[quote=“brmckay1, post:358, topic:2865”]
LOL…you are the atheist right? Not a contemplative of fifty plus years, so who’s understanding should we go with here?..especially on a forum dedicated to critical thinking?
Yes I am atheist and it is for that very reason you should refrain from drawing any connection between Universal properties and mythical superstitions .
I might be mistaken, but wasn’t it you who introduced me to David Bohm back 2013? Entirety, Singularity, Reality-as-it-actually-is, The undivided Whole, The Tao, Brahman/Atman, Kaivalya, Śūnyatā, God,…any of it ring a bell?
And yes, I introduced you to the physics of David Bohm, and the book he wrote:
“Wholeness and the Implicate Order”.
This site is dedicated to ctitical thinking and it is for that very reason I implore you to keep critical thinking and uncritical belief systems apart.
Well, I see it as dichotomous. I guess you don’t. I don’t see why that’s political. How can “god” be both a real thing and an abstraction? You would have to include the qualifier “to some”. That is; to some, God is real, and to others, gods are an abstraction.
Unless you think you have proof that it is one or the other.
All relative proof is an abstraction AND the fact of the undivided absolute context is apriori.
Disciplined intuition and reasoning are the right and left hand of navigating the paradox.
Reality being the undivided Whole no matter what “we” get up to. This is well mapped out for millenia, no matter how much else there is to make fun of or be appalled by.
I would call proofs of existence, or why we are here, something we can only assign a probability of certainty. I don’t know what you mean by “the undivided absolute context” or what “paradox” you are navigating or where any of this has been “mapped out”.
Yes, and that “get up to” includes the notion of a motivated agency we have dubbed God and described in many different ways depending on your local customs.
You are overlooking the thousands of gods that came before but that you have found unacceptable, which makes you an atheist, except for one preference.
The difference between you and me is that I do not believe in 1 more god than you. but we do have rejection of many thousands of other gods in common.
As to the term “Wholeness” is in no way an indication of conscious motivation.
A rock is a wholeness but it has no conscious intent of remaining a rock. That ability is provided by the 4 fundamental Universal forces, none which describe “motivated intent”.
And without those essential qualities, God (by any other name) is merely a quasi-intelligent mathematical condition, a Causal Dynamical Triangulation that may well be the manner in which spacetime itself unfolds.
This means that it does not assume any pre-existing arena (dimensional space), but rather attempts to show how the spacetime fabric itself evolves.
There is evidence [[1]]
(Causal dynamical triangulation - Wikipedia) that at large scales CDT approximates the familiar 4-dimensional spacetime, but shows spacetime to be 2-dimensional near the Planck scale, and reveals a fractal structure on slices of constant time. These interesting results agree with the findings of Lauscher and Reuter, who use an approach called Quantum Einstein Gravity, and with other recent theoretical work.
write4u - "Yes, and that “get up to” includes the notion of a motivated agency we have dubbed God and described in many different ways >depending on your local customs.
You are overlooking the thousands of gods that came before but that you have found unacceptable,"
I’m not overlooking anything. Try taking my statements as they are, without running them through a filter of your fixations and expectations.
(Also take the whole statement into consideration when interpreting the parts.)
“As to the term “Wholeness” is in no way an indication of conscious motivation.”
You are nowhere near ready to understand what I was saying until you acknowledge the apriori infinitude of Reality. (and bring it down to street level in your day-to-day)
Yes, I found that subjective street level discussion seldom contain anything worthy of my time.
Chuck-n-Jive about “Infinitude of Reality” as you are presently engaged in is not my style.
You have not a clue how the human brain operates. So unless and until you see this video a few times and think about it for a few weeks, come back and we can have a serious discussion about the properties of “mind”.
After you understand what the brain is and does, we can talk about “controlled” and “uncontrolled” hallucinations, including the concept of God and if that necessarily relates to the concept of “Wholeness”
@brmckay, you are using capitalized words, meaning they have some meaning other than their basic dictionary definitions. You’re combing words, making concepts out of them. I don’t see any “as they are” in these words.
Also, what other filter, other than my own experiences, can I possibly run your words through? Maybe you should stop insulting people and try clarifying. This might mean that you take Write4U’s sometimes harsh delivery and give it a charitable interpretation.
Not helpful. I put that one in google and got 8 or 9 philosophers mentioned on the first page of results.
lausten- you are using capitalized words, meaning they have some meaning other than their basic dictionary definitions. You’re combing words, making concepts out of them. I don’t see any “as they are” in these words.
Also, what other filter, other than my own experiences, can I possibly run your words through? Maybe you should stop insulting people and try clarifying. This might mean that you take Write4U’s sometimes harsh delivery and give it a charitable interpretation.
What part of the critical thinking paradigm emphasizes defaulting to ones own “fixations and expectations” when interpreting someone else’s use of language?
As for my use of capitalization…we call it the Sun and not the sun for a reason. If you are talking about my reference to “God” instead of “a god” , or “gods”. Do you not see the significance of that coming from a person who also probably just referenced the singularity of Reality-as-it-actually-is?
I will also point out that somewhere in this new batch of comments I’ve reassured everybody that it is my personal choice to call Reality’s infinitude God. Even declared it optional. So any complaints from you or write4u indicate some sort of belief system I’ve interfered with.
You are expecting us to understand what you are talking about. But if you have a unique subjective perspective on the concept of God the burden falls on you to explain what you are talking about.
Your annoyance with our skepticism is wholly unwarranted. We are not mind readers.
So if you want a productive exchange of opinions, you better start explaining yourself in more detail instead of grandiose sweeping statements like “singularity of Reality-as-it-actually-is”.
So what is this singularity of reality as it actually is?
What is this singularity that all things in the universe have in common?
I agree with the concept of a fundamental singular event.
IMO, there is no such thing as “irreducible complexity”.
AFAIK the one known singularity that all things in reality have in common is contained in the hypothesis of the BB and the subsequent evolutionary processes that after some 13.5 billion years yielded the universe as we experience it today.
But the BB implies Chaos , not Intentionally Designed Order.
You will have to argue your way past Choas Theory, to makes sense of what it is you are talking about.
Let’s talk street talk. If you wanted to build something, would you start with blowing it up so that it would take you 13 billion years to refine that which you could have “created” perfect from the beginning?
I’m fine with saying “we exist”. As for “why”, you are on your own with that one. I thought the specialty here was critical thinking. Hence my reliance on the foundation of apriori infinitude.
The paradox is well summed up by Lao Tsu in the first few stanzas of the Tao Te Ching. (or has there been a book burning no one told me about?)
I was trying to interpret those words generously. You see it as his prejudices. Maybe it is, maybe not. It’s too much mind-reading for me.
The undivided Whole, Reality is the only answer, Inifinitude, Potential - for example
No. What do you mean? Who referenced the singularity? You are making me go back over two days of conversation when I’m telling you that I’m having trouble understanding you.
Again, you’re making me remember these terms you’ve picked. No, I don’t remember you saying that, but I’m glad you cleared that up. That’s what I’m asking you to do. Clear up these terms. I don’t know how that request can be misconstrued as me feeling my belief system has been interfered with.
What’s that again?
Arrogant much? Come on man. I’m usually pretty patient. Really thought you might have something to say, but you just keep repeating phrases and then telling us we’re stupid for not knowing what you’re referring to.
If your words made sense, maybe this wouldn’t happen. As I said before, you don’t make sense and I don’t think it’s just to me that you don’t make any sense. Even Lausten is asking you, “What do you mean”, so there are three of us who aren’t understanding what you are attempting to communicate. We read your words, but that’s about all they are- words strung together with little meaning. The Tao Te Ching made more sense to me.
If you want people to understand what your saying, then it is your responsibility to speak so others can understand you.
You brought up Taoism, so why can’t I bring in other beliefs too? You know, atheists only believe in one less god than Xians or Muslims do. BTW, Taoists aren’t exactly god believers just because they have a recognized religion. Many are atheistic.
Are you kidding me?! For one thing it was write4u who needed the “fixations and expectations” buisiness pointed out. (in my dreams it also should have put everyone in mind of basic Zen practice)
Since I mention some variant of Entirety, Reality, absolute Infinitude, undivided Whole, etc. in every comment. Where exactly is the confusion coming from?
Is Reality ultimately the context of the undivided Whole or not? (apriori means there can be no question about it, so this is rhetorical)
In my dreams, we’re all at a nice dinner party, having nice intellectual conversations, and enjoying the time together, but in reality, we’re here trying to understand what you’re trying to communicate.
My suggestion is, slow down, take a break. You are asking if one of your undefined words is the context of another. I can’t answer that. I know what apriori means, but you combine it with “infinitude”. These seem like a bunch of replacement words for actual deities or whatever your concept of them is, but it’s hard to tell what you’re getting at.
