Question?

[Arkilogue]

I don't want to be killed, but I know I am going to die somehow.  So I will choose my death and earn it.  That is not martyrdom, that is Bushido.

Death is a certainty, it WILL take you. Unless you "take it first."

Everyone dies and the question all are faced with at the end is "Have I truly lived?"


I have been near death in a drowning situation. I did leave the body to look down on it floating in the water. I had the time and space to freely choose to leave the planet or return to my body.

In the wake of that experience I lost my fear of death, gained more appreciation for my life and a great mirth for life in general. Even though I'm am sure I will go on, the experience of being this person will never repeat and it is priceless....just as you are.

My job in the trees is the most hazardous in the world and puts me face to face with death on a daily basis, so you can understand with I might be quit comfortable and cozy with the thought and approach it volitionally.



So if there's an opportunity to stand for something truly good, though others threaten my life for it, I will remember these things and I will not cower. My fear shall pass through me, and only I shall remain, having truly lived.

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Nope, not ignoring anything. Simply not convinced. It's revealing that you seem to need me painted as the irrational one in this scenario. If what you want to present as evidence isn't exactly being lapped up with crusty bread, it may not be your audience at fault. Consider getting more subsatantial evidence.

Incidentally, an ad hominem isn't synonymous with insult - it's the fallacy of deriding one's opponent's character to dismiss their opinion.

So you do have some knowledge of Man's previous belief systems/religions/mythos/ancient sciences? I'm not asking you to believe them just to not ignore them and make the mistake of appeal to novelty.

[Thumpalumpacus]

So basically your god is going to punish people who don't worship him until you do worship him?  Yeah, totally sounds like a guy worthy of worship.  Right up there with Kim Il Sung and Leopold II.  Sounds like a great guy.  Really.

No, I wouldn't (willingly) worship the god of the bible.  Even if I did believe he existed.  He sounds like a terrible deity, and I'm not sure why everyone thinks he's so great (aside from the fact that he agrees with many of their prejudices).  The biblical god is love in the same way that Lord Voldemort is a friend of Harry Potter.  That is to say, not at all.  If anything he's an enemy of love.  There's enough hate inspired by his religion that I can't really see how he'd be anything else. 

There's nothing that makes him worthy of worship.   "Worship him because he's all powerful" is basically saying that might makes right.

The burning is karmic and electromagnetic for those who put up resistance to Consciousness. It is God's grace that you don't immediately self incinerate for violating the laws of natural counter balance. Aka free will to make choices and suffer the benefit or deficit thereof in time so that you may learn from them

I worship God because of that power of judgment to cleanse me of error I'd otherwise have no way of knowing or correcting. I try to I make myself fluent to consciousness. I do not hide from errors I find in myself, I do not resist my own feeling of "wrongness", I do not make excuses. I am grateful for the correction. It is a constant self pruning and retraining for good fruit.

I have experienced the fire of God that consumes inconsistency. I decided to save us both the further "trouble" and do it myself.

Oddly enough, I don't need dire threats to hold myself accountable.

To the OP's question, I'd never worship the Abrahamic god.

[Arkilogue]

That experience shattered many of my previous beliefs....especially about myself. I got to experience Self without the filter of my birth personality, locked up in the specific paths my neurons have fired and wired for over my life time. It was like my life was the dream, and I was actually awake for the first time in a very long time.  I was no longer occluded by anything I had collected or created in the body.  There was a bit more to the experience, but that was the core.

Amazingly like your brain was subjected to a drug.  Funny that coincidence.

Amazing that a drug would recreate the experience of being out of my body, physically looking down on it with sharper visual acuity than while in body, with greater depth, stillness and space of internal thought.

No hallucinations, no crazy visuals, no profound trips, no emotional roller coaster, just clarity of self, like I was transparent. Like the normal membranes in place between conscious/subconscious and super-conscious were no longer there and the information came together as a whole.

Like I was no longer filtered by the neural pathways I had been firing and wiring since birth. No longer in the brain/body.

[Angrboda]

Amazingly like your brain was subjected to a drug.  Funny that coincidence.

Amazing that a drug would recreate the experience of being out of my body, physically looking down on it with sharper visual acuity than while in body, with greater depth, stillness and space of internal thought.

Or so you thought.

No hallucinations, no crazy visuals, no profound trips, no emotional roller coaster, just clarity of self, like I was transparent.  Like the normal membranes in place between conscious/subconscious and super-conscious were no longer there and the information came together as a whole.

Amazing that this was the thought you had. No, not really. Ever read about DMT trips. Similar stuff. Super-what? Now you're just leading yourself deeper into what you already believe. Got any actual evidence that there is a super-conscious?

Like I was no longer filtered by the neural pathways I had been firing and wiring since birth.  No longer in the brain/body.

'Like'. How would you know what that would be like. You're postulating a make believe state that corresponds to what you already believed. Hardly surprising that you can 'imagine' what you experienced would be like. The brain isn't limited to ordinary everyday conscious experience. It can produce dreams. It can produce visions. It can produce a feeling of clarity without there being any actual clarity.

[Cyberman]

Nope, not ignoring anything. Simply not convinced. It's revealing that you seem to need me painted as the irrational one in this scenario. If what you want to present as evidence isn't exactly being lapped up with crusty bread, it may not be your audience at fault. Consider getting more subsatantial evidence.

Incidentally, an ad hominem isn't synonymous with insult - it's the fallacy of deriding one's opponent's character to dismiss their opinion.

So you do have some knowledge of Man's previous belief systems/religions/mythos/ancient sciences? I'm not asking you to believe them just to not ignore them and make the mistake of appeal to novelty.

I'm not going to insult you by pretending that any part of that had even a semblance of relevance to anything I said. All I will say is if you think you have anything to substantiate this stuff - by which I mean anything credible, sufficient and compelling - please, present it and I'm sure we all will give it such consideration as it deserves. All that's required is that you not feel slighted if and/or when the evidence doesn't actually evidence what you think it does.

[Cyberman]

Amazingly like your brain was subjected to a drug.  Funny that coincidence.

Amazing that a drug would recreate the experience of being out of my body, physically looking down on it with sharper visual acuity than while in body, with greater depth, stillness and space of internal thought.

What's the difference between a brain experiencing these things and one influenced by a chemical to believe it is? How would you recognise the difference, from the brain's perspective?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Amazing that a drug would recreate the experience of being out of my body, physically looking down on it with sharper visual acuity than while in body, with greater depth, stillness and space of internal thought.

What's the difference between a brain experiencing these things and one influenced by a chemical to believe it is? How would you recognise the difference, from the brain's perspective?

"Solipsism is a hell of a drug."

[Bunburryist]

If you discovered a personally acceptable truth that Hitler was god incarnate – would you choose to serve him?   Or, if you discovered a personally acceptable truth that god wanted you to follow and obey Hitler, would you do it?  I hope you’d say “no.”  One of the main reasons I find it impossible to believe in the god of the Bible is because besides (among lots and lots of other things) doing vicious things himself, he has people do vicious things to other people in his name.  It’s the very stories in the Bible itself that make it impossible for me to “discover a personally acceptable truth” that he’s real.  I find it simply unbelievable.

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. . . and at least Hitler was nice enough to gas the Jews, Gypsies, etc. before he burned them instead of just burning them alive. And god wants to burn non-believers FOREVER. What a swell guy.

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. . . and Hitler (supposedly) liked dogs. In the flood, God drowned all the dogs in the world but two. I could go on and on with this theme.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yeah, but Hitler wasn't so big on ship-building.

[Cyberman]

What's the difference between a brain experiencing these things and one influenced by a chemical to believe it is? How would you recognise the difference, from the brain's perspective?

"Solipsism is a hell of a drug."

Yeah, sounds like something I'd say.