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What is reality?
January 28, 2014 at 10:27 am
I have just been pondering about reality and what is real and can we ever truly know what reality is? And are we controlled or are we controlling the world? And if we're controlled, then who or what is controlling the controller? Or is there even such a thing as control?
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful" - Edward Gibbon (Offen misattributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca or Seneca the Younger) (Thanks to apophenia for the correction)
'I am driven by two main philosophies:
Know more about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you' - Neil deGrasse Tyson
"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain
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RE: What is reality?
January 28, 2014 at 10:32 am
Everything that we know comes to us by means of our senses and personal experience. Anything beyond that is pure speculation.
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RE: What is reality?
January 28, 2014 at 11:07 am
Well, there is contextual reality, and absolute reality. Contextual reality would be something like "All the things I see and feel are consistent with the idea that there's a physical universe."
Absolute reality is unknowable, because we only have the senses upon which to draw inferences about it, and the information collected by the senses is only knowably contextual.
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RE: What is reality?
January 28, 2014 at 11:13 am
As best as I can tell, reality is a fiction created by our brain in response to external stimuli.
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"The lord doesn't work in mysterious ways, but in ways that are indistinguishable from his nonexistence."
-- George Yorgo Veenhuyzen quoted by John W. Loftus in The End of Christianity (p. 103).
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RE: What is reality?
February 8, 2014 at 2:57 am
Reality is a fact which is seen by us after a moment. We don,t care of it because it is not with us.
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RE: What is reality?
February 8, 2014 at 6:37 pm
(This post was last modified: February 8, 2014 at 6:39 pm by Sword of Christ.)
It's a combination of stuff and conscious awareness that experiences the stuff. You need something to experience and someone to experience it. The universe provides the stuff and the sentient organic being kind of things made from the stuff you have there. You will need time and space as well as this all needs to move around take on form.
Come all ye faithful joyful and triumphant.
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RE: What is reality?
February 9, 2014 at 5:04 pm
'Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.' - Phillip K. Dick
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
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RE: What is reality?
February 9, 2014 at 5:34 pm
(February 8, 2014 at 6:37 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote: It's a combination of stuff and conscious awareness that experiences the stuff. You need something to experience and someone to experience it. The universe provides the stuff and the sentient organic being kind of things made from the stuff you have there.
So things are only real if there is something around to experience it according to you.
Quote: You will need time and space as well as this all needs to move around take on form.
So by this definition and given that god existed outside of time and space according to some, god cannot be real!
You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.
Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.
