Atheists should shut up!

We always pretty much agreed on stuff, don’t see any reason to stop now.

So I’ve had 5 years to mull over what little of the Dao managed to sink into my bones from back in the day. Now the kids have grown up a bit, and my son has read the Dao as well, he turned to me after he’d finished and said “I kinda get it now, why you’ve let me make up my own mind on a lot of stuff, not bullshitted me about the big stuff and not really set a lot of rules. You were being non-coercive.”

I really hadn’t thought about it much to be honest - I’m not really the kind of person to ever have sat down and said to myself, “Hah, now to carry out my plan to raise Daoist superchild.” But seems like that’s what I’ve been doing lol. I can’t take much of the credit, beyond paying attention, not shirking the hard conversational topics, and letting them run and fall on their asses. My kids were always good kids. For which I am eternally grateful.

I really don’t know how to get through to you that your logic is built on sand. I’m sure that you believe in something called “a continuity of consciousness” but forgive me, I and a lot of other folks aren’t convinced based on your say so. When you can summon someone from your spirit world with tangible proof of an afterlife then perhaps I’ll believe as you do. Until then, I’m quite comfortable saying “I don’t know.”

Hopefully, you can see that we are playing the “I say potato, you say…” game. It is the ultimate in futility so I’ll just bow out. Have a nice day.

So sending you that Daoist translation planted a seed. Now, you are stuck with a two-headed alligator. =D> Wonderful! I raised three of 'em and they are whole people who will always be survivors to the bitter end. That’s pretty much all we can ask for. So go ahead and be a proud parent (no bumper stickers on the car). Just remember that the kids grew up as much in spite of us as opposed to because of us…

Continuity of consciousness is an elementary concept.

It’s self evident: you remember that it was YOU who did that when YOU were ten years old.

If YOU ever cease to exist, then the YOU now couldn’t be here, as the YOU now is an extension of the totality.

I know you’re trying to sound clever, as an antagonist, arguing for the sake of arguing itself…

The logic is flawless. It’s also borne of many peoples direct experience (though not yours)

Must admit Ecmandu, I’ve never really gotten a grasp of your - eh can’t even think of a name that fits - theory.

Do you mean somehow that as we age, or if that’s a contextually meaningless concept, move through time, all the past iterations of our consciousness, all those momentary holographic ‘me-nows’ are somehow stored and embodied…? And that our ‘deaths’ or otherwise ‘ceasings to be’ would obviously obliviate these and yet we still constantly experience these me-nows in every moment and from this we must somehow deduce that we can’t possibly have died in some future ‘yet to be’ because we are still here in the present, experiencing me-nows already stored and embodied by some still existent future self…?

Plz more explains plz.

I’ll tell you something about this:

I don’t believe in past incarnations.

I think we are magnets (resonant frequencies) drawing from an infinity of memories that never die.

I think this is a confusion of Buddhism — that our memories of these lives mean that those memories are ours!

In fact, I’m positive of this.

We are each individual “YOUS”

That cannot, nor ever will be taken away from us.

Read my last post!

I’m going to tell you a story you may not believe.

I had a panic disorder that started when I was 16 years old. I had this disorder for 11 years straight. Most people talk about having a panic attack that lasts a few hours a few times a year.

I can tell you! This was not my experience. I had a panic attack 24 hours a day for 365 days of the year for 11 years straight.

Panic attacks make you feel like you are on the verge of death every second.

Is it any wonder that feeling like I was dying all the time, that I declared, “death is my teacher”?

I met death 14 years later. That’s an experience I’ll never forget.

To me, these experiences are illusion and not reality, to me, god and death are just PEOPLE!!!

Death is mean as fuck, but resurrected me 3 times after people murdered me… not god… death resurrected me.

Death liked me because of my teaching that the solution to ethics was to make it as easy to commit suicide and homicide as possible and whoever survives is fit to survive. Actually, death is my best friend.

Like I said, death is a cruel, cruel teacher.

At the ripe age of 43, I have become insanely wise, wise enough to know that death is trying to cause enough of a stir to get god to intervene and send everyone to heaven. That’s why death tortures and torments people. For the greater good.

Now, you must understand again, my perspective is that these beings aren’t embodied archetypes, but just people, people with lots of power, but not enough power to be the non consent violators of existence.

And they know that I know this.

So we have me death and god, me being able to pull the veil on this narrative and say they’re full of shit.

I’ve met every conceivable god, and judged them as all full of shit, and they respect me for teaching them this. Every being likes clarity.

So that’s some of my story that I told you, that you wouldn’t believe.

I was deaths greatest student.

You make these ridiculous claims all the time but you cannot provide any evidence for them
The reason for this is because they are obviously unfalsifiable but I also think they are false

Are you trying to convince yourself or everyone else they are true because if its the latter nobody believes you you know
I would say that the panic attacks you experienced are responsible for the way you are now thinking and no other reason

Prophets are who they are because “nobody believes them”. If I’m a prophet, it’s news to me. I think ALL religion is bullshit!

I’m certainly not trying to make a religion, I’m trying to make hyperdimensional mirror realities, and I’m not promising them here or in the “afterlife”.

If you were astute, you’d realize that earth has been resurrected —- there are many changes that are easy to notice (I call them “Easter eggs” out of the common video game term) — the most obvious one to the entire world is that before the earth was resurrected, Washington D.C. lisence plates correctly read “no taxation without representation”, now they read: “taxation without representation”

I know it’s an ego wound to YOU! That YOU can’t falsify my sentences. I can assure you that it’s not unfalsifiable on a cosmic scale. Death knows that I met death. You currently don’t. You don’t have the tools right now.

The ONLY thing that matters about ANY being is to send ALL beings to non consent violating realities forever and ever and ever.

Anything else is a false god or false prophet.

read above post as well

When the gods bother me, I tell them something very simple:

“It’s much easier to destroy something than to create/build it”

Basically what I’m saying to them is that their ability to terrorize is not the highest example of power. In fact, it is the easiest thing possible to do.

If the gods come after you! Use this to defend yourself.

Ecmandu,

.

Why do you say this? What do you base this on except for the fact that many people are unable to face the thought that at some point we may just not “be” in any shape or form anymore.

I think that the whole point of philosophy is to teach us how to “dig”. Then, when we have come upon those artifacts, we think and we go in search of answers to our questions and then we accumulate more questions ad continuum.

Perhaps that is such a wonderful journey in itself because we are far too busy digging and thinking to worry about dying and what happens afterwards because all that IS is the present moment being lived to the fullest.

I can agree with your last statement, Ecmandu, if you delete the word “forever”. We have no control of that whatsoever.

Arcturus,

I’ve explained this on the boards over 10 times now:

Continuity of consciousness is WHAT WE ARE!

If we (continuity of consciousness) die at any point in the future, it’s impossible for the us now to exist, as the us now is a subset of the larger continuity of consciousness.

I offer this argument so that people can understand this aside from intense direct experience (which many people don’t have).

I’m simply preaching the choir for anyone with direct experience, which, for people who haven’t had it, is like trying to explain the color green to a person blind since birth!

So I offer this argument for people who don’t have direct experience.

I’ve heard people all over the spectrum on this in my travels… some people think the only thing that makes life precious is mortality, others think the only thing that makes life precious is immortality.

I understand that it is the latter. If a persons life isn’t precious, they’ll cease to exist.

Ecmandu

,

I am, for the most part, one of the above. We really cannot know, either way, if we are immortal or not, so why not choose to learn from time and death to live our lives as fully as we can, without causing harm to others.

What a wasteful way to look at life. The way that I look at it, it is the not knowing which makes life precious.
I suppose though that this might also depend on the individual. Some of those might continually put off living the best life which they could, postponing their individual human evolution, living like hedonists…

Is it possible that those who think in that way actually fear death, become immobilized when they think of it. Those who want to become immortal in their own eyes and in the eyes of others, actually fear death and not being remembered. They are also narcissists.

They may not cease to exist but life may be kind of unbearable to them and they may make the lives of others unbearable.

Personally, I always liked Keats words: "I will clamber through the clouds and exist!

In my younger years, I argued for atheism. When the idea was new and exciting, after escaping a childhood of Kingdom Halls and knocking door-to-door in a cult. I think I argued for it then as a way of testing it, proving it to myself, seeing what holes could be poked in it. In a way, it is what made me fall in love with Philosophy.

After I got over it, there wasn’t much meat on that bone left for sucklin’. It really is not a robust position, for me it was more of an on/off switch with profound implications that could only be understood in time.

Kingdom Halls?
You were jehovah’s witness?
I also was.
At the time, i felt like i had all the answers.
Later I realized I didn’t.
But for a few unusual and blissful years, i felt i had all the answers.

Yes, I was. Perhaps the religion isn’t as useless as I thought, it apparently directs some people to an interest in philosophy. Not sure I would have been so interested in knowing “The TRUTH” if it had not been drilled into my brain.

If you had to choose between utility/useful affect, or truth and a neutral stance, which would you prefer?

Atheism is supposed to be neutrality about things we can’t know or don’t have enough evidence of.
But the nature of truth is usually neutral as well.
It’s there, but it has no opinion or should/aught.
Should/aught is something that arises from life itself.

I value truth over utility, if that’s what you’re asking?

Agreed.

Hello Faust

I think that some argue for atheism because they are not too sure about their own decision to be an atheist. They’re working things out loud in a way. But in America there is a political/religious aspect that has been lost in most of Europe, so, defending atheism and attacking theism is no mere mental masturbation.
Of course, as far as defending atheism in this forum, I agree.
I’m a pretty liberal guy. You want to believe in metaphysical X, Y or Z, you should be free to do so, provide you harm no one else. A beneficial argument could only be had if we at least agreed on some basic assumptions, and where these are wholly lacking, then arguing is just a waste of time. Just smile and let them be on their way.

Hmmm
Truth is not something we “discover” indifferently, guided by what is ONLY before us. We cannot derive what always is from what we have always observed and yet we do, science does because of the explanatory power we gain in the process. No necessity that the speed of light is a universal constant (held as true/is, rather than an ought) but is is held as such due to the utility one gains in trying to organize other observations.