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#21
Life As An Atheist / Re: Does atheism have anything...
Last post by Asmodean - March 22, 2024, 01:50:39 PM
A bar of gold in the bank is not valuable because the bank may lose it.

Life is precious because it offers a very limited time to do everything one may consider worth doing to the degree one wants to do it.

There not being a sensation of loss after it ends... I don't see how that's relevant to its value. My old pair of shoes had value, and yet they ended in a dumpster with not a second thought - well, until their use in this example.
#22
Science / Re: "Just One Word: Microplast...
Last post by Icarus - March 22, 2024, 01:05:34 PM
This is an article about the cleanest air on earth.  Not unexpectedly, there are particles of plastic in the air, along with all sorts of other contaminants.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-town-with-the-cleanest-air-in-the-world?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
#23
Religion / Re: Christian Nonduality
Last post by zorkan - March 22, 2024, 12:16:13 PM
I don't believe in belief.
I'm even atheist to atheism.
As I am to all crackpot beliefs, except one.

I was personally visited by the angel Zarani on behalf of the goddess Zorka to reveal the truth about life and the universe.
It was described on gold plates which I have now buried, but to you my friends I am willing to divulge it if you wish me to do so.
#24
Life As An Atheist / Re: Does atheism have anything...
Last post by billy rubin - March 22, 2024, 12:14:47 PM
why is life precious?

if you lose it, you will experience no loss.

if you can experience no loss, a thing cannot be valuable.
#25
Religion / Re: Christian Nonduality
Last post by Asmodean - March 22, 2024, 11:22:23 AM
Quote from: Me_Be on March 22, 2024, 10:41:23 AMAnd this story authored by you there, is also you're belief. For anything at all to be known, it must first be conceptualised and infused with meaning for it to make sense or not.
Or you can just assume the words to carry their most commonly agreed-upon meanings.

The story was not authored by me - I merely reproduced and reframed it. I do not claim any original research in the realm of physics.

QuoteHuman language is the perfect tool for making sense of what we ultimately cannot know,
Perhaps it is. Now, what makes you think that there is something worth knowing that we may ultimately not? (By "worth knowing," I mean something that has or can have some interactivity with us)

Quotebut can envision this unknowing as if it is known as and through the senses and the mental capacity to be able impose our make-believed beliefs upon it as and through our conception of it.
It ceases to be make-belief when it can be verified as an adequate model of some aspect of reality.

QuoteWe have the capacity to think about reality, to perceive it by attaching labels and stringing them all together to make a story
There was a time, even in your own life, when all you did was gather and process sensor data. Your conscious capacity to sort and label, not to mention make stories, came later. A person who does not know a language can still perceive and think about reality in terms of some other sensory input, and may output those thoughts by other means than linguistic communication.

QuoteAnd we have been doing this story telling from cradle to grave constantly relating to our thoughts until we think we've understood who we are and the world we live in. But our limited knowledge as finite beings is still just a (belief)
It's not a belief if it can be verified as an adequate model of some aspect of reality, even if it is not "cosmically correct." Einsteinian gravity is not a force. Newtonian gravity is. Both model the same aspect of reality with varying degrees of precision. Both are useful. You can throw a ball and predict exactly where it lands using Newton's model. You can drive a car and know exactly where to take the next right using Einstein's. When trying to accomplish something these models are insufficient for, you need a different one.

QuoteBeliefs are mentally constructed arbitrary ideas within the sense of human I Am-ness,
No. They need not be arbitrary, or have anything to do with someone's "themness," beyond "running on their hardware."

Quotethey're born of thoughts.
This, however, they are. They are born of thoughs and are themselves thoughts. They are a product of sensor input and dataset processing. (Just to explain precisely what I mean by that, a sensor input may be a sound you hear. Dataset processing may be you recalling that sound or relating it to a cat or an air raid siren)

QuoteAnd yet 'thoughts' can never touch reality as it actually is, because reality as it actually is is inconceivable to the human mind.
Are you certain that you are not talking about The Cosmic Truth(tm) rather than reality? Because even if your sensor data is faulty, you still use it to perceive reality. It's far from inconceivable, and your conception of it needs not be total or often even approach perfection.

That said, thoughts are processes. They can touch reality through triggering proper outputs. Even if we grant the premise that thoughts cannot touch reality, however, how do you arrive at the conclusion that it is because reality is inconceivable? Being inconceivable is not a bar from being touched in any way physically or metaphorically, so... Yeah.

QuoteAnd yet seems to be obviously knowable in this immediate Non-knowing, for how could there be a state of Not-knowing for the mind - 'thought' simply imposes upon this unknowing reality turning it into some kind of known. So what seems to be happening here is very basic and simple once realised, and that is reality is known only by association by what is ultimately always this mysterious unknowing knowing of itself.
So close, and yet so far, it seems. Anything that can be sensed, directly or indirectly, be it by you or some tool for the purpose, is knowable. I don't see the mystery here. Precisely how it works - say, how does my brain store faces I've seen in memory - that's the mysterious part as I see it. Of course, the fog of mystery recedes with increased understanding, For an explanation of the state of not knowing, I refer you back to the discussion we've had about you experiencing not being in my living room, or above for the burnt hydrogen example. It works in precisely the same manner.

[EDIT:]Tacked on the response to previous post:
Quote from: Me_Be on March 22, 2024, 11:03:47 AMI don't think an observation of a belief is what forms the belief.
Nono, not what I meant. An observation of a log floating down a river may make you believe that "things float." Throw a rock in, however, and you will have falisified that belief. Thus, your model of reality, in which things float, should be modified to accomodate the new data.
#26
Introductions / Re: Hello
Last post by Adey67 - March 22, 2024, 11:18:46 AM
Quote from: Tank on March 21, 2024, 06:46:36 PMHello Adey67

Welcome to HAF it's good to have you here.

Regards
Chris
Thanks for the welcome Chris it's appreciated.
#27
Religion / Re: Christian Nonduality
Last post by Me_Be - March 22, 2024, 11:03:47 AM
Quote from: Asmodean on March 22, 2024, 10:34:42 AMIt's a fair enough observation, but I don't think validation is always secondary to belief in this manner. An observation may form a belief, and therefore precede it.

I think there is a third (trinity) factor involved here. Which is (observer - observing - observed) are all one unitary action.

I don't think an observation of a belief is what forms the belief. There is an awareness of belief, but the belief itself was not formed by the observer of it. Awareness and belief are one instantaneous knowing, and not two separate things where one precedes the other, or is prior to the other, except the belief within the idea of conceptual separation where the observer, observing observed, are known only to be 3 separate words in this conception.
#28
Religion / Re: Christian Nonduality
Last post by Me_Be - March 22, 2024, 10:49:26 AM
Quote from: Asmodean on March 22, 2024, 10:34:42 AMThere simply was no you.

You know that you didn't exist before your time - and you know that you will not after (unless you believe in some manner of an afterlife that enables the continuation of you as a single system in some meaningful way) It's... "All chemistry." If you burn two hydrogen molecules, you will get two water molecules. Those molecules did not exist before hydrogen was burned, and will not exist after they have been electrolysed apart or reacted into something else. Humans are no different in this sense - only significantly more complex.

Well I agree with that so far.

So when you say there is no you... and then say there is a you that knows it didn't exist before it's time? and knows there is a you that will not exist upon death?

Are you saying you think the word ''YOU'' is a synthetic product of brain chemistry ?

Thank you for this insightful discussion btw.
#29
Religion / Re: Christian Nonduality
Last post by Me_Be - March 22, 2024, 10:41:23 AM
Quote from: Asmodean on March 20, 2024, 07:56:59 AM
Quote from: Me_Be on March 19, 2024, 04:09:22 PMI think that 'Empty Space' is what divides the interconnectedness of all things creating the illusion of distance between objects. And yet there cannot be known to be space without objects and there can't be known to be any objects without space, so they have to be connected as one undivided unitary whole reality when it comes to the claim to know.. It's only language that divides what is essentially this one reality without a second. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's how we learn to understand ourselves and others. We, the one's that make the claim; each and every one of us;  who have somehow just suddenly popped aware out of nowhere, without ever knowing how or why. We just did.
Well, if we are onto something with a field-based model of space, then in a way, "empty space" is what bridges stuff rather than what divides it.

It's not a perfect analogy by a long shot, but imagine the surface of a lake. You disturb it, and concentric waves move outward. The greater the disturbance, the grater the waves. Theoretically, "the entire lake" may experience this disturbance, but at certain point, the waves created by it fall below the level of noise - those waves already there from other causes. The lake is an analogy for a field, permeating the "empty space." The disturbance can be an analogy for a particle - a wave packet of that field. If you try to resolve a point where the particle is, you will get a probability distribution, greatest at the epicentre of the diisturbance and decreasing outwards - theoretically, "forever." If that is all there was to it, everything would have been connected. However, there are different sorts of fields permeating space, there is an inherent "noisiness" to them ("zero-point energy," ref. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) and sufficiently-large systems are, much like the fields themselves, not practically changed by the loss or addition of their smallest components. If there is hardly any practical (or, meaningful) connection between "everything" at the building block levels, how would there be at the levels of systems consisting of more such building blocks than there are stars in the observable Universe?

Language is a tool for communication. If I start responding to you in Norwegian, you will not understand enough of it (assumnign that you have never learned it) to understand what I'm saying. It is not a reflection on the factual basis in what I say. Whether a car or en bil, the hunk of plastic, metal and rubber does not depend on it. You apply language, if you know any, to your datasets as a part of creating that mental model of reality I've been belabouring in the past two conversations.
And this story authored by you there, is also you're belief. For anything at all to be known, it must first be conceptualised and infused with meaning for it to make sense or not.

Human language is the perfect tool for making sense of what we ultimately cannot know, but can envision this unknowing as if it is known as and through the senses and the mental capacity to be able impose our make-believed beliefs upon it as and through our conception of it. We have the capacity to think about reality, to perceive it by attaching labels and stringing them all together to make a story, where previously there wasn't one. And we have been doing this story telling from cradle to grave constantly relating to our thoughts until we think we've understood who we are and the world we live in. But our limited knowledge as finite beings is still just a (belief)

Beliefs are mentally constructed arbitrary ideas within the sense of human I Am-ness, they're born of thoughts. And yet 'thoughts' can never touch reality as it actually is, because reality as it actually is is inconceivable to the human mind. And yet seems to be obviously knowable in this immediate Non-knowing, for how could there be a state of Not-knowing for the mind - 'thought' simply imposes upon this unknowing reality turning it into some kind of known. So what seems to be happening here is very basic and simple once realised, and that is reality is known only by association by what is ultimately always this mysterious unknowing knowing of itself. 


#30
Religion / Re: Christian Nonduality
Last post by Asmodean - March 22, 2024, 10:34:42 AM
Quote from: Me_Be on March 22, 2024, 10:02:12 AMThe point I'm making is that there are some people in the world who believe the story that is written in the Bible to be God's word. And that Jesus was the son of God.
That's all I'm trying to say here. The Belief is always prior to any valid or invalidation of it.
It's a fair enough observation, but I don't think validation is always secondary to belief in this manner. An observation may form a belief, and therefore precede it.

QuoteIt's all very mysterious because it certainly feels like I am alive, and yet there was a time when I did not exist, and so I can say to myself, ''who am I right now''  knowing right now that there was a time where I did not exist. And knowing I once did not exist seems like death to me now, so death is a strange concept then, insofar as how could I have been dead if I know that I am alive right here and now? That question is unanswerable, in my opinion.
This is interesting, because from my point of view, your question is actually very easy to answer.

You were not dead before you were born - or, conceived, in fact. There simply was no you. Death is something that happens to something that is alive. A cell may die - or a system (of systems) of cells, constituting a human. Death is the degradation of a living system into its non-living components. Thus, there is no death without preceding life.

You know that you didn't exist before your time - and you know that you will not after (unless you believe in some manner of an afterlife that enables the continuation of you as a single system in some meaningful way) It's... "All chemistry." If you burn two hydrogen molecules, you will get two water molecules. Those molecules did not exist before hydrogen was burned, and will not exist after they have been electrolysed apart or reacted into something else. Humans are no different in this sense - only significantly more complex.