My theory of the universe

Freddy Mercury was mostly a fame ambition. He knew quite well where he stood in the objective state at acomplshment. However, it must be noted that in his personal torments he could probably lose sight of purpose in their minds' subjectivity.

Is there such a thing?. In a courtroom perhaps; he never broke the law as far as I know it.

 

8 inch blog..meaning you already have a pretty sound opinion on it..
no havent read that one..Im not sure if I believe any of that stuff.
It does def. make one think about travel though huh ?
whaddaya think about the possiblity of that ?

 

Yeah, 8 inches, baby. (Keep it clean, Okie. You're supposed to be a Christian!) Almost as good as Nine Inch Nails. Actually,my opinion on Newton's relativity theories is pretty unsound, since they are in the same sorry condition as Einstein's string theories--i.e., nonexistent. It does make me think about travel, definitely. Did you have any place in mind? I think this thread is travelling south! You and Famewalk must meet. You're made for each other!

 

Ego battles and few cliches masquearading as discussion of the theory of the universe.
I am out of it.

 

Theory of the Universe, in other words, Cosmology.
Boy what a challenge to you atheists. One is with the water for the 8 ball reward; one is knowing that it is others who are that pro-creating synergy; 8 becomes 7. Luckier to make friends, not be naive. 7 more inches. Not bad.

 

I'm going to try to tackle OkieFreak's magnus opus here. Your first paragraph pretty much covers the illusory part. It's obvious that what we see and feel as separate, whole objects is illusory. The things we see has having material properties are really almost totally space.


2nd paragraph: Adding together NDE accounts, people remembering past lives that can be verified with still living relatives of the deceased person as well as physical anomalies (birthmarks that correspond to injuries incurred by previous body at time of death), communication from deceased persons explaining the afterlife, accounts of those who believe they are able to leave their bodies temporarily, the whole thing surrounding ghosts and apparitions, and teachings of those reputed to be of great spiritual advancement it would appear rational to me to conclude that some part of us lives on after the material body dies. In fact, to me it would appear irrational to believe otherwise.


3rd paragraph: Perhaps you are correct in that I am assuming all of this adds up to reality as it is and that reality is unknowable. That's not what people report or what those who are accepted as being "enlightened" teach us. They teach that there are definite "planes of existence" that are attainable by those who apply themselves to developing their spiritual ability. They teach that over the course of many lifetimes we can steadily overcome the penchant for sensual stimulation and so learn to stay on the higher planes, thus ending the cycle of life/death or birth/rebirth. They also report/teach that simply moving to a higher plane, such as when one's body dies, gives one knowledge that is taken away or forgotten during rebirth. This knowledge can be/is regained when our consciousness is raised. They do a much better job of explaining it than I can.


4th paragraph: Quantum physics shows us that what we perceive with our senses must be an illusion. It has to be. We don't scientifically know what to make of much of our material universe. There are forces at work that we don't understand and can't sense or measure. That is a fact. Dark energy and dark matter are two such unknown forces. Gravity is a mostly unknown force to us. As for the article by Piero, I found it to be an illuminating discovery. I had found much of the research that he includes in the article on my own previous to finding it. Kenneth Ring and Charles Tart both have extensive websites devoted to their work, for example. I am reasonably sure that you will be able to find more documentation for everything he has listed if you look. I am positive that it is not his intention to mislead or report false stories. If you can find anything in the article that isn't true, please let me know. As you know if you read the article, this is a composite of many, many studies and experiments. There is some anecdotal evidence included but not nearly as much as most people can come up with from their own lives. I could write an article just as long as his about stuff that I've heard first hand or experienced in my own life. His intent behind writing the article was to make it interesting to the casual reader and present the findings of many years of research. All of the experiments and studies have been written up by the experimenters and researchers. Some have been written up in the press. Many have been written up in scientific journals. If you find anything in the article that doesn't include enough information to be independently verified, please let me know (with the exception of his wife's "knocking on the wall" incident).


5th paragraph: Good question. Most of us accept what we are taught. Life is real, life is precious, suicide is bad, God put us here for a purpose, etc. Despite all this, many people don't put much value on life, theirs or anyone else's. According to those who are purported to know, we are here to work out our karma from this and past lives and will continue to do so life after life until we transcend sense gratification as our primary raison d'etre.


Last paragraph: Good for you! It definitely pays to be skeptical. You are completely right in that there are many charlatans and false religions in our world. It is confusing and difficult to make sense of it all. Christianity is an excellent example of religion gone wrong. They are certainly not the only ones. All religions have the Absolute Truth at their core and teach a path that can be followed if one is discerning. You know, we all take chances every day and have faith that the majority of the time the outcome will be in our favor. There are many choices we make that we end up suffering for. I haven't yet made the choice to give up all of my attachment to sense gratification, but what do I really have to lose if I do? I did make the decision to meditate and chant a mantra that includes the Lord's name. In the 8-9 months since I made that decision I've experienced more joy and bliss than in all the 55 years prior. I am also much more calm, make decisions more easily, and feel more love for my fellow man. Coincidence? I don't think so.

 

Cool thought, certainly

The universe would occur exactly as it did if all the variables occurred under the same laws and exactly as they originally did. This takes the idea of free will into question, however, your will possibly results exactly the same since everything you experience is also the same, resulting in the same outcome of decisions and personality.

But, to claim that humanity has a realistic grasp on the universe to the point of determining the laws of its operation to an exactness seems silly seeing how little we really know. We know that we can mathematically predict the behavior of interactions with physics, but there's no proof that would suggest that such a tool as physics isn't simply our way of consciously experiencing the universe through the limits of human cognition (as in our senses were developed as means of 'seeing' the universe but are limited by the biological development to do so being merely a translator for our minds as to what reality truly is). But there's no exact proof to this either at the moment.
*edit: g'dammit plebe pretty much said this, that's what I get for only reading the OP

 

Thanks for a thoughtful, well-reasoned response. Maybe there's hope afterall.

 

I agree with you. We don't know. We can't know. But I don't think that's what Plebe is saying. I think he is claiming that some humans have a realistic grasp on the universe. That's where we part company.

 

What you're persuaded by is up to you, but I wouldn't call it "irrational" to disbelieve the evidence you mentioned. Adding together "evidence" from dubious sources, no matter how many are involved, doesn't make a case. There are powerful psychological reasons why people want to believe in life after death, and where this is the case, there is the possibility that perceptions are colored by wishful thinking. How was the evidence that you mentioned gathered, and by whom? What were the conditions under which it was gathered? Is it firsthand, or are we talking ghost stories? My probelm with everything you've provided is the sketchiness in addressing issues like these. In particular, to cite "teachings of those reputed to be of great spiritual advancement " as an evidentiary source is, in my opinion, questionable, since false prophets from antiquity to our own time have had no trouble winning followers who "repute" them to "be of great spiritual value". Some, like Jesus, Gandhi,and the Buddha impress me, so if that's who you have in mind, I'm with you.

Again, if you rely on this kind of evidence, there is no point in further argument. There are lots of people I consider to be charlatans who could meet your definition. Some people would put Pat Robertson in that category, or the various faith healers who cure people of their cancers every Sunday. To convince me, you need to do better than that. What this amounts to is an appeal to faith. I'm all for faith, but we need to call it that. Besides, some of the spiritual leaders I look up to reject the notion that the world is an illusion. Is your guru bigger than my guru?

No argument from me here. There's lots that science doesn't know: the nature of human consciousness, the origins of life, etc. But we can't use our ignorance to claim knowledge that some supernatural power is at work or that the universe is an illusion. I'm sure in your metaphysical researching you've come across Ervin Lazlo's Science and the Akashic Field. Lazlo begins with an excellent analysis of phenomena from quantum nonlocality to cosmology which are as yet unexplained by science, and then he offers an explanation: the Akashic field. Offers it is about all he does; no real proof that the field is linked to all the phenomea he claims it is. I think you're doing the same thing. And yet the Akashic field has already become the basis for a thriving industry of New Age therapies.

The problem with the article is that, while it mentions various research on parapsychology in glowing terms, it doesn't provide enough information to enable the reader to assess how the research was conducted, replicablility, what measures were taken to control for such possible influences as unintentional cues, not to mention fraud, etc. I gather you expect us either to accept it uncritically or to do our own research to try to answer these questions. But the important point is, the article, even if true, would only show the validity of parasychology and NDEs, not your broader claim that physical reality is an illusion.

This answer doesn't really seem to be responsive to the question. If you jumped off the roof of a tall building, what do you think would happen?

If it works for you, you've thought it through, and you're willing to bet your life on it, go for it! Here we seem to be on the same wavelength. My own faith is based on a number of things, including one intense religious experience and some "coincidences" like the one you refer to. Its all a matter of interpretation. Basically, you're saying what I've been saying in most of my posts. Namaste, Bro

 

.misfeed

 

Who owns the set? Forwarding a reply or something, eh?:cheers2:

 

It's called symbolic logic. Dot (.) is the symbol for period. Misfeed stands for missing a meal during the period. Logical?

 

and there will always be the " what if this was supposed to happen people were supposed to question this and say everything we are saying, ust as im typing this im thinking, what if this was always planned for me? or what if our world is some big complex ideo game that people in another dimension play, and we dont know? what if everything we do is a command, and we dont even know it because it seems like we are just thinking it in out mind.... it fustrates me to think about the unexplainable sometimes.

 

Interesting theory. It was actually the nearly exclusive view of the world for thousands of years.

Was?

Yeah. Quantum mechanics kind of proves that there's no absolute rules. Some particles can actually be in two different places at the exact same time.

All of this has given rise to the idea of the Multiverse-- anytime there's a chance that something could happen, it does. In a different universe parallel to ours. Of course, this is one of probably many theories, but it's the most widely accepted. And keep in mind that gravity is "only" a theory as well.

It's pretty mind-blowing. If you do some research into it, though, it gets almost comforting.

 

OP, the theory you are describing is called determinism, you can read all about it on wikipedia. I subscribe to it wholeheartedly, I don't see how any intelligent person who has a solid grasp of all the arguments can dispute it. Quantum mechanics might throw a nasty wrench into the equation, the future will tell, I don't think anyone on earth actually knows what the quantum world means to our understanding of the world we experience ... yet!

Your brain is a physical system and is therefore subject to cause and effect. You are a product of your environment / genetics and that is all there is to it. We don't consider bacteria to have free will. Lizards don't have free will either, they simply react to the stimuli around them constantly. Cats have a very limited selection of actions that they are able to carry out at any given point. Chimps have a comparatively wide range of activities compared to the previous examples, grooming, socializing, warring against other large families of chimps. Now we come to humans where we see a huge increase in the size of the frontal lobe. With this adaptation we are able to predict farther and farther into the future. We developed agriculture, permanent homes, civilizations, and governments. It's simply an exponential explosion of opportunity.

We are so much more complex than any of our predecessors that we have trouble wrapping our head around how we can be the same considering how different we appear. Things usually work better if we just live in the moment and that's why the majority of people never really ask these questions. It creates some serious problems as far as punishing criminals goes, but laws are necessary for society to function optimally and the only way you can have laws obeyed with any consistency is to enforce them with serious penalties. I have trouble assigning blame or credit to anyone considering that any and every mind is shaped by the DNA dictating its structure, and the outside inputs that solely guide the chemical and electrical signals inside it.

Also, as always, you get absolutely nowhere by referring the problem upward toward an all powerful supreme being. If "god" knows everything, he knows where you were going to be born, he knows to what extent your parents would mess you up, and he knows the future position of every atom in your body and for that matter all of existence.

So my philosophy is to do meh best to increase the pleasure of all living things which can experience happiness (humans having the the most developed aptitude for these purposes), eliminate or curb suffering in all its forms (humans again being the most prominent example), and as long as I feel I'm doing my best regarding these principles, I have no guilt whatsoever as far as mistakes I make. The ability to rationalize away guilt is one of the biggest advantages to this line of thinking in my opinion.

Just to digress a little bit, I think pleasure and pain multiplied over time are all that matters to all of existence, in essence ... the answer to why we are here which is a pretty silly question in the first place. That doesn't mean you should go out and do all the heroin you can get your hands on, that's why I included time in the equation. Consequences must be accounted for obviously. If it was possible for everyone to shoot up right before they die I would have absolutely no moral problem with it. They could experience the dragon without having to chase it for the rest of their life. I haven't done heroin just to clear that up but I know people who have.

Humans being the only species capable of escaping this doomed planet, one of the most moral things anyone can do is contribute to the colonization of space. Science and math people are incredibly valuable to long term pleasure through our long term survival. We may be able to one day approach a Utopian like existence for millions, maybe billions, maybe (if we are able to transfer physical life into an energy based life form since all life is simply information) forever, or something approaching it. Ever since I completely rid myself of a belief in any gods this is what I developed to fill the void left by the loss of hope of eternal life. It's a much more honest approach and I feel it's not at all beyond our capabilities.

Thanks for reading and congrats if you made it this far!

 

How do you know?