I think you would really like it, check it out.

I believe it was Feynman who stated in his book "Six easy pieces" something like: What poets are they if they can't write anything about the glory of (insert planet, i forgot) when they know it's a big, gigantic ball of ammonia turning around his axis in the vastness of space. Knowing something about it doesn't remove the mystery or wonder, it just raises more questions.

That's not literally a quote but it conveys the idea of what he was saying, and in some sense that's my idea on religion.

I have a double feeling when it comes to religion. We all know what atrocities were done in the name of christianity and islam, but think about karma. you collect good/bad karma -they say- and get reïncarnated this way or another depending on that karma, a nice piece of social engineering. on the other hand when you look at the Indian caste system karma's just a way to keep the lower classes down; though luck bro', you must have done something bad in a past life so go shovle my shit out in the ally.
And then they have all these stories and ideas wich, and this I do believe, that are an effort to shape the behaviour of man in a good way, like things that are constructed in this era (the human rights bill e.g.) meant exactly for that purpose.

It's the human condition that at times fuck things up, not theoretical abstractions of reality.

In no particular order, and to varying degrees:

The Big Bang
DMT Space
Channeling
Shamanic insight
Quantam physics
Life
Synchonicity
Fractal Geometry
Torsion Fields
Intelligence
The absolute perfection of the laws of nature, to within 1 millionith of 1%, any other values and life could not exist.
Electon spin resonance
Self replicating nature of DNA
Consciousness



You just stated two enormous flaws in evolution. Those are problems. In addition there are huge gaps in the fossil records that have yet to be explained.

Many apolgies!

I absolutely love this thread!

Burnt, you have a fallacy in your arguments. You appear to be claiming the right of truth of your Subjective experiences, while at the same time denying everyone else's, in addition to claiming the absense of evidence is evidence of absense. I would like to see that debate. It is more likely that the Dali Lama would leave you spiritually changed, than you would be to leave him in pieces. I'm sure he has heard and debated your ideas many times over.



A question. How would you describe/define mind?
How can you look at constucts of mind objectively? It is impossible.

burnt
What is ypur opinion on the parallels between quantum physics and certain mysticisms ie the void generates all things from nothing just as particiles arise in a vacuume seemimgly from no where. We need a experement to determin whats realy happening but I fear it wont be in my life time I hope I am wrong.

Zen beleives in nothing not even not beleiving just like dmt nothing is real its all a illusion is this religon I think no but its a tough question. is dmt a relegion hummm....

I used to be a very dedicated practicing Christian. Eventually the entire religion became non-sense to me. After this I drifted around, hesitant to believe in anything. Then I started to experiment with psychedelics. For a while I was kind of a quasi-spiritualist that drifted toward the idea of a universal consiousness. I think this was in response to the void left by leaving christianity. I'm am now at a point where spirituality in and of itself is non-sense. I choose to live by my principals, and that is all I need.

Life and its complexity is best explained by science. Well, in my opinion, since I know there are people who would be quick to dispute that statement. But there are certain questions, like the origin of matter, that have yet to be explained. They may or may not be within the realm of science, but I will assume that they are within the realm of science at this point.

The origin of matter is quite well understood. Scientists can go back to 1 billionith of a second after the Big Bang and can theorize what was occuring. If you mean the origin of existence itself, ie the Big Bang, the moment of creation, well I would assume nothing.

The origin of matter has nothing to do with evolution. That concerns the big bang. The big bang doesn't concern evolution either. Evolution is a perfectly acceptable explaination for the complex organism we now observe. But how does life start one my ask? Well it seems that life could be possibly written into the laws of thermodynamics.

Check it out

Yes, I mean the origin of all that exist in the universe. Is the universe eternal like Einstien used to say, or does it have a beginning and possible ending like Stephen Hawking would argue.

An intersting, if lacking in substance article. It has all the validity of a post on this forum. I agree in its ideas, but it in itself has no validity to its claims.

We are talking about religion/spirituality. Athiests claim that evolution is the basis for everything we observe, while conviently ignoring the Big Bang. I agree with evolution, but it can only take one so far and has its flaws. It cannot, and never will explain the moment that all of existence sprang forth.

Why does life spontaneously start from the moment of creation? Why is life written into the laws of thermodynamics? I've read an article that stated that if you take sterilized silicon, and sterlizied water in a vacuum and apply electricty, life will form. Out of nothing! Why does life form out of nothing?

As I said, there is too much circumstantial evidence in a higher organizing principal. Forget the notion of a personal god, that is completely absurd. Think more of Brahman, All That Is. Spirituality for many is an all pervasive force that just is, everywhere and in everything, since at the Big Bang everything that is was part of a whole, therefore we are all still part of that whole. A torsion field, an omnipresense that exists everywhere at the same time, containing in each infintesimal part the whole, and the whole in each infintesmial part.

There is good evidence for a Holographic Universe.



Einstein has been proven wrong on this idea, he admitted that it was his "greatest mistake". The universe had a beginning, and it will have an end. Whether in a big crunch, a big chill, or a big rip is still a matter of speculation.

I agree with Saidin. Most of the time when anyone refers to "God" on here, they aren't refering to some man upstairs who judges you for this and that. "God" is a very universal term for all that is, cannot be created or destroyed, etc. Sounds like energy to me.

I've never been a christian, I have been to church "once in my entire life" and was totally blown away with all the nonsense. And I figured this all out at the age of 14. By then I started reading reading and reading! Science books, physics, metphyscis, tao, quantum mech's,etc, etc. I have been to several countries inclduing a recent past year trip to Peru to do an 11-day excursion including Ayahuasca ceremonies. Those very things ROCKED my beliefs. Not on a religious note. But a spritual note. I was shown things that mushrooms, dmt, etc have NEVER shown me.

I agree with burnt in the ideas of DMT/spirituality. I think its very possible that all the beings that one encounters on DMT are archetypal figures used to represent different parts of our consciousness/psyche. BUT the experience of DMT and especially ayahuasca points to something (that most of us can agree on) great within ourselves and our world/reality/universe. That to me is something special in itself.

Wow lots of replies let me try to catch up.



Then I don't think the term god is appropriate for what you and many others are talking about. God implies something much more personal and human like for the devote and faithful.



Emotionally it brings out something many other substances or experience cannot or very rarely do. There are many great things about our universe the trouble is sometimes really feeling or seeing it. DMT can help that.



I should have been more clear but yes what I meant was that evolution did not seek to explain the origin of life but rather the origin of species. In that it has succeeded tremendously. However the basic ideas of evolution also seem to apply to non living things like the cosmos and perhaps the origin of life and our current universe. Which shows the power of Darwins observation. There was a reason he didn't dare publish what he noticed for over 20 years (i think).



Well its not nothing its matter and energy. The biological definition of life does allow for life to really be anything that is capable of self replicating. I mean do you consider a virus alive? Or a prion? Most of us wouldn't its more like a little robot. But in a way its what all life is doing except now life is so complex. Could we consider a computer virus alive? I dunno about that but I dunno. However I do think there is a difference between a virus and conscious life like mammals. Not in its fundamental self replicating manner but in its ability to well be conscious.



Well ok. Our entire universe is made up of 'stuff' space is not empty. But where did space come from? I don't know no one does. But why think that some intelligence force created it? How could there be an intelligent force without something making it? Thats why god is so improbable.

I think you are wrong there are lots of experiments going on so I think we are going to see a lot in this regard except I don't think its going to be good news for the spiritual or religious folk for the reasons I am currently suggesting.

But yea I often don't like when people link mystics with quantum physics. Theres a lot of popular writing about this these days and half of it is complete garbage. I ask my physicists friends this and they explain it as such. I prefer to look at just quantum physics and what it tells us because it was discovered by a process in which we can not deny its real.



I mentioned this before I thought.

But anyway I am not claiming there is an absence of evidence. There is tons of evidence for people seeing ghosts and demons and god and experiencing oneness the void nirvana all that. My subjective experience with lets say DMT has been much the same as everyone else. My objective explanation seems to be where we differ.

I am saying that psychedelics like our everyday waking reality are completely constructs of the mind. But they are not proof of god or a universal intelligence or karma or whatever else. None of the things you have mentioned in your list saidin are. Let me go to some of the more complex ones if I can.



Look at the psychotic. Everyone else can see they are talking to no one. Even they sometimes realize it and then recognize it. The trouble with us non psychotics is we only experience something like that sometimes so we think its realer or more novel. In some ways its more novel but not neccessarily more real.

Its hard to explain how I would define mind. hmmmm. I'll think on that.

So to your list.



Well all of these things except the big bang and the laws of nature are 100% explainable in the context of the laws of nature without anything else needing to be added in. That's the power of what science has learned and what a few key observations lead to. Things like shamanic insight and synchonicity may seem outside the laws of nature but they aren't. Nothing is. Now I am not saying that science knows all the laws of nature. There are still issues to be resolved and things to connect. Many! But the laws of nature so far explain EVERYTHING after the big bang up to us and our conscious little brains asking these questions. So why believe superstition?

There were no laws of nature before the big bang (if big bang theory is correct). So lets move to this pivotal issue. Creation.

It appears the universe is expanding. We can see the radiation left over from about 14 billion years ago and it paints a picture that is remarkably in agreement with what our universe would have grown up to look like had that been its earlier state. Thats not a trivial correlation nor is it 'just a correlation'.

But you are right saidin that if the laws of nature were different we and our universe that we see (this is important) wouldn't be here in the way it is. But our visible universe may not be all there is. In fact its somewhat arrogant of humankind to think our visible universe is all there is. Its so big why should we think that just because our telescopes can't see any further there is nothing else out there?

But in the multiverse if there is more could exist completely different 'universes' with different and uninhabitable laws of nature. Many would collapse in on themselves many would expand too rapidly that matter may never form etc. But all of them too may have come from the same event that created our universe. Part of the story of the history of the universe is inflation. Inflation is where the idea of dark energy and einsteins cosmological constant came from. Inflation explains why our visible universe is rather flat and not spherical. However we don't really understand why it happened. Its weird.


So yea I dunno I might have went off on a big tangent.

We don't know what created the universe. But to suggest that it was intelligent is unnecessary because we already see from both cosmological and biological evolution that intelligence is not a pre-requisite for anything in our visible universe to form once our universe comes into existence.

Could the universe with laws of nature like ours arisen from an evolutionary principle? That's another fascinating possibility. But what started it all to begin with may never ever be known.

But my entire reason for then objecting to religion and spirituality is that it proves nothing in the face of what science through its processes has discovered. Not to mention its dumbing down of humanity and mechanisms of destruction.

I just popped in to rectify something I'd forgotten to say.

Science and philosophy does not prove that there isn't a 'god'. It does prove the teachings of most if not all religions to be wrong, but it doesn't prove that there isn't 'god' in some form. Evolution and the big bang etc could just be how It makes existence work. But when someone claims that something exists, the burden of proof is on their shoulders to show that it does. And as yet, there is no proof.

I only call myself an atheist for want of a better word. My informed guess is that there isn't a 'god', but if I were really an atheist then I would have to believe that there isn't a god... and that would be closed-minded. I used to call myself 'agnostic', but stopped doing so because I am spiritual in that I like to philosophise about that which science doesn't understand and I enjoy triggering what I would call the human emotion of 'spiritualness'- that wonderful mystic state. In my eyes, atheism is a belief system just as a religion is. If you have to choose a side, atheism is the choice of the scientifically informed, but to choose a side is to close the mind. Agnosticism is I think the only common outlook that does not require belief.

Agnositicism implies 50 50 on everything. Anyone who gambles knows the flaws in taking that approach.

That is not the definition at all. It just means someone who doesn't see the point in holding beliefs on matters which are currently unknowable.

Humanists (the atheist ones, who say they're the 'only' humanists) can be as pig-headed and smug as religious fanatics.

True I take it back hehe.

But yea athiesm isn't really a belief because its based on the overwhelming odds that there is no god like being out there. Except if you consider what created the universe as god but then thats not the god that most other people are talking about. heck I consider the sun god but I'm still an athiest. You see what I mean?

This is part of the problem with the definition of religion we are talking about. As 'cotal posted, the definition of religion is a broad one and encompases many differing degrees of belief. I completely disagree with the notion of a personal god, I personally think that is absurd. A "god" with personality sitting a judging and making shit up as it goes along is equally absurd in my opinion.

But there is another perception of what some call "god". Brahman is one example of a pervasive force in the universe that is all unifying. Tao as well. Energy would be another good synonym for this concept. All of the universe is energy from its very beginning, more or less organized thoughout the cosmos. We are all energy, matter is just energy vibrating at a slower rate. Therefore each of us is a part of everything that exists. We are all interconnected, all part of a whole, and therefore we are all "god"




I agree with you, evolution explains things quite well, but it is not infallable. There are gaps and things that don't make sense from a purely evolutionary standpoint. Boyle's comment that to make DNA, it would be like a tornado going though a junk yard and compling a completely functional 747 jet. Those are the odds that one is working with when trying to explain how life arose in the first place. Yes, statistically it is possilbe, but highly improbable.



True, it is matter and energy, but my question still remains. How does life spring forth spontaneously from inert matter and energy? Yes I consider a virus alive, I also consider a prion to be alive, it can affect its envrionment and create changes to itself and its host. I would go further, away from the very small to the very large. I consider the earth to be alive. I also consider the sun to be alive. Computer virus, thats a good one, I'm not sure about that.

I agree there is an enormous difference between basic life and consciousness, there is a higher organizing principal, it is the nature of existence to coagulate into more complex forms. Why that is I don't know. Doesn't seem necessary, but it is a fundamental property of the reality we apparently inhabit.



I would disagree with you here. I believe that the more science learns, the more it will find validity in certain aspects of spirituality. They are like two rivers merging, eventually we will be able to explain everything using aspects of both.

What do you have to say about the fact that quantum physics proved long ago that reality as we experience it is an illusion? That everything we experience is a product of consciousnes?



I never said I could prove the existence of something more than myself, I said there was a lot of circumstantial evidence out there that leads me to believe that there is some force that unifies all of creation, Brahman, Tao, All That Is, Intelligent Energy. I know my ego is false, it separates me from the reality of existence. I'm sure you can find more complex/compelling ones, those are what I came up with off the top of my head.




How do you know the psychotic is not talking to anyone/anything? How can you objectively prove that?

Heh, need to go do stuff for a bit, but will come back to comment on the rest of your post. Excellent discussion we are having here, many thanks for making me think!

Namaste

Please explain intelligence in context of science and laws of nature.
Please explain consciousness in context of science and laws of nature.
Why are synchronicity and shamanic insight apparently outside the laws of nature, but in all actuality perfectly explainable by them? Please explain.



You are correct, it is arrogant to assume that what we see is all there is. In fact what we can see is only our "light horizion", once we get to the edge of that, that perspective would have their own "light horizion". It is quite possible that the universe extends on into infinity by following this logic.




They may have come from the same event that created our universe, there may have been alternate events, there is no way to know. Inflation and expansion are two completely different concepts. I was under the impression that Einstein's cosmological constant was there to explain the expansion of the universe, not the inflationary period that some scientists have used to explain how it got so big so fast, and why it is flat. Dark energy is the explanation for the expansion, not for inflation. It is the opposing force to gravity.



You are right, concepts of religion and spirituality prove nothing. But they offer suggestions for what may have happened, and give a possibilty of an answer to questions it is unlikely that science will ever be able to prove. Intelligence is not a pre-requsite, but it seems to be an inherent property of existence, as least as far as life on this planet is concerned. As above, so below. This is why im curious how you can explain intelligence, as it is not necessary for life.

I think we would agree that evolution is the force of complexity arising from simpler forms over time.

I have a question, which I'll lead into a thought experiement..The cells in your body...They can take in energy and dispose of waste, they can communicate with eachother, they can replicate, they are a microcosm of everything that you are as a complete being. Do they work in harmony with that which you call "burnt"? Or are they slaves to you?