Comments

  • In what capacity did God exist before religion came about, if at all? How do we know this?
    I think the initial concept of God was created for language as opposed to a real being. I think that forces in the universe were personified because we are better equipped to pass on knowledge in narrative form as opposed to a series of facts. I think the current notion of a God is a misunderstanding of teachings of ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians who believed in a spirit world which they explained with characters and stories, which foreigners mistook these characters as real entities.
  • The emotional meaning of ritual and icon
    I think symbolism comes down to universal language, a language that really is a culture where all things of the mind merge together. It works in the same way as dreams where you compress multiple meanings into one, using form and composition to address all the issues together. So since it is reflecting the language and culture of the unconscious it is held very deer to the people.

    Many people claim the lion as their symbol because they have this personal and tribal connection with. Its a conscious link between our true selves and the outside world. Because the brain processes information in this dream way, its possible that this tribal dress of a culture (uniforms, flags, anthems, insignias etc) is purely natural.

    We are a family orientated species, our instinct is to stick together because we can survive better in large families (im calling society a family here because your surviving together). And a way to create and strengthen a bond with strangers to create families is to share symbols, a language and culture to link our unconscious self's together.
  • Free Will or an illusion and how this makes us feel.
    Again this is just a possibility i'm thinking about and am not 100% sold on it, but I think here that there are preferences and social states but they are simply one of the conditions I speak of. And that they are a result of previous conditions.
  • Free Will or an illusion and how this makes us feel.
    There doesn't have to be a pattern, because there are so many factors behind a decision its different each time, meaning that the reason why I decide to walk (of the 50%) is different each time and the times I pick the bus are also from different conditions.

    If you flick a coin 100 times, the reason why it landed heads so many times and tails so many, is because of the conditions: where it was held in the hand, the energy in the flick, the density of the air, the dirt that kept adding to the coin surface etc. And a lot of those conditions were created because of the conditions of the persons body, their mind, the changing environment, and on it goes.
  • Brexit
    I'm a Dual Citizen British and Swiss so I have an escape plan if need be. Having said that I don't like what the EU is becoming, while I agree with the basis of an EU (a body to help with European trade), it has become a power hungry entity (it feels like a cult now with their behavior). It is very undemocratic with not just the lack of proper elections by the EU population but also with the idea of different nationals ruling each other. It would make sense that a German EU politician would do things that are in Germany's favour.

    So I am attracted to Brexit as it not only provides sovereignty but also we can create trade agreements that best suit us, an EU trade takes many years and is filled with far too many regulations. Now with Brexit we could create the perfect trade agreements.

    As to the commitments we made, I think they were made with the mindset that we would commit ourselves to the EU, now we have decided to leave those commitments are no longer valid. While I agree this is unfair it is also the danger of a Union, it is always possible that members could leave so in that case its just one of the disadvantages a Union has. If I go to work 9-5 I have to accept that im possibly going to eventually get really bored of it.

    But what matters is the result, could it damage our quality of life in the long run or only short? This is impossible to predict as Brexit does provide a lot of opportunities to improve our economy. However the EU might want to punish us by introducing all kinds of tariffs and make trade between us as difficult as possible, the reason I believe this is because they want to set an example so no other nation leaves. But we all know that these interior fear tactics shorten an empires stability.

    I dont want anyone to get hurt, even though I dislike the EU, I hope we can trade with them positively and share a great growth of prosperity. Politics has become very hateful recently and that type of attitude needs to stop, just because you disagree with Brexit doesn't mean you should hope the UK economy fails as I have heard so many say.
  • Free Will or an illusion and how this makes us feel.
    For now I dont think we have free will because if the science of particle physics is correct then it appears everything that happens is a direct result of a reaction much like a series of Dominoes pushing each other over. So our decisions could simply be the result of the conditions of the moment.

    We choose to walk instead of taking the bus because a condition was created from previous events that made us prefer walking instead of the bus.

    And the feeling that decisions give us is simply another condition in the chain, our emotions have been pushed into a particular state, so the feeling works the same way as the decision making.
  • Is it true that ''Religion Poisons Everything''?
    Agreed, however I think Athiesm is relatively young, and so in time I think people will get to a point were godless philosophy could be used to kill and terrorize. I hope i'm wrong.
  • Is it true that ''Religion Poisons Everything''?
    All of the negative aspects of religion exist in other things. So going by Hitchens logic here, its humans poison everything.
  • Is logic undoubtable? What can we know for certain?
    Logic requires total impartiality, are humans capable of this?
  • Atheism is far older than Christianity
    Its hard to know if we had no religious thoughts at any time prior to Christianity. I'm starting to think that during the early paleolithic era, where were quite animalistic in our thoughts, and something caused our imagination to explode. As imagination developed I think it drove our minds towards curiosity and expressing our thoughts into a language that may have been a very visual one with illustrations and narrative.

    At some point that language gave birth to a shared spirituality to fulfill the curiosity. Because if your language is very illustrative and narrative based, then surely any philosophical thoughts you will have would come out spiritual. Then those first spiritual teachings developed into religions.

    Atheism could be a relatively new development caused by splitting the old illustrative language into separate ones such as mathematics, science, engineering etc.Causing an advancement into our understanding of the universe and thus eliminating God from it.
  • Is life meaningless?
    I think meaning is created by our imagination, so therefore life can be meaningful if you really want it to be.
  • What if spirituality is the natural philosophy?


    That’s a very aggressive stance you have there. I’m not an authority on his mental health, what’s the diagnosis?

    Either way, the idea of merging academic subjects into a single one interests me.
  • What if spirituality is the natural philosophy?
    Laird Scranton has written books on how the Ancient Egyptians and the Dogon developed similar theories that ran quite parallel with all kinds of Quantum theory, string theory etc. He is a Software Engineer who studied these ancient beliefs.
  • What if spirituality is the natural philosophy?
    I understand that many studies outline how the brain looks for patterns and compares them to its knowledge in order to seek a truth that makes sense. Also what one person believes is truth may not necessarily reflect the reality of the outside world.

    But what I am trying to talk about here is how anything can be believed as truth and the mechanics of how the brain accepts information and processes it. And that the brains functionality can be affected negatively or positively depending on how that information was digested.

    So when I see Christians mention how the universe was created, they have a very human connection to that story and they feel a level of satisfactory on many emotional levels, the package of information here is built in a way that makes them feel happy. Now when I hear many atheists explain their version of how the universe was created they don't have the same kind of connection to this package and often seem emotionally unfulfilled. This would suggest that when information is processed, there are areas of the brain that require sustenance and if the package of information doesn't provide enough to those areas it could affect your overall happiness.

    Again the Ancient Egyptians are a society I like to look back on, and I see how in their sciences they combined the academic studies into one subject to some extent. Some of the architecture combines human anatomy, astronomical data, history, particle physics, sound engineering all into the structure itself. Since those times the separation of the academic studies has allowed us to expand on each one greatly and pushed our technological capabilities to extreme lengths, and yet as we push ourselves further to atheism I feel we have to some degree lost a deep connection to the outside world and therefore emotionally lost.
  • Is it possible to be certain about the future?
    If you look at the universe on a molecular level, you can see that one particle interaction will directly influence other interactions. So its possible that the future while not specifically written yet, can be accurately predicted because the trajectory of particles wont change. Much like dominoes, one interaction influences another, then another and so on.

    I used to think that consciousness could interrupt the predictable outcome, by deciding whether or not to intervene with the physical world, but its possible the mind is subject to these rules too.

    Although this is just a super simplification of particle physics.
  • What if spirituality is the natural philosophy?


    I am suggesting that consciousness is fluid were different components such as emotion and knowledge merge together in different ways at different times. Dreams process information retrospectively by combining certain components together into an illustrative narrative. So I am wondering if we need to process information during waking day to a similar extent.

    So im not wondering why we dont dream during the day, but wondering if it should at least be similar by creating illustrative narratives, so a little similar yes but the process being different.

    What I am getting at is, does our brain require information to be processed into an artistic form in order for it to be completely accepted? Much like how a video file is compressed with a codec.
  • What if spirituality is the natural philosophy?
    Yes you're right, by "natural" I'm talking about a predetermined manner of thinking that we are born with, so while our physical bodies have systems for actions such as legs for walking, pain for damage awareness, we could have a predetermined perspective on the world around us and our place there.

    The creative lens is a perspective that distorts the incoming information, into an illustrative language where multiple information become merged into a package that the unconscious is able to read effectively.

    So i'm saying that maybe the most efficient way for us to view the universe is through artistic manipulation.