The Preconception.

Human thought memes imbue a preconception appon us all.
That we are alive or dead. And that dead seems to hold some
equivocal status, that dead may not mean dead.
That death may be a 'state change'.

Occam suggests the meme is false.
there is no death.
There is existance
Or non existance.
DEATH, is a false concept. It is not a thing that happens to us.
It is an end to all happening.

Death is not a tunnel of light.
But non existance.

Existance is ALL there IS.. That's what existance means.

To all that say occam is being negative.
That conciousness can rise above such existential process.
Have yet to provide more than scattered indicative evidence.
You once did not exist. As did we all alive now.
What right do you claim for 'more' of what you never knew you
had before you had it.?

Most never do anything with it anyway but persist without question.

Occam

 

Hmmm this is really something thats 'blowing my mind'.
You should come up with a name for this amazing philosophy of yours.
Im thinking.. mmm...

Existentialism?

Maybe check and see if someone else might have thought of this too or anyone else is using that term.
I dont think Ive heard of it before myself although maybe check with University Philosophy 101 or something.

 

Ikden

And the purpose of your comment is?

Are you saying existentialism is taught in school..it is not,
and many readers are not uni/college room 101 types.
There are many who read these posts who are not quite sure what it is.
Occam was one.
He has never been to 'uni' and never been to room 101.

Occam

 

THe point of this post is.
That in human society, the word death does not automatically mean.
Non existance.

Pick your flavour or religion on non religion and it can mean a thousand things.
A thousand heavens or hells or higher states.
When it can be shown to all that 'something' survives the extinction of the mortal body. then the rules change.
But as far as we understand objective reality.
It means only one thing.
Not existing.

One exists, or one does not. There is no 3rd option. [that is verified, and untill it is,, rule number one rules]
Some say reality is not black and white...but they mistake 'human reality'
for 'reality'. They are not the same thing.

Occam

 

I just want to be clear about something here...

You state that "one exists, or one does not".
Ok.
Now this is verified by whom, when, where?
You know this how?

 

First of all, "you" are 1 of many combinations of sperm and egg that made it through your mothers womb. Many Many other 1/2 brother and/or sisters (sperm/egg) did not make it through. "You" happened by chance. Had another sperm in the same ejaculate made it through, you may have looked totally differnt because different genes may have been in that other sperm. Next, there is absolutely NO evidence to suggest there is some production line in outer space (heaven?) inserting "souls" in to sperm/egg combinations at the time of conception. Any kind of thinking like this can rationally be declared fantasy.

The brain is just (technically) meat. Thought, cognition, conciousness are nothing more than a series of electro-chemical reactions firing across neurons and synopses that have been and can be measured. These reactions don't even begin at conception, it isn't until after the first tri-mester that any kind of a brain starts to develope. There is no neuronal activity, there are no synopses formed. There is no cognition or awareness. This is simple biology that has been evidenced by mere disection of failed fetus'.

When the brain dies, electro-chemical reactions stop. The only way to keep a body alive is to do so artificially. When E-C reactions stop, you have no conciousness or cognition. there is no thought process. This too, can be and has been measured using PET scans, MRI's etc....

What is there to suggest that somehow a "soul" is inserted into the body, and at what point? The only thing I can think of to suggest this is creative imagination.

Occam still has the best (easiest) answer. During life, "you" are aware of yourself and your surroundings. At death, "you" no longer exists. Brain activity stops, "you" stop and are no longer aware.

Here is an article that may help you understand the development of the embryo/fetus. Its a couple pages, but not a difficult read. Its about embryology and abortion, so please don't pull that into the debate. It explains the development of the brain as well.

 

aldous huxley wrote a fascinating book called the doors of preconception which "the doors" took insight from to name their band... if you don't have time to read the book, just listening to the doors music will open your doors of preconception

 

Ikden

Good grief my man..you put pooh on occam then make a statement like this?
What third option is there?

That one 'sort of exists' or 'half exists'
Like being ' a little bit pregnant'?

Existance is closely linked to the concept of 'phenomena'
Phenomena are 'what we observe'.
Thus making a link between us and objective reality.

So far, no series of events has occured [phenomenon]to uphold he concept
that consciousness is more than a phenomenolgical event
sustained by the neurochemical activity of a our brains.
No valid evidence can be shown that anything called a soul is ever
'injected' into a human foetus.
As Isdarts points out, consciusness comes quite late in foetal development.
And if 'souls' are inserted at conception.
Then explain identical twins?
Who are one at conception and divide into two later.

Occam does not reject the idea of a complex standing wave of consciousness, something science knows very little about.
Having access to ............well who knows.

But an enternal soul?
Thats just religious pap. A Term the ignorant use in a desperate desire to
escape mortality.
And exactly why the church created it as a vital core of their lie.

Occam

 

So just to be clear again... you have decided that 'so far' there is no evidence that something you call a 'soul' is physically injected into a human being.

Now I suppose we might put aside how stupid a person has to be to 'discover' that a spiritual entity cannot be detected through common physical detection units.
Or,
That nobody has really been looking for such a thing or inventing such a detection unit.
Put that aside...

You are basically telling me that we may or may not have a 'Spirit' which we may or may not develop or translate into after death.
Ok.

I suppose what we are left with might be to take a look at what we 'do have'.
A whole lot of people who claim various sorts of spiritual occurances, transcendance, oobe's, post-death existance etc.
This seems consistant in just about every culture throughout human history and spans the length and width of civilisation.
Its really the one thing almost everyone on earth thru all time has in common.
Ok.
So i would say that I have some evidence there.
If not convincing evidence - its certainly something to work on.

No.. I think you should keep noticing that as-yet uninvented spirit-detecting devices are 'not' measuring spiritual injections into physical beings.
Good work!

 

Ikden

Very true
There is some indicative evidence.
but no more

And as for 'spirit detecting devices'.. Can you show occam the one that
religion uses to KNOW.that spirits exist?
Well, you yourself say they are 'as yet uninvented''
That means no-one has one.
And thus spirits souls are a 'concept to be explored'
And no more.

Pretty much like dark matter. Another idea created to fill a preconception.

Occam

 

Yes its correct to say that 'religion' doesnt 'know' anything other than it is based on evidence that might be accepted as 'proof beyond a reasonable doubt'.
I dont think anyone else is claiming otherwise.

I just wanted to clear up what appeared to be a case of you asserting to KNOW something without doubt or question.
Didnt want to see you become that which you claim to hate so much is all.

 

Ikden

Well you KNOW. the world was created in the last 10 thousand years.
You know it without doubt, so it seems.
'Just wanted to clear that up'
Didnt want you to become like me who you claim you dont want to see
claiming 'knowing' without evidence.

Occam

 

I repeatedly explain how nobody can 'know' how the earth and life started.
I remind people they do not have a TimeMachine.
You have to base it on forensic evidence and with just about everything in your life its always, at best;
Evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Thats the sense in which we use the word 'know'.
To the best of your knowledge.

You seem to be the one repeatedly guilty of KNOWING (as if by some empirical, objective and logical proof) so many of these philisophical truths.
You are constantly asserting the wildest imaginations 'as if' you have some secret way of 'KNOWING' how they roll.
If you are not doing that - by all means, good for taking the opportunity to clear things up on that.

In the case of Christianity, the idea is that humans are 'intended' to be physical beings with a 'Spirit' inside them.
In this case that 'Spirit' is intended to be from God.
We understand that we are born and develop 'spiritually dead'.
We do believe that this can be 'repaired' by a free will allowing/inviting God to put his Spirit back into us.
The idea is that after we physically die, that 'spirit' carries us to a new life.

Now, we do not actually believe that this Spirit is a physical entity so I dont think we would even try to invent a physical device to measure or detect it.
but,
What we do is look at the circumstancial evidence.
We see almost all humans from all cultures from all eras always seeming to 'seek' after some spirit(s).
We see some sort of inherinent 'need' or 'want' to find such things.
So, we have people who study the brain, the mind, psychiatry and these things describe this as humans being physically:
"Hard Wired for Spirit"
Ok.
Now again, this is not 'empirical logical proof' just like your plug-in is not proof electricity exists.
but,
It gets added to the bin of evidence that might convince us 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.
As well we might look at eyewitness testimony as well as testimony from 'experts'.
For example, if Jesus could demonstrate himself to be an expert and authority we can take his words as evidence for it.
Add that to the bin.

Obviously there is alot more needed to be done but the idea is that after accumulating enough it can put someone (me, others) into a situation where the evidence is beyond a reasonable doubt.
It becomes more unreasonable (illogical) to trust in the contrary than it does in the claim.
This is where you have faith.
Just like you are living 'by faith' when you walk across a bridge. You cannot actually KNOW it will support your wieght.
You do not phone the ambulance before you start across it.
But,
That 'faith' is based on evidence and what you have seen before. You have faith 'beyond a reasonable doubt.

So this is true with Christianity we hope.

 

Ikden,

You have a misconception of the word "faith". In the religious sense and in the dictionary, faith is belief without logical proof or empirical evidence. In a scientific sense, to have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, IS based on logical proof and empirical evidence and is not faith at all. It is knowledge that can and someday WILL change. Roughly 5 billion years from now the sun will not rise after it has engulfed the earth prior to going nova. Your attempts to inject scientific belief and knowledge with religious faith is intellectually bankrupt.

Using your own example above about the majority of the world believing in some sort of sprituallity is nothing more than appeal to popularity, a logical fallacy. Thus rendering that argument false. Humans have imagination, that is what is common between us. The less education human have about the world around them drives this imagination into the fantasy world. The majority of the world use to think the earth was flat and the sun revolved around us. It was the few thinkers of the world who proved this wrong. Not the majority. Christianity is based on nothing more than a god of gaps reasoning. It was how things were explained when the gaps of knowledge were huge. The gap is narrowing at a tremendous rate.

The christian concept of god can not exist. It contradicts already existing proven claims. Laws of physics clearly state that energy can't be created or destroyed. Thus energy has always existed and could not have been created by your god. Based on Occam, the choice of energy always existing or a god always existing, we have to go with the simplest answer for which there IS evidence for, energy exists. We know this, with no doubt what so ever.

 

Thats incorrect.
Im pretty sure you just pulled that out of your ___.
As I explained to you, faith is based on what was and has been and then put in things not yet seen.
Same for science as it is for Christianity or you sitting in that chair right now.
Please dont comment on this anymore. Thnx.

Im glad you will never be on a jury.
If the majority of people claim to have seen someone at a certain location it serves as evidence.
Re-read my post and try and 'get' what is happening before attempting anymore misplaced 'logical fallacy' rebuttals that do not apply here.

Then ask yourself:
WHERE THE FUCK DID I SAY THAT FUCKING PROVED SPIRITS EXIST?
Oh thats right.. Nowhere.

No they did not.
Read a history book or something before talking again.
Thx.

Wow.. I didnt see this part of your post until the end.
If I had known you were this bad off I wouldnt have dignified any of the previous nonsense with a response.

 

I agree that our use of the word "death" is somewhat inaccurate -- one could mean many things by "dead", depending on his/her beliefs. Your belief is that death is non-existence, from the point of view (or lack thereof) of the deceased. Obviously this isn't, and never will be, anything more than an imaginary belief, scientifically speaking: There is no way to prove it; there isn't, and I would venture to say, never will be, any evidence that can, conclusively, prove it. The human imagination will always find a way to cheat you of the glory of...not existing, and having everyone else know that they will succumb to the same fate.

To me the more pertinent question is: Why do you want to not exist? There is no evidence for non-existence -- to believe in it is a preference -- so why? I do believe that a sense of being survives bodily death, death meaning simply a body in a state of decay (or something like that). I can cope with this: Am I strong, then? Would your life lack vigor if you knew that you had an eternity to exist? Or do you just dislike life? I don't mean to be completely insulting; I'm just trying to think of reasons why a person would want to stop existing.

The joke is on you, Occam. What is almost guaranteed is that, when you die, copious amounts of DMT are going to be released into your body, and you are going to believe in all kinds of crazy irrational bullshit. So, in a way, you are destined to convert to "our side". ha

 

It interesting.
Beliefs.
Some have faith they will cease to exist when the brain dies.
Others have faith that there is some sort of translation from physical to a spiritual body.
I can remember this discussion at a funeral home and there you would think they have some special answers.
A Coroner may be absolutely convinced that we face Heaven after death and the Embalmer thinks its a load of rubbish.

A number of people explained having signifigant experiences after death.
Then another programme came out with a Doctor explaining how the 'lack of oxygen' caused these hallucinations.
Woops..
Turns out that the Dr. on the programme (and a LOT of people believed him) didnt know what he was talking about.
He got caught out making up stuff - but still many insisted 'they had proven' it was 'oxygen'.

What id do is the same thing you would do at a trial.
Look at all the evidence, circumstancial, forensic and eyewitness and so on.
There is no 'one thing' that 'proves' anything but some balance might come up for you after all.
Just like the 'Oxygen hoax' in the 80s, Id probably be a bit careful about announcing that DMT has 'proven' anything.
Its an interesting hypothesis though.

 

i do not know what reason rocks would have to lie, but i do know that people keep comming up with excuses for doing so all the time. so i hope you can understand why i trust rocks, and other relatively inert objects, somewhat more then the coerciveness of human society, however wonderful, whatever excuses it might come up with, for that coerciveness.

and what the rocks tell us, is that other life forms on this earth, have been arround, not merely longer, but many times as long as humans. that plants have been arround many times as long as mobile land life forms, that indeed the former made the atmosphere become one that the latter could breathe. that rocks themselves have been arround many TIMES longer then life forms, plants or animals, of any kind, on this earth.

inert objects and human remains, as well as indiginous traditions themselves, tell of even humans having been arround for at least TEN thousand years in the western hemisphere, and something CLOSELY resembling, if not identical to, modern day humans, existed in a part of africa, AT LEAST TWENTY THOUSAND years ago.

i could point out how even the christian book itself contradicts that figure of six thousand years, but that is an exercise, that seems to me totaly pointless.

a book is just a book. a creation of our immaginative art, which it is in our nature to be creative of. a piece of rock is a piece of rock.

and i again i can see no reason one would have to be deceptive.

=^^=
.../\...

 

nothing exists, either of itself, of others, or nothing whatsoever. how can that which has yet to come, come to pass? how can that which is present, come to pass?

 

Ikden
But creationists claim they do know.
While science only says. Earth is a product of stellar mechanics.
Life.... is way to complex for us children to understand. But we have a theory.

Occam