(August 11, 2015 at 4:22 am)robvalue Wrote: Indeed.

You can't "defeat" a weak atheist in any shape or form, because they make no positive claims.

That makes it very hard for people (the people that bother to understand the above point anyway) because they want atheism to be making claims, so they can thwart those claims and make themselves feel better. So they tell atheists what kind of atheists they are (strong atheists as a minimum) and then add on what they believe are the logical consequences of the belief. They then merrily back away at this effigy, and after "defeating" it, they think they've somehow proven atheism wrong. All they've done is made a mess in their bedroom.

Strong atheism is very easy to defend anyway, but the point is that people like Rik require everyone to be strong atheists so they can attack "atheism". They also require them to be philosophical naturalists, which is actually quite rare in my experience. I'll let Rik explain what that means.

Holy, holy Rob.
You are in a total mental mess. 
There is no such a thing as a philosophical naturalist.
Philosophy is all about wisdom and wisdom can not come from a limited arena as the universe
in which the positive and negative always balance each other.
On the contrary the definition given for the word philosophical naturalist mean someone who believe that the natural world is all there is.
How the hell can someone who believe that the natural world is all there is and at the same time talk about philosophy which goes outside the physical world.
Total madness Rob. 

(August 11, 2015 at 9:24 am)Iroscato Wrote: This is every bit as fucked up as a hellfire-preaching pastor.  

I know, right? It's disgusting. Regardless of which religion you turn to, the story is basically "Your suffering is invalid because it's either your own fault and/or all these fictional people went through the same thing or worse with smiles and joy in their hearts and untouched piety, sooo...fuck you."

(August 11, 2015 at 9:32 am)Little Rik Wrote: Holy, holy Rob.
You are in a total mental mess. 
There is no such a thing as a philosophical naturalist.
Philosophy is all about wisdom and wisdom can not come from a limited arena as the universe
in which the positive and negative always balance each other.
On the contrary the definition given for the word philosophical naturalist mean someone who believe that the natural world is all there is.
How the hell can someone who believe that the natural world is all there is and at the same time talk about philosophy which goes outside the physical world.
Total madness Rob. 

At the risk of sounding like a Scientologist, Rik, your primary and foremost problem is that you do not understand the definitions of certain words that you're using. Considering that English is your second language, I could probably let this slide, only you sound exactly like the kind of charlatan who just redefines words when it's convenient, so I guess that's what I've been presuming you were actually doing. I'm betting you do the exact same thing in Italian.

Philosophy is not inherently tied to the supernatural. Hell, not even religion is inherently tied to the supernatural. The supernatural isn't exclusively tied to religion, for that matter.

Philosophy is the study of knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life, etc. While a lot of woo and religion gets injected into it, philosophy in its purest form has nothing to do with the supernatural and everything to do with pondering what we are and why we're here. The supernatural is not required for that in any way.

The Universe encompasses everything that naturally exists. We don't actually know if it's finite or infinite, or what its absolute limits are. For you to call something as large and all-encompassing as the Universe a "limited arena" is a statement of broad ignorance and cretinism. People who can look at the natural Universe and feel like there needs to be something more just don't make any sense to me. The natural world is a massive, complex place that we barely understand, and to me that's magical enough without having to paint a bunch of cartoon characters over the parts we don't understand yet.

(August 11, 2015 at 9:33 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:

(August 11, 2015 at 9:24 am)Iroscato Wrote: This is every bit as fucked up as a hellfire-preaching pastor.  

I know, right? It's disgusting. Regardless of which religion you turn to, the story is basically "Your suffering is invalid because it's either your own fault and/or all these fictional people went through the same thing or worse with smiles and joy in their hearts and untouched piety, sooo...fuck you."

So, according to your line of thinking if someone rape and kill your loved one and are not caught in this life will never paid for their debt?
Would you really like that Pinky? 
Get real Pinky.
If life would be based on good luck and bad luck the universe would have gone billion of years ago already.
What is not gone long time ago are the dreamers that think that is all based on good luck and bad luck.
These dreamers are the one that try to drag the society behind.
As bad as the religious fanatics. 

(August 11, 2015 at 9:42 am)Little Rik Wrote:

(August 11, 2015 at 9:33 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: I know, right? It's disgusting. Regardless of which religion you turn to, the story is basically "Your suffering is invalid because it's either your own fault and/or all these fictional people went through the same thing or worse with smiles and joy in their hearts and untouched piety, sooo...fuck you."

So, according to your line of thinking if someone rape and kill your loved one and are not caught in this life will never paid for their debt?
Would you really like that Pinky? 
Get real Pinky.
If life would be based on good luck and bad luck the universe would have gone billion of years ago already.
What is not gone long time ago are the dreamers that think that is all based on good luck and bad luck.
These dreamers are the one that try to drag the society behind.
As bad as the religious fanatics. 

What I would like to believe and what is actually true don't necessarily have anything to do with each other, do they Rik? What you would like to believe has no impact on the truth either, for that matter. The truth is true regardless of what anyone believes about it, and the simple fact is that there's no evidence of karma, reincarnation, or hell.


Your argument is a ham-fisted appeal to emotion, and not a very good one. If someone raped and killed my loved one, there's a good chance they'd get caught. Even if they didn't, they might get caught later on down the line if they continued to behave that way. If they're executed or they kill themselves, they've been deprived the rest of their existence, which isn't exactly "getting away with it".


Maybe they wouldn't get caught, though. Sometimes people do bad things and nobody punishes them, Rik. Maybe it would be nice to believe that reality has a built-in justice system...I know I used to think that, and I'm ashamed to admit there were certainly times when I relished the thought of people getting punished by karma and/or god and/or hell for the times they'd wronged me or someone I cared about. You know what though? That's the cruelest kind of wishful thinking, and any system of dogma that encourages it is inherently unhealthy and destructive.


You're the one who's as bad as the religious fanatics, you sick fuck. You're the one who wants people to be punished across multiple lifetimes for crimes they at that point have no knowledge of having ever committed. That's disgusting.


Furthermore, you do not understand enough about probability, statistics, or science to make the statement you just made about the Universe and blind luck. All evidence indicates that the Universe IS blind luck, operating within a system that is governed by consistent physical laws. Particles aren't just randomly whizzing around in space, they clump together because they're attracted to each other. Blind luck doesn't mean absolute chaos, it just means nobody is pulling the strings of the system.

(August 11, 2015 at 9:42 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:

(August 11, 2015 at 9:32 am)Little Rik Wrote: Holy, holy Rob.
You are in a total mental mess. 
There is no such a thing as a philosophical naturalist.
Philosophy is all about wisdom and wisdom can not come from a limited arena as the universe
in which the positive and negative always balance each other.
On the contrary the definition given for the word philosophical naturalist mean someone who believe that the natural world is all there is.
How the hell can someone who believe that the natural world is all there is and at the same time talk about philosophy which goes outside the physical world.
Total madness Rob. 

At the risk of sounding like a Scientologist, Rik, your primary and foremost problem is that you do not understand the definitions of certain words that you're using. Considering that English is your second language, I could probably let this slide, only you sound exactly like the kind of charlatan who just redefines words when it's convenient, so I guess that's what I've been presuming you were actually doing. I'm betting you do the exact same thing in Italian.

Philosophy is not inherently tied to the supernatural. Hell, not even religion is inherently tied to the supernatural. The supernatural isn't exclusively tied to religion, for that matter.

Philosophy is the study of knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life, etc. While a lot of woo and religion gets injected into it, philosophy in its purest form has nothing to do with the supernatural and everything to do with pondering what we are and why we're here. The supernatural is not required for that in any way.

The Universe encompasses everything that naturally exists. We don't actually know if it's finite or infinite, or what its absolute limits are. For you to call something as large and all-encompassing as the Universe a "limited arena" is a statement of broad ignorance and cretinism. People who can look at the natural Universe and feel like there needs to be something more just don't make any sense to me. The natural world is a massive, complex place that we barely understand, and to me that's magical enough without having to paint a bunch of cartoon characters over the parts we don't understand yet.

Holy, holy Pinky you are as bad as Rob.
You just remind me something about my younger years when i was living in Italy.
In summer i used to go in the Adriatic riviera where i could see thousand of north europeans
there for their holidays.
What it came in my mind was that if all these outsiders were coming in Italy Italy must be the best place on earth.
Well, well, how wrong i was.
Later on when i started travelling around the globe i found out that there are better places than
Italy especially here in Australia so my views changed so much.
You act exactly in the same way.
As a materialist you think that the physical universe is all there is but you never allow your consciousness take you in better places so you have build a dogma in your mind that the universe is the only thing there is.
Sad Pinky, very sad but as i did wake up also you can so all the best for your next trip within.  

(August 11, 2015 at 10:03 am)Little Rik Wrote:

(August 11, 2015 at 9:42 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: At the risk of sounding like a Scientologist, Rik, your primary and foremost problem is that you do not understand the definitions of certain words that you're using. Considering that English is your second language, I could probably let this slide, only you sound exactly like the kind of charlatan who just redefines words when it's convenient, so I guess that's what I've been presuming you were actually doing. I'm betting you do the exact same thing in Italian.

Philosophy is not inherently tied to the supernatural. Hell, not even religion is inherently tied to the supernatural. The supernatural isn't exclusively tied to religion, for that matter.

Philosophy is the study of knowledge, truth, the nature and meaning of life, etc. While a lot of woo and religion gets injected into it, philosophy in its purest form has nothing to do with the supernatural and everything to do with pondering what we are and why we're here. The supernatural is not required for that in any way.

The Universe encompasses everything that naturally exists. We don't actually know if it's finite or infinite, or what its absolute limits are. For you to call something as large and all-encompassing as the Universe a "limited arena" is a statement of broad ignorance and cretinism. People who can look at the natural Universe and feel like there needs to be something more just don't make any sense to me. The natural world is a massive, complex place that we barely understand, and to me that's magical enough without having to paint a bunch of cartoon characters over the parts we don't understand yet.

Holy, holy Pinky you are as bad as Rob.
You just remind me something about my younger years when i was living in Italy.
In summer i used to go in the Adriatic riviera where i could see thousand of north europeans
there for their holidays.
What it came in my mind was that if all these outsiders were coming in Italy Italy must be the best place on earth.
Well, well, how wrong i was.
Later on when i started travelling around the globe i found out that there are better places than
Italy especially here in Australia so my views changed so much.
You act exactly in the same way.
As a materialist you think that the physical universe is all there is but you never allow your consciousness take you in better places so you have build a dogma in your mind that the universe is the only thing there is.
Sad Pinky, very sad but as i did wake up also you can so all the best for your next trip within.  

(August 11, 2015 at 10:03 am)Little Rik Wrote: Holy, holy Pinky you are as bad as Rob.
You just remind me something about my younger years when i was living in Italy.
In summer i used to go in the Adriatic riviera where i could see thousand of north europeans
there for their holidays.
What it came in my mind was that if all these outsiders were coming in Italy Italy must be the best place on earth.
Well, well, how wrong i was.
Later on when i started travelling around the globe i found out that there are better places than
Italy especially here in Australia so my views changed so much.
You act exactly in the same way.
As a materialist you think that the physical universe is all there is but you never allow your consciousness take you in better places so you have build a dogma in your mind that the universe is the only thing there is.
Sad Pinky, very sad but as i did wake up also you can so all the best for your next trip within.  

Don't hold out on me, Rik. I know you got that good-good.

Actually, it's quite the contrary. I used to go around calling myself a Christ-following Shaman, thinking I had a special, unique, more-correct-than-usual perspective because I had the ways of the East, of the West, and of Science gloriously unified in my brain through the power of intense mental gymnastics. My brain was filled with New Age Judeo-Christian Enlightenment woo, and I thought I had magical, spiritual senses that allowed me to tap into the cosmic consciousness and know things that were impossible to know.

In short, Rik, I sounded a lot like you.

Again, for you to act like it's a dissatisfying prospect for the Universe to be "the only thing there is," you must not realize what an awe-inspiring place the Universe actually is, nor how lucky we are to actually be alive in it.

(August 11, 2015 at 9:55 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:

(August 11, 2015 at 9:42 am)Little Rik Wrote: So, according to your line of thinking if someone rape and kill your loved one and are not caught in this life will never paid for their debt?
Would you really like that Pinky? 
Get real Pinky.
If life would be based on good luck and bad luck the universe would have gone billion of years ago already.
What is not gone long time ago are the dreamers that think that is all based on good luck and bad luck.
These dreamers are the one that try to drag the society behind.
As bad as the religious fanatics. 

What I would like to believe and what is actually true don't necessarily have anything to do with each other, do they Rik? What you would like to believe has no impact on the truth either, for that matter. The truth is true regardless of what anyone believes about it, and the simple fact is that there's no evidence of karma, reincarnation, or hell.


Your argument is a ham-fisted appeal to emotion, and not a very good one. If someone raped and killed my loved one, there's a good chance they'd get caught. Even if they didn't, they might get caught later on down the line if they continued to behave that way. If they're executed or they kill themselves, they've been deprived the rest of their existence, which isn't exactly "getting away with it".


Maybe they wouldn't get caught, though. Sometimes people do bad things and nobody punishes them, Rik. Maybe it would be nice to believe that reality has a built-in justice system...I know I used to think that, and I'm ashamed to admit there were certainly times when I relished the thought of people getting punished by karma and/or god and/or hell for the times they'd wronged me or someone I cared about. You know what though? That's the cruelest kind of wishful thinking, and any system of dogma that encourages it is inherently unhealthy and destructive.


You're the one who's as bad as the religious fanatics, you sick fuck. You're the one who wants people to be punished across multiple lifetimes for crimes they at that point have no knowledge of having ever committed. That's disgusting.


Furthermore, you do not understand enough about probability, statistics, or science to make the statement you just made about the Universe and blind luck. All evidence indicates that the Universe IS blind luck, operating within a system that is governed by consistent physical laws. Particles aren't just randomly whizzing around in space, they clump together because they're attracted to each other. Blind luck doesn't mean absolute chaos, it just means nobody is pulling the strings of the system.

I was on my way to bed but as i saw your disgusting post i hang on for few more minutes.

1) The outer mind can not have knowledge of bad things from your previous life but your superconscious mind
can that is why people born with a good or bad attitude to life.
Nothing happen by good or bad luck.
You carry with you your karma whether you are aware or not.
The evidence that there is karma is that after you pay for your debts you feel so much better within.

2) You got no evidence of whatsoever that the Universe IS blind luck, operating within a system that is governed by consistent physical laws.
None of whatsoever. 

Little Rik Wrote:Not at all Luc.
The laws of physics are related to the physical aspect which is energy.
Consciousness is not something physical and yet according to yoga goes hand in hand with energy so the physical laws lack half of the whole.

"According to yoga". Seriously? What is the epistemic validity of yoga? Why should we take it seriously as a description of reality? Science works. Does yoga? How so?

Little Rik Wrote:Energy without consciousness would and could not follow a direction so it would generate total chaos.
A mind is always required to make sure that chaos is not created.

Nope. The universe acts in a particular way because there are parameters and physical laws that are valid inside of it. Again, if this consciousness was absolutely necessary to make the universe work, it would be really easy to demonstrate its existence.

Little Rik Wrote:In nature lower form of lives up to animals are driven by instinct so also in this case there is a force that make sure that chaos is not created.

If you knew anything about biology, you'd realize that there is a big difference between life forms and non-living objects - namely, the fact that organisms have evolved over the course of ~3.7 billion years to respond to external stimuli in order to perpetuate their genetic material.

Little Rik Wrote:Energy also follow directions.

Umm what do you mean?

Little Rik Wrote:According to the laws of physics energy....... is a property of objects which can be transferred to other objects or converted into different forms, but .......in yoga however first of all everything has energy not just objects but most of all energy is the cosmic consciousness (God) thought waves which created the universe so even the space, air, light, water beside the matter are compose of energy.
In this way the energy that create the space create the air and so on until the matter is created.
So where there is energy there is also consciousness.
One can not be separate from the other.
They all sprung out from God mind at the same time.   

Any evidence for all these ridiculous woo? If there were "thought waves" creating life, the universe and everything, again, it would be pretty easy to point at their interactions with matter and prove their existence.

Little Rik Wrote:First of all let me say that atheists pop up all the time saying that consciousness can not exist outside the brain.
Have they got any solid evidence to state so?
NO.
By not having any evidence at all they break their own rule that say that statements should always have evidence or else are sort of rubbish.

Oh. My. Fucking. God. The evidence for consciousness being a product of brain activity is right under your nose. If the brain (especially the neocortex, which is especially developed in humans, who - guess what - are the animals with the best cognitive and metacognitive abilities) is active, then a subject is conscious. If the brain is not active (e.g. brain dead subjects) the subject is not. If parts of the brain are removed or damaged or if the brain chemistry is changed (e.g. by drugs) consciousness is altered. And there are tons and tons of studies which confirm these facts.

This is simply what we get from the observation of reality:
There is a brain ==> there is a consciousness
There is no brain ==> there is no consciousness

So, since there is no evidence proving the existence of a consciousness outside of a brain, YOU are to bring the evidence. Burden of proof mate, I explained it to you two posts ago. Remember those 500€?

Little Rik Wrote:By me saying that consciousness can live outside the brain once the brain is dead i at least have thousand
of NDEs evidences.
Not only that but it make sense that when the vehicle rot away you are not bound to rot away as well.

NDEs are at the very least really unreliable as evidence, because they are not unequivocally happening outside of a brain. The fact itself that the people who experience NDEs come back to their senses means that their brain was not damaged irreversibly - that is, not dead at all! It's "*near* death experiences", not " dead people coming back to life". There is no evidence for people ever coming back to life.

Little Rik Wrote:Your thought is very weak Luc.
Life is very short.
You are stuck inside a body.
In the same way your journey in a vehicle from point A to point B is also short.
You can get out from your vehicle during your journey so you can say that you are not stuck to your vehicle and therefore you are separate but by terminate your journey from point A to point B you defeat the purpose of going from point A to point B.
You can also put an end to your life by committing suicide and in this way you will defeat the purpose of advancing toward the goal of life so in this way you can say that you are a separate entity from your body or vehicle but it wouldn't make any sense after all.
The reality is that we are fully connected until death brake the parallelism between body-brain and consciousness.

Again with this analogy?
Listen up, I am a *separate* entity from my car. This fact can be easily demonstrated.

As I explained to you before, there is a HUGE correlation between brain activity and the expression of consciousness. This correlation is so deep (open a book of neurophysiology if you're interested) that it makes a lot of sense that consciousness is a product of brain activity. Now, if you think that it is a separate entity, please show to us how it is possible and how it works without a brain.

Quote:What is the realm of spirituality? How do you prove its existence? And why shouldn't physical evidence count when "energy", which affects all of the "physical realm" is supposedly "spiritual" in nature? If the spiritual interacts with the physical, shouldn't we be able to tell? If so, why? And if not, why bother with postulating something that can't be experienced at all (and whose  existence therefore doesn't mean anything)?

Can you please answer these questions? Because this is not an answer to any of these:

Little Rik Wrote:You presume that energy and consciousness can not go hand in hand but the evidence is quite clear.
You eat meat and you feel aggressive while if you eat vegetarian food you don't feel aggressive.
What this means other than indicate that the energy goes hand in hand with consciousness which in these two cases give different results.  

BULLSHIT. First off, could you please substantiate your claim that eating meat makes you more aggressive? That is an easily verifiable claim, so, if you didn't pull it out of your ass, show me a peer-reviewed observational study that confirms it.

Even if your claim were true, in what way would it prove your point? If anything, it would just prove (as if it was needed) that the chemistry of the nervous system alterates, influences and ultimately controls consciousness, because food is nothing but chemical substances necessary for an organism's survival.

If food has other "spiritual properties" that cannot be explained by chemistry, then PROVE IT.