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MarJay
But it's British!



Joined: 15 Sep 2003
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PostPosted: 09:09 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
chickenstrip wrote:
You could have just introduced him to Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Saves beating your own head against a brick wall.


It wouldn't have worked. I mentioned those authors to him (and Hawking which had a massive influence on me) but he repeatedly cited baptist sources for the 'fossil record' etc. He was never going to risk having his mind opened to the possibility of their being no deity via reading a published work, so I just asked him directly to open his mind instead. That was when he cut me off.

As I said to him, In many ways I wish I had something that provided as much comfort as the idea of an all knowing, all seeing, all controlling being making sure I'm safe, and the idea of being alone in an indifferent universe is very much an uncomfortable one, but it's the only logical conclusion.

As many people have previously said, nobody is really a true Atheist, we're all technically agnostic as evidence is what will sway us. However, the evidence for their being an all knowing deity is... laughable as it's all literally hearsay.

he accused me of not being... what was his phrase... 'spiritually blind'. What a fallacy! What a fallacy indeed! I'd say rather than being 'spiritually blind' I'm simply open to being swayed by evidence.
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MarJay
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PostPosted: 09:52 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
By the way, The above makes it sound like I was preaching Atheism to our friend here. Just to clarify, he messaged me and asked me how I became an Atheist. He disputed my version of events in my own life. I knew I was on a hiding to nothing by engaging with him but I quite enjoy debating religious people who come to me and tell me I'm wrong.

I never look for religious people to engage with, and I only talk to them about religion once they engage me about it. That way I'm still 100% better than those types who come to my door with a small kid in a pram on a 35 degree day to tell me I'm going to burn in hell unless I read the book of Mormon, or witness Jehova or whatever.
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 11:09 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Last time I had the Joey Biscuits at the door I let them ramble on a bit and then said something like:

"Now start again with no reference to the Bible. It's a great book and all but if you burned all the bibles they'll never come back on their own... whereas if you burnt all the science textbooks all that information would come back over time as consistent, reproducible ideas are are never really lost."

You couldn't say the same for every other religion: something like Buddhism might be recreateable from scratch but certainly not any of the Abrahamic ones.

But hey, at least we're pretty sure Mohammed and Siddhartha Gautama were real people. Jesus is about as real as Ragnar Lothbrok Wink
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Bubbs
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PostPosted: 12:59 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Quote:
As many people have previously said, nobody is really a true Atheist, we're all technically agnostic as evidence is what will sway us.


That the truest statement i've read in a while.

It annoys me when people say "There is no god!"... How the fuck do you know? You have absolutely no fucking idea what happens after death.

I'm not a follower of any religion, but definitely feel like there is more to it than "when you die you die".. but it's just a feeling. I've never seen a ghost, and those I speak to who claim to have seen a ghost immediately become labelled as potential bullshitters.

Anyone here seen a ghost? Do you have a story that you're 100% convinced of?

I'm fascinated by these NDEs. I read a book by a lady named Anita Morjani, she had stage 4 cancer and basically died, then came back from an NDE where she was told by dead relatives that she would get better and return to full health. She shocked doctors and has medical paperwork proving her miraculous recovery - cancerous tumour shrank 70% in 4 days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Moorjani

...I'm going off on tangents but I'm open to all these ideas, being completely closed off from the prospect of there being a god is as bad as being totally convinced there is one. You can't claim anything 100% without proof.
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MarJay
But it's British!



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PostPosted: 13:10 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Bubbs wrote:
Quote:
As many people have previously said, nobody is really a true Atheist, we're all technically agnostic as evidence is what will sway us.


That the truest statement i've read in a while.

It annoys me when people say "There is no god!"... How the fuck do you know? You have absolutely no fucking idea what happens after death.

I'm not a follower of any religion, but definitely feel like there is more to it than "when you die you die".. but it's just a feeling. I've never seen a ghost, and those I speak to who claim to have seen a ghost immediately become labelled as potential bullshitters.

Anyone here seen a ghost? Do you have a story that you're 100% convinced of?

I'm fascinated by these NDEs. I read a book by a lady named Anita Morjani, she had stage 4 cancer and basically died, then came back from an NDE where she was told by dead relatives that she would get better and return to full health. She shocked doctors and has medical paperwork proving her miraculous recovery - cancerous tumour shrank 70% in 4 days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Moorjani

...I'm going off on tangents but I'm open to all these ideas, being completely closed off from the prospect of there being a god is as bad as being totally convinced there is one. You can't claim anything 100% without proof.


Anecdote does not equal evidence though I'm afraid. There is just as much evidence for ghosts etc as there are for gods.

Near death experiences have been proven to be related to the function of the brain as it dies. It's very close to a hypoxia induced hallucination.
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 13:11 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
Jesus is about as real as Ragnar Lothbrok Wink


Oh I don't know. Jesus could have been a real historic figure. Just not "The Son of God" and all that. He may have been a shamanic-type figure, or just someone who had some good ideas about how to live as a society.

Moses was supposedly addressed by god in the form of a burning bush. Maybe it was an acacia bush, a plant with a very high DMT content. There are a lot of people out there who think many such figures may have been influenced by psychedelic molecules from various plants. These things are mind-blowing enough for us today, but imagine what they must have been like for much more primitive cultures who had no idea of biochemistry, neuroscience etc.

Clearly, most religious texts are just apocryphal stories invented by people who had a shrewd idea of how to manipulate others, but I think they had their uses, and in many cases were probably very beneficial to the various societies in which they arose. Some of those benefits have been handed down to us and we generally live by them to this day. So I'm not entirely against those who follow certain religious ideas, but I think we can comfortably discard the literalism of this or that book nowadays.

Spirituality - it's a term that has been hijacked by the religious types in my view. We need a new word for the connections we have with the universe, now that we know much more about it all. There is something about it all, that when you take a step back from the modern human world, you can still feel at times. Who can look at what we have discovered about the nature of things and not be awed by it all? But I also think that science alone is not enough. Alone, it is too cold, too harsh. We can't operate as humans if all we know is science.
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 13:14 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Bubbs, I think it depends on how you describe "God". What I think many these days are rejecting, self included, is this idea of a supreme "being" who came to various people and personally told them to do this or that etc.
I have an idea of a kind of god. It would simply be a word to sum up all things in existence.
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Bubbs
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PostPosted: 13:27 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
MarJay wrote:
Anecdote does not equal evidence though I'm afraid. There is just as much evidence for ghosts etc as there are for gods.

Near death experiences have been proven to be related to the function of the brain as it dies. It's very close to a hypoxia induced hallucination.


That's the problem, all we have is annecdotes. Maybe the technology needed to capture the truth has not yet been invented, and therefore unprovable until it is.

It's thought that NDEs happen during death due to a release of DMT by the Pineal gland. Again I don't think this has been proven but there is a lot of discussion on this topic in the science world.

People who have taken DMT recreationally claim to experience NDE type experiences where they are transported to the spirit realm (or whatever else you want to call it).

The fact of the matter is, just because you can explain why a hallucination occurs, doesn't mean that that is the end of the story. Maybe it is the end of the story... but i'm not buying it. It seems closed minded to assume that nothing further happens because current technology can't measure it.
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Bubbs
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PostPosted: 13:38 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
chickenstrip wrote:
Bubbs, I think it depends on how you describe "God". What I think many these days are rejecting, self included, is this idea of a supreme "being" who came to various people and personally told them to do this or that etc.
I have an idea of a kind of god. It would simply be a word to sum up all things in existence.


Good point, when I think of god I just think of a higher power, pure consciousness. I'm not thinking in terms of the gods portrayed in religious doctrines.... I just see it as something more than what we know - a reason for it all.

When you play the "but what happened before that" game long enough you run out of answers. No one can explain what was there before the big bang. They say the whole universe was squeezed into a pin head.. but where was this mass? what was around it? the scientists say "Nothing was around it" but how? It had to be able to expand into something no? What put that grain there in the first place? Where did that come from?

Science is the answer!! But science has universe sized gaps in it's knoweldge so saying you believe in somethign 100% because science is crazy.
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 13:43 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
There are still some very fundamental things that haven't been explained by science. Consciousness itself - what is it? Where does it come from? The AGI people seem to think that once you have sufficient complexity in a computer, it will be an emergent property. I have my doubts about that. How does it explain emotions? How does it explain what I have a suspicion is an essential connection between mind and body, certainly to experience the kind of consciousness that we do as humans? A computer as just a compilation of electronics, however 'intelligent', is never going to know what pain is, unless we also find some way to give it a body with which to 'feel' things.

There are some very interesting ideas about consciousness doing the rounds, some of which could explain an afterlife of sorts, if found to have any concrete underpinning. If nothing else, it's a fascinating subject to pursue, and no longer seems to have the stigma that science once accorded it, effectively ruining careers if a heretofore serious academic decided to do so. Same with psychedelics, which are becoming more and more thought of as a way to explore consciousness and neuroscience generally (again!), as well as being found to have some rather significant health benefits if used in the correct manner.

Bubbs, I hope we never run out of things that we have no explanation for!
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MarJay
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PostPosted: 14:17 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
A hallucination is just a feedback loop inside the brain. The mind feeds images back into itself like a dream. There is no supernatural explanation for it.
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Diggs
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PostPosted: 14:41 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
My view is that anybody who says 'this is how it is' is going to be wrong because we are discovering new ways of explaining things all the time. In this sense having a religion to the exclusion of all others or declaring oneself atheist are both illogical philosophical viewpoints. IMO the truly enlightened human by is therefore agnostic by default.

It would make me chuckle if one of the established religions turns out to be right though - imagine all those bigots turning up at the pearly gates to find they have been backing the wrong horse all along, and all their self-righteous preaching and 'holier-than-though' smugness backfires as god/allah/fat bloke with 8 arms or whoever tosses them into the fiery pit with the rest of us non-believers....

Alternatively they could all be right, and each has their own fluffy cloud where they can sit and fire RPGs at each other for eternity.

Alternatively they could all be wrong and the one true prophet is actually the toad that is currently living in my garage, discussing his ascendancy to heaven with a tin of Gunk and the tumble-drier.

Lets not forget the space-alien theory also - we could all be players on a universal stage for the entertainment of the Clangers....

I could go on, because the older I get and the closer to finding out the answer, the more the options interest me.
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Ste
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PostPosted: 14:47 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Bubbs wrote:
It annoys me when people say "There is no god!"... How the fuck do you know? You have absolutely no fucking idea what happens after death.

...

You can't claim anything 100% without proof.

There is a Flying Spaghetti Monster and he has told us what happens after death.

We know what to expect in Heaven and what to expect in Hell.

Praise be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. : Wub
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 14:50 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
MarJay wrote:
A hallucination is just a feedback loop inside the brain. The mind feeds images back into itself like a dream. There is no supernatural explanation for it.


I don't think that such terms are the most important thing in themselves. It's what you do with an experience out in the world that matters, whether or not there is a firm scientific explanation for a phenomenon. There will undoubtedly be some kind of mechanism behind it, but as Bubbs said, it doesn't, shouldn't end there for us as human beings, alive and acting in this life.

It seems to be true that psychedelic experiences are very much open to suggestive influences, and will be affected by all kinds of things; cultural background, education, emotional state etc etc. That doesn't mean they can't be very useful to us. If an idea when put into practice means that people will have better lives and behave better towards each other, who cares if there's no scientific basis for it, or if the science disagrees with how such a thing is used? Science cannot be everything to us. That way lies nihilism, and then there is no point to life. And if you already believe that, wanna stop wasting yours and everybody else's time and buy some razor blades? Smile

For me, life is about the wonder of increasing knowledge and experience.
This is my problem with religions and their ideas of a heaven. It seems to me to be an excuse to consider this life as being of little consequence beyond following certain rules in order to attain one's place in this dreamworld of an afterlife. Why not find some real meaning in this life you are definitely living right now, if you are able to? That way, if the religious people turn out to be wrong, you won't have thrown away the one chance you might ever have at any kind of experience at all.
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MarJay
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PostPosted: 14:55 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
chickenstrip wrote:

For me, life is about the wonder of increasing knowledge and experience.
This is my problem with religions and their ideas of a heaven. It seems to me to be an excuse to consider this life as being of little consequence beyond following certain rules in order to attain one's place in this dreamworld of an afterlife. Why not find some real meaning in this life you are definitely living right now, if you are able to? That way, if the religious people turn out to be wrong, you won't have thrown away the one chance you might ever have at any kind of experience at all.


This sums it all up for me, especially when you consider things like the oppression of women in Catholicism or Islam. They are doing all of these 'duty' things now, but they aren't going to be rewarded for it.

Either way it doesn't change the fact that hallucinations don't equate to the supernatural being real, nor to the existence of a deity or deities.

You get people who have taken LSD or similar psychedelics and swear blind that they saw aliens. They didn't, they just re-wired their own brains such that it made then think that. It comes from the chemical effect of the drug, not because aliens are real.

Believing something to be true does not make it so. That is the other key to life that a lot of people need to pick up on (see Brexit, Anti Vax, Climate change denial etc etc).
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 14:56 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Diggs wrote:


Alternatively they could all be wrong and the one true prophet is actually the toad that is currently living in my garage, discussing his ascendancy to heaven with a tin of Gunk and the tumble-drier.


Funny you should say that. Have you tried 'milking' that toad, drying the result to crystals and smoking it? Wink
Actually, it sounds like you have Laughing

Quote:
Lets not forget the space-alien theory also - we could all be players on a universal stage for the entertainment of the Clangers....


Shocked Tut Tut Thou shalt not take the Clangers name in vain!
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 15:07 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
MarJay wrote:


Either way it doesn't change the fact that hallucinations don't equate to the supernatural being real, nor to the existence of a deity or deities.

You get people who have taken LSD or similar psychedelics and swear blind that they saw aliens. They didn't, they just re-wired their own brains such that it made then think that. It comes from the chemical effect of the drug, not because aliens are real.


I think you missed my point, or misconstrued what I was trying to say, (or aren't aiming this response at me!).

I don't think there is anything 'woo' about psychedelics, but I do think they could be used for our great benefit (I also happen to think if people want to take them for recreational purposes, they should be allowed to do so, as long as they bring no harm to others as a consequence).
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 15:08 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Are you aware of anything before you were born? No? Death going to be the same I'm afraid.

Once you go beyond the veil that's your lot; there's absolutely nothing you can do (with current technology) to not die. Live your life now waste no time wondering about the next life.
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Diggs
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PostPosted: 15:09 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Mustn't forget Norse. Perhaps the one true religion is a contemporary version where people argue daily on the holy internet and receive bans from the mighty moderators... We then go to a virtual hall where the God 'Justeat' feeds us until we can eat no more. Sleep and repeat....
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Diggs
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PostPosted: 15:11 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
waste no time wondering about the next life.


I disagree. Surely pondering the 'big' questions is part of life?
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recman
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PostPosted: 15:20 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Diggs wrote:
Easy-X wrote:
waste no time wondering about the next life.


I disagree. Surely pondering the 'big' questions is part of life?


The biggest question is why am I reading this shite.
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Diggs
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PostPosted: 15:25 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
recman wrote:


The biggest question is why am I reading this shite.


Some would say that the only way to get your answer is to sit in a wooden box next to a man who doesn't have sex with women yet is allowed by his line manager to shag kids, and ask him. 50 'hail Marys' later, a rub of the Bishop's mitre and you should receive your answer...

Peace be with you.
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Bubbs
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PostPosted: 15:33 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Easy-X wrote:
Are you aware of anything before you were born? No? Death going to be the same I'm afraid.

Once you go beyond the veil that's your lot; there's absolutely nothing you can do (with current technology) to not die. Live your life now waste no time wondering about the next life.


That's just guess work though isn't it. Maybe before you arrived in this meat waggon you did have a memory of the 'other place'. And maybe when you die you regain that knowledge.

Marjay wrote:
A hallucination is just a feedback loop inside the brain. The mind feeds images back into itself like a dream. There is no supernatural explanation for it.


I think there are different types of hallucination experiences. When it comes to annecdotal evidence with regards to DMT/Ayahuasca, people are having life altering experiences. Vast majority of people swear they are transported to a different dimension and are conversing with other beings.

I've never tried it so I'm like a blind man trying to explain the wonders of sight at the moment, but it's interesting how all people feel that this experience is immensly valuable.


Quote:
For me, life is about the wonder of increasing knowledge and experience.
This is my problem with religions and their ideas of a heaven. It seems to me to be an excuse to consider this life as being of little consequence beyond following certain rules in order to attain one's place in this dreamworld of an afterlife. Why not find some real meaning in this life you are definitely living right now, if you are able to? That way, if the religious people turn out to be wrong, you won't have thrown away the one chance you might ever have at any kind of experience at all.


Captured it perfectly. That's how I feel about life.
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 15:49 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
recman wrote:
Diggs wrote:


I disagree. Surely pondering the 'big' questions is part of life?


The biggest question is why am I reading this shite.


If for no other reason, because science and philosophy together are a heady and fascinating mix Smile
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chickenstrip
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PostPosted: 16:03 - 19 Aug 2019    Post subject: Reply with quote
Bubbs wrote:


I think there are different types of hallucination experiences. When it comes to annecdotal evidence with regards to DMT/Ayahuasca, people are having life altering experiences. Vast majority of people swear they are transported to a different dimension and are conversing with other beings.

I've never tried it so I'm like a blind man trying to explain the wonders of sight at the moment, but it's interesting how all people feel that this experience is immensly valuable.


I think you and I are reading about the same kinds of things at the moment Smile

I would love to try the Ayahuasca experience. Except I'm not particularly enamoured with the idea of throwing up Laughing

DMT - I dunno. Whilst it may be an amazing experience, it seems to me it's too short to really gain any useful insight from. I'm suspicious of people like Terence McKenna saying "DMT is everything!"

I am interested in hearing what the likes of James Fadiman have to say on the subject though.
As well as being curious about the "heroic dose" method ( Laughing ), I'd be interested in microdosing with psilocybin or LSD.

The one thing everyone who has used these substances seem to agree on, is that if you take enough, you are going for one hell of a ride, believer or not!

I'm also currently following the thoughts and ideas of Graham Hancock (yes, that infamous "pseudo-scientist! Laughing ). I should stress that I don't necessarily accept everything such people say, but you have to admit they make some interesting points, and when backed by people like Robert Schoch, it becomes harder to completely dismiss it all. I think 'the establishment' are slowly having to crumble in the face of mounting evidence to at least large parts of it.

With the consciousness question, I'm currently a bit of a fan of the Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis. It has an elegance to it, although once again, it is just a hypothesis at present. For one thing, it takes the complexity of neuron firings as the matter of the equivalent of simple 'bits', 1s and 0s, to another level altogether, literally, and rightly or wrongly, I like the idea of a quantum connection to consciousness.

Try also reading "The Master and His Emissary", by Iain McGilchrist, about the two hemispheres of the brain. McGilchrist is definitely no pseudo-scientist, a very intelligent chap (I also like to think this book helps to explain the Brexit/Remain war to some extent, and what is wrong with the EU!).
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