humanity, at last, and without precedent or 'source', comes into its own.
Gary,

OK let's leave the Sumerians and aliens out, if you prefer; but I believe this is leaving relevant evidence out of consideration, which will affect the range of conclusions you can arrive at. However, proving you wrong is not something I can do. This is for several reasons, one of them being that I believe that, at least, some of what you say is completely correct, and in all probability most of what you say is correct in some way (not in an absolute way). I believe that the same applies to the ideas I express. They contain at least some truth, and maybe a lot of truth if viewed in a certain way or from a certain perspective. I am saying: hey guys and gals, from my perspective things appear to be this way; but I cannot make you, or anybody else, view things from my perspective or in the way I view them. I share my ideas with you, and I'm glad you noticed them, and you must decide for yourself how much truth you can find in those ideas and how much of it is relevant to you. If none, that's OK. We have a discussion to see if there is anything else that can be provided by the other party that has validity; but ultimately, you and I, both, make up our own minds regarding what makes sense to each of us and what we want to believe.

People have been philosophising in a certain way for millennia, and no certainty can be attained, and no undisputed truth can be found, on almost any issue. That is because we have limitations, imposed to us by nature, which prevent us from attaining absolute knowledge (at least of the outside world), including our reasoning process itself. Opposing views on almost every philosophical issue are at a standstill, gaining some supporters and losing some. It is really not my intention to convince anybody of anything. I'm just sharing and exchanging ideas. Maybe you can tell me something that will make me change my mind, but I doubt it would be a significant change. This is not because I undervalue your skills in debate or in the exercise of logic and reasoning; I think you are a fine philosopher (hard to follow though, due to your lofty/academic writing style and vocabulary use); but because my convictions arise out of life experiences, not from theory, and I believe it will take actual life experience to cause me to refine my current ideas and to increase my knowledge.

-- Updated November 13th, 2017, 10:39 pm to add the following --
Count Lucanor wrote:I'd rather say the point is whether the so called "Source" has been established or not. There's no reason to accept its existence just because you say it exists.
Agreed, don't accept it on my world. When I say Source, I am referring to the form or way of how we got to be here, and how the universe and the world came to become what we see. We are here; our lives are what they are; our world is what it is. There is a reason why things are the way they are. That's what I'm saying. It all has to do with the nature of the universe and the nature of life.
Count Lucanor wrote:No, actually you didn't present any evidence, or proof. And if you want to take the Big Bang as the source of everything we see now in the universe, nothing would indicate that this so called singularity has anything to do with a conscious or purpose.
To you, all of the evidence that supports the Big Bang Theory is no evidence at all, and neither is the fact that all of the raw materials that make up our bodies, our planet, and everything else, are, actually, the same material, at the quantum level; it is one fundamental substance that makes up everything. I respect your opinion, but I cannot help you here.

The fact that we see purpose in nature is telling us the universe is purposeful. The fact that we have consciousness is telling us that the universe has consciousness. The fact that we see intelligence working all around us is telling us there is intelligence in the universe. To me denying any of these facts is seeing that our bodies are carbon based but denying that the universe, at least in part, is made out of carbon. I don't think we are going to be able to agree on this either.
Count Lucanor wrote:Two claims of which there's no empirical or rational support either. There's no evidence of something "non-physical" at this right moment. And for sure, there's less evidence of some spectral figure messing around with people's lives.
There is no evidence that something non-physical cannot exist. However, when I say non-physical, I'm talking about mental activities, processes, or objects. I'm talking about consciousness, feelings, thoughts, ideas, desires, knowledge, beliefs. I call it this because, for example, our consciousness does not have mass, or weight, or volume, or color, or any of the other properties of matter; yet we know there is such a thing as consciousness, or feelings, etc. You may want to say those mental processes arise out of brain activity and, therefore, are physical in nature, but you cannot prove that. Until then you can continue to believe there is no evidence for spiritual objects, and I will continue to believe the evidence I have cited. Besides that, there is much evidence that suggests the awareness of a person survives the death of that person's body (brain dead cases when the person is revived and the person tells of their experience during the time their body or brain was dead).
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Thoughts Conquer »

Well you can just ignore my earlier comment as the first time I missed the last bit and it turns out this is a suicide note.

I wouldn't do it if I were you; seeing as you were irrational to not kill yourself before making this post, you might as well make it stretch. The pursuit of life is the pursuit of personal pleasure, in whatever form that may be. We agree on this, so why not be "evil"? I'm completely fine with existing, knowing that my existence harms, in some small way, another living thing, as long as I don't empathize with the creature. If I feel fine about what I do, then there's no problem. I'm not a psychopath or anything; I just understand that suffering is a part of life and I plan to enjoy myself before mine ends.
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Steve3007 »

BlindedWantsToSee to Count Lucanor:
The fact that we see purpose in nature is telling us the universe is purposeful. The fact that we have consciousness is telling us that the universe has consciousness. The fact that we see intelligence working all around us is telling us there is intelligence in the universe. To me denying any of these facts is seeing that our bodies are carbon based but denying that the universe, at least in part, is made out of carbon.
So some bits of the universe are made from carbon, and some aren't. Some parts have purpose and some don't. Some parts are conscious and some aren't?

I agree with that.
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

Blinded,
You are finally coming to an essential question. If your posts are a suicide note I would like to add my opinion that you do not do it. Any premature death is a great loss to the world, because life is a character of the differing time is that cannot be replaced, and I believe that time is the drama of realizing all that difference each of us is of it, even if this takes all the universe of time and space to do this. I think we all feel that we might be becoming, or making ourselves, the tool of evil. The moral dilemma certainly can seem that whatever we do in an effort to conquer or thwart evil, and good we try to do, tends to become or get made into just more material in an edifice of wrongs and injustice. You cannot yet see that my view helps us along the way because you expect too much all at once, but consider this: we are all born strangers to this universe, but we all, or mostly all, become convinced we are most at home in it, at least in some ways. Consider how meaningless a conversation in an unknown language sounds to us, and yet how facile we are in our own? This difference does not happen all at once, but in an important sense it does happen in moments of sweeping changes in our ability to understand one another. We don't learn a language word-by-word, at least not initially, we learn to speak in sudden moment of recognition.

A good example of this sudden coming to see is, quite literally, of coming to see. A woman was restored sight in her blind eye, through which she had never seen before. It was not long before she cold see through that second eye, but stereo vision did not come to her right away. She did not think it ever would. But one day she was in her car when the dashboard and steering wheel seemed to pop up towards her. At first she had no idea what had happened, only that things around her seemed to project toward her dangerously. But as the alarming dynamism of vision slowly settled to an accustomed sensation she realized that, all of a sudden, she could see in depth, in three dimension. Ponder this for a while and you will realize it had to happen this way, there simply can be no intermediate condition between two and three dimensional vision. And, similarly, there can be no intermediate condition between the stranger you cannot understand and the familiar you cannot help but understand. Yes, we do seem to get to know each other, stranger or member of the same social group, in incremental ways, but the fact is, and in an important sense, each increment is more complete than either the strangeness or the familiarity that seems to form its out boundaries. If we use such ends to navigate this we fail to see the real drama of it. Purpose blinds us to that difference, where the real meaning has nothing to do with ends or limits. And that, to my mind, is why the universe has no definable beginning nor end, though it did indeed come into being and will pass away.

By the way, the evidence for the Big Bang is clear, the universe is, and always has been, expanding. Reverse the expansion and you get 'POOF!'

-- Updated November 14th, 2017, 8:45 am to add the following --

It was not long before she cold see through

should read

It was not long before she could see through
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Count Lucanor »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:I'd rather say the point is whether the so called "Source" has been established or not. There's no reason to accept its existence just because you say it exists.
Agreed, don't accept it on my world. When I say Source, I am referring to the form or way of how we got to be here, and how the universe and the world came to become what we see. We are here; our lives are what they are; our world is what it is. There is a reason why things are the way they are. That's what I'm saying. It all has to do with the nature of the universe and the nature of life.
As long as you acknowledge that there's space for other views about what reality is and what comes in play in human affairs, I guess there's no problem. I'm aware that the nature of this forum allows for the type of conversations in which you can come up to say: "I feel like believing X, anyone feels the same?"and the chatting goes on. Or you can say "X is a truthful proposition about the world, one of universal validity". A different conversation stems from that.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:No, actually you didn't present any evidence, or proof. And if you want to take the Big Bang as the source of everything we see now in the universe, nothing would indicate that this so called singularity has anything to do with a conscious or purpose.
To you, all of the evidence that supports the Big Bang Theory is no evidence at all, and neither is the fact that all of the raw materials that make up our bodies, our planet, and everything else, are, actually, the same material, at the quantum level; it is one fundamental substance that makes up everything. I respect your opinion, but I cannot help you here.
I have no reason to doubt the claims that the universe is expanding and that there was an initial phase of that expansion, which can be called the Big Bang. But there's a difference between claiming that it is an absolute beginning, when all physical laws were suspended and everything popped out of nothing, and claiming it was a relative beginning, an inflection point. The problem has not been settled yet and Hawking's position on the issue is that there's nothing to say about the absence of causes for "popping up", which has forced him lately to be more outspoken about his atheism, given that he himself opened the doors to an "uncaused cause". From a philosophical perspective, the problem boils down to defining if nothingness exists, which I find to be an absurd claim.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: The fact that we see purpose in nature is telling us the universe is purposeful. The fact that we have consciousness is telling us that the universe has consciousness. The fact that we see intelligence working all around us is telling us there is intelligence in the universe. To me denying any of these facts is seeing that our bodies are carbon based but denying that the universe, at least in part, is made out of carbon. I don't think we are going to be able to agree on this either.
I'm sorry, but I and a good bunch of people have been looking and we don't see purpose in nature, only the projections of man's desires and illusions applied to phenomena that have explanations in physical, material causes. And inteligence, we see it only where material brains are. It's not something floating up in the air.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:Two claims of which there's no empirical or rational support either. There's no evidence of something "non-physical" at this right moment. And for sure, there's less evidence of some spectral figure messing around with people's lives.
There is no evidence that something non-physical cannot exist.
There's no need to. Whoever claims there is, has the burden of proof.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: However, when I say non-physical, I'm talking about mental activities, processes, or objects. I'm talking about consciousness, feelings, thoughts, ideas, desires, knowledge, beliefs. I call it this because, for example, our consciousness does not have mass, or weight, or volume, or color, or any of the other properties of matter; yet we know there is such a thing as consciousness, or feelings, etc. You may want to say those mental processes arise out of brain activity and, therefore, are physical in nature, but you cannot prove that.
That's simply not true. It is common knowledge in neuroscience and cognitive disciplines, with plenty of testable data as evidence, that mental processes are the product of the brain, which is a physical organ. On the other hand, there isn't a bit of evidence of any mental process independent of a living body.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: Until then you can continue to believe there is no evidence for spiritual objects, and I will continue to believe the evidence I have cited.
Please allow me to correct: I can continue to hold the knowledge I have from the testable evidence and you can continue to believe the empirically unsupported claims of a spiritual realm.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: Besides that, there is much evidence that suggests the awareness of a person survives the death of that person's body (brain dead cases when the person is revived and the person tells of their experience during the time their body or brain was dead).
Unfortunately, you are still forced to admit that such questionable, unreliable, untestable, indirect "evidence", must come from a material body, which underlines how out of touch we are with that supposed spiritual domain.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

The concept of infinity is a treacherous tool to those who wield it. Refer to George Berkeley's The Analyst. The calculus relies on a summation of slices of a curve presumptively reduced all differences to the 'infinitesimal'. Quite aside from the issues Berkeley raises, if it can make any sense to say our calculations approach infinity, the differences at that scale actually become greater than the pieces in the summation. The calculus therein fails. From there we can make up stories, as Blinded does, and just as surely Hawking does (and the super-symmetry promoters do). Or, we can try to find a kind of reasoning that is just as rigorous but that takes the failure of the extremity into account. For all its tendencies to wax poetic, maybe it's time to move from calculation to valuation, from the quantifier to the qualifier.
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by BlindedWantsToSee »

I want to thank all of you who may be concerned about the possibility of me taking my own life, or regarding my emotional state or well-being. Please rest assured I am not making any emotional or rash decisions, and all my actions will be deliberate and responsibly taken, after the careful consideration of all relevant facts I know of.

-- Updated November 18th, 2017, 8:27 pm to add the following --
Gary_M_Washburn wrote:The concept of infinity is a treacherous tool... The calculus therein fails. From there we can make up stories, as Blinded does, and just as surely Hawking does (and the super-symmetry promoters do). Or, we can try to find a kind of reasoning that is just as rigorous but that takes the failure of the extremity into account. For all its tendencies to wax poetic, maybe it's time to move from calculation to valuation, from the quantifier to the qualifier.
I agree it is possible for calculus predictions to be incorrect, but the odds are overwhelming that they will be correct, at least for what I can remember from College Calculus. The point being that my theory is just a theory, arrived at by evaluating evidence of all kinds (historical, current research of many fields of study, my own life experiences, observation and analysis of society locally and globally, etc. and putting the evidence together in the only way it makes sense, if it were all true). This theory could be wrong, but it is unlikely. I am sure that what I stated in my theory is true. There are many other scenarios playing out at the same time, of course. Those are just as true as the scenario I have described in my theory. But scenarios change (as the world turns), and I predict the life scenarios of many people eventually will turn into the undesirable state described in my theory (even in future lives or incarnations, if you will).

I really believe most people do not have to even pay attention to what I say because they cannot relate in any way to it. This information may not be relevant to them at all. They just need to keep the status quo, everything the way it's always been. I look for change because when I look at reality, I don't like it, not for me, not for other people, etc. So I share my thoughts for those who do not like the reality they see, and may find something of value in what I say, in hopes that those Ideas will improve their lives in some way.

-- Updated November 18th, 2017, 10:32 pm to add the following --
Count Lucanor wrote:
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: The fact that we see purpose in nature is telling us the universe is purposeful. The fact that we have consciousness is telling us that the universe has consciousness. The fact that we see intelligence working all around us is telling us there is intelligence in the universe. To me denying any of these facts is seeing that our bodies are carbon based but denying that the universe, at least in part, is made out of carbon. I don't think we are going to be able to agree on this either.
I'm sorry, but I and a good bunch of people have been looking and we don't see purpose in nature, only the projections of man's desires and illusions applied to phenomena that have explanations in physical, material causes. And intelligence, we see it only where material brains are. It's not something floating up in the air.
When I see the cosmos, for example galaxies or planetary systems and their movements, I can discern order, structure, design, even purpose (the purpose of repeating their cycles maybe), definitely not randomness or chaos. On this planet, we see life forms which display purpose and intelligence as part of the design of their physiology: our organs all are intelligently constructed to serve a purpose. Human beings did not design those organs, so the intelligence and the sense of purpose are not only in us. We have them because the earth, which gave us life, has them. I'm not trying to shove this down your throat; this is just what makes sense to me. I respect you believe differently.
Count Lucanor wrote:Two claims of which there's no empirical or rational support either. There's no evidence of something "non-physical" at this right moment. And for sure, there's less evidence of some spectral figure messing around with people's lives.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:There is no evidence that something non-physical cannot exist.
Count Lucanor wrote:There's no need to. Whoever claims there is, has the burden of proof.
Regarding a spectral figure messing around with people's lives, there is no need for the universe or reality to have intelligence or intention or to have a non-physical agent acting to be destructive to us or to living beings in general. Just look at the world; whether there is a non-physical intelligence present or not, most of the world lives a violent reality.

I, of course, ultimately cannot prove whether the nature of reality is purely physical, non-physical, or a mixture of both (which is my belief). However, when something cannot be proven to be right or true, it does not follow that this something must be wrong or false. It is to the benefit of each of us to be aligned with the truth as much as possible. I guess we have to go with our gut feeling, after considering all evidence presented to us.
Count Lucanor wrote:
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: Besides that, there is much evidence that suggests the awareness of a person survives the death of that person's body (brain dead cases when the person is revived and the person tells of their experience during the time their body or brain was dead).
Unfortunately, you are still forced to admit that such questionable, unreliable, untestable, indirect "evidence", must come from a material body, which underlines how out of touch we are with that supposed spiritual domain.
Yes, it is indirect evidence. It is the testimony of people who were dead for a brief period of time. I have seen many reports of such cases of near death experiences. I believe there are thousands of cases every year. Are those people all lying about their experience while they were dead. The doctors testify those people were really dead, some of them with no brain activity at all. Are all of those doctors lying also? We don't know for sure, but I have no reason for which I should not believe them.
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Namelesss »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote: The Evil Nature of the Source.
All 'good' and ALL 'evil' exists in the sinful judgmental thoughts/ego of the beholder!
If you perceive 'evil' ('out there', in your reflection), the 'source' is YOU!

"Perhaps it is the curvature of space that, like a fun-house mirror distorting our own reflection, we imagine strangers." - Mythopoeicon
Gary_M_Washburn
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Gary_M_Washburn »

Blinded,
The calculus works just fine, within limits. It is at the extremes that it collapses. But it requires an intensive discipline to grasp the meaning that derives from that collapse of the quantifier. The quantifier has a tactical advantage over the qualifier, but the qualifier has a strategic advantage over the quantifier. In the calculation of ends ('purpose') the final term is there is no ends at all! And that irony produces all the effects you perceive and lament. But it is clear you have no intention of engaging in the necessary discipline to learn this.

Fact is, the vast majority of life is very peaceful indeed! Amazingly so, considering...

Yeah, there are lots of accounts of bright lights and wonderful scenes. But this only means we need to review our determination of "time of death". When the body has ceased to function there is yet enough energy left in the brain to serve it to produce images that things are going to be just great. What a way to die!. I knew a young lady who would commonly have near-death experiences. She would get home from school and say "Judy farted in gym today!" or "Sally came into history with a big zit on her nose!" and then exclaim: "I almost died!" This was her favorite phrase, in that phase. Personally, I hope they won't put me under until I start to rot. Rigor-mortis is proof there is residual energy in the body after death. The 'evidence' you appeal to is a precursor to that stage, not a sign of a better life to come. The rest is rot.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: A Correct but Forbidden Theory of the Nature of Life

Post by Count Lucanor »

BlindedWantsToSee wrote: When I see the cosmos, for example galaxies or planetary systems and their movements, I can discern order, structure, design, even purpose (the purpose of repeating their cycles maybe), definitely not randomness or chaos.
What you see in the order of nature is the regularity of the physical forces that intervene in it, none of which appear to have any conscious purpose. And whenever humans have tried to ascribe a conscious purpose to physical phenomena, that is, explain the conscious reasons behind them, they have always failed. They have been left with no other solution, but to say that's all a mystery, something so "transcendent" that it cannot be understood. Meanwhile, scientists kept discovering things and moving the explanations of phenomena from the transcendental field to the immanent field, leaving the first one empty.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:On this planet, we see life forms which display purpose and intelligence as part of the design of their physiology: our organs all are intelligently constructed to serve a purpose. Human beings did not design those organs, so the intelligence and the sense of purpose are not only in us.
It's a fact that biological "design", although superb, is far from perfect. So either you will have to acknowledge the imperfect nature of the "designer", with the obvious implications, or accept that the combination of success and flaws in organisms is the result of a natural, self-driving process, made of billions of interactions for million of years. Why do we have the useless abdominal appendix? What use there is for nipples in males? What is the grand purpose the "designer" gave to the human tailbone and many other vestigial parts of the human anatomy? What purpose is there for sickness, hereditary or acquired?
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: We have them because the earth, which gave us life, has them. I'm not trying to shove this down your throat; this is just what makes sense to me. I respect you believe differently.
As I said earlier, it's your choice to believe whatever you want to believe. It's something different if you propose that your beliefs are not just beliefs, but facts.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote:
Regarding a spectral figure messing around with people's lives, there is no need for the universe or reality to have intelligence or intention or to have a non-physical agent acting to be destructive to us or to living beings in general. Just look at the world; whether there is a non-physical intelligence present or not, most of the world lives a violent reality.
Certainly there's no need to, from any point of view. Reality debunks by itself the idea of a supreme ruler that puts harmonious order in the universe.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: I, of course, ultimately cannot prove whether the nature of reality is purely physical, non-physical, or a mixture of both (which is my belief). However, when something cannot be proven to be right or true, it does not follow that this something must be wrong or false.
That's the old ad ignorantiam fallacy. There's plenty of evidence of the physical, material nature of reality, so that one is already a given. About a non-physical domain, it's only a claim, something that some people have imagined as possible, but other than the philosophical hypothesis, it remains as purely speculative and without any empirical support. It can be anything you can imagine to be, but that's all for now: a product of imagination. There's no need to prove the falseness of any product of your imagination, it can be summarily disregarded, since the burden the proof is for that who claims to know that something he/she has imagined, does exist in reality.
BlindedWantsToSee wrote: It is to the benefit of each of us to be aligned with the truth as much as possible. I guess we have to go with our gut feeling, after considering all evidence presented to us.
Our remote ancestors in the wild had to resort to their gut feelings for explaining the phenomena surrounding them. And despite their good intentions and cleverness, were clueless about the forces that were behind.
Count Lucanor wrote: Yes, it is indirect evidence. It is the testimony of people who were dead for a brief period of time. I have seen many reports of such cases of near death experiences. I believe there are thousands of cases every year. Are those people all lying about their experience while they were dead. The doctors testify those people were really dead, some of them with no brain activity at all. Are all of those doctors lying also? We don't know for sure, but I have no reason for which I should not believe them.
Most of these rare cases are reported as "near death" experiences and all of them happening just a few minutes after signals are detected. Such experiences have been explained scientifically as the effect of specific chemicals in the brain while in the process of dying. No rotten corpse has ever returned to testify, not that I remember. Before you go into your beliefs in paranormal activity, be reminded that it has been debunked zillions of times. There was a one million dollar prize for whomever could demonstrate such thing and no one could claim the pot.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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