Question for Cris and James R.,if possible...
- Thread starter Gravage
- Start date
Let's say it basically means that if you have the experience and you have faith in yourself or God as the case may be you are sure what you are experiencing is real despite the fact that others may not share this experience and may dismiss it as something other than what you know it to be. I mean you can see red when someone else sees green but who is really colour blind?
Definitely. Faith in something without evidence that it is true is nothing. I mean you can have faith in an invisible pink monkey [some atheists love to use that one] but unless there is some evidence for it, well, I don't see how you can continue having faith in such a thing. Truly I am, right now, trying to discern the interaction between faith and evidence [which one precedes the other] and I have to conclude that faith comes first, then evidence strengthens your faith, or none comes before the other [I lean more towards this view]. I liken it somewhat to the scientific method of hypothesising then observing then concluding. And the key to it is that there are certain degrees of faith which implies degrees of certitude. The more evidence the more certain, but, how can you see evidence without faith that it is evidence in the first place? You see the conundrum? To me it is one.
I'm not claiming that I derive knowledge from faith. I'm claiming, in fact, both. Without faith there is no experience, without the experience there is no faith, and without both there is no knowledge.
Most definitely. You can only experience God, as everything else, on a personal level, at the moment. The fact is your experience of God might be something else another. You will both have the conviction that your interpretation of your experiences are true, through faith and evidence. But who is correct? Only time will tell.
You can't call faith knowledge, of course, it's the collective experience which leads to knowledge - meaning faith through evidence and evidence through faith and thus a high degree of certitude. I hope my position is a bit more transparent now.
That is clearer yes. If I get you right what you're saying is that faith has two applications. Firstly faith in a hypothesis, a conjecture, even if it is not proved, is necessary in order to seek and find the evidence for it, (otherwise you're in the wrong mindset to see that evidence for what it is), and secondly a faith in the truth of your own personal experience is necessary in order to know the truth, for without faith experience is useless as a guide to truth. If you mean this then I completely agree.
On the first of these, faith as a guide to vision, I've always found it interesting that it's much easier to find things that you know are there. Have you noticed this? It's a well known domestic phenomenon, and very annoying.
You go to look for the jam and it isn't in the cupboard. On complaining to ones all knowing mother or spouse you are told that of course it's in the cupboard, you just haven't looked properly. When you look again, bingo, it's right there in front of you, where it was all along. Somehow believing things are there makes them easier to find. My guess is that this applies to mystical knowledge as well as marmalade.
On the first of these, faith as a guide to vision, I've always found it interesting that it's much easier to find things that you know are there. Have you noticed this? It's a well known domestic phenomenon, and very annoying.
You go to look for the jam and it isn't in the cupboard. On complaining to ones all knowing mother or spouse you are told that of course it's in the cupboard, you just haven't looked properly. When you look again, bingo, it's right there in front of you, where it was all along. Somehow believing things are there makes them easier to find. My guess is that this applies to mystical knowledge as well as marmalade.
Canute,
It's much more complicated than marmalade. It only seems that way because we arrived at a place - suggested by something as mundane as a history about religious Israel and a man called Jesus - from where we have grown in a faith that extends far beyond the principles from which it started from. It is a place where God's existence is an axiomatic truth. But our attempts to rationalize it are just as insufficient as yours.
From your side it seems we are trying to explain something we can't know - that we have first imagined an idea we are now trying to fill with substance. But while we know something we can't explain, it is no less based on reason. Only, it has grown from reason until reason has become insufficient to describe it.
The gap inbetween is filled with trust - because faith is really nothing more than trust. We have come to know a Father that we can trust and have faith in. Evidence can only go so far before faith must take over.
No matter how much evidence you have that someone loves you, the only thing that can make you trust that love to endure is faith, based on your experience within the relationship. Otherwise that person might as well be "loving" you from the grave. You don't trust a complete stranger to love you, no matter how much evidence someone else can give you abuot his compassion. If you don't have faith in someone's compassioante nature, you might never experience it - and you will forever believe that that person could never care for you. It's a catch 22 that takes only a small amount of faith - in humanity or in God - to overcome.
It's much more complicated than marmalade
. It only seems that way because we arrived at a place - suggested by something as mundane as a history about religious Israel and a man called Jesus - from where we have grown in a faith that extends far beyond the principles from which it started from. It is a place where God's existence is an axiomatic truth. But our attempts to rationalize it are just as insufficient as yours.From your side it seems we are trying to explain something we can't know - that we have first imagined an idea we are now trying to fill with substance. But while we know something we can't explain, it is no less based on reason. Only, it has grown from reason until reason has become insufficient to describe it.
The gap inbetween is filled with trust - because faith is really nothing more than trust. We have come to know a Father that we can trust and have faith in. Evidence can only go so far before faith must take over.
No matter how much evidence you have that someone loves you, the only thing that can make you trust that love to endure is faith, based on your experience within the relationship. Otherwise that person might as well be "loving" you from the grave. You don't trust a complete stranger to love you, no matter how much evidence someone else can give you abuot his compassion. If you don't have faith in someone's compassioante nature, you might never experience it - and you will forever believe that that person could never care for you. It's a catch 22 that takes only a small amount of faith - in humanity or in God - to overcome.
Last edited:
You know consciousness exists, but can you show me what it is and where it resides, what it's made of?
The soul is the only entity.
Because consciousness is only a symptom, the real actor is the soul.
Which definition do you find plausible?
Love
Jan Ardena.
Jenyar,
Read your own statement, it says – evidence doesn’t matter but trust and faith is based on evidence. Can you see your error?
You cannot be serious. At least two thirds of the world population does not believe in your God, how can that be interpreted as an axiomatic truth for his existence? It might be axiomatic for you because it is only in YOUR mind.
So what type of reason are you suggesting? Is it the type based on logic or is it the thefountainhed criteria where any reason will do. Like the murderer who when asked his reason for killing said ‘I just felt like it’. Sure, it’s a reason, just like yours, you believe in a god because you feel like it. For “reason” to have any meaning in this type of argument we really do mean logic and logic is based on evidence and proofs, and you still cannot produce any. And that means that what you claim to know is most certainly NOT based on reason.
Nonsense, what we observe is that reason is unable to describe the claim because the whole concept of gods is irrational. The claim for the existence of your god simply defies logic – there is no substance, no evidence and no proofs. And I don’t mean history or the bible but anything that might possibly show that such a god exists here and now. You have only your imagination as your basis.
I can see how you have so easily confused the two terms but they aren’t the same. But trust in this sense is the same as the child who trusts that Santa Claus will deliver his gifts. Such trust has no bearing on the existence of SC as it has no bearing on whether your god exists.
Only that you cannot show that the basis for this trust and knowledge is anything other a product of your imagination. It is the same as trusting and having intense faith in fairies as being of equal relevance pertaining to their existence – zero.
But in your case you have no evidence to even begin the process.
You are simply confused. It is the experience within the relationship that is the evidence. It is that evidence that leads to trust and faith of that person. You have everything reversed. The evidence comes FIRST.
Read your own statement, it says – evidence doesn’t matter but trust and faith is based on evidence. Can you see your error?
Of course not. This has to be a personal experience.
It defies common sense to openly trust someone in a potentially loving relationship until they see some evidence of their true nature FIRST, i.e. evidence. Trust and faith in that person grows over time and with increasing evidence of their demonstrable compassion and love. Until that evidence is apparent then you always have to take a risk at the start - and that has nothing to do with trust or faith, it is better described as gambling. But even those early steps begin with some communication where evidence is being sought that this potential partner has merit and only then would a sensible person proceed, i.e. evidence always comes first.
Only if you are naïve. Taking a risk is not the same as trust or having faith, you may simply have no idea what will happen. And you certainly do not have to believe that the outcome will be favorable before you begin, that is perhaps the domain of hope.
Jan,
Canute – if I may.
We know we have a brain and we have described something we call consciousness. We also know that if the brain is damaged through various degrees then we know that our consciousness is also directly affected to a significant correlation with the degree of brain damage.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that brain and consciousness are inseparably linked. And until we observe some other organ that can produce consciousness then it also seems reasonable that the brain causes consciousness. If we also realize that the brain has similar processing power and possibly more compared to 10,000 super computers crammed inside a single skull then it would again seem reasonable that that is the cause of consciousness.
There doesn’t seem any good reason to suppose anything else.
Canute – if I may.
Consciousness appears to be an emergent property of brain function.
We know we have a brain and we have described something we call consciousness. We also know that if the brain is damaged through various degrees then we know that our consciousness is also directly affected to a significant correlation with the degree of brain damage.
It is therefore reasonable to assume that brain and consciousness are inseparably linked. And until we observe some other organ that can produce consciousness then it also seems reasonable that the brain causes consciousness. If we also realize that the brain has similar processing power and possibly more compared to 10,000 super computers crammed inside a single skull then it would again seem reasonable that that is the cause of consciousness.
There doesn’t seem any good reason to suppose anything else.
Do you mean this is just another name for the brain?
The brain is the only organ we know that is likely to be responsible for consciousness. The term ‘soul’ has no meaning in this context.
There is no plausible definition for soul that cannot be better explained using the physical nature of the brain.
Canute,
Similarly such subjective experiences about certain ‘knowledge’ of God have no necessary correlations to whether such a being actually exists and represents truth.
The people in the institutions are clearly deluded. What then is the distinguishing criterion between these delusions and someone who is certain that a god exists? I would suggest that without physical evidence of a god there is no distinction.
Note that this is significantly and qualitatively different to someone who speculates that a god might exist.
This is incorrect. There are people in institutions that are certain that they are Napoleon or Hitler, etc., their conviction has no necessary connection to truth.
Similarly such subjective experiences about certain ‘knowledge’ of God have no necessary correlations to whether such a being actually exists and represents truth.
The people in the institutions are clearly deluded. What then is the distinguishing criterion between these delusions and someone who is certain that a god exists? I would suggest that without physical evidence of a god there is no distinction.
Note that this is significantly and qualitatively different to someone who speculates that a god might exist.
MarAC,
That is not correct. You can only claim to have an experience. Without independent verification and proof you only have a baseless claim.
And again without independent verification and proof how can you distinguish these claimed experiences of a god with simple delusions? Which are infinitely more believable.
Of course not.
That settles that then. What is your particular definition of soul?
Do you expect me to just take your word for that?
Any of them that make soul an element of consciousness.
Your argument that soul is not consciousness utlimately fails imo, since if soul is something other than consciousness it cannot be truly known by consciousness, and must remain as a infered entity, a part of the world of appearances. Also it means saying that our consciousness dies with our body, since the soul is not conscious, which is odd.
No it doesn't. Increasingly it appears to be scientifically inexplicable.
You're cheating with the words. You might just as well say that we know we have consciousness and we have have described something we call a brain.
Yes, if 'reasonable' means adopting a completely counterintuitive postulate on the basis of no evidence.
The fact that the brain behaves like a computer is the precise reason that it is unlikely that it causes consciousness. 10,000 supercomputers would no more cause consciousness that my PC would on its own according to the available evidence.
I don't think you mean that. It's a profoundly and quite obviously incorrect statement. Otherwise we'd all agree.
It is likely to be responsible for most normal states of consciousness. That is quite different to saying that it is responsible for its existence.
In your opinion.
This argument doesn't work. You yourself might be writing from an institution as far as we can know, convinced that everyone else but you is deluded.
If lack of physical evidence is proof of non-existence then consciousness itself doesn't exist, and neither do your thoughts about the non-existence of God.
Then there is no need to assume that soul and consciousness are separate.
Simply put.....pure consciousness.
Of course not, but if you take the time to study literature such as Bhagavad Gita it becomes very simple. For example;
B.G. 2;13
dehino 'smin yatha dehe
kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir
dhiras tatra na muhyati
As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.
You had the body of a baby, a youth, and now a man, but you are the same person. Your consciousness has developed according to your body, but you are recognisable to your parents as the same person.
By consciousness we mean the awareness of thoughts and sensations that we directly percieve and know that we percieve, and as such you are aware that your body is changing, but you are the same person. The 'you' is what is regarded as the soul whose awareness/consciousness is limited in this atmosphere by the type of body it inhabits.
I didn't say the soul is not consciousness. Water has it properties (h20), but it is described as wet. The soul has its properties (eternality, knowledge and bliss) but it is described as pure consciousness.
Love
Jan Ardena.
And maggots appear to be born out of rotting meat.
Okay.
Okay.
Consciousness is roughly described as awareness of abstract qualities. What material properties constitute such awareness, and where would such properties reside in the brain?
Not really.
Consciousness would corresponds to higher-order abstract properties of the computers physical state, properties described by symbols such as thought and feeling, which stands at the top of a lofty ladder of abstract definitions.
We know that consciousness is real but the abstract properties are not. So what is it that reads the these properties from the computers physical state? The same question applies also to the idea of the brain being the seat of consciousness.
It depends on the individual.
No.
As you don't fully know what consciousness from an abstract POV is, how can you know if anything can be responsible for consciousness. How do you know that consciousness is not responsible for the brain?
Only to a closed mind.
The soul is eternal and the brain is temporary, seems a plausible definition to me.
Love
Jan Ardena.
Jan,
When a relatively simple computer can outthink a human playing chess then imagine the effect of something 100,000 times that power.
For example if you observe a chicken egg and then look back later and see a broken egg and a baby chicken it is not reasonable to assume that the chicken arrived by spaceship from Mars.
That the brain produces consciousness is obvious. The idea of a soul originated from ancient and ignorant times when little to nothing was understood about human physiology. The idea of a soul has zero basis in reality and there should be little doubt for informed and intelligent people that such things simply do not exist.
Why? The brain is real. The soul is just a fantasy. There is no plausibility to such baseless assertions for a soul.
Why speculate that it is anything other than 200 billion and several trillion synaptic connections?
When a relatively simple computer can outthink a human playing chess then imagine the effect of something 100,000 times that power.
Because every precedent for bodily organs shows each organ providing a certain function, why would the brain be any different? I.e. there is no basis to support other speculations.
I have no problem with the concept.
Because we know we have consciousness and we know we have a complex brain that is yet to be fully understood. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the two are not related as cause and effect.
For example if you observe a chicken egg and then look back later and see a broken egg and a baby chicken it is not reasonable to assume that the chicken arrived by spaceship from Mars.
That the brain produces consciousness is obvious. The idea of a soul originated from ancient and ignorant times when little to nothing was understood about human physiology. The idea of a soul has zero basis in reality and there should be little doubt for informed and intelligent people that such things simply do not exist.
Well, this wasn't posted to me but I've got to comment. It is profoundly unscientific. It's not at all obvious that the brain produces consciousness. There isn't even a plausible scientific hypothesis for how it could happen. You're entitled to speculate, but there's nothing obvious about your conclusion.
Just because you cannot imagine that consciousness is more fundamental than brain doesn't mean that it isn't. You have to have some sort of evidence. So far there is none. In fact so far it has been impossible to decide even what sort of evidence might settle the matter.
On top of that it is becoming clear, from the ongoing inability of researchers to hypothesise logically plausibly mechanisms, that the very idea that consciousness is just matter self-referencing is logically suspect.
My apologies. It seems i may have misunderstood where you were coming from.
Love
Jan Ardena.
Oh! Well that's that then!
Why not?
If i was staring at a windmill on a beautifull summers day, would that image be in my brain if it was being scanned, mapped or monitored symultaneosly?
No?
So how come i am percieving this marvel, and know that my perception is real?
That is not consciousness, that is just a programe made by someone with consciousness.
Huh!!!
That is a seriously ignorant attitude.
You only know you have a consciousness because you are conscious. If you were unconscious or dead, would you know you have consciousness?
Cause and effect presents a different more open scenario. The soul is the cause and the perception is the effect.
What does that have to do with anything?
How so?
Please specify.
What information would these so-called intelligent people and informed have at their disposal to justify this definate conclusion.
Love
Jan Ardena.