Explanations...

[Ecmandu]

I had a panic attack for 11 years. I also had fiber myalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, OCD, obsessive personality disorder (not in the DSM) and asthma.

The Jews in the concentration camps had paradise compared to this. Because I always felt in the verge of death every moment, I exclaimed “death is my teacher!” Then death came to me 14 years later, and spoke a very simple sentence to me, “you have no idea how easy you’ve had it”

I was shocked that any being could say this to me.

Death was 100% correct. The next 14 years were hell beyond hell, beyond that, and beyond that.

My prior experience made my will power so strong (putting one foot in front of the other with all my might for 11 years, made my will power invincible) I endured those hells with dignity and grace.

Death was my teacher.

Death and I understand each other. This planet is so horrific that your only job is to destroy existence so that nobody can ever experience that level of suffering again.

I took what’s called “the good path”, others take “the bad path”. The bad path is simple, people wreak horrors upon the world to bring a hypothetical god down to fix it all. “Look what I can do! You fucked up “god” now fix it!”

This is deaths psychology as well.

Now here’s the deal. Hyperdimensional mirror realities are possible. Because if this, we all have a perfect case against “god”.

People who act out are trying to draw attention to our collective misery.

If we want to, we can send “god” to hell, we can even kill this hypothetical being.

The thing I constantly tell death and humans, “don’t be the thing you hate”.

Look for solutions other than annihilation of all!

If “god” cannot do those things and you prove they can be done, then god and death are both assholes! Just people, and assholes at that.

Let’s claim our birthright and send every being to heaven forever, and stop this stupid war.

[iambiguous]

My prior experience made my will power so strong (putting one foot in front of the other with all my might for 11 years, made my will power invincible) I endured those hells with dignity and grace.

Death was my teacher.

Okay, you have managed to think yourself into believing that this is true. Good for you. Whatever works. And, sure, I often wish I could figure out a way to believe this sort of thing myself. But I no longer can. After all, what does "dignity and grace" really amount to in an essentially meaningless world that ends forever in oblivion?

As "I" see it, only to the extent that it is able to somehow contribute to a greater peace of mind for someone, or is admired by others around them, enabling them to take advantage of it in particular sets of circumstances, does it have any real use value.

From my own subjective frame of mind [here and now], value judgments such as this are far more a psychological font embedded and embodied in dasein than anything that one is able to demonstrate has an importance beyond that which one believes is true in their head.

Unless, of course, someone is able to demonstrate -- in this world -- why and how "dignity and grace" might be within my own reach.

For me, death becomes one of two things:

1] something I dread because there are still so many things in my life that bring me enormous satisfaction and fulfilment -- things that death will take away forever

2] something I can choose if an accumulation pain begins to inundate all the things that do make me want to stick around

And all I can do in places like this is to hear out those who might be able to change my mind. About both living and dying.

[Tab]

Death takes nothing away. Because there will be nothing to register its loss.

Say someone comes to your house in the middle of the night. Teleports straight through the wall. You never wake up, and teleport guy leaves no trace of their being there, not even a single carpet thread out of place.

Teleport guy leaves a very small teddy bear in the back of a drawer that you haven't opened in months.

For a couple of days, you continue not to open that drawer, and never discover the presence of the very small teddy bear.

Then, the next night, while you are asleep, teleport guy comes back, again not waking you, again leaving no trace of their visit, and takes back the teddy bear that you never knew you had.

That's death, trying to take stuff away from you when you're dead.

The only things that should dread your death are other people. Dreading your own death is stupid. Dread the pain involved in some means of dying sure, but not its cessation. And how can the living conceptualize death anyway..? Aren't we all just guessing..?

[iambiguous]

Death takes nothing away. Because there will be nothing to register its loss.

Again, sure, if you can think yourself into believing this and it works for you, end of story.

Just don't expect all others to think, "yeah, that's the most rational way in which to think about death."

Because "here and now" any particular "I" is registering that all of the people and all the things that they dearly love can be snatched away from them in the blink of an eye. And for all of eternity. Including "I" itself.

It's not for nothing that God and religion are by far the resolution of choice here. Nothing else on the other side of them comes even close to sustaining a sainted morality on this side of the grave and the assurance of immortality [even paradise] on the other side of it.

Thus in a No God world it just makes no rational sense [to me] to speak of "dignity and grace" other than as just another existential contraption.

And here's another frame of mind that for all practical purposes works for some:

Mickey: Look, you're getting on in life. Aren't you afraid of dying?
Father: Why be afraid?
Mickey: You won't exist! That doesn't terrify you?
Father: I'm alive. When I'm dead, I'm dead.
Mickey: Aren't you frightened?
Father: I'll be unconscious.
Mickey: But never to exist again?
Father: How do you know? Who knows what'll be? I'll either be unconscious, or I won't. If not, I'll deal with it then. I won't worry now.

Good for him. That works. It just doesn't work for me. Not here and now.

[Ecmandu]

Iambiguous,

You’ve never met a god. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve met all manner of gods in my life, I do know what I’m talking about.

It’s not an “existential contraption that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside”

If anything, death being death is the most comforting thought in existence.

But! None of us, none of us ever die.

We retain “continuity of consciousness”. There’s a very simple proof for this... if we ever died completely for ourselves, who we are now would also cease to exist (since who we are now is a subset of our lack of death continuity of consciousness), but since we’re still here, we can prove this never happens to us...

[Tab]

Because "here and now" any particular "I" is registering that all of the people and all the things that they dearly love can be snatched away from them in the blink of an eye.

Wrong way round. You can be snatched away from those you dearly love by your death. They'll still be there, probably shouting "someone call 911 !!!" and "holy shit, that daesin guy just collapsed !!!"

[Meno_]

No way!

If the above was true then no one could be around again to tell all about it. Maldoror was wrong and all the rest of those who do not realize that the fact that we are here, is a testament to life and not death.
For instance, You could not even imagine a death which could encapsulate the idea of life, or even the absence of that-no life.
It takes life to begin this process , and that it is all there is, from an existential point , has no nearing on the hypothesis of what death really is, or, what it will be like.
Even unconsciousness could not be imagined from other then a conscious state of mind.
We know consciousness by existing in it and living through it. Unconsciousness by definition is unknowable, except through dreams , which are nothing more then conscious fields of phenomenal memory breaking through the nothingness of nothing.
Nothing by definition has no existence
it occupies neither space nor time, it is simply a logistical negative.
The proof of eternal return of beings consisting with objective and essential being is in the pudding, we exist in a relative spatial temporal infinite universe, building and rebuilding memory laden genetically deserved composites of how we can imagine our continuous existence be described in an automonu that is partly determinitovrly based on merit, choice, affinity, all those energies circlingnaround a magnetic matter/antiateer of variable differentiated calculus of energy.
That energy/matter can never be destroyed, it can be changed from other forms, into one or many types.
The ONE type is a hypo Theistic possibility ever present in an Absolute realization of Being, it is always Omni present, with lower shells of more variable existences, laying dormant in fields of possibility.

[Meno_]

Because "here and now" any particular "I" is registering that all of the people and all the things that they dearly love can be snatched away from them in the blink of an eye.

Wrong way round. You can be snatched away from those you dearly love by your death. They'll still be there, probably shouting "someone call 911 !!!" and "holy shit, that daesin guy just collapsed !!!"

Tab, the 'wrong' was not ref. 2 You, but the comment made before. Sorry.


In fact that was a misnomer , no one is clearly wrong or right. It is the mind, which dictates attitudes and chooses between what has been reduced to the coloring of energy : black or white. Absence is clearly not presence, and only presence can testify toward it's own verity.

[iambiguous]

Iambiguous,

You’ve never met a god. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve met all manner of gods in my life, I do know what I’m talking about.

It’s not an “existential contraption that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside”

If anything, death being death is the most comforting thought in existence.

But! None of us, none of us ever die.

We retain “continuity of consciousness”. There’s a very simple proof for this... if we ever died completely for ourselves, who we are now would also cease to exist (since who we are now is a subset of our lack of death continuity of consciousness), but since we’re still here, we can prove this never happens to us...

Look, if you have actually managed to convince yourself that all of this is true then, by golly, bully for you!!

What I'm most interested in however is you reconfiguring the stuff you believe in your head into the sort of evidence that I might use in order to reconfigure the stuff that I believe in my head.

Given as I may well be of sounder mind here than you.

Especially this part: "None of us, none of us ever die."

What's the most potent proof you've got in regard to that?

[iambiguous]

Because "here and now" any particular "I" is registering that all of the people and all the things that they dearly love can be snatched away from them in the blink of an eye.

Wrong way round. You can be snatched away from those you dearly love by your death. They'll still be there, probably shouting "someone call 911 !!!" and "holy shit, that daesin guy just collapsed !!!"

That's them there and then, not me here and now. Here and now death is more or less right around the corner. And I'm looking at it from the only perspective I've got, not from the perspective of anyone else.

So, for me, it's the right way around. Though I would never argue that it ought to be my way around for others.

Again, whatever works best to comfort and console you. Beyond that it's anybody's guess.

[Ecmandu]

Because "here and now" any particular "I" is registering that all of the people and all the things that they dearly love can be snatched away from them in the blink of an eye.

Wrong way round. You can be snatched away from those you dearly love by your death. They'll still be there, probably shouting "someone call 911 !!!" and "holy shit, that daesin guy just collapsed !!!"

That's them there and then, not me here and now. Here and now death is more or less right around the corner. And I'm looking at it from the only perspective I've got, not from the perspective of anyone else.

So, for me, it's the right way around. Though I would never argue that it ought to be my way around for others.

Again, whatever works best to comfort and console you. Beyond that it's anybody's guess.

Iambiguous,

I gave you my most potent proof (you ignored it):

1.) beings are a continuity of consciousness
2.) you here right now is a SUBSET! of that continuity of consciousness
3.) if that continuity of consciousness ever stops, you, being a subset of it, couldn’t be here right now
4.) you are here, therefor, you will always be

I even stated that the most consoling and comforting belief is that when we die, we die forever (your belief!)

Who’s the one comforting themselves here, you or me?

The answer is: you

[iambiguous]

Iambiguous,

I gave you my most potent proof (you ignored it):

1.) beings are a continuity of consciousness
2.) you here right now is a SUBSET! of that continuity of consciousness
3.) if that continuity of consciousness ever stops, you, being a subset of it, couldn’t be here right now
4.) you are here, therefor, you will always be

I even stated that the most consoling and comforting belief is that when we die, we die forever (your belief!)

Who’s the one comforting themselves here, you or me?

The answer is: you

That may well be what you construe as potent proof, but it's still all just in your head. An intellectual contraption as I like to call them.

Or, rather, it seems that way to me.

As for death, again, it comforts me to know it will be an option if the pain [from whatever source] becomes beyond that which I can bear. Pain such that, for example, I am begging to die.

After all, that's what folks fear most about Hell: it never stops.

[Ecmandu]

Iambiguous,

You don’t explain things, you just deny things, without even a shred of an argument.

I can say, “iambiguous, you don’t have a penis”. Simply denying something. Then you whip out your penis to prove that you have one, and like you, I can say, “you have proven nothing, it’s just your existential contraption rooted in Dasein out of fear”

This sentence, “it’s just your existential contraption rooted in Dasein out of fear” is your mechanical response to EVERY post!!!!!

[iambiguous]

Iambiguous,

You don’t explain things, you just deny things, without even a shred of an argument.

I can say, “iambiguous, you don’t have a penis”. Simply denying something. Then you whip out your penis to prove that you have one, and like you, I can say, “you have proven nothing, it’s just your existential contraption rooted in Dasein out of fear”

This sentence, “it’s just your existential contraption rooted in Dasein out of fear” is your mechanical response to EVERY post!!!!!

There you ago again, over the edge. Driven there by whatever condition it is that prompts you say things like this.

Now back to the actual point I raised:

"What I'm most interested in is you reconfiguring the stuff you believe in your head into the sort of evidence that I might use in order to reconfigure the stuff that I believe in my head."

Starting with any substantive evidence you have that, "none of us, none of us ever die." What "on Earth" do you mean by that? Empirically, existentially, phenomenologically etc., for example.

And even though I'm not likely to die soon, I don't want to die period. Help me out here.

Explain in more detail how, for all practical purposes, a “continuity of consciousness” sustains "I" beyond the grave. If that's what you're saying. Go beyond the "simple truth" though and supply us with some of the more complex details of what will happen to you on the day that you die.

Prove something here that goes beyond you merely telling us what you believe is true in your head.

[phenomenal_graffiti]

Ecmandu.

All beliefs regarding the nature of existence when it comes to things that cannot be proven true via sensory perception is open to this type of denial, based upon the fact that the subject of ones belief cannot be proven to be true via sensory perception. God is in this predicament, as is the afterlife, as is, well, mind or consciousness-independent doppelgangers of the content of visual perception.

I only have one observation: if "I" or conscious experience can cease to exist at death, this means that something that does not exist can come into existence. That's a weird but common belief.

[iambiguous]

I only have one observation: if "I" or conscious experience can cease to exist at death, this means that something that does not exist can come into existence. That's a weird but common belief.

Well if "I" just popped into existence ex nihilo, that would truly be mindboggling. But I came into existence as a result of the evolution of biological life on Earth.

Now, either life itself just popped into existence beyond an explanation rooted in the laws of nature, or, sure, there is a Creator, the Creator, My Creator "out there", "up there" that brought all of everything into existence. Or that, somehow, given the perspective of pantheists, everything in the universe is just tied together into whatever is construed to be the divine or spiritual or enlightened nature of existence itself.

But: The truly mindboggling part for me is how existence itself could either always have been or did itself pop into existence ex nihilo.

Here, of course, you and I and ecmandu have our own narrative of choice. Which I, myself, root largely in dasein. Rather than in the capacity of one of us, using philosophical, scientific or theological constructs, through both deduction [explaining the small from the large] and induction [explaining the large from the small] to pin down intellectually the explanation for existence.

But that far out on the reality/human reality limb, I always come back to one's capacity to demonstrate that what one believes is in fact true is in fact true such that experiments can be performed, predictions can be made and results can be replicated.

Only this time in regard to existence itself.

[Ecmandu]

Explaining gods to someone who’s never met one is like explaining the color green to a blind person.

I’ve met many gods in my life. In saying that, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in the “one true god”, simply because everyone in earth is having their consent violated, and the “one true god” would make that impossible for everyone!

It is absolutely something that can be done with complete power to make sure that nobodies consent is ever violated.

[iambiguous]

Explaining gods to someone who’s never met one is like explaining the color green to a blind person.

I agree. But demonstrating that you have in fact met one rather than just asserting that you have is quite a distinction too.

I’ve met many gods in my life. In saying that, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in the “one true god”, simply because everyone in earth is having their consent violated, and the “one true god” would make that impossible for everyone!

It is absolutely something that can be done with complete power to make sure that nobodies consent is ever violated.

Try this...

The next time you meet one, record the exchange. Bring up consent violation. Get it on tape or on a smart phone. Then go on to the next God.

I am just trying to bring all of this, as I call it, "down to Earth".

I figure you might actually succeed in bringing me hope with regard to oblivion or I might succeed in, well, reasoning you out of whatever, for lack of a better word, "condition" it is that prompts you say what, to me, is often bizarre thinking.

[phenomenal_graffiti]

Iambiguous:

Given that existence only appears in the form of an experiencing person and anything demonstrated to exist must appear before a person (and anything that has ever demonstrated it exists has always appeared before a person), anything demonstrated to be true (ignoring, I agree, "in one's head" explanatory constructions) must be composed of first-person subjective experience.

But avoiding that discussion again, it is worthy to note that if something that does not exist comes into existence, given it did not exist before it began to exist, its coming into being would he entirely arbitrary as it did not exist a moment before and thus would not in terms of appearance or quality logically derive, be linked, or depend for its coming into existence upon anything existing before it. This is an underlying conceptual fact many people overlook when speaking of consciousness coming into and going out of existence.

[iambiguous]

But avoiding that discussion again, it is worthy to note that if something that does not exist comes into existence, given it did not exist before it began to exist, its coming into being would he entirely arbitrary as it did not exist a moment before and thus would not in terms of appearance or quality logically derive, be linked, or depend for its coming into existence upon anything existing before it. This is an underlying conceptual fact many people overlook when speaking of consciousness coming into and going out of existence.

This makes no sense to me. Either that or I am not understanding your point.

I, myself, did not come into existence in a manner in which I think of as "arbitrarily". Instead, I am rooted biologically in the evolution of life here on Earth.

But: How did living matter itself come to evolve out of lifeless matter? Sure, "a God, the God" might be the explanation. And with this God [most of them] comes immortality. And, of course, Judgment Day.

It's still a mystery even to scientists. At least given the current knowledge that I have. Just as a full and complete understanding of human consciousness is.

Then, as with ecmandu, I can only come back to that which you are able to reconfigure from what you believe is true "in your head" into actual substantive evidence you can link me to that might manage to reconfigure my own rather bleak assessment of "I" re morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side of it.

Look, I am willing to admit the problem here might revolve more around me not understanding what you are saying than you not saying what is true.

But that always comes down to something between a molehill and a mountain of actual hard evidence able to demonstrate that all rational people ought to think this instead of that.

As I always say, "what else is there"?

I just make a distinction here between the either/or and the is/ought world.

[phenomenal_graffiti]

Hmm.

We only have evidence of the existence of first-person subjective experience in the form of persons: we do not have evidence of the existence of anything else. Lifeless matter, therefore, as it cannot be demonstrated to exist must be entirely fictional, thus biological evolution and lifeless matter evolving into living matter is really just "in ones head": make-believe spoken as if it were something that actually happened.

[Meno_]

If there is a chance for the validity of pan psychism, then the difference between life full and life less matter is strictly a rebuttable conjecture.

That. conjecture is implicit in the propositional value of differentiating contential from necessary modes of preception, whereas , there is no probable source.

Particularly to hypothesize a primordial objective preposition, consisting of all inclusive referentiality of all primary sources of information, leaves subjective source undefined.

How do we know that the proposition assigning unique primary sources atotally differentiated , having more probability for factual information then not? We don't and we cannot.

Therefore the distinction has no merit one way or the other, and the question becomes tedious and irresolutely mute..

To dismiss this propositional synthesis as some sort of a pie in the sky abstract acrobatics, has absolutely no ground, since it seeks a (ground) without having one to be based on
In fact it is tautological excercise using the abstract that is denied.

[iambiguous]

Hmm.

We only have evidence of the existence of first-person subjective experience in the form of persons: we do not have evidence of the existence of anything else. Lifeless matter, therefore, as it cannot be demonstrated to exist must be entirely fictional, thus biological evolution and lifeless matter evolving into living matter is really just "in ones head": make-believe spoken as if it were something that actually happened.

Okay, somehow, buried deep down in your own existential trajectory from the cradle to, well, here and now, you have thought yourself into believing whatever it is that you think this means.

But then I am back to this:

...as with ecmandu, I can only come back to that which you are able to reconfigure from what you believe is true "in your head" into actual substantive evidence you can link me to that might manage to reconfigure my own rather bleak assessment of "I" re morality on this side of the grave and immortality on the other side of it.

You clearly don't see your own reaction above as a "general description intellectual contraption". At least not in the manner in which I construe them.

How is your point here related to your day to day interactions with others? In other words, its "use value" in a "for all practical purposes" world.

And then the part where the dots are connected substantively to what you construe the "afterlife" to be.

But, yeah, that's just me. That's what I want to get out of the exchange. If that's not what you want to get out of it, fine, there are surely others here more in sync with your own inclination.

[promethean75]

We only have evidence of the existence of first-person subjective experience in the form of persons: we do not have evidence of the existence of anything else.

this kind of radical berkeleyean skepticism wouldn't even be possible unless something existed independently of and prior to the skepticism itself, or else it would have nothing of content. you'd end up with an infinite regress of doubting the doubting of the doubting of the doubting, etc., unless there was a pre-existing context in/of which to doubt.

"The questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those [doubts] turn." - wittgenstein

"Without that context, the doubt itself makes no sense: The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty; A doubt without an end is not even a doubt." - wittgenstein

give this one a look when you aren't busy doubting everything but your 'subjective experience' (whatever that means).

[phenomenal_graffiti]

Promethesn75:

Doubt of everything except the existence of oneself supports an improbable conclusion. I am not a solipsist. I believe an external world exists. I just believe it is made up of first-person subjective experience and is in fact not an infinite space but the inner mind of an infinite Person (guess who).

When I state 'only subjective experience may exist' I don't mean only my subjective experience exists but that reality only consists of subjective experience, as nothing other than persons (may) exist. I derive this conclusion from the fact that yes, existence only appears in the form of a person and that which that person experiences. Existence does not, and it may be inferred has never, appeared or even existed in any other form. A person is not materially composed of something that is not first-person subjective experience, but is composed of subjective experience.

Lifeless matter, in the godless mythology that first-person subjective experience did not exist in the eternity before before lifeless atoms unknowingly (as subjective experience did not exist) and accidentally created brains implies that for an eternity before chance and the laws of physics (Stenger) created brains something other than first-person subjective experience existed and first-person subjective experience did not exist.

But the truth is that we can't, and have never, demonstrated the existence of anything except our own first-person subjective experience, thus that which is not or that is something other than subjective experience itself must be, and is, entirely fictional.