"How do I know God exists?" - the first step to atheism

[Abracadabra]

In fact, the only way that could not be true is if I was something other than the universe experiencing itself.

Ah,finally, solipism. Well, that puts the fairy on top of thee Xmas tree.

Pantheism is actually quite different from solipsism. They are two entire different philosophies. This just further goes to demonstrate that gross ignorance that actually exists concerning the Eastern Mystical philosophies.

Of course, pure solipsism cannot be disproved either so I'm not sure what you're laughing about. The joke might ultimately be one that you're playing on yourself. The solipsists may be right.

I personally don't believe in solipsism, I think reality is more likely to be some form of mystical pantheism. In fact, if you really want to get technical about it, I actually favor "panentheism" myself.

Scientifically there may even be secular ways of preserving individuals after death. Discoveries in the western sciences actually provide a means where all information that ever existed can be preserved.

In fact, that very debate was the central topic of "The Black Hole Wars" between Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking. It's a major law of physics that information cannot be lost. In fact, violate that law, and our entire cathedral of modern physics falls. This is why Leonard Susskind was so concerned about information being lost in black holes in the first place.

So even information that falls into black holes cannot be lost from the observable universe and Leonard Susskind and Stephen Hawking found a way to save the information and thus save modern physics.

At the same time, they may have potentially saved our 'souls'. (ha ha)

They may have provided a mechanism through which we can indeed become eternal individuals without violating the sacred laws of the God of the Secularists.

It may be possible to, not only resurrect your physical body and persona, but it may be possible to recreate your entire life and everything that you have ever experienced, and it may even be possible to use any point within that framework to construct a brand new reality that can actually unfold from that point forward differently from the way you had actually experienced in this life. The possibilities are actually quite amazing.

In fact, one scientists is proposing that future humans will actually be able to do this. So he's suggesting that our future descendents may actually be able to do what we believed only the "gods" could do.

It's amazing just how many scientific ideas the human mind can actually come up with that cannot be ruled out by our current knowledge. Of course, then again our current knowledge is so miniscule, it really shouldn't be much of a surprise that we can't rule out very much at all.

I think it's quite interesting that some scientists can actually use scientific knowledge to hypothesis things that we thought should only be possible for "gods". Someday we may be able to control reality, the past, future and present, far more than we ever thought could ever be possible.

We may someday actually have the power to do things that we used to laugh at as being 'impossible' for even 'gods'.

But no Padraic, solipsism is not the same as pantheism, they are two entirely different philosophical views. But don't be too embarrassed about that. A lot of people make that same mistake. That's a very common misunderstanding.