Lets hear your opinion

[harmonicminor]

When you ask a question that presumes the existence of a "soul", then you should not say that it "has nothing to do with religion". Only the religous believe in this concept.

wtf are you talking about??? you can be spiritual without being "religious".
also ...why are some of you guys that think you will only push daisies when you die
even in the spirituality section at all???

[braddog10]

wtf are you talking about??? you can be spiritual without being "religious".
also ...why are some of you guys that think you will only push daisies when you die,
(are in the) spirituality section at all???

Very Good questions, I suspect for them to be consistent, in there mind,.......... for them to deny God, they must also deny their own spirituality. Religious? .... They are just as religious as the best of them. Oxymoron..... but hey trying to be nice.

I'm going E. down I 80 driving with my knee, and typing with my computer on my console. I can see how anyone could doubt my judgements.

[Breukelen advocaat]

And you accept the fact that you are religious?

No, I'm not religous at all, but I will accept the fact that others are. Many religious people deny that anybody can be an Atheist. I am not "spiritual" in any sense of the word.

I assure you that I not only do not believe in a god, or gods, I was born with a brain that cannot do so. It makes absolutely no sense to a person like myself, and I find the worship of such make-believe things repulsive, and beneath all human dignity.

[Oneironaut]

As far as we can tell, the findings of neuroscience indicate that our personalities, our memories and our emotions are the result of trillions of neurons firing around in our brains in a very complex pattern. But when you really get down to it, it's all just standard chemistry. All our decisions and thoughts are made by that organ, the brain, which is nothing more than a heap of matter and energy moving in spacetime according to the laws of physics.

When part of your brain is damaged, part of your mind is too. You're not quite the same. You may have lost memories, or a cognitive capability like speaking, or part of your personality. The more damaged the brain, the more severe the damage is to memory, personality and cognitive functions. When the brain is destroyed, we see a complete lack of memory, personality or cognitive functions. The person is dead, and they begin to decay. The brain in that body, and therefore the mind as well, has ceased to function, as surely as heartbeat ceases to function when the heart decays.

Look, I know death is a scary concept and I can understand the desire to have your mind somehow continue existing forever, but as long as there's no evidence for it it's just wishful thinking. Besides, we know this life exists so make the best of it while you're here, instead of worrying about whether you're good enough to avoid being burnt forever or living your next life as a cockroach. See the quote in my signature.

[Hamlet]

"it's all just standard chemistry. All our decisions and thoughts are made by that organ, the brain, which is nothing more than a heap of matter and energy moving in spacetime according to the laws of physics"

Well, yes and no I think. I'm of the opinion that the whole is more than the sum of it's parts. A Mozart symphony, a Picasso painting, an act of compassion defying evolutionary law....it seems to me these things are greater than math, physics and atoms colliding. If we're it, and there's no little green men out there, or superbeings playing god in another Universe, then you have to consider that something miraculous is happening. Our Universe, consisting of nothing more than math, matter and physics, is becoming sentient--self aware. And it's doing it through us!

Maybe the old myths are telling us something. Maybe they're archetype models of an eventual destiny? A little hint from the collective consciousness in the back of our minds that really knows whats going down? Think about this one, how humanity is referred to as 'the children of God' in the old testament. What do children grow up to be? I know, I know...how dare I suggest such a thing. Just speculating on the scheme of things if you'll excuse me....lol

But back to life after death-I kinda figure we're just dead. When I was a kid in Sunday school reincarnation always seemed more logical to me. If a kid flunks fourth grade, do you take him down to the basement furnace and throw him in? Nooo, you make him take it over again. <--(but no good evidence for that so probably not).
.....Or maybe we're like drops of water that go back into the sea. Conciousness goes back into the cosmic pool where it originated. I like that one--seems to me from personal observation and experience there's other forms of intelligence and consciousness than what our wee little brains manifest or can even grasp. (Check out the cunning an orchid uses to get a wasp to polinate it. etc..)

Well crap, I'm rabbling again, aren't I....well..uhhhh..this is a morbid subject anyway. I'm going to go wash my socks.

[Oneironaut]

"it's all just standard chemistry. All our decisions and thoughts are made by that organ, the brain, which is nothing more than a heap of matter and energy moving in spacetime according to the laws of physics"

Well, yes and no I think. I'm of the opinion that the whole is more than the sum of it's parts. A Mozart symphony, a Picasso painting, an act of compassion defying evolutionary law....it seems to me these things are greater than math, physics and atoms colliding. If we're it, and there's no little green men out there, or superbeings playing god in another Universe, then you have to consider that something miraculous is happening. Our Universe, consisting of nothing more than math, matter and physics, is becoming sentient--self aware. And it's doing it through us!

Miraculous? That word implies supernatural to me, i.e. out of the realm of observable and measurable (natural) phenomena. Yes, the universe is becoming sentient of itself, and that's amazing. It's yet another example of how science is much more awe-inspiring than religion; not only does it reveal amazing processes, it explains how they work and how we know they work that way. And as time goes by, science expands its scope of knowledge, rejecting old ideas that turned out to be false and adopting grander ideas which are shown to be probably true—but not absolutely true; science adheres to no dogma, no faith, no wishful thinking or tradition or blind speculation passed off as absolute knowledge.

By the way, compassion does not defy evolutionary law. Cooperation between individuals of a species ensures that that species is more likely to survive. We care about other people because we'd have gone extinct long ago if we didn't.

Maybe the old myths are telling us something. Maybe they're archetype models of an eventual destiny? A little hint from the collective consciousness in the back of our minds that really knows whats going down? Think about this one, how humanity is referred to as 'the children of God' in the old testament. What do children grow up to be? I know, I know...how dare I suggest such a thing. Just speculating on the scheme of things if you'll excuse me....lol

Umm...okay...

But back to life after death-I kinda figure we're just dead. When I was a kid in Sunday school reincarnation always seemed more logical to me. If a kid flunks fourth grade, do you take him down to the basement furnace and throw him in? Nooo, you make him take it over again. <--(but no good evidence for that so probably not).
.....Or maybe we're like drops of water that go back into the sea. Conciousness goes back into the cosmic pool where it originated. I like that one--seems to me from personal observation and experience there's other forms of intelligence and consciousness than what our wee little brains manifest or can even grasp. (Check out the cunning an orchid uses to get a wasp to polinate it. etc..)

Well crap, I'm rabbling again, aren't I....well..uhhhh..this is a morbid subject anyway. I'm going to go wash my socks.

Orchids do not display intelligence or consciousness; they don't even have a nervous system. If you're going to attribute your sense of awe to anything, attribute it to Darwinian natural selection and the inconceivably long time scales it took for that orchid to evolve features attractive to wasps.

Just because you "like" a theory of the afterlife does not make it true. It's still just wishful thinking and blind speculation without any basis in reality. Orchids attract wasps, therefore we go back to the cosmic pool of consciousness after we die? That's a logical trainwreck if I ever saw one.

It's a cold hard fact that once we're dead our minds no longer have any discernable impact on our universe, except through the memories of others which are eventually distorted and lost. Life, like so many other things in our universe, is a temporary phenomenon. We need to face that, look death in the eye and laugh as we enjoy the few decades of conscious thought that we have. I'm gonna smoke a bowl now.

[halo]

I personally believe that when we die we stay in the "afterlife" for a while and then are reincarnated. And we keep reincarnating until we are good enough to exist sole with/as god or creation or whatever you want to call it. Personally thats kind of what i think but i really have no idea. I just cant imagine that we are here for absolutely nothing and serve no purpose.

[Hamlet]

Wow dude, you make Jerry Faldwell look like a panty-waste when it comes to 'dogmatic'...lol

I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said something along the lines that an advanced science would be indiscernable from magic. So 'miraculous' and 'supernatural' are just as good a label as any.

Maybe science's complexity takes an I.Q. of 2k or greater to even begin to grasp...and we're wallowing around with a measely 200 tops? You say orchids display no intelligence or consciousness? Take a closer look! If you must have a label that a 140? human I.Q. can grasp, then label it the intelligence of 'Darwinian Natural Selection'. Like I said I think there are intelligences/consciousness that just don't fit the paradigm of what we consider intelligence because they're not like ours.

We thought we had it all figured out at one time. A few simple rules of physics with a dash of math and suns and atoms would behave just like billiard balls. In our arrogance we thought we had a handle on it all and those who could grasp the higher math sanctified themselves as the holy ones, sneering at those who couldn't. Then we discovered the subatomic and all those billiard ball physics went right out the window. Sure it can all still be calculated with some formula-some unified field theory yet to be discovered-but maybe not with what we're capable of...then possibly anything goes....like an orchid functioning with a cunning and intelligence, without a nervous system or anything we're capable of pointing to with our miniscule capacities and saying 'that is why!'
So the academics will cling to their dogma, stick their fingers in they're ears and scream No! No! No! like any creationist blindly clinging to the old testment.

You're a smart guy but you're also smug and condescending...and you're just parroting the rhetoric of a bunch of college academics. You ever notice how these guys can't come up with anything on their own until someone has the guts to jump on a wild-ass theory? C'mon, work that healthy brain of yours and give us something original! We can get a smug brow-beating anywhere. They're a dime a dozen.

Yeah, my stuff is just silly-ass musings but at least a lot of it is all mine and intuition tells me, as foolish and simplistic as it all is, that there's a good chance it isn't all totally wrong...

cheers

[Oneironaut]

I'm not even going to take the time to respond to such nonsense. Some people are too encapsulated with the supernatural idea to accept reality for what it is, I guess. Enjoy your fantasy world of thinking orchids, magical sky wizards and immortality; I'm going to smoke a bowl down here on earth.

Besides, why shouldn't I be condescending to ideas that don't make any sense? I'm going to express my opinion regardless of what anybody else thinks. I'm not going to "respect" your beliefs just because you hold them. If your beliefs are silly or stupid, I'm going to make fun of them. Like the idea that Jesus exorcised demons out of people to miraculously heal them. That is silly and stupid, now that we know what really causes diseases.

[braddog10]

No, I'm not religous at all, but I will accept the fact that others are. Many religious people deny that anybody can be an Atheist. I am not "spiritual" in any sense of the word.

I assure you that I not only do not believe in a god, or gods, I was born with a brain that cannot do so. It makes absolutely no sense to a person like myself, and I find the worship of such make-believe things repulsive, and beneath all human dignity.

Behold......... your religious Ideology.
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.As I recall I read something like this printed on a pretty little pamphlet being handed out at an airport once...Gosh, Was that Denver???..Ummm
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