The tolerant atheist

And now we will wait to see what Sus' answer to the question is. He has been asked to describe the being of which he speaks, and to tell us all about this being. Let us see if he responds with an answer or more evasion.

Sus and Glenn: a marriage made in heaven...

Ok, that is funny.. plus true in my observation.

Dear Glennn, refer to Annex below, in other words you comprehend things by your experiences of things, i.e by being first and before anything else a conscious being, capable of thinking and rethinking over your experiences, thereby coming to what we might call templates of things: by which now you can understand i.e. comprehend things, like how you have a baby - if ever you have had one at all.

Now, in regard to your question, namely:
"Now why don't you describe that being, and then tell me all about it?"

Are you referring to God, in concept as first and foremost the creator cause of everything with a beginning?

Here is how and why I know God exists in concept as first and foremost the creator cause of everything with a beginning:

1. I have experiences all the time of things which were not existing previously and then they have begun to exist and are still existing, for examples, you and me.

2. You and I, we search for the chain of things giving existence to things which were not existing previously, like you and me we were not existing previously; then respectively your and my papa and mama, entities already existing prior to our existence, they brought us to existence.

3. We can go on and on and on...

4. Then we come to the inevitable conclusion that going on and on and on is senseless, because that is all inside our mind: for outside our mind and independent of our mind, there exists a first being in existence without deriving its existence from still a previous existing being.

5. That being is the entity existing from from itself.

6. And all others with a beginning, they owe their existence to that one being which exists from itself.

7. I call Him God, in concept as first and foremost the creator cause of everything with a beginning.

Okay, dear Glennn, let us all readers here, read your objections to my explanation on how and why I come to the existence of God, in concept as first and foremost the creator cause of everything with a beginning.

Annex

Hi Jo! Hope you're well.

Those two will ping-pong till kingdom come, I reckon...

I'm ok, suddenly elderly, how did that happen? wtf? Actually my health is pretty near great, good health scorecard if there are such things. My brain seems still ok, knock on wood, or ricotta. It might be starting to dribble, but so far so good. My immediate situation? financial, always a concern, so it goes, decades go by; I'd call it comedic over the years, and no, I don't dealve in stocks. Last time was, I think, '81.

I want to ask about you and family, which I like from afar.

Actually it appears to be a threesome at the moment--two posters and a troll.

You must still be fuming over having me hand your ass to you in another thread. You must realize that trolling won't change that . . . right?

Good to hear. We're vacationing in New Caledonia. I won't complain, although the wife still does... some people won't allow themselves to be pleased.

Hahaha... Tx for the laugh!

Umm, I don't mean to offend you, but have you forgotten that your powers of observation have been seen to be lacking as of late; like your clarity is not clarity anymore?

Are you sure it's just a matter of her not allowing herself to be pleased? And are you sure that the vacation is the subject matter of the issue of her not being pleased?

Didn't think of that, did you??

You are your own source. You are a part of the whole, and not apart from the whole. You are the eternal being. I am the eternal being. You believe that this aspect of you is all that you are, and that you owe an unidentifiable source (one that you arbitrarily designate as male) for your existence. And how will you repay this male being what you believe you owe it? What does this being desire?

One day you will give up the ghost, and when you do, you will know that your body was the ghost.

That's pretty cryptic, Glennn, and entirely appropriate.

Gessus, are you saying you never complain?

I just complimented the guy on an appropriate reply. How do you get a complaint out of that?

oh, well.

Yes, I'm sure.

Glenn,

The problem with that familiar comforting 'you are (or are part of) an eternal being' argument is that ''self' is unlikely to survive death to know anything, given that it it seems to pop in and out of existence every time we sleep!

An alternative view of 'existence'...one that is supported by current trends in both cosmology and subatomic physics...is that existence is relative, not absolute. For example 'particles' are only defined in terms of interaction with other particles and have no existence between interactions. And that view corresponds to ideas of 'self' advocated by some philosophers (Heidegger for example) who claim 'self' is transient.

The key issue (which I have no doubt returned to many times) is that all talk of absolutes is essentially religious since it involves faith in an 'eternal' state of being, whether or not anthropomorhically personified as 'God'. Psychologically, it is like the 'safe' permanent side of the pool which we would like to return to from swimming in the flux. But 'flux' is really all we ever experience which makes 'the eternal' desireable but hypothetical.

I guess you mean to say that, since you were unaware of your surroundings during last night's sleep, you didn't exist during that interval, and then popped back into existence upon reawakening. That's one way of interpreting the data.

Anyway, I have a choice between believing that my consciousness is an effect of my body, or that my body is an effect of consciousness. My experience has shown me that matter springs forth from consciousness, and not the other way around. If you define your body as matter, can you tell me what element, or elements, your consciousness consists of? If not, can you describe to me the method by which you would measure it? And if not . . .

This is a somewhat incredible statement unless you are talking about faith in some sort of 'holistic consciousness'.

I do not define 'the body' simply as 'matter'. I might refer to a definition like 'a dynamic energy exchange system far from equilibrium'. It may be that what we call 'conscousness' refers to some emergent aspect of that dynamic system in combination/communication with another to the mutual evolutionary advantage of both. Indeed some writers argue that 'self awareness' is a socially acquired existential state which emerges via language acquisition.

Whether or not we consider reductionist 'systems definitions' to be viable as an explanation of consiousness, the fact remains that as far as most peoples experience goes, the living body is a necessary condition for consciousness even if not yet understandable as a sufficient one. To go from that situation to non-reductionist position is pure speculation.