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26th August 2015, 06:18 PM | #521 |
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Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
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26th August 2015, 08:29 PM | #522 |
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Your body dies, and with it your consciousness as an individual person. That part that animates you, because it's not just enough to live on a ventilator, leaves to join the rest of you.
I think of it as being a hand with many fingers. The fingers are us as individuals but we are connected to the hand as one. When the finger is removed, the life continues as the hand. That hand remembers what the finger was like, kind of like phantom limb pain, but it isn't the finger. That's how I visualize it and freely admit it's a belief based on different types of research related to neurology, physics that I'm not sure I totally understand, and philosophy that I intuitively put together to come up with my idea/belief. |
26th August 2015, 09:43 PM | #523 |
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I don't of course agree. I think we are connected to the world, and at a more local level to other people, when we live. When we die, we are, we hope, remembered. Something of what we've done, if it was worthwhile, is added to society by our having done it. But we are remembered, not reabsorbed. When I see a falling star, what remains in me is the vision, not the star. Phantom pain comes from within. We do not get the finger back.
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Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
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26th August 2015, 10:26 PM | #524 |
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No, we don't get the finger back, sad as that is.
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27th August 2015, 04:56 AM | #525 |
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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27th August 2015, 07:35 AM | #526 |
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Simple probability tells us that we should expect coincidences, and simple psychology tells us that we'll remember the ones we notice... |
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27th August 2015, 07:41 AM | #527 |
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I recall you didn't answer this last time I asked, but as you say it's based on physics and neurological research, please explain what you mean by 'the part that animates you' and 'the rest of you', and what functions the latter element has, if, as you say, it's not your consciousness as an individual. If you're suggesting some kind of 'elan vital' or animism, I think you'll find that's contradicted by physics and neurology...
[it would also help if you indicated precisely which poorly understood physics and neurological research prompts your supposition, because it's can't be anything you've mentioned so far, as that's been explained to you.] |
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Simple probability tells us that we should expect coincidences, and simple psychology tells us that we'll remember the ones we notice... |
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27th August 2015, 08:02 AM | #528 |
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Och, who knows? She's (I assume) coming from admitted belief, so all she needs do is find shiny baubles of half-formed sciencish whimsy to glue to her gossamer cloud of candy floss and call it an argument.
Contradict it; shift. Negate it; slant. Reason it; feel. It's chess with a pigeon. |
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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27th August 2015, 08:05 AM | #529 |
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In a long-ago debate on the old forum, we managed to (sort of) agree that if you survived death and turned into some sort of immaterial soul living in eternity, you'd have to become either something much more than human -- or much less.
Dwelling in the house of the lord, forever twanging a harp, would rather reduce you to very little in the way of a conscious being. OTOH, turning into some sort of super-dooper entity inhabiting the whole universe wouldn't be any better, because even if the universe is somehow infinite (we have no reason as yet to think so, but anyways) you'd still have to deal with the horror of eternity -- a prospect that a poster in that long-ago thread observed would drive the most powerful mind mad. And then what? Madness for all eternity? Jodie? Hello? |
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27th August 2015, 08:34 AM | #530 |
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God forgets that she was plebeian, shod in cheap shoes upon rough earth, as she ascends to omnipresent unity with her forever selves. The pinnacle of expression is ever emitted — a cry to reach the quarks and shake the atoms on their loops: D'oh!
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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27th August 2015, 09:09 AM | #531 |
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27th August 2015, 03:04 PM | #532 |
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I think I brought that up somewhere above, but that does indeed seem like a contradiction, doesn't it?
I'm reminded of Anatole France, who said "the average man, who does not know what do do with his life, wants another one which lasts forever." Or the more modern variant by a mystery writer, Susan Ertz: "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." |
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Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
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28th August 2015, 02:12 PM | #533 |
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Simple probability tells us that we should expect coincidences, and simple psychology tells us that we'll remember the ones we notice... |
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28th August 2015, 03:26 PM | #534 |
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It depends on where we are going and what we do with our life just like it does here. Since I have no way to really comprehend eternity it's hard to say, I just hope I'm not asleep or in a coma like state, then I couldn't see the point of being. I could be a human being here and a cock roach on another scale of being. I might already be a cosmic cock roach and not have sense enough to know it.
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28th August 2015, 03:37 PM | #535 |
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I should say our corporeal body is inhabited by an infinite spark of something that carries on after we die, like shedding skin after you've outgrown it.
I never really understood the concept of the trinity until I came up with my hand analogy. The father, the son,and the holy ghost; The hand is the father, the finger is the son, and the phantom limb pain when the finger dies is the holy ghost. They are all one but appear separate. |
28th August 2015, 03:56 PM | #536 |
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28th August 2015, 06:37 PM | #537 |
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The way I see it , there isn't any reason it can't be a possibility. What I hope for is a life with meaning.
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28th August 2015, 08:04 PM | #538 |
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28th August 2015, 08:09 PM | #539 |
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"The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly worth the effort." - Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth |
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28th August 2015, 08:11 PM | #540 |
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28th August 2015, 09:01 PM | #541 |
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I look at it in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When you have the basics covered then self actualization becomes important which gives life meaning.
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29th August 2015, 02:35 AM | #542 |
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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29th August 2015, 06:21 AM | #543 |
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Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
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29th August 2015, 02:04 PM | #544 |
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It's two different things, but if we are an eternal one, what do you suppose earthly living is supposed to be about with all the push me/pull me going on?
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29th August 2015, 02:41 PM | #545 |
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Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
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29th August 2015, 02:58 PM | #546 |
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I don't know, I don't believe in intelligent design the way creationists put it out there, but I have hard time thinking all of this was for nothing.
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29th August 2015, 03:02 PM | #547 |
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Once I see a bunny that looks like a cloud, I have a hard time not seeing it as a bunny. That doesn't mean it really does represent a bunny. Our brains naturally tend toward certain things, but that doesn't mean those things must be true. Wanting to believe life has meaning is something our brains naturally tend toward, which is why so many religions have spread so successfully.
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29th August 2015, 04:32 PM | #548 |
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29th August 2015, 05:30 PM | #549 |
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29th August 2015, 07:30 PM | #550 |
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Like many humorless and indignant people, he is hard on everybody but himself, and does not perceive it when he fails his own ideal (Molière) A pedant is a man who studies a vacuum through instruments that allow him to draw cross-sections of the details (John Ciardi) |
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29th August 2015, 07:55 PM | #551 |
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"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest "The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David "Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze |
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30th August 2015, 07:04 AM | #552 |
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I wandered lonely as a bunny.
It's getting rabbity out. Bunny, the future is. |
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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30th August 2015, 07:08 AM | #553 |
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"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest "The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David "Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze |
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30th August 2015, 07:23 AM | #554 |
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After life,
playing harps, on bunnies. |
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"If I hadn't believed it with my own mind, I would never have seen it." - thanks sackett "If you stand on a piece of paper, you are indeed closer to the moon." - MRC_Hans "I was a believer. Until I saw it." - Magrat |
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30th August 2015, 07:35 AM | #555 |
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30th August 2015, 07:49 AM | #556 |
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Demanding that the universe provide you personally with some sort of "meaning" is massively egotistical.
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30th August 2015, 11:35 AM | #557 |
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30th August 2015, 01:01 PM | #558 |
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My life isn't perfect but I don't have any real complaints on a personal level. I was thinking of what you see on the news about terrorism, everybody thinks they are justified to feel the way they do. I don't think jihadist attacks are really about a belief in Allah, but about power. Religion is used as a motivator in those cases. If we are really all one the entire concept of religion is pointless much less any wars about it.
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30th August 2015, 03:41 PM | #559 |
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"They want to make their molehills equal to the mountains by cutting the mountains down." -turingtest "The universe did not come from nothing, it came from 'We don't know'." -Dancing David "Cry, booga, booga, booga! and let slip the Hamsters of Silly!" -JFDHintze |
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31st August 2015, 04:23 PM | #560 |
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