Philosophy

[Kyuuketsuki]

You know, you call others "fucking ridiculous" but you have absolutely no intellectual curiosity at all.

Not really, what he seems to be saying (much like I would) is that all the OP has done is layer an unprovable idea on top of what we perceive as reality.

All atheists seem to know how to do is berate what they won't take the time to even think about.

Not only is that a generalisation based on limited experience (I know of lots of atheist who buy in the philosophical gobbledegook) but you're wrong ... the point is that we DO think (HAVE thought) about these things and what you got from Adrian was his summarised conclusion, for what seems to be much the same reason I responded with, "Bored now!"

Lots of philosophers through the ages have doubted that what we consider "reality" is truly all there is. Parmenides, Zeno, Plato, Aristotle, Berkeley to name a few. But I guess with a wave of your what, 20-year-old hand, you would dismiss them as "fucking ridiculous" as well.

Being "into" philosophy as I can see you are, you are almost certainly going to reject all of what I say in the following paragraph(s) which is fine but, as I say above, I HAVE given this a great deal of thought and I have rejected modern day philosophy as largely meaningless.

Philosophy seems to have (as is usual within the English language) a correct meaning and a number of common usage meanings but, thanks to Asimov (who was one of those dratted Doctor's of Philosophy as you probably know) and his "New Guide to Science", it appears that it derives from the ancient Greeks. Asimov devotes some space to philosophy where he referred to the Greek investigations of the universe and that they called (and I quote) 'their new manner of studying the universe philosophia ("philosophy"), meaning "love of knowledge" or, in free translation, "the desire to know"'(page 8). I would argue that it is because current day philosophers seem to provide little or no direct value to the real world that much of the philosophy bandied about today is little more than academic psychobabble. The true philosophers are scientists.

Obviously I accept that philosophy can generate ideas that can feed into science (the real philosophy) but alone it is a pointless waste of space and nowadays philosophers seem largely people with huge ego's blowing deductive sunshine up each other's arses (and don't even get me started on its bastard child, metaphysics).

Both Adrian and I chose to be dismissive of the original posters arguments for good reason ... that we didn't outline those reasons (and Adrian's' may well be different from mine) doesn't mean our views lack thought, it means (certainly in my case) we can't be arsed to answer.

Let me tell you something I know that you don't seem to know:
Everything you know--has been taught to you. You think you're advanced, intelligent, wise, oh, and what's the other word...educated. But you don't espouse any original ideas.

Maybe, maybe not but let me tell you something YOU apparently don't know ... nor do you!

A man with an original idea, wrong or right, is worth a thousand know-it-all's. A person says they're gnostic. I'm intrigued, but you seem to be threatened to the point of hostility. Why is that?

Who says we're threatened, that's just like all those other theists posts where they say were angry or aggressive or whatever ... we're not, you simply perceive it that way and I say above I read Adrian's comments as dismissive. In fact, being brutally honest, I thought his response was really, really funny.

Oh, and here's a clue I learned from some of my...shall we say, experience...if you want a successful forum, you don't talk to your new members like that. You want this forum to run with the big dogs, you should grow up, act like a manager, and enforce your own rules. You're supposed to be an example for the rest of us in here to follow. You want ten of your friends to be in here posting once a week? Fine, piss off everyone who comes in to try out the forum. Believe me. If you want to be successful, you better find a way to attract every religious nut, like me and the gnostic, that you can. You'll always have pleanty of atheists to challenge them.

The forum, despite your implicit claim otherwise, is doing fine and (personally) I wouldn't want too many people like Dagda and you here ... it's not that I don't (sometimes) enjoy the debate or am (sometimes) unwilling to answer, it's just an awful lot easier to post these kind of things than it is to raise a coherent argument against it and that is exactly what leads to replies like Adrian's and mine.

But what do I know. You probably think I'm fucking ridiculous, too.

If you buy into the idea that what we perceive as reality is an illusion then yes, I do, not you personally but the POV expressed ... I think it's naïve, premature, very little different from a religious beliefs indeed a kind of god substitute.

I mean don't get me wrong, I still think philosophical ideas can be interesting and sometimes even useful (when they feed into science) ... here's one that I kind of buy into (I'm not sure it's what most would call philosophy, I just classify it as such because I don't see how there can, at least at our current level of technology, be any real evidence):

When you look at a computer screen you assume the screen is external to you but, because everything you perceive is merely data that have already entered your brain, what you perceive as external is a neurologically constructed model inside your brain of the real world outside your brain. The key point is you NEVER perceive the external world directly you only ever perceive second-hand "messages" from where it was processed into the three-dimensional model of the real world that you “see”. The things that you perceive as being the genuine articles "out there" are actually simulations of them inside your brain.

So you interact with the real world through a simulation and as long as that simulation is an exact analogy of the real world you do not experience problems. However when that internal model falls out of sync with the real world the subject begins to experience problems and paranormal, insane or non-sober experiences result ... one only has to drink three or 4 beers to get a good idea of what this can be like.

Since the internal model is a construct it is obvious that other brain (possibly abnormal) activities can interfere with that model ... for example if the neurological program that places the “virtual” you in one location in the model places you in a different location in error an out-of-body experience might result.

“The location of your consciousness could appear to expand and engulf the entire world-model, resulting in a "cosmic consciousness" experience. Or, inside your brain's program, experiences like pain could be placed in a location outside your simulated body, such as in the perceived location an amputated leg used to be, resulting in a "phantom pain" apparently outside your body. In each example, only the parameters of a simulated body inside the brain are transcended, and thus the evidence of a spirit body disappears like a ghost.” Ian Williams Goddard, 1999

When assessing and understanding paranormal experiences such as out-of-body or past lives it is important to understand the nature of the data existing within our brains and the fact that it does not necessarily have to be the same as that in the real world. The real world is never directly perceived.

Objective evidence to date indicates that such paranormal experiences are unique to the subject and that the only changes occurring are with the subjects internal world model.

Objective observers tend to view such experiences therefore as personal and not related to the real world in any literal fashion and, quite rightly, dismiss them as such.

References
“Out Of Body Experiences” Ian Williams Goddard, 1999

Not, of course, that I would say the above is true (how could I know?) but it sounds like a logical hypothesis and I would be interested to see if someone could devise some real tests for it ... maybe the recent brain imaging work in Japan (?) will one day yield some results.

Anyway, to summarise what is a way too long post, we DO think about these things much more than you'd like to believe, we simply CHOOSE to cut to the chase and dismiss such views as rubbish because we're reasonably confident that's were we're going to end up and an awful lot of time and effort (as this reply demonstrates) is required to deal with it effectively.

Kyu

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So, I assume you speak for the owners of the forum? And you say it's primary purpose is not to debate and discuss? Then what is it? Hey, I've been to lots of Christian forums where all they want to do is post JPEGs of flowers and paintings of Jesus with a lamb on his lap and write little banal notes of tired encouragement. They have a handful of members and it's just for them. Is that what this forum is? Just a little myspace for atheist freshman and teens?

The owner is Adrian ... if he's anything like me (perish the thought) the forum's primary purpose would be a place to hang out, discuss ideas, have a bit of pseudo-intellectual fun. With the exception of the "debate forum" itself I'd say that debating was too formal a purpose even if some of us lean towards such ideas.

Fine. Just say so. Don't make forums called "Discussion" and then say you don't want discussion.

Firstly we're human (we have lives, limited time and sometimes we just get arsed off), secondly it's an atheism forum (there's nothing in the rules that says we MUST discuss ideas that bear no specific relationship to atheism), thirdly there's nothing in the rules that says we MUST discuss anything (simply a set of behaviour guidelines) and fourthly we do (that you don't like the answers is your problem not ours).

I wouldn't think of challenging you...really.

I find cynicism works much better if the argument you're raising in the first place is a good one ... see above.

Kyu