Conservation of souls?

Guys, there are three of you swamping me with replies. I'm taking a break for dinner. Will come back later.

peace and love,
bowser
 
Bowser said:
Have you ever just sat down and felt your feelings? I mean, feel them, live them, experience them. They are absolutely free, and there's no need to travel anywhere to find them.
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Yes, I have, many times and deeply so. OTOH I am also able to compartmentalize different aspect of life and living.
 
Bowser said:
Guys, there are three of you swamping me with replies. I'm taking a break for dinner. Will come back later.

peace and love,
bowser
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Please do not take it personal. I, for one, do like your posts and your civility. Enjoy your dinner!
 
Bowser said:
But I have already given my argument. Either people don't grasp it or just won't accept it? I honestly have nothing more to offer other than repeat myself. If I were to hazard a guess, people are clinging to the notion that they are independent of the larger picture.
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Most people I know view God as separate from the universe. As such, they view us as separate creations. (AKA - Independent of the larger picture.) Part of that previously mentioned baggage that comes with the word "God".
 
Bowser said:
But I have already given my argument. Either people don't grasp it or just won't accept it? I honestly have nothing more to offer other than repeat myself. If I were to hazard a guess, people are clinging to the notion that they are independent of the larger picture.
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But I have already given my argument

I find the Universe a wonderful place - is not a argument. Statement yes. Argument no

:)
 
James R said:
Musika:


I'm inclined to think that empiricism will continue to provide further insights into the mind. It is, of course, conceivable that we might hit a wall with that, but there are no signs of that so far. Similarly with life.


It is interesting that you mention cosmogony. I assume you chose to use that word to encompass something other than cosmology. Again, it seems to me that virtually everything we know about the large-scale structure and evolution of our universe has come from empirical investigation, so far.

As far as things like ancient history go, the past is the past. We had limited means to investigate it empirically. But I'm not aware of any other methods that are able to give greater or more reliable knowledge about the past (or about cosmogony, for that matter).


And apparently, 75% of statistics are made up on the spot. (Joke.) That 50% thing makes a nice sound bite, but I doubt it is true.


I take your point, I think.
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These were all offered as examples of things, other than the subject of God, that empiricism is epistemologically challenged by. IOW they are things that struggle at an epistemological level, as opposed to something like a mere lack of cultivation or advancement of knowledge.

So would it be correct to say that it is your contention that God provides certain people with special, non-empirical methods for access to or communication with him?
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Yes.

I agree with you that God, if he exists, is certainly in a position where he can dictate the terms of any interaction with human beings.

Do you think any such communications or interactions between God and his subjects have happened?
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That, I would argue, is the entire subject and focus of religion.

Have you had any yourself?
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Not in the sense you are probably alluding to.

That's probably right, but once 100 islanders have had similar experiences, it becomes more difficult to dismiss them out of hand, especially if there have been any exchanges of trinkets or there's some other physical (empirical) evidence.
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I guess at this stage, the analogy is starting to fall away since the Andaman islsnders are mere victims of geography as a foremost contribution to their isolation (as opposed to being relegated or awarded such an existence on account of their desire or through the superior arrangement of the sovereign powers they are under).

But what you are indicating more or less is true. If we want to examine the ultimate substance of a religious institution (as the concamitant element that instills ideas of God in society), it is not its money, or politics or even its philosophy but its saintly practitioners that are the ultimate "assets" and determine whatever is forthcoming in the bust and boom cycles of God consciousness (commonly identified by religion) as it appears in society.

In the case of God, of course, in thousands and years and with millions of believers, the available empirical evidence is still rather sparse.
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Its kind of like being something like a gold miner. The more precisely you can qualify what you are looking for, the easier it becomes to look for it in the right places and the stronger the liklihood of encountering large reserves of it. If you just head out to the backyard with a pick axe or backhoe, you may strike it lucky but it will probably be a lengthy process.

What do you think about that?
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As mentioned earlier, its the primary function of religion, to establish the ways, means and instances of connecting to God or make advancement in that regard.

Presumably, as a believer yourself, you think there is some way of communing with God, on God's terms. How does that work?
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You might have to be more specific in order for me to reply in a way that is valid.
I'm pretty sure you are already familiar with the themes of duality presented by various religions and prescriptive systems of do's and do not's, similar to a regimen for a diseased person, that are means to elevate a person to a higher standard (as opposed to means unto themselves).
 
James R said:
Musika:

I haven't had a chance before now to respond to your posts to me from a while ago. But the theme I'd like to concentrate on is the same one as in my post immediately prior to this one.

You have made various claims about the soul, saying it is the "most intimate source of agency and identity" and that "the soul 'wears' bodies", that it "animates matter", and so on. But all this raises the following question for me: how do you know all this?
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The short answer (which ended up a bit longer than I anticipated ...) is that it is a problem answered by self realization. Of course that sounds like an esoteric claim, and perhaps it is if you want to jump in on the top rungs of that position, but it is also framed by philosophy, world view etc, which tends to be the playing field for any ideas of self.

IOW ideas of self are very much connected to our ideas of the world, reality, purpose, etc ... so, regardless of who we are and what our views on self are, we kind of buy into an ontological "package deal" (as opposed to a piecemeal smorgasboard), which in turn give us a range of specific behaviours, goals etc. So our ideas of self are very much connected to our ideas of the world and vice versa and all of this is cemented and held together by our activities.

For instance, the task of getting a drug addict off drugs is not as simple as telling them it is bad or unhealthy or destructive. Infact they probably have greater realization of those things than a non addict (often they even romanticize it). If you want to talk about what a drug addict has to "know" in order to stop using, it is a complex answer of viewing the self in relation to the world. Part of it involves seeing the world and their own self as it "really is" (if we can agree that a life of addiction is an inferior standard of reality) and another involves seeing what clouds or complicates that vision of reality.
And its not a black and white position of knowledge. There are a whole spectrum of positions that reflect the intensity that they can or cannot hold such a view of the self/world, identifiable by (and to a large extent, controlled by) their behaviour.

So in the beginning, such knowledge can be driven by the mere idea that a certain self/world view is but a "good idea", but when behaviours also come around behind and support that, it changes from a mere idea to an actual position.

IOW it is not a position of knowledge that just requires philosophy or "new information", but rather words backed up by action.

To go back to the drug addict, they never "know" what the "real world" is for as long as they are unable to bring a certain standard of behaviour to the table.
In the same way, discerning the self as distinct from matter requires a bit of perserverence.



I don't understand where all this information about souls comes from. You might tell me that you read about souls in a religious text, but that merely pushes the question back a step, and I ask how the writer(s) of that text came to have that knowledge.
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The general principle is that such a position of "knowledge" is actually the constitutional natural position of a living entity. IOW this dualistic position of a self in a body is a temporary imposition brought about by behaviour, desire, etc.
Its just like when a person reawakens from a coma. They don't "become" something, rather they "reclaim" something from an inferior position.

You agree that none of this stuff about souls is empirical knowledge. It isn't based on observation of souls, because souls are not detectable by empirical methods. So how do you know all this?

You take issue with the "reductionism" of physics, so I take it that your knowledge of the soul is based on some kind of "wholeistic" knowledge. But I'm still at a loss as to how you gained such knowledge. Understand that I don't mean you, specifically, but anybody.
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I tried to answer all this above . Its kind of like the matrix (which, interestingly enough, drew on the upanisads for source material).
Through a superior imposition, a superior existence is rendered inferior.
If he decided to reject either the red pill or the blue pill and work things out for himself (aka the enpirical approach), how would that have worked out for him?

Similarly with statements like this:

How is this animating force of life perceived, if not through the medium of matter?
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The irony of this existence is that something that is not matter (ie, life) has been relegated to the realm of matter.
Its just like our hapless matrix hero sifting through what is a computer simulation of life, trying to unplug himself from the reality of his comatose state hooked up to a machine (granted, Hollywood could make it happen, but hopefully you see the point)

If the soul animates the body, doesn't that imply a connection between the non-material soul and the material body? Clearly it does, and your explanation for how that connection "works" reduces, as far as I can tell, to "God makes it work".
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Or "superior agency".
Due to a qualitative distinction between God and the living entity, God has a relationship with both spirit (life) and matter that the living entity doesn't. God controls these two things. The living entity is controlled by them

From my point of view, you look like you're assuming that a non-material "spark" is needed to animate life. But I'm sure you don't regard it as an assumption - or else you regard it as a justified assumption (perhaps on the basis of "life comes from life" or something like that)? Is that right?
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If you want to talk about "justified assumptions" you are talking about world views, behaviours ... the whole ontological package we have already "bought" in to, etc.

And then you posit and additional entity (God), that is separate from these animating souls, that is supposedly required in addition, in order to run the whole "soul" system. Which raises the obvious next question: how do you know that God exists?


This is where I'm getting stuck. Where does this knowledge - this certainty - you claim to have, about souls and God, come from? And how does it come?

It would be circular to claim that knowledge of God is given by the very God whose existence you're trying to establish in the first place, wouldn't it? You'd just be begging the question if you were to claim that God exists because he tells you he exists (through some other non-material, unspecified, mechanism). Wouldn't you?
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It is not just simply a "telling" (descending) system of knowledge or the opposite, empirical (ascending). Technically it is a descending system with the added prerequisite of concomitant behaviours. This is distinct from empiricism, which has no such provision (you could be a paedophile murderer, a drunkard or a nobel peace award winner or all of the above, but provided you can hold the telescope around the right way, empiricism will deliver the goods).
If someone tells you that you will feel relief from hunger by eating, but you do not eat, you will not know it.
If you get offered the red pill in the matrix, but take the blue pill, you will not be part of triology.

You may think, "Hey, empiricism is better, I can do whatever the hell I want and get to the "objective truth", but that mode of investigation comes prepackaged with a glass ceiling.

Con't ....
 
..... con't

You make an analogy:

This reminds me of the brain-in-a-vat scenario. It is possible, of course, that you and I are actually brains in vats, being fed "fake" sensory data by somebody else (aliens, advanced humans, AIs, you name it). But I don't claim to know that these "enablers" of my life and all my perceptions exist (if they exist). The best I can say is: they might conceivably exist. I certainly couldn't know anything about them, independently of what they chose to feed me.

Would you agree that your God could be an alien species or advanced artificial intelligence controlling you as a brain in a vat, or perhaps a simulation in their computer?
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Much like the matrix, unless there is someone to come down from the "natural" position, unfettered to whatever illusion the fed brain was being fed, how else would you know?

That kind of God would not need to be supernatural, in the sense of being empirically unexplainable, though of course that God would be inaccessible to our empirical investigation.
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Your very example is more or less what is proposed to be occurring. The only difference is that you are imagining God as some extrapolated version of ourselves, struggling with an empirical universe, as opposed to a superior being who has such a universe on his beck and call .... and also that the simulated, illusory existence offers a grander field of expression, existence and fulfillment than what a brain in a tub would conceivably have on offer.

Is this how you view your relationship to God? Is God the computer programmer who restricts your real choices while providing you with the mere illusion of freedom in an ultimately-artificial world?
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God is simply providing us with options to be happy. If we choose a type of happiness that is technically impossible, it has to be managed through the medium of illusion and simulation.
On account of our constitutional position, any sort of attempt to pursue artificial happiness is met with limitations, so you could say that behind such a simulation is a subtle computer coding attempting to bring us over the learning curve ... it might just take a couple (or maybe a couple thousand) universal devastations for things to start falling in to place for us.


It strikes me as a depressing sort of worldview to hold, if so. Not that it would have any practical effects on your daily life, if it were true.


In a previous post, you acknowledged that you would be willing to change your mind if it turns our that life does leave a material fingerprint, contrary to what you currently believe. I'm glad you're open to changing your mind.
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I guess we can only hope.

But the thing is, you make the explicit claim that you have isolated a transcendent cause. You call that cause God. But how did you locate that God? Since material means can't help, you must have used transcendent means. Right? How does that work, then?


My point is that God is a dead end in terms of being an explanation of anything. Once you say "God did it", that's as far as you can go. And you haven't really increased your understanding. "God did it" is just a place holder for not understanding, as far as I can tell. I want to know how God makes souls work, and how souls make bodies work. I want a better answer than "They just do". Don't you?
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You are not going to get that knowledge. You will not "understand" things as God does. But that said, you are welcome to investigate how life sits within this cradle of matter. I don't doubt that you can and have learnt many valuable things.
 
gmilam said:
Most people I know view God as separate from the universe. As such, they view us as separate creations. (AKA - Independent of the larger picture.) Part of that previously mentioned baggage that comes with the word "God".
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Yeah, that is the problem. We grow up as isolated creatures, and it often starts with religion. It's sad that people spend their lives trying to join with God while all along they were never apart. Always looking elsewhere for answers.
 
Michael 345 said:
But I have already given my argument

I find the Universe a wonderful place - is not a argument. Statement yes. Argument no

:)
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I don't really view it as an argument. You can accept or reject the premise that God is all. There is no penalty for not seeing.
 
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Bowser said:
Scripture is man's attempt to understand God. A better question to ask: Who is the Father?
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The Father of what or whom?
Certainly not the Father of Jesus. By God's own law a woman cannot conceive a male child unless male sperm is involved in conception. If Jesus was conceived by a virgin, he would have to have been female and a clone of Mary.
 
Bowser said:
I don't really view it as an argument. You can accept or reject the premise that God is all. There is no penalty for not seeing.
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Also contrary to most people's concept of god - more of that baggage. Most people associate ideas of salvation and redemption with acceptance of god.
 
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