Atheism

George, while pontificating as he is wont to do, uses the terms spirit and soul, as though one were to assume that such things exist. Neither science nor the god squad can prove the existence of spirits or souls. Those Jesuits failed with George, they routinely turn out atheists, but they missed this time.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

George, while pontificating as he is wont to do, uses the terms spirit and soul, as though one were to assume that such things exist. Neither science nor the god squad can prove the existence of spirits or souls. Those Jesuits failed with George, they routinely turn out atheists, but they missed this time.

'Soul' means consciousness, i.e. the part of you that experiences/perceives sensory inputs, feelings, thoughts, sensations, emotions, etc.

I don't assume a rock or a computer monitor experiences consciousness, at least not in the way a human or other animals do. I do, however, assume that it only makes sense that consciousness must be rooted in something fundamental in matter/energy that is extremely well-organized in brains, esp. human brains.

A rock is cold and solid, but to the extent it has some miniscule electron activity within it or on the outside of it, it could experience some extremely weak basic form of consciousness, though nothing that we would recognize as being similar to what we experience as sentient beings.

'Spirit' has a different meaning, more like that of culture, i.e. something that exists as a pattern within other things but is really more abstract information, meaning, etc.

The spirit of Christmas is a good example, because people get into the spirit of Christmas at Christmas time and then they go on with other things after New Year's. It is a pattern that gives form to their thoughts, feelings, and activities; but it is not conscious itself in the way that the soul is.

People personify Holy Spirit as a personal being, but I don't think of it that way. I think of it more as God's Holy Spirit of goodness and creation that permeates the universe and is available to us to tap into within ourselves if we are open to serving the general good will of God beyond (or in addition to) our own personal self-interest.

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@livinglava,

Do you have a compulsion to run from thread to thread making moronic comments? As I said in another thread, I have no reason to accept any of your ipse dixit claims. What a maroon.

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@georgeob1,

So those who believe in Santa and those who don't believe in Santa have the same intellectual equivalence?

To believe something with no evidence for it's existence is the same as not believing something because there's no evidence for it's existence.

I'll ponder that.

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@eurocelticyankee,

eurocelticyankee wrote:

My wife died 2 years ago, it was actually her 2nd aniversary last Friday.
As he goes Edgar she was cremated.

Now i don't believe in God as such and certainly have no time for main stream religion.

But i like to think, maybe hope there is something after death and there is a chance i might be reunited with her.

And i don't give a **** what science or all the know alls say or think.

Anybody be they priest or scientist who claims to know what this life is, this universe means is full of ****.

Same goes to anybody who claims to know what happens after death.

Religion says we go to heaven or hell, scientists say we shut down, like a robot.

They're all full of **** and none of them actually know for a fact what happens.

So if it's alright with ye all i'm going to keep on hoping i'll meet her again.

You can hope whatever you want. It's your business (and I mean that in a positive way.)

However, you didn't answer any of my questions. I wasn't being rhetorical.

Science doesn't have all the answers, but it seeks them in such a way that can be explained as to the methods used to seeks.

All priests and the like has going for them is "faith" which is believing in something for no good reason.

My husband died 28 days ago.
I know science doesn't have all the answers. That doesn't make someone a know it all. I was asking a question.
Funny how when someone can't or is unwilling to answer a direct question, so much of the time they assume the other person was mocking them.

When I got to the hospital, the body was still warm. I don't know how long every single brain cell, nerve etc stops firing. So, I proceeded as if there could be some form of activity. I talked with him, held him, kissed him and removed his watch in the same way I would have if he were alive.
I just looked it up, and it seems bone, tendon and skin can survive up to 8 to 12 hours after death.
So, maybe I provided some comfort to skin that was transitioning.

But saying "I hope" something survives....I was serious when I said that doesn't make sense to me.

The scenerio I presented. Is that what you think happens? That some essence can control it's movement with the earth and be at a certain other persons death? Or more as a universal type thing?

Hope and faith to me are 1st cousins.
However, while faith can just blindly and blissfully proceed regardless of reason, logic, or proof, hope is much more fragile and painful.

I honestly try to avoid using the word "hope" in anything but the most mundane sense. As in "I hope tomorrow isn't as hot as today"

It just hurts too much hoping for something and having those hopes dashed. That's happened to me an inordinate number of times in life, so it doesn't make sense to do anything but accept reality until proven otherwise.

Faith is blindily believeing.
Hope is willfully jerking yourself around.

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@glitterbag,

glitterbag wrote:

chai2 wrote:

or even worse, liked Celine Dion?

I just ran out of the room screaming!!!!! You scared me.

I know. Can you imagine having to spend even a day with her?

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@edgarblythe,

Not at all Ed, you didn't step on my toes.

It's funny you now, i'm pretty much an atheist but that said i don't believe science has all the answers either, not even close.

Not that science claims to unlike some of the religious charletans.

I'm in the ''I don't know'' camp.

Science bascically tells us we're biological robots, while religion tells us whatever it needs too to control us.

I ask myself why are we here, you know what's the purpose of our existance.

To me there's more than enough ambiguity in science to allow for who knows what after we die.

Hence I'm an atheist who still hopes we reconnect with loved ones when we kick that bucket.

And Chai i wasn't refering to you as a know all. Why would i do that.
Sorry for your loss.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

George, while pontificating as he is wont to do, uses the terms spirit and soul, as though one were to assume that such things exist. Neither science nor the god squad can prove the existence of spirits or souls. Those Jesuits failed with George, they routinely turn out atheists, but they missed this time.

Speaking about "pontificating"....

The relevant fact here is, to borrow Setanta's phrasing that, "neither science nor the go squad can prove the existence of spirits or souls", also implies that neither science or the god squad can prove either their non existence or provide an alternative explanation for either our existence, or that of the universe that (so far) sustains us.

I doubt that Setanta really knows the details of just what Jesuit schools did or didn't turn out, or the processes leading to my views on these matters. There are several phrases and terms phrase describing such broad & empty generalizations. Pontification is one.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Do you have a compulsion to run from thread to thread making moronic comments? As I said in another thread, I have no reason to accept any of your ipse dixit claims. What a maroon.

I read and respond. You find it moronic for some reason. I suspect bias, though I'm not sure what your bias is based on, probably political.

Faction before active thinking?

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@chai2,

Here's one for you Chai.

Science says we're biological machines, ie heart is a pump, skeleton the main frame, muscle the hydrolics and of course the brain the computer, the software.

So science says when we die that's it, the machine shuts down.

But in the computing machines we create when we shut them down it doesn't erase the software.

So who's the say our biological machines, our bodies, cant be the same and who's to say our biological machines when we die cant access biological wi-fi and download our biological software into the ..........

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@eurocelticyankee,

I don't see us as machines. My personal view is that we are born to bloom out a lifetime, same as flowers and to wilt and die. We have intellect and so can discover purpose and given the chance make life worthwhile. Some of us can succeed and some are cut off at a far too young age or are bullied out of a fighting chance. I don't appreciate having to die but nature has no solution against that for our species.

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@eurocelticyankee,

Interesting but flawed analogy. I can't think of too many machines that change physically and mentally so much over time, that join with one other machine to make a new machine that will take over a decade of careful monitoring to be able work with another machine to create other machines.

Turning the 'machine' off is equivalent to sleep.

Memory/Soul/Spirit isn't 'software' (maybe personality, learning style, moral code is?). It's storage/retrieval.

So dementia is sitting a magnet on a disk drive and scrambling/erasing menu (maybe aging is too).

And death is more like when your computer is chucked in a crusher and/or incinerated.

But I appreciate the thought game and commiserations on your loss (and you too Chai).

Go well ECY.

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@livinglava,

You're the one here with a political bias, which you employ rather than thinking. What monumental gall for you to show up in a thread about atheism (apparently another topic upon which you are willing to expatiate without knowing anything about the subject), and to take a didactic tone to the atheists who are posting here.

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@eurocelticyankee,

eurocelticyankee wrote:

Here's one for you Chai.

Science says we're biological machines, ie heart is a pump, skeleton the main frame, muscle the hydrolics and of course the brain the computer, the software.

Science doesn't say any of that in the way you are indicating.

The heart does contract rhythmically, pushing blood out, and taking it in. The word, both a verb and a noun, that we have for something like that is pump.
The skeleton does act as a frame for all the tissue, or else we would just collaps in a puddle on the floor. etc.

If the medical community, scientists and other concerned communities ever refer to these organs (or others, the kidney is a filter (among other organs), the pancreas a chemist, the bladder a holding tank, it's in a very rudimentary way.

I doubt in the extreme the people mentioned routinely call these organs those things.
They are analogies for the expression of the most basic explanation of what some organs perform.
In the way you mean it, it seems to be the sort of thing in a 2nd or 3rd grade "wonders of the body lesson"
We all realize thought that it is much more complex than that.

Also, I've never heard our bodies referred to as "biological robots" or "robots" at all.
That implies we have no control over any of our functions.

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You are with your loved ones forever.

Either metaphysical magic sleeve or clown's pocket: on with the show.

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@livinglava,

Quote:

...but why isn't there a way for an atheist to think of consciousness as something universal, like a unified field, that localizes in a body for as long as it is hospitable, and then retracts away from that body when it is traumatized or dies?

There are very likely atheists who might hold such a concept; while I don't rule it out, I wouldn't list it as a personal "belief". I'd need to see more research into how this "unified field" works and how it can be shown to have impacted terrestrial evolution.

Quote:

Is the Tibetan Book of the Dead a Buddhist work?

Technically "yes" but Tibetan Buddhism is a school of Mahayana Buddhism which is far removed from the core teachings of Gautama.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You're the one here with a political bias, which you employ rather than thinking.

I would not deny my political biases, but I don't avoid thinking because of them.

Quote:

What monumental gall for you to show up in a thread about atheism (apparently another topic upon which you are willing to expatiate without knowing anything about the subject), and to take a didactic tone to the atheists who are posting here.

What gall for you to imply that people should bow to others in discussion. We all have different points of view.

I don't have anything against you or anyone else the way you seem to against me.

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Quote:
...but why isn't there a way for an atheist to think of consciousness as something universal, like a unified field, that localizes in a body for as long as it is hospitable, and then retracts away from that body when it is traumatized or dies?

There are very likely atheists who might hold such a concept; while I don't rule it out, I wouldn't list it as a personal "belief". I'd need to see more research into how this "unified field" works and how it can be shown to have impacted terrestrial evolution.

'Unified field' just means that all the particles that make up matter are condensates of the same all-pervasive field that makes up space-time and everything that forms from it.

So to the extent terrestrial evolution occurs as a product of interactions between the fundamental particles and forces of nature, like everything else in the universe, it is part of the unified field.

Quote:

Quote:
Is the Tibetan Book of the Dead a Buddhist work?

Technically "yes" but Tibetan Buddhism is a school of Mahayana Buddhism which is far removed from the core teachings of Gautama.

It's very interesting to read, if you haven't yet read it. It says that souls wander with desperate hunger and thirst after death, which motivates them to search for a body. It says they try to get back their old body sometimes, but it is a decaying corpse or has been cremated, so they can't do that. Then they eventually go between a couple in a state of union and that causes them to enter the womb.

There are other possibilities that involve simply merging with the bright white light of pure wisdom and thus avoiding further reincarnation, but a lot of the book is devoted to describing what happens to souls who for whatever reason fail to merge into that light.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

You're the one here with a political bias, which you employ rather than thinking. What monumental gall for you to show up in a thread about atheism (apparently another topic upon which you are willing to expatiate without knowing anything about the subject), and to take a didactic tone to the atheists who are posting here.

Remarkable. It appears Setanta wants a "safe space" where he will not have to encounter either disagreement of alternate views from his own. I was not aware until now that he had any snowflake-like needs and fears.

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All these comments/questions of "Can an atheist believe this that or the other?"

Seriously?

There is no "atheist handbook"

I suppose you would have to ask each person individually what they believe.

And georgebob, your comment about proving "non-existance" of something.

Hasn't that been beaten to death an infinite number of times?
If you still haven't seen the memo, the burden of proof is on proving something exists, not that it doesn't exist.

Do we really need to go over that again?

1 Reply

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