I agree one hundred fucking percent. Finally, thank you JMAN YOU ARE GOD! I have a lot of input for this, beautfil. About time. Maybe I can throw my whole spiel on The Illusion of God, moral relativism, the 9/11 possibilities for which you vilify me as an "idiot" to quote you...

If those first posts are your, and I believe you to be Jonathan based on your username for webdiplomacy, then I agree with you on both posts, although the second is more concrete.

i would say i am a illusion before God is

that's interesting, care to elucidate or is that just a general mark of little real significance to show your devotion to God. In other words, can we work with this idea to expand it to the given topic of reality or is it just a wasted statement. The fact that you are making that statement proves (or does it?) that you are in fact not an illusion. God has never revealed himself to me, whereas you have. From my personal reality, it is unlikely you are an illusion.

Haha, I throw around "idiot" alot. Theoretically though, everything that we call "real" could just be a mass halucination and we could simply be an imaginative force or something. It can get very weird and also very interesting.

Thanks a ton for the input.

hoever, otto, I do say that our personal realities are not the true realities. They are simply fudged perceptions of what is true. So essentially we cannot know whether a God exists or not.

yes, i think therefore i am. and because i am, therfore God is. u see most scientists and all evolutionaries(im partly one, i think its true but i dont think humans are fish, maybe monkeys but not fish, anyhow its a flawed theory im open to anything.) believe the begining of earth was big bang. Catholic priest actually made that up. i think its true as well, as more evidence is for that than evolution anyhow, but the question still remains, what made it bang? U dont know that, but for me its God. Because i think there needed to be a creator, not for my body to be, but for my soul to be. how can a soul be?

lets stick to reality. all these threads keep on getting hi-jacked into God vs. Evolution battles.

Maya: the illusion of the reality that we live in. (I am referring to Buddhist thought, not Mesoamerican cultures)

I don't believe that. I also believe that there can only be one true reality, which is impossible to achieve if parameters are not set (there is too much out there). Everyone has their own perceived reality, which differs based on a multitude of reasons. But wait a second. What are we talking about here? Are we talking about perceived facts vs. rue facts? Are we including opinions? Are we just asking whether we exist?

there's no soul, too bad when you die there will be no soul for you to know that there is no soul... i agree with jman on the derailing of a lot of threads on religious bases. ssreichs: IM me if you want to discuss evolution more, but basically BigBand was the beginning for the process of evolution. Here's a doozer for you. If you think God created the Big Bang/made it possible, What created God? Energy cannot be created or destroyed. I have an elaborate reality-based explanation or where I'm going with this, maybe I'll post on the blog soon...

JECE: ALL OF THE ABOVE

If a tree falls in the woods but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

So do you help feed the hungary or poor in your solispsitic world? Just wondering if you are bound to any moral imperatives?

lol, what created God? God Is, He always was. This may be the biggest excuse in an argument that doesnt prove either side but God say "my ways, are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts." for us to understand God with our measly brains is like a dog trying to understand algebra. We came late in the game, God had already created angels. And our souls? If i think, i am, and if i am i always will be, that is if Gods willing

the second part of that string of logic is totally flaws ss and you know it, first part is possible but debatable as well. SOW I'm not even sure if my mental state is real... I personally volunteer at a Lutheran Nursing Home, Why? Why the Hell not. Doesn't hurt me. My motives are not bases on morals. I believe at the same time that people are constantly in a struggle over realities/power but at the same time obviously seek the continuance of the human race (ie sex drive, saving fellow human beings). We are animals and thus compete/survive, while at the same time helping out the human race. I realize that the soul is only a metaphor, and so my legacy, ie what I do for the world is the only vestige of me after I die. I don't really care what that is (obviously I'll be dead). There is a human desire I believe to leave part of one's self behind, whatever that happens to be.

@otto,

Why was the Big Bang the "beginning for the process of evolution" any more than it was the beginning for any other process? There's no reason to expect that, given a universe, it will contain life.

Otto...I wasn't referring to a human atheist philosophy. I was asking about the solopsitic philosophy.

@SSRF,

No evolutionist claims that humans are fish or monkeys. Also, the formation of Earth happened a long time after the Big Bang.

"... Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man ..."

thank you SunZi. SOW... reread your own question please. ABGE: do you know what a prerequisite is?

Ok...do I need to rephrase it?

Jman....in your world of individual reality, what place does altruism have?

Yes, I do. But when you say the Big Bang is a prereq for Evolution, when the Big Bang is a prereq for EVERYTHING, it seems like a vacuous statement. I was just wondering if I misunderstood you.

it's a logical vacuous statement. SOW your first question had two main parts including moral relativism, which I tied in with atheism to give you a general overview. I'm not an all out individual realist yet, that takes time. Just like religion takes a while to stick for some, or how God can be removed from the conscience...

@SSReichs: Matter-Energy is and always was. Why do you think it needed God for it's own creation? If everything needs to be created then why is God exempt, if not everything needs to be created then why is the Universe included in your idea? (also re:the big bang, that may have been another state of Matter-Energy, which we can't currently describe with our limited understanding of physics - more so than evolution, cosmology is just a theory, they keep refining it, and dark matter/energy are both recent additions which change things quite a lot)

You will not always be in a sense: http://www.xkcd.com/659/
you are a combination of atoms, which atoms make up 'you' varies with time, but eventually you will die. If you have a soul and it continues to exist in some way it will not be the same combination arrangment. Study how the brain works (better still how damaged brains lose some functions). There is some really interesting stuff out there, and if you come back still thinking that conscisness isn't based in the brain/your soul will be you, i'll ask what 'you' means.

@Jman: sorry haven't read your blog yet.
Yeah we all have different precieved realities, we strive to understand a true reality. What difference does this make to the price of milk?

BB was a prereq for EVERYTHING except those things that precluded the BB... Without matter you cannot have life. There's a point of unity for religion and science if creationists would chuck out their ludicrous argument of the seven days of creation in the convergence of God and Evolution, it's called deism...

Orthaic thank you, JMAN sorry you are no longer GOD, orthaic has usurped the throne momentarily, You'll have to earn it back. However, Ortho (to go to the root of the matter, hahaha) what are "you?"

anyone, does time exist?

Altruism is easy to explain for me. I don't tend to be a "charitable" individual of the nature of the uber rich. So, if in my dream, I become uper rich, I should become more altruistic. It is part of the self deception... The dream world I have created is completely consistent within and is tweaked on occasion to make it self-conform. That way I can continue to deceive myself into believing there are more lifeforms than just myself. In essence, I am God and no one else exists.

That being said, I don't actually believe that. If I did and it were true, it would trigger me to awaken from the dream state. If I did and it weren't true I would stay in the dream state. Therefore, the time in my life some 25 years ago where I accepted that this was possible and might be reality should have made the sleeper awaken. But it didn't, vis a vis, it must not be true.

Yes, but deism can not be used to control the masses, so why would Organized Religion settle for that?

"anyone, does time exist? "

Depending on which Physicist you ask, you'll get a different answer...

The internet is a lie, you are all bots developped for a secret and elaborate plot by the canadian federal government to keep me entertained.

@ Dominic,

Do we all pass the Turing Test?

Time is a means of measuring change. But it isn't a true dimension like the three we perceive.

@abgemacht
I don't want to talk about do we all pass the Turing test.

@zckls04,

HAHAH

Draugnar that link you sent/posted, is that all your work? If it is, damn it's great

@draug: not like the three we precieve in that we precieve time differently. So it is unlike the three we precieve, however Einstien did some great work on relativity which has been proven by almost every experiment. (sorry, never disproved by any - cause that's all science can ever do)

@Otto: 'what are "you?" ' - to steal from my maths lecturer: the definition of 'you' is left as an exercise for the class.

I believe i am an arrangment of atoms. I believe that arrangment changes over time. I also believe that humans (these arrangments) have come up with a way to apply abstract concepts to the world to make sense of it. (hence our precieved realities - they are simple models of reality to allow us make judgements and decisions) The concept of self is fairly useful.

It is not a precise description of what a human is, however it is very useful for how we make decisions. I assume that you have your own version of this concept, thus i don't need to explain what 'you' is any further.

@zckls04: best reply so far.

I meant Orthaic not Draugnar on my last post, who's artwork is that for the link posted?

no not my work. xkcd is a webcomic which i read, the artist is very good.

I actually think every person perceives time differently, that is why some people seem to have perfect timing and can count seconds in their heads to within a fraction and others let time get away from them and couldn't keep a beat on a drum with a metronome ticking in the background.

some people precieve space differently, but with clocks and rulers we are able to come up with a measure which different people can agree on.

I suspect we ALL actually perceive every thing differently, but find something common that allows us to communicate our ideas. For all I know, what I see as a spehere lookls like a cube to you and vice versa. My straight lines may have a curvature to you but because we were taught that a straight line looks like some example, we forever call it a straight line.

no, i suspect we all have similar mechanisms in our brains which we use to perceive, the same bio-mechanical mechanism to detect light in our eyes.

sure some people have abberations in their eyes which alter what they see, but not what they perceive...

and yeah, the neural-pathways differ from person to person, but i'm guessing that the same physical processes shape those path-ways, so while different people have different expierences, we mostly learn the same kinds of things.

But because all communication, and therefore shared experience, relies on prior common experience and perception, we can't be certain that what my wife sees as pink matches what you see as pink. In fact, I would argue that our perceptions have to be different or we would all like the same foods, sounds, smells, visual arts, and other sensory experiences because they would always be pleasing if we all perceived them the same. I find Mahler interesting, but most people can't stand his work. I find Charles Ives' music amazing, but again, many can't stand it. Why? Because my perception makes that music pleasing to me. at the same time, I find most country music gets on my nerves, but a large group of people love country music.

Favorite foods and hated foods, the perception of taste and smell is different therefore whether they stimulate the endorphins that tell you they are pleasing or not is different.

Art... I find some art to be a visual cacphony while other artists work are simply sublime. Someone else may find their are diametrically opposed to my views regarding the same artists.

And the real kicker is the masochist who enjoys and finds pleasure in pain while others (myself included) avoid pain at all costs.

@draugnar: However you agree that they feel the same thing, that this brain-tool mechanism - so the feeling of pleasure is the same chemical reaction (though varying in intensity, and i'm sure different brains are more/less sensitive to whatever chemicals happen to be involved.

so a masochist happens to have some feedback mechanism built into(or created by the enviroment) their brain which means their pleasure centres are stimulated by expierencing/inflicting pain.

you said: "because all communication, and therefore shared experience, relies on prior common experience and perception, we can't be certain that what my wife sees as pink matches what you see as pink."

All communication is an attempt to bridge our common perception. It is only succesful because we have common expierences to base it on. For all the variation between people we stil have common mechanisms to do so many things we can't help but understand each other. (similar facial expressions which have been developed and are automatically used to communicate emotion without the use of language)

Of course it has been shown that these are learned understandings, and that children who grow up without ever seeing a smiling face don't understand what it is like. Again studies of brain damage and developmentally impaired brains really tell us a lot about how we work.

Effectively it doesn't matter what your wife thinks 'pink' is. It is triggering by the same wavelenght of light interacting with the same type of chemical in the eye. It may not stimulate the same parts of the brain, the same cognitive/emotional responce, but then we learn a word to describe it and can identify it as pink.

Some part of our expierence is subjective, but it is based on an objective reality which we perceive, which we filter with our senses. We interact via our bodies, (light (photons) interacts with the photosensitive cells in our eyes, sound (phonons) in the air interacts with the bones in our ears...)