Generally speaking, pantheism (classical) is the view that ultimate reality is consciousness itself while the phenomenal world is in a constant state of flux and hence, in some sense, illusory. 

Proving it simply consists of spiritual awakening. I wasn't aware that atheists seek spiritual enlightenment. 

You can't determine the presence of  inner experience (conscious-awareness) from external behavior except by inferring it.

This thread is like reading an obscurantist's wet-dream.

More than a dozen posts have gone by, and I must give voice to the sorrow fermenting in my spleen that I have still not received a sufficient answer to my simple and direct question.  I must now ask a fourth (4^th) time:

Rationality and belief mutually entail each other. You can't have one without the other. Whether my belief in God was a logical conclusion or a basic presupposition, I don't know. It's probably a combination of both. What I do know is that I feel a presence in my life of a mind greater than my own. This I call God.

Meditation.

It wasn't dishonest. It was meant as a challenge.

It is part and parcel of the life of faith.

I frame my theological beliefs in basic Christian terms. Also, I do subscribe to a trinitarian theology.

Begging your pardon, but this is false.  Beliefs can be rational, or irrational.  So yes, you can have one without the other.

If the preceding statement purported to:

I'm afraid it does not suffice.

Well that is troubling, indeed.  Troubling first that you concede it might be a "basic presupposition", as basic presuppositions are irrational.  Troubling second that you don't know whether your belief was logically deduced, or illogically presupposed.

Well that is troubling as well.  For logical conclusions and basic presuppositions do not mutually entail each other.  You cannot have one with the other.

You said in post #50 (we are now at post ~160):

Whereby you implied that pantheistic worldview is rational.  It was at this point that I entreated you to:

At lengthy intervals, you provided two (2) single-sentence responses, apparently intended as responses to my request (whereby you were standing by your assertion that your pantheism is rational), when in fact each response in turn was grossly insufficient. 

Rather than definitively expounding on the rational basis for your belief (and thus satisfying my simple and direct request), you now seem to be revising your original assertion, to allow for (irrational) presupposition.  I must confess to a stirring fear that you have been prevaricating all this while about your belief.  This would certainly scandalize me, as it would be contrast quite discordantly with the impeccable character you have so far demonstrated.  Please advise, lest my conflicting emotions give rise to catastrophe.

This is most intriguing, but you will kindly acknowledge that "feeling a prescence" and subjectively calling it "god" does not serve to:

I would think that the basic presumption of the mind/body problem should be dualism until proven otherwise.  

This may be true for others but not for me.

Avoiding the original discussion is cute. I already listed evidence for a physical mind, including brain injuries and psychoactive drugs. If you have evidence for dualism, bring it. Thinking the weaker argument is better by virtue of historical precedent is ridiculous.

I see you didn't bother defending your position. I wouldn't have bothered either.

You mean like being born into sin and doomed to eternal hellfire if you don't grovel your whole life?

Yeah. You really got it made, there, Champ.

Argument from ignorance. That's all there is to that.

And, your proof of the existence of such a Universal Mind/Spirit would be?

Sorry, for the pedantry; but, I hope you understand.  I have quite purposely avoided defining God as anything that is not self-evident.  The truth always stands on its own; so, to define God as All that is True in the Universe is to define God as something that, by definition, cannot be false - yet, requires no evidence, proof, or even comprehension of what "truth" is.

Now, if you have a self-evident explanation that allows your definition of God to be tenable, I am quite open to hearing it.  So, please, present your evidence of a Universal Mind/Spirit.

You have constructed a straw man of atheism to pummel.  That is logically fallacious.  It is not your place to arbitrarily force your idea of atheistic materialism on all atheists.  You have arbitrarily decided that atheists have no "ultimate purpose" and you have then arbitrarily decided that's absurd, and therefore, irrational - without the first shred of evidence that atheists subscribe to any such notions as you have slapped on them.

An atheist's ultimate purpose need only be to experience all he/she can experience to render your characterization false and unfair.   After all, who are you to declare the "ultimate purpose" for others?

It just occurred to me that this statement, which I knew was incorrect from fallacious reasoning (but not from fellatio), actually makes no sense as it is internally inconsistent. (Sorry. I kind of glossed over the first time through, as it was patently false.)

The first part of the statement claims that the worldview of atheistic materialism holds no ultimate purpose. Even given the half-defined "ultimate purpose" bit, I guess I'd have to agree. The next statement declares that worldview implies that life is meaningless and absurd. Huh. I look around, and though I don't think my life is meaningless, I guess life itself (in the bigger picture) is meaningless: we're all sure to die before the entropic heat death of the universe. And humanity is definitely absurd. So I agree with the second statement.

1) Atheistic materialism as a worldview has no ultimate purpose

2) Life is ultimately meaningless, and also absurd

3) Conclusion: Atheistic materialism as a worldview is absurd, and so irrational by definition.

It's at step 3) that the logic breaks down. It is life that is absurd, not the worldview. So your syllogism is illogically constructed.

Unfortunately, this type of poor thinking is typical in the few responses in which you attempt to employ logic.

Even if we agree that everyone desires happiness, and we haven't established that, only that you desire happiness, and I desire happiness, but even if we were to say that everyone desires happiness, a)you are the one claiming an atheistic life is meaningless and absurd, and b)this is an example of internal purpose: purpose arising from our own impetus, goals, and desires, not some 'ultimate purpose' assigned to our lives by an external agency.

Congratulations, you've just refuted one of your own assertions: That to an atheist worldview, life is ultimately meaningless and absurd.

To be honest with oneself is a purpose. Meaning is whatever I decide based on my own observations. You have a god, so your purpose is his purpose, you meaning is his meaning. My meaning and purpose is my own.

I follow my own rules,  so I judge what is rational. You live under a Theist dictatorship, so follow your imaginary god's rules.

Are you suggesting that trauma to the head is ruled by quantum waveforms, and only exists once observed by the consciousness of the brain itself? Or am I completely misreading you here?

I distinguish between "phenomena" and "reality." Basically, I designate ultimate reality as that which does not change. The phenomenal world of our senses is constantly changing - hence, illusory. The only "thing" that is not changing is conscious-awareness itself.

I do not believe that the objective world exists without the subjective. This is what separates the worldview of the pantheist from that of the atheist. The atheist believes that an objective world of mindless matter (mass/energy) exists independently of subjective experience.

I disagree. Not all conscious states entail sensory experience. The experience of pure-awareness devoid of content is readily available to the meditator.

I think you're taking my comment out of context. However, for the sake of argument, let's assume you're right.

If you agree that life itself is ultimately meaningless and absurd, then do you view your personal life as being ultimately meaningless and absurd? If not, why not?

Furthermore, why is it irrational for an individual to live by faith -trusting that all things are ultimately working out for a greater good?

I've already explained it.

It seems more reasonable to me to believe that conscious-awareness is more fundamental than dead, lifeless matter.

 Thanks tothiel, we need more of you.  

Who are these people that put life down ?  The nerve of them denying that I AM GOD AS YOU ...... ????  Watch out for the dogs ..... (dogma) 

Sound the siren , "The dogs are out" ..... shoot to kill .....    In gods name .....    hey, it really ain't funny  ......      Re load , shoot again ...... 

Thanks for asking!

I didn't really take the quote out of context. At least, near as I can tell. Unless there was some subtext I was just not getting. If so, I apologize.

There are actually two parts. First is rationality, which is distinct from, and orthogonal to, purpose. I believe that postivism is the only logical metaphysics, and the scientific method is the only known logical epistemology. I say this because, so far, science is the only epistemology to give us concrete, coherent, consistent results. (The alliteration is accidental.) Also, it is based upon constant checking and re-checking of our assumptions against the only source of data we have: objective, observable reality.

Now, I view life as "ultimately" meaningless (not really absurd) as, in the end, our sun will expand, swallowing the earth, and all life on earth will be dead. If by some happy circumstances we've moved out into space, then we will certianly die with the heat death of the universe, as there will be no energy gradient to sustain us. That is why life is "ultimately" meaningless.

My own life? Now, that's a completely different thing altogether.

Do you enjoy your life? I do. Do you ike others to enjoy their lives with you? I do. So, my purpose is to enjoy life, and to help those around me enjoy their lives. Further, I would like as many people to enjoy their lives as possible, so I do what little I can to help those with potentially less-enjoyable lives to enjoy theirs. This includes giving to charity, and working to help a specific asian country with communications infrastructure. This gives me pleasure, and a feeling that, when I die, my life will have contributed more to the world than I took.

As far as ultimate purpose goes, I have only one: to see that we move out into space. I would like to live to see the first permanent settlement on Mars, for instance. (I doubt I will, but it's an attainable goal.) I can't do this on my own. And since my work is towards immediate return, it's not even my life work. But I do what I can, here and there.

Like communicate in forums like this. As I said, I believe positivism is the only rational way of looking at the world. Otherwise, if we're trying to find truths in things for which we have no evidence, we're just making shit up. That's going to interfere with our going to the stars.

My life isn't meaningless because I'm enjoying it now, and I'm helping others enjoy their lives. That's why my life is not meaningless. I extract joy from most moments I'm alive. And if that isn't worthwhile, I don't know what is.

The irrationality comes from the "making shit up." It's not like you are just creating a story. I realize that. But, if you look inside yourself and find one Truth, and another looks inside themselves and finds another Truth, then you haven't stumbled on a method of learning actual, real, concrete Truths. You've merely figured out a way to ask yourself questions. This is the problem with the early experiments in introspection. The results weren't just inconclusive. They were completely contradictory. This invalidates the procedure as a method for learning anything real about objective reality.

And further, if you simply trust that things will work out for the greater good, you are working blindly. That's like asking a carpenter to build a house blindfolded, with no tools, and no blueprints. If you truly wish for things to work out for the greater good, you're going to have to work for it. You're going to have to evaluate what you consider to be the greater good, and work for it.

It's not going to be easy, because there's nobody to give you a goal. There's nobody to trust that it will work out. It might not work out at all. And you'll have to understand that you may never see results, even if you manage to make a positive contribution. As I said before, atheists have to cowboy up. We have to look reality right in the eye, squint like John Wayne, and say, "Mister, you got a problem with me?" And then reality draws its gun, and we draw ours, and BAM! we're dead, because reality always fucking wins.

But before we die, each and every one of us, we can do our best to leave the world a little better than we found it. And in that way, things will work out. Or, we'll all die in a nuclear holocaust, or by synthesized super-plague, or by triffids, or any number of other things. But I can promise you this: just trusting it'll work out is the worst possible way to make it work out.

I'll be honest: everyone figuring out the greater good is just like your introspection. We'll all come to our own conclusions, and there will not be a cohesive whole. That's just life. That's because each of us is different, each of us believes different things (which we can do even if we all think perfectly rationally), thinks different ways.

But, if we all base our goals on what we rationally know to be true, rather than what we think or hope or feel might be true, we'll get to a better place faster.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

You said:

If you agree with your statement, you should agree with mine, since they both put positive emphasis on "traditional" approaches.

Lots of traditional approaches to things have been superseded by things that ACTUALLY WORK. The traditional approach to something is all well and good as long as it actually does what it's supposed to.  You want to feel a connection to the past?  Follow tradition.  You want predictable results?  Use science.

No, he didn't.

His belief was that "traditional" mystic practices in conjunction with "traditional" scientific method could possibly be used to shed light on the nature of consciousness, but that IN NO WAY could they be testaments to the True Nature of Reality, or the Face of God, or whatever.  His argument is that people (as a society) do not suffer for being too reasonable or rational; that personal experience arising from any mystic practice cannot be proof of anything external to our biology.  Now stick the two together and you get his main thesis: spiritual/religious conviction has no authority outside your own skull, and it is inevitably dangerous to assume otherwise.

So did you actually read The End of Faith, or were you just quote-mining?

Wait, you don't share the thought that the universe has existed for billions of years? Or that the universe will continue on for billions of years after you die?  Or you actually think the Van Allen Belt, the Crab nebula, etc., wants you to be happy? Or something else?  From the part of my response your quoted, I don't know what thought you "don't share".

And you have my awed pity for your seeming need to project your own fears and insecurities so hard that not only do people who do not share belief in your unsubstantiated claims all of a sudden feel what you fear, but that reality itself is altered to conform to your insecurities so that you do not have to feel them.  Accept the fact that you will die and that the sun cannot possibly care.

I pity anyone who looks out at the stars and feels the need to feel special.