A Non-Violent Solution?

[genkaus]

Remaining open-minded about what cannot be known is not unrealistic.

Being open-minded does not mean one should lend credence to any and every idea that one comes across. It simply requires one to consider and idea based on its merits, and if its found to be irrational, to reject it.

Your ideas are rooted in absence of knowledge of the unknown and denial of knowledge of the known. Lending it any credence is not a sign of open-mindedness.

Certain doom is not necessarily a 'fact'. It's just something that you have personally accepted to believe because you can't imagine a spiritual essence to reality.

Oh, I can imagine it alright. I simply realize that my imagination has no bearing on reality. Something you seem to be incapable of learning.

And I never said that it would protect anyone from anything. All I suggested is that it would allow people to have hope who wish to consider these things as possibilities.

So how is it any 'safer' than their original god fantasy? It is in the same category as it.

So says you.

But who are you to make such an outrageous claim?

You can't possibly know that with absolute certainty. All you can do is accept that you personally feel that this is the most likely situation. But trying to demand that other people jump to the same conclusions that you do can only amount to extreme personal arrogance.

There's just no other explanation for such a stance.

I know it with as much certainty as I know that there is no god, Christian or otherwise. And with as much certainty as I know who I am and where I am right now.

As for explanations, I've given them. You just seem unable to understand them.

I disagree. It's that simple.

I can personally imagine a scenario where the totally of what we think we know is actually nothing more than an illusion.

Yet, your conclusions that you can rule out illusion would themselves be based on that illusion, thus making them totally illusive and meaningless.

You're very foundational premise begins with your acceptance that everything you have experienced and see around you cannot possibly be an illusion.

You could be totally wrong about that altogether.

No. My argument is that even if this is an illusion, the axioms of existence would still be applicable to the reality (that is separate from the illusion).

In fact, there exists scientists and cosmologists today who are seriously toying with ideas that the entire universe may be nothing more than a hologram of some sorts.

There was a "Black Hole War" between Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking concerning the idea of whether or not "information" can be lost from the universe. Susskind held that this would be an extreme violation of our very understanding of physics. Hawking felt that our understanding of physics must then be violated.

After many years, Hawking finally conceded that Susskind was right, and that information is not lost when it falls into a black hole, but instead it is somehow spread across the entire event horizon.

And esoteric conclusion to be sure, but this is what physicists are considering.

From these very results other cosmologists have chimed in suggesting that our entire universe may actually be some kind of hologram that is actually being created by a 'surface boundary' of the universe, too far away for us to even detect.

Yes, I'll be the first to grant that these are truly wild and speculative theories. None the less, these types of theories exist. And like Leonard Susskind himself has said, we don't question whether or not these things make intuitive sense, we just follow the logic, and that's where the logic appears to be pointing.

So your claim that you can "rule out" anything, is a bit premature, IMHO.

And here you go off at a tangent again, blabbering about possible scientific theories and how little knowledge we have about the possible existence of this "other" reality. None of which lend an iota of support to your pet hypothesis.

Understand this. I'm quite open to the idea of existence of a "reality" independent of spacetime. What I have ruled out is the possibility of existence of a consciousness in that reality - inherent or otherwise. I've ruled out the former based on axiom of existence and the latter based on the known nature of consciousness.

You may as well be preaching Christian fundamentalism as far as I'm concerned. You're demand that you can rule something out is equally laughable.

Obviously, you would think so. For someone incapable of being rational, telling difference between rationality and absence of it is impossible.

You have absolutely no ground to stand on.

Much more that your Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam.

All you can say is that based on assumptions and premises that you are personally willing to accept, you can't imagine how a spiritual essence of reality can exist.

I can imagine it and by the same standard, rule it out.

But in truth, that is not impressive to other people, nor should it be.

You could be accepting totally false assumptions and be totally unaware of that fact yourself.

Except, these axioms cannot be false, because without them, there wouldn't be anything such as a "false statement".

Like I say, I can easily lump you in with the definition of "atheist" in my sig line. A person who simply lacks enough imagination to overcome mundane assumptions. That instantly explains away your claim to have a 'proof" of anything. You're just accepting assumptions that cannot themselves be proven.

You do understand the difference between an axiom and an assumption, right? No, I don't think you do.

An assumption is a statement that is assumed to be true for the sake of argument. An axiom is a statement which is true for every possible argument.

Why should I accept your limited thinking?

I would've said "because you seem incapable of thinking for yourself", but your unthinking acceptance is not something I want or care about.