When religion shapes politics, people get hurt. The reason why i believe this great debate is a good cause because it's as valid as anything else in the world. It's as valid as many of life's questions: why do we have to work? why is money an  object? what's the point in sports? Why endure pain and dullness to satisfy our minor cravings? All questions people don't think about and just accept as necessary to society.

I would suggest "The End of Faith" or "Letter to a Christian Nation" to answer the question for theists

The point of proving that theism is an intellectual handicap afflicting the majority of individual members of the species whose resultant ignorance could wind up in its very extinction?

Oh, I don't know ...

EAT THE RICH

That's going to be my standard answer from now on.Love it

Or you can just chill out with a Guinness and a good book. One can have a little too much of all that hyperbole ...

Focusing on the innocent children and the world, we are handing them, brings home the "point" of why fighting against all dogma and separatism patriotism is so needed.   

 What's the point ?

Replacing the pursuit of truth w/ what are essentially fairy tales cheapens our existence.  And of course, the price for a fictional next life is nearly always denying yourself happiness in this one. 

"Certainty about the next life is incompatible w/ tolerance in this one". 

Sam Harris

Teaching humans that belief in fiction is not only a virtue, but that it is  honorable to force others to abide by it is deplorable.  When it is promoted or forced on humans by government it amounts to tyranny. 

It purports to give the human the one thing they want most.  Relief from the fear of death and this is often why so many overlook its tyranny. 

But teaching the truth about our human condition, sobering though it may be, is not the end for humanity.  It's an opportunity for our growth and our education that religion has tried to stunt in humanity for so long.

I long since stopped bothering.

I blame his parents.

RRS, a giggle a minute ! Precious !  Wisdom TOO !    

Thanks L ... I enjoy your words ... as the piano is being played here ....

  Was just thinking the word "spiritual" might be better substituted by "wisdom" or "idea" ....

     I forgot what I really wanted to say, so maybe later I will remember, something about the the yin yang it was .... as your post reflects ....

 It's difficult not to consider that kind of talk childish ("geez, what's the point?&quot because ... well, what's the point of skiing? You just have to go up the hill again!

What's the point in tempering the general consensus that we all have an invisible dictator? To not do SOMETHING when identifying a large mistake like that is a little weird. The idea has staying power, that's for sure, but it's patently wrong. I like to be patient with people who still believe in strange things, but that's generally because the shock of loss when they figure out they've been duped is unsettling. That doesn't mean I won't still show them where they've been mislead.

It's an incredible lie, too, and one for which the truth is so utterly devoid of magic. I know a great many people want to feel special and "spiritual", so the idea that they're not really special isn't very attractive for them. But it's the truth. Shouldn't there be some value in that?

Well, this particular part seems very philosopical to me, and alot of the time, the discussions we have here, are political, not philosophical. Indeed, the RRS's whole raison d'etre would appear to be political.

We're here, and to me that is all that matters. The philosophical question of "why" is, to me, nothing but a game, or a way to occupy my thoughts. Surely, I will never know with certainty, and I'm fine with that.

You'll notice, however, that it is mostly the personal discussions, as opposed to the political discussions, that I engage in. Why is that? Because I live in Denmark, and there is no political issue with religion here. I'm not very worried about religious bigotry, because it is a non issue in my world, though I will say, I have alot of sympathy for the American atheists that are here, because, obviously, their situation is a different one.

So what am I doing here? I just like you people, and I find it fulfilling to hear your thoughts, and share mine. There isn't much point to it, nor does there have to be, because after all, what the point of anything really?

(said the happy nihilist, smilling )

These are a curious two assertions to go together:

As for the latter, there is a good reason why everyone except you recognizes this is simply not possible or compatible with a well-founded understanding of reality. THe problem is that consciousness is, well, complicated. As a process, it has particular prerequisites and prerequisite processes that can be understood and necessarily explained in terms of physical causal processes. Thus, for example, it wouldn't really make sense to speak of consciousness without a particular perception. It does not matter whether this perception is the result of a physical object or not (ie dreaming, or hallucinating). THe point is that a particular percpetual experience is correlated with those particular brain states . So, for example, I can give you fairly detailed and precise explanations of the manner in which particular sensory experiences are integrated and processed, etc. THe problem with your assertion is that it would explicitly require that the conscious process not require any of those processes which we can demonstrate to be the result of some physical causal chain and resulting brain states (perceptions, for example). Additionally, if we want to speak of minds, it will follow that we will be speaking of such things like thoughts, memories, etc. And it does not appear to make sense to speak of consciousness without a particular associated mind (unless of course you want to assert that this is possible, which would be problematic since you just asserted that you don't know what consciousness is). And then, if you want to speak of particular conscious minds as being precedents of matter, you will be going up against a pretty damn solid wall of neuroscience and philosophy of mind. In other words, your criterion is not only impossible, but appears to reduce consciousness to a vague and meaningless abstraction, which is equally problematic from your point of view.

DG, ... yeah that contradiction I saw too. L should indeed address that.

  Thing is, I ponder what "our" kind of consciousness is, and wonder, are there other "types" of a conscious like energy, within the oneness of all connected reality, or what ever we might call it ..... like "the eternal ( changing milk shake )" ! ???    

  The ingredients were always all there, from which any consciousness emerged !  Worship materialism !!!!  Thats my dumb hunch ..... God is fancy "material" !               

As for solid matter, it doesn't really seem conscious, it behaves mainly according to laws of physics. I almost never had seen an exception. But there are more subtle degrees of "matter", 49  the esoterics, sensibiles, and clairvoyant people knows of. Each seven of them makes together a "plane of existence". Every degree "up" that direction is more responsive to consciousness, whatever it is.
Not only they're more responsive, they're seats of consciousness. If ours is seated in material level, then we we will be limited on material level in our actions.
The focus of consciousness, the range it's able to operate in, can be made more broad, allowing us to expand our perception. I for myself have the this range slightly broadened. It's nothing great, I have seen my friend to learn it as well, but it already gives a new look on life. My perception doesn't already end where my skin ends or begins, it's for an inch stretched outward and and attuned to that kind of subtle matter which is just above gaseous, called 1st etheric. This gives some really weird feelings, feeling of objects which are not visible by bare eye, but very well tangible. When I include that into my logical reasoning, everything changes. If matter is not the only thing in the world, where does it end? Are there people, who explored even "deeper" in that "direction" than me? Can I meet them? Did they write any books? If these books describes what I do, and more, does it mean they're true? So this is my lifetime exploration. I'm almost on the beginning, but I already have results.

What is your obsession with taking meaningful terms and wrecking them? Don't you know what a field is? A field is a mathematical concept where a particular value (which can be scalar, vector or tensor) is assigned to every point in space. Objects accelerate because being in a curved region of space time is equivalent to accelerating, although, gravity is not actually a force as Newton thought. Once again, you spew out meaningless terminology to sound intelligent. A constant refers to a particular real number, such as pi (the constant of proportionality between a circle's circumference and diameter) or e (a constant such that e^x is equivalent to the slope of d(e^x)/dx for all values of x). You get the idea. A field is a wholly different concept in mathematics.

This is all very well and good (by which I mean it is not) but without a coherent and well-founded definition of consciousness, your assertions are just that. And they mean nothing to boot. Some considerations of definitions of consciousness are, for example "a point of view, a particular subjective quality characterized by an experience" (Nagel), or an ability to introspect or access a particular mental space (Block). You get the idea. In any case, it would seem that either of these definitions, or any of the other coherent ones (all of which are variations on the same theme) will require that these particular structures came first. Any of these understandings rely on It is possible for an organism to be having a perceptual experience but not be conscious. Another very basic philosophical objection that could easily be raised to your vague assertions is simply that it cannot in any meaningfully account for the differences between consciousness and non-consciousness and unconsciousness. The latter is important and should be defined as different from non-conscious (someone dead is non-conscious but not unconscious). Another and even more obvious problem is that by asserting that consciousness is a form of substratum, you are committing a fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Thus yielding a final and decisive objection (as if one were really needed) to your views. Or of course, it might have been easier to point out that what you said was totally devoid of meaning, but I like to be precise. Your view is most appropriately labeled as panpsychism, although it has some differences. Another and final thing to consider is the question: Is it possible to have consciousness without a particular subjective experience? This cannot be brushed aside, for it would be utterly essential to your position to claim so. If it was not possible, then whatever things are necessary for subjective experiences necessarily precede consciousness. But since consciousness is (as above) can be understood in terms of introspection, then it is not by definition possible to speak of consciousness without a particular subjective experience, and therefore your view (or whatever coherency could be salvaged from your writing) collapses. 

So that you're saying is that you haven't a fucking clue what you're saying.

Nuff said.

    Come on now, aren't we here for the community feeling of friends ?  I know that I have a sense of community here and my community is better than their community!!  We can look out for each other so to speak, watch each others backs.  I have learned quite a bit just by reading what you have to say.  So keep on writing, this is fun.

Dishonest bullshit. And worse in several respects than even the worst excesses of religious hubris.

Try harder. I employ vastly more complex and meaningful terminology than you ever could, and I have no trouble explaining it.

The proof of the Poincare conjecture and the canonization of quantum field theory are also complex concepts which are not comprehensible to everyone. There is a difference between the lack of comprehensibility of these things and the lack of comprehensibility of the things you assert. The lack of comprehensibility of the former for most people is because the pertinent terms are defined in terms of concepts which they do not understand because those concepts in turn are defined in terms of concepts which they don't understand. For example, to understand the proof of the axioms of the Zermelo-Frankel system would require me to understand the pertinent concepts in intuitive set theory, which in turn requires my understanding of formal logic and mathematical axioms (not to mention proof and definition by mathematical induction). This could be extended to explain why people do not understand perfectly meaningful concepts such as the ones I just mentioned. In your case, however, the lack of comprehensibility is because the terms you use have had the meaning sucked out of them in order to stand in for vague allusions which the real concepts they denote do not actually represent. Witness, for example, within the community of quacks and pseudophysics, the liberal use of words like "force" and "energy" etc. etc. ad infinitum. This constitutes precisely the sort of errors in your writing that I could spend days elaborating on. Do not tell me you are not guilty of these mistakes since I have pointed them to you many times. All the pertinent terms you use have real meanings in other contexts. This indicates to me that you aren't struggling because you are trying to explain a complex concept that requires a heirarchy of knowledge of other complex concpts (such as where a mathematician attempts to explain to a non-mathematician the proof of the Poincare conjecture). You are struggling because you need to make it look like this is the case, when it really is not.

Let me give you a precise example to articulate precisely what I am trying to get across. As you obviously know, there is a particular curious discipline of pseudoscience which is derogatorily and deservedly labeled quantum mysticism. It is called so because it attempts to use the discoveries of quantum mechanics to verify particular metaphysical beliefs they have, particularly those pertaining to “Eastern mysticism”. Reading their writings seems to be little more than mystical poetry than a serious and rigorous discussion about the nature of reality. But one way which would force those who hold these particular beliefs is to ask them to characterize their beliefs and assertions into a coherent set of mathematical statements. Of course they cannot do this. The reason for this is because the pertinent terms being used (read: abused) by these people cannot rigorously be employed in the context they are trying to use them in. The contentions they make about reality are too, well, metaphorical. The pertinent terms they employ cannot be force-fitted into their strange beliefs. This is why the whole business collapses. You find yourself in a similar position. And that is the difference between complex things that may be incoherent to most people such as quantum mechanics or topology, and things that are incoherent because of the stealing of pertinent terms. For example:

This makes perfect sense to me:

This does not:

“Quantum healing is healing the bodymind from a quantum level. That means from a level which is not manifest at a sensory level. Our bodies ultimately are fields of information, intelligence and energy. Quantum healing involves a shift in the fields of energy information, so as to bring about a correction in an idea that has gone wrong. So quantum healing involves healing one mode of consciousness, mind, to bring about changes in another mode of consciousness, body”. (Chopra)

This brings us to another distinction between the complex ideas and terminologies I employ and those that you…attempt to. The first example (Fick’s second law of diffusion) is a useful and meaningful statement about the nature of reality. Using it, I can predict the rate function for which non-constant diffusion across a partially permeable membrane will occur. As for the latter…well, what is there to say?

This is untrue because you make very extravagant assertions about the nature of reality, as well as such things as epistemology and ontology, as well as physics, chemistry, biology etc. As luck would have it, I have a great deal of knowledge on these things and am therefore perfectly able to hold a discussion on them. Virtually everything you assert could be classed under a discipline that I am fully competent in, but you aren't.

At some point in every deluded person's arguments - whether they have been indoctrinated or not into adopting their particular delusion - comes an assertion that they are above criticism since they hold "special knowledge" without which another person cannot be qualified to discuss, let alone debunk, the other foolish assertions they have made. That assertion alone reveals the depths of dishonesty to which these people have sunk, again whether it is entirely their fault or not that they have done so.

Deluded God has been trying valiantly in several posts now to refute this particular deluded fool's ranting with hard fact, and to any sane and reasonable person the points he has raised would long ago have at least given the other person cause to reflect on the possibility that he is wrong. But that would be an honest reaction, and Luminon is not capable even of that. The lies he tells us are indicative of the lies he has been told, but also of the ones he tells himself. Worse, he believes that his identity itself is bound up with this tangled web of dishonest fallacies which he lyingly refers to as philosophy, and therefore - like any theist - interprets contradiction as personal attack.

Since fools like this will take umbrage at anything that pokes a hole in their fantasies, however politely, diplomatically, or intelligently constructed it might be done, then I don't bother even trying (though I commend Deluded God for his effort, however wasted it is in this case). Luminon needs to know at least that his dishonest, arrogant and ultimately stupid take on life is recognised as such by others and merits no respect whatsoever. If he interprets this assessment as a judgement on his own character as well is entirely up to him - and as I said, he probably will.

But what is most offensive about this particular fool is where he has chosen to spout his inanities. Theists who come to this site are directed to areas where their views can be expressed, and requested forcefully not to enter other areas. The vast majority, deluded fools and all as many of them might be, are honest enough to do so. This guy, whose arrogance and stupidity in refuting rationality exceeds many theists, feels he can interject wherever he wants whenever he wants with repetition of his creed, and that he is protected from criticism by virtue of the fact that he asserts he is not a theist. That is hypocrisy, and hypocrites deserve no respect or consideration for hurt feelings when being spoken to.