by Space Madness 65 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I am living my life under the premise that this is all there is. Which when you think about, is a pretty damn good deal. I did not ask to be here, but here I am. Living and enjoying life.
I refuse to live my life as it was a dress rehearsal for something better.
Im with New York. Who cares what happens to us after we die?! Who wants to live for eternity anyway? Sometimes I wish I believed in reincarnation. I'd much rather come back as an animal like a porcupine or someone else than to be in heaven freaking playing the harp all %^&ing day long!! Id even prefer hell. At least some cool people would be there. There would probably be some kind of sexual activity going on. Seriously, if there is a heaven that would mean my nana is there. Who wants to party with thier nana? ...My nana is cool though. Aint no party like my nana's tea party!
Everything is what it is, and nothing else. It is limited in its qualities and in its quantity: it is this much, and no more.
“Infinite” as applied to quantity does not mean “very large”: it means “larger than any specific quantity.”
That means: no specific quantity—i.e., a quantity without identity.
This is prohibited by the Law of Identity, one of 3 major axioms in logic of thought.
Is God the creator of the universe? There can be no creation of something out of nothing. There is no nothing.
Is God omnipotent? Can he do anything? Entities can act only in accordance with their natures; nothing can make them violate their natures . . .
“God” as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle.
The point is wider than just the Judeo-Christian concept of God.
No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world.
No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one.
ON THE OTHER HAND. . .
We can deny what we don't wish to accept. Many do. Perhaps most people do this.
Denying is the same thing as putting your hand over the speedometer while speeding and simply ignoring the danger.
Should we wonder why people are depressed when they don't live in the real world and the silly things they choose to believe
don't work in the real world?
You choose your own beliefs but you can't choose your own reality.
Cause and effect pack a wallop if you are standing in the way.
No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a “super-existence.”
Seraphim - If you don't understand the difference between sleep and lack of consciousness hae somebody perform surgery on you while you sleep.
Sure there is a difference but my point was about memory, plus even doctors don’t really understand how anaesthesia works on consciousness so it’s a moot point.
Is consciousness being AWAKE?
I was cut once in the operating room while the lights were still on in my brain.
doctors now avoid talking about the patient during narcosis (or so I remember reading) because in some cases the conversations were remembered.
If consciousness is such a frail thing, how can it survive the mechanism, the organ on which is dependent ?
with ultra sensitive dedectors one could thing of capturing the minuscule brain-waves as they recede into the past and space, but that is not consciousness, the ongoing state being alive, with brainfunction of one kind or another.
We can think outside the BOX, but not ouside the brain..
Terry your definitions for life could be picked apart very easily. For instance there is some debate over the question of if a virus is a living thing or not and they do not have cells. Also consciousness is not included in these definitions for life, which is probably because the majority of what is generally defined as life does not have it as far as we know in any practical sense. So such definitions excepted currently could be changed to include viruses or even consciousness. Of course in doing so some of what is now defined as life would be edited out of the definition to accommodate these others elements of life. As it is the current definitions also seem to edit out certain things thought to be quintessentially limited to life. If for now consciousness is not part of life’s definition, it rather superficially allows for consciousness to not be part of the debate of what biological life is anyway. So one can say that consciousness is irrelevant to life, or does not have to be alive in a physical sense in order to have experiences.
Also reproduction is another problem if life is defined by the ability to reproduce, not just because some people cannot reproduce but because life itself was presumably from non-life at some point. A non-living parent reproduced without being alive one might say, or that on a general level all life’s parent was never alive, and so according to the definition of life all life is not alive because it didn’t come from reproduction as non-living things cannot reproduce.
The problem with definition is that it is not supposed to be an absolute but a tool. As more is discovered, the more the definitions of things change accordingly. One is never going to get 100 percent precise definitions which leaves open the door to other things.
Terry your definitions for life could be picked apart very easily.
I'm entitled to opinion but not to make up facts. The definition of LIFE I gave is standard science.
For instance there is some debate over the question of if a virus is a living thing or not and they do not have cells.
That only has to do with taxonomy, as to how biologists classify the virus currently. It is not a debate about life itself.
Also consciousness is not included in these definitions for life, which is probably because the majority of what is generally defined as life does not have it as far as we know in any practical sense.
Consciousness is a separate issue. That is why it isn't included. When you are unconscious you are still living, are you not?
So one can say that consciousness is irrelevant to life, or does not have to be alive in a physical sense in order to have experiences.
Occam's Razor: don't make things more complicated unnecessarily.
Also reproduction is another problem if life is defined by the ability to reproduce, not just because some people cannot reproduce but because life itself was presumably from non-life at some point.
The General definition of anything will, at some point, break down by instantiation with specifics. Exceptions test (i.e. prove) the rule itself.
Evolution is a constant mutation machine whereby archetypes transmute into new types.
One is never going to get 100 percent precise definitions which leaves open the door to other things.
Categories are for our convenience and are wholly ad hoc as an imposed discipline for understanding.
Nature itself is a vast grayscale.
In math, arbitrary (but necessary) rules are declared to prevent--for example--dividing by zero. Operations come in a certain order (i.e. F.O.I.L.)
and it keeps mathematicians on the same page. Yet, it is a convention or orthodoxy.
The same is true of Logic. These are tools for thought and praxis.
Knowing these tools and applying them gets us far closer to a rigor of rational understanding than declaring deuces wild the way
religion and metaphysics do in supernatural venues.
I think there's an excellent case to be made not only for life after life, but life before life. If Jesus had a pre-mortal life and if Jerimiah (Jer. 1:5) had one, why not us? Remember the apostles asked Jesus, "Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?" Jesus could have responded by saying that they were erring, not knowing the scripture, or he could have corrected them some other way, but he didn't.
The answer to the question 'is there life after death' can only be found, if at all in this life, by doing some personal research. There is certainly a great deal of evidence IMHO to suggest that it may happen. The weight one gives to this evidence is perhaps a personal matter. For those who are interested there is a good summary of the evidence which suggests we may survive physical death in David Fontana's book "Is There An Afterlife?". David Fontana was a Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool in the UK.
It is a well-referenced book that will yield much further reading for those interested. I am not saying it will or should convince anyone of survival - it didn't convince me - however if one read only that book it, I don't see how anyone could confidently assert we do not survive physical death.
Anyone interested in the subject feel free to pm me and I am happy to provide further references to useful reading if required.
