"I dont view it in an anthropomorphic way" All established religion makes the mistake of anthropomorphising God. Not just the appearance, purpose, behaviour etc but down to imagining 'it has consciousness' along the same lines as our consciousness. In my experience, I have found what could be called God to be...calmly confused sort of, as if it were dreaming, or not entirely awake [more anthropomorphising, but thats the only way to convey the sense of the feeling???].


"for me, the term ´god´ is not connected with something good.. good and evil are both equal necessary part of existence, expressions of the law of trinity (positive, negative and neutral or unity of both).. so for me evil is not a sign of no god, and neither is good a sign of god"
yeah, the oldtime religions like to lend God a human [and essentially ephemeral] morality.
Try and guess what the God ethic is...

also
"I would never recommend belief in "God" without firsthand experience.
Thats what it took to convince me.
But my belief in God may not be the same thing that you ascribe to the notion of God.
God is just the most proper name for what I consider to be a life force that feeds reality.
It is beyond description and language.
Psychedelics were the key that unlocked my mind to such a possibility."

thats so damn spooky, its almost word for word something I wrote to a friend last year, after a certain experience.
something like "dont be thinking Im into some kinda christian God, its not like that at all, I wouldnt even know where to begin describing it to you...its just that there simply is no other word that comes close to this..."
After I told my friends, I realised that the word God meant a very different thing to them than it did to me, so the whole excercise was kind of pointless. I also realised that although they called themselves atheists, they were more like achristians, since they knew no conception of God or theology to reject except the little information they inferred from indirect experience of christian theology.

warren, the elegant universe is now available on dvd starring the author. i think its made my NOVA but i'm not sure. its mainly about string theory, which may or may not be correct. his book called The Fabric of the Cosmos is mostly about the current working theories, and includes some amazing effects of quantum mechanics, some of which can't be explained (other than by equations but they don't really say why) and are open to translation.

link to Fabric of the Cosmos I highly recommend the hardcover, my paperback fell apart. it doesn't have equations and is pretty easy to read, although some parts may take a few rereads to get but its worth it! The guy is a phD in physics and teaches Ivy league. you will appreciate the complexity of our reality much more after reading this book, and be surprised by the counterintuitive strange things about our reality which have been proven by science (like the idea of timetravel; faster you move through space the slower you move through time, and how strange and mysterious light works, much more)


i think if there is a conscious force in control, it is malevolent. think of all the death and pain over the millions and millions of years of evolution. death being the driving force (well, natural selection).

i like the idea of calling everything in existence God, including the mysterious fabric of the quantum world. but I don't believe its alive and in control. therefore even if i completely accepted this i'd still call myself an atheist.

Forget about control, there is only guidance & direction!! Always progressing forward!!
Forget good & bad, as they do not exist!! They are only rationalizations for reactions to stimulus to these bodies.
And most importantly, forget about death being a negative thing!! It is just a release of this physical weight!! Not good or bad!! Just a change!!
Why is that so scary?!?



You don't believe your alive?

The fact that you are even aware of yourself should be some kind of sign that there is more going on here the what we can see and touch!!

I just have a hard time believing that my consciousness is coming from simple electrical pulses in this flesh brain! I could see it as a receiver that can pick up my specific transmission but I know that I am more than this meat & bone body!! I know it is just a vehicle! I know this from being out of it and still aware of myself in the same exact way if not more clearly aware!!
I've experienced this both while using psychedelic help and without!!

...And I know, I know, tell all that to a 3 yr old kid dying of aids in Africa!!
I don't claim to have any answers, just what I've learned through experiences. We all have our place at this time and our bodies will all die eventually. But our consciousness will go on.

WS

SWIM has actually grown even more atheistic. He reports that sometimes the hallucinogens will tell them him things and will be absolutely certain and confident... and then they will be wrong! SWIM has also asked the hallucinogens if they are gods or supernatural and the answer is always a firm "No!". Asked who they really are they tell him "you!". SWIM understands, and knows, that theists have vastly different experiences.

Exactly!!!


Same experience, different "understanding".
And I wouldn't exactly call myself a "theist".
Theology is the study of religion.
Religion has nothing to do with spirituality!! At least not anymore.

Spirituality is internal and personal even when in a social context.
Religion is all external and has more to do with money & control through guilt and judgment than the internal acceptance of ones self which leads to acceptance of everyone & everything else!! Not judgment of everyone else.

WS

of course i believe that i am alive, but not molecules, dirt, stars or even bacteria (consciously).

i'll never believe that good and bad don't exist. many situations are open to interpretation on whether they are good or bad. but a rapist harming a woman for life, or a child killer i'd consider bad. helping a person who has led a good life and who is in genuine need i'd call good. you consider that reactions to stimulus if you want but i'll never delude myself to think there is no good or bad.

Thats cause your too busy reacting.

WS

delusion? Morality is a practical reality. Nothing more.

Reading some ethical philosophy might help put that in context.

Look at paradoxes.

If you see a child drowning, and you know jumping in to save it will ruin your new clothes, what will you do?
Leaving it to drown because you dont want to waste your money would be 'bad'.

If a child on the other side of the world is starving, and you know flying over there and buying it some food will cost you, what will you do?

In the Roman times, loving children sexually was good. In the ancient world, women having sex before marriage was definitely 'bad', it lead to the degeneration of society. Today, sex is a human right between consenting adults.

Ethics change from millenia to millenia, from day to day, from country to country, from person to person.
They always remain entirely subjective. New times means new ethics.

Coleridge said that there is no evil in the world, just non-thinking that stems from non-feeling.

Those who argue for moral absolutism are always proven wrong by time, because the world which those morals are supposed to govern, changes. If morals cannot be absolute, you have to accept that they are subjective, transient, ephemeral. From there everyhing just gets messed up...and confusing.

I think what I mean is that Right and Wrong, Good and Evil are all subjective interpretations of a great system of which we receive an extremely limited amount of information. So theyre ok concepts for day-to-day life as long as you dont believe you have an absolute conception of each, or try and dictate that to others. Philosophically, they are all meaningless however, products of ego.

Its all very easy to say, of course. Just don't believe too strongly in Good and Bad...I guess

Besides, in the context of God, ethics is definitely a strictly human idea. I dont think God knows or cares what Good is, it has bigger things to do/be

You are nothing but molecules!! Carbon!! Dirt & stars are made of exactly the same things with tiny variations.

Check this out:
http://www.micro.magnet....ienceopticsu/powersof10/

might take a minute or two to load up.

WS

i do believe in a certain absolute morality. i agree there are lots of gray areas but directly causing harm to innocent others is a negative thing to do. if someone rapes and slaughters your mother aren't you going to have some idea that what was done was wrong and bad?

interesting new powers of 10 video, i watched the original made by IBM. we are molecules organized in a way to process reality, like a computer. our neurons function as circuits to give us a processor. rocks, dust and bacteria don't have a processor so therefore don't have consciousness. its debatable whether insects and lower animals have consciousnesses or just effective conscious machinery.

btw, dirt and stars don't have dna. and the dna variations in terms of bits of information difference are significantly different between animals.

this thread is an iteresting read... it amazes me more and more how many intelligent, enlightened and completely rational minds we have as members of this community... respect.

I also was a very content athesist untill my mid twenties...

it was a heroic dose of LSD that gave me my first tastes of the other side.. I thought i was dying... I had my ego totally shatterd and reverted to a state of non-self that was very familiar and I knew that I had been in that state before this lifetime... I had reflections of past lives enter my consciousness, communicated with the higher selves of some of my friends, experienced the membrane that divides dimensions... and experienced a number of total out of body experiences that to this day are still more real and vivid than most of my waking memories...

the beginning of many shamanic initiaitions that in this particular instance took me almost 12 months to begin to integrate...

now in regards to DMT... ive never sat down and had a coversation with 'god' while in hyperspace... I have however met many entities that put up convincing arguments that they are either aliens or deities... or both... wheather these are ascpects of my own consciousness or true disincarnate entities is the big question I suppose



under this reasoning would you consider that the huge interconnecting myceleum networks of mushroom contain consciousness... these have been proven to fire in a very similar manner to our own synapse and neurons... networks which can spread under hectares of fields and be orders of magnitude more complex than the human brain... If you listen to the mushroom speak you may believe that the mushroom seeded life on this planet and is our god...

just my 2 cents

I've become very confused lately if i am an athiest or not. i dont beleive in a god that listens to prayers or masterminded the universe and sends us to hell and heaven because thats just silly i might as well believe in thunder gods throwing lighting bolts at the humans below. i have had deep spiritual experiences in the other realms but i always am left with the same questions when i come out.

was it real? what is real? how do i know?

This is exactly how i feel. Morally it shouldn't make a difference in how you act, if you believe in god or if you don't. Spiritual experiences can be just as meaningfull when you realize that there is no certainty. The real reason for acting morally should always be compassion, rather then the fear of having to burn in hell infinitely.

I treat others like how I would like to be treated. Thats enough for my morality.

If god exists though, he/she/it could not reasonably demand from us to believe in him/her/it. You cannot first create this total material world with all the auschwitz-horror going on, and at the same time demandig people to believe in you and your infinite goodness. If god exists, then when i meet him/her/it when i die, he/she/it would have some explaining to do.

"TrYpt / PhEnEtHyl-AMinE" know what he's talking about...

I can't wait to read "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" by Alan Watts, sounds great!

OK, I'll byte on this discussion.
I think that you ARE a miracle, just the fact that you exist. An argument could be made that you exist as a part of a storm in a Greater Mind. Certainly even the staunchest atheist would not be so anthropomorphic to think that MAN posseses the only and highest form of Intelligent Consciousness?

If you agree that it makes NO SENSE that intelligence arises only one time in one species in a Universe with billions and trillions of worlds then you must also see it would be ridiculous to assume that we are the APEX of evolution.

Even if we were not *created* by a God, there must be beings more intelligent and greater than us.

That "something amazing happening in your head" happens to everyone each time we go to sleep at night. The Molecule is ubiquitous.

Are we not guilty of total ignorant arrogance to think this is not something that could occur on other planets, and most likely there are far older beings than us, even if they aren't Gods with a capital G?

In some ways, to be a Theist is to just admit our individual Careeniums (careeniums = brains - see Doug Hofstadter in "I am a Strange Loop" are simply toooooo small and limited to contain *all there is* to Know.

Oh, BTW I LOVE the book by Alan Watts (The Book) and I think he claimed to be an Atheist too. Cool!

What if I said that makes you/Alan/Doug all sound very much like Christians? "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." "With faith the size of a grain of mustard seed you can move mountains!"
"Knock and keep on knocking...seek and keep on seeking..."

Jesus Christ circa 30 A.D.

What's so unscientific about that sort of Theism? <grin>

No we don't know what other forms of intelligence are out there and man is still evolving and his intelligence may increase as a result of that.



It is rediculous to assume we are the apex of evolution we certainly are not.



Not necessarily. However if we just look at the intelligence on earth and not worry about everywhere in the universe it could be argued then some mammals are approaching human or similar intelligence like dolphins. There is no need for more intelligent beings but there might be them for sure i wouldn't doubt it. It depends how you define intelligence also, dogs are smarter at smelling piss and im smarting at climbing trees you know?



I am not sure what molecule you are talking about but if you mean DMT i dont see how thats related to sleeping or dreaming. going to sleep and dreaming is a very necessary process but theres is nothing divine or otherworldly about it.



Its arrogant to assume that we are the only intelligent beings in the universe.



Thiests use faith to make there belief systems. Faith is not an appropriate way to draw out conclusions about the universe or god. Thats how we get all these stupid religions.





They can sound however they want when they talk about the beauty in nature but that has nothing to do with whether or not their is a god. Im sorry but I just can't accept these arguments as giving any indication that there is a need for god in this universe.



This is not true. Tryptamines and phenethyamines both work by effecting other receptor systems in the brain as well. the Trace amine system being one. certainly administration of tryptamines and phenethylamines can effect various types of gene expression buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut god gene is a horrible term that is so misused i think it should be stricken from the record. it implies that there is a god and a gene that makes people more spiritual which is kind of stupid. yes certain people with certain genotypes will be more prone to religious experience. that doesn't mean the experience is true or real it could be a complete and utter delusion just like schizophrenia.

"I am not sure what molecule you are talking about but if you mean DMT i dont see how thats related to sleeping or dreaming. going to sleep and dreaming is a very necessary process but theres is nothing divine or otherworldly about it. "

Here I meant merely that our pineal glands produce a molecule which only differs from DMT in its polarity, that's why we are sensitive to DMT.

Our dream state is certainly not Divine, but it is not nearly well as understood as our waking state. And we all have the potential for *mystical* experience due to our Chemistry.

(Just substitute the words Chemistry or Physics for God, and you'll be fine. They are both simply belief systems; subsets of Mathematics))

It bothers me not, nor does it change Reality in the slightest! if you prefer to use different terminology for our direct interaction with the creative aspects of Reality/Uberself. You don't like the word God. Fine.

I can accept the words a *chemical response in the brain* to explain the experience of God. Many of us find that way of looking at things very limiting and incomplete.

I simply think the meme *children of God* comes closer to fully describing who we really are.(as opposed to the descriptions you choose)

Our subconscious activities (awake or asleep) including the *mystical experience* have empirically verifiable manifestations; which for the first time in history we now have the technology to quantify and observe. (using EEGs,other bio-feedback markers etc.) For once, I think the Atheists have something to sincerely be *frightened* of.

Because we can now study this God experience scientifically, I can understand your *fear*.

Science's major "God," Mathematics has now paradoxically started us down a road with no end of new subjective delights...I strongly recommend you pursue the empirical as deeply as you can go, and then come back and tell me about it! THAT would indeed be a TRIP!

<hahaha>
I think the jury will, and shall remain, OUT on this one, and that's what makes this topic worth discussing at ALL.

Thanks for the insights - we all should examine our strongest convictions out in the light of day, in a friendly place. (And I've never doubted how easy it is to debunk a subjective Reality. That's precisely my point)

I used the sleep state as an example (it's hardly the only one) to illustrate how little we understand about our brains even in light of all our technology. The quest continues (thank the Deity heheh) and really has no need or reason to end...

Be careful with assuming that any humans have or ever WILL find the bottom of this Rabbit Hole or that there is even one to find...or if so, would it be desirable to pursue as a goal?

Somehow the sense of wonder and awe WILL prevail, (which to me = wholiness) because my logical friend no *good* science has ever been done without it. By *good* in this context, I mean REAL.

How can you possibly equate the spiritual experience with mental illness?

What could be more schizophrenic than trying to divide your life into that which can be explained by today's science, and that which we still have yet to understand? Which part of you is more *REAL*?

BURNT; you state:
"Thiests use faith to make there belief systems. Faith is not an appropriate way to draw out conclusions about the universe or god. Thats how we get all these stupid religions."

OKAY! You want to try and use Occa's Razor to kill the God thought...wonderful!
What would you say to my assertion that MATHEMATICS is MY BELIEF SYSTEM, and the subsets of Physics and Chemistry are convenient short-cuts to make it easier to operate in the macrocosm.

In Mathematics, we assert that the concept of ONE and ZERO are necessary. Do you *believe* in the necessity for ONE and ZERO? Have you *experienced* this to be true? (of coure you have, if you know how to add and subtract)

In Christianity, it is asserted that the personal experience of God is necessary.
My personal belief (or yours)is certainly not enough to establish the necessity or reality of ANYTHING and is not a necessary pre-requisite for the existence (reality) of anything!

Faith? What do you mean by the word? Faith is meaningless without substance. By *faith* in this context, I mean the conviction that something is TRUE.
Obviously faith can be dangerous, but still extremely powerful EVEN if it is coupled with a LIE.