VincentRJ

Wow! Everyone is searching for happiness. Who would have known? How profound! The guy also looks overweight. Probably due to the happiness he feels when eating delicious food.

It doesn't seem sensible to build a home on land which is susceptible to flooding during the monsoon periods. Following is a quote from the 'Businessinsider' article, which describes the cause of the delay in building the house. "Our whole land was flooded, which meant the builders had no access to the site. When the water subsided, it took a lot of the access road with it," Ben said. "It was another two months before the government rebuilt the road so the builders could get back to the house."

As I've mentioned before, a fundamental characteristic of all life involves a competition for resources, in order to survive and replicate. There are no exceptions that I'm aware of. Whist we are very much aware of the many examples of our own competition, as in football and cricket matches, commercial activities, political elections, theft and corruption, and the slaughter of our fellow citizens during wars and armed conflicts, the competition that other life-forms engage in is usually under the radar of most people. Here's an example of the competition that ants engage in. "Ants are also aggressive toward each other, fighting to the death over their tree territories. The consequences for losing colonies are stark: loss of territory or colony death. After a fight, victorious colonies have to defend their newly gained territory with a workforce heavily depleted by fighting. In a new study, researchers found that victorious colonies might offset this challenge by recruiting members of the losing colonies to help." https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160318181610.htm Perhaps the main threat of human extinction is a full-scale, world-wide atomic war, but I doubt that would cause extinction. There would be at least a few remote areas where the populations would survive. Also, the potential devastation of an atomic war is so obvious, that I doubt that any government could be so stupid as to start one.

That's an interesting question. I personally do not believe in God, but I also do not believe that the universe was created from nothing. The hypothesis that the current universe began with a 'Big Bang' is no more than an extrapolation of our current scientific theories, which are always open to questioning, and many theories have eventually proven to be at least partially wrong, throughout the history of scientific enquiry. For example, a theory might be well-established within the limited scope of human activity, at a particular time, and might seem to work perfectly well in practice. However, there is usually a margin of error in our calculations. If that margin of error is too small to quantify, and/or too complex to quantify, then we cannot know if the error exists. An error which is too tiny to measure on a human scale, and is therefore considered to be non-existent, might be very significant on a cosmic scale where huge distances, huge quantities of energy and mass, and huge time-scales are involved. I should also add that the hypothesis of the Big Bang does not state that the universe was created from nothing. A 'singularity' is not nothing. From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity "Although there is no direct evidence for a singularity of infinite density, the cosmic microwave background is evidence that the universe expanded from a very hot, dense state."

What you've just expressed is one of the many examples of the imprecision in the normal use of language. Another example is describing a leaf as green or yellow. We have to simplify our use of language in order to be brief. It would be more perecise to say, 'I'm experiencing a sensation of greenness when I observe that leaf,' but that is not as brief as 'the leaf is green'. However, such imprecision does cause confusion when one expands upon the topic. I wonder how many people actually believe that the leaf itself has the property of being green, and don't understand that the leaf appears green because it has the property of reflecting a particular wave length of light that the normal human brain interprets as green. The leaf itself is devoid of color. All your thoughts are part of you, just as your arm, and your leg, and your heart, and your brain with billions of neurons, are all a part of you. We don't say 'I am the thought', because we understand that we are more than just the thought, just as we don't say 'I am the hand, or 'I am a big toe'. So to answer the question, 'What is the "I"?, I would suggest that the "I" is a conbination of all the parts that are required for the human body to exist and function. However, not all parts are of equal significance. Probably the most significant part of the human body related to the concept of "I", is the Cerebral Cortex in the brain, which is possibly the 'seat of consciousness', although it is also reliant upon other factors for consciousness to flourish. Hope I have enlightened you.

Okay. I'll try to answer it for you, to dispel your confusion. Mind, memory and thoughts are not objects like a house or any other inanimate object, but they are related to, and dependent upon the body. 'No body' equates to 'no mind', and 'no mind' equates to 'no thoughts'. What science reveals is the enormous complexity within all the objects and life-forms that we observe. Such complexity can only be addressed by specific scientific disciplines directed at specific aspects of an object or subject. The normal description of all objects and subjects that the average person is aware of, involves simple and basic labels to identify the object or subject. Most people understand what a car is, or a house is, or a tree is, and even what consciousness is, at a basic level. If they don't, because they are a bit illiterate, all they have to do is search a dictionary for the meaning of the word. Consciousness is awareness, which everyone experiences when they wake up after a sleep. However, if one wishes to go into the details, within and related to, each 'labelled' object, one could spend a lifetime discovering more and more information. Consider the simple example of 'what is a car?' Most people understand what a car looks like, and what its purpose is. They can identify the model, if it's printed on the car, and its identity in terms of the number plate. However, if they wanted to know the full details related to the car, they would have to ask thousands of questions, such as 'how was the car manufactured', 'what are the materials used', 'where were the materials sourced', 'who designed the car and who designed the individual components, and how do those individual components work and contribute the the functionality of the car, and so on, and so on.

What an amazing amount of confusion over a simple concept of 'what and where' is the "I". Do we have such confusion about 'what is a car', or 'what is a house', or 'what is a tree'? The quality of consciousness in humans, and our capacity for abstract thought, gives us the ability to name both objects and subjects, and make distinctions between them, which is a necessity for all scientific enquiry and all human activity. Can you imagine anyone being able to function and survive if they were not able to distinguish between a house and a car, or a rock and a tree, or their arm and their leg, or themselves and someone else, and so on? The reason why this issue of 'who am I?' becomes a problem, is due to greed, and attachment to things which or not "I". Because people usually 'feel' attached to their beautiful house, for example, they consider it a part of themselves. They are the owner. When the house is destroyed during a flood or cyclone, the owner will probably suffer emotionally, even though they themselves have not been injured in any way. If they are not the owner, and are just renting the house, they will probably not suffer nearly as much, unless their material possessions (which are not them) were left in the house when it was destroyed. What's the point of suffering because a material object has been damaged or destroyed? Oh! I see! You think material objects have consciousness, just like you do.

You seem very confused, Tippaporn. Why do you assume that my intention was to find 'dirt'? I'll repeat what I wrote in the post you are responding to. "I'm no expert on 'Seth', and I have to admit that until I searched the internet for information about him, I assumed he was a real person rather than a 'fictional' character created by the female writer, Jane Roberts, whilst she was in many states of some type of trance, communicating with the paranormal. Her life and writings should be a fascinating subject for parapsychologists. Following are a couple of articles which address her beliefs and her background, which seems quite awful, and which must have influenced her later writings." I have an enquiring mind, and don't accept anything simply because a particular authority claims it is true. However, I have a high degree of faith in the 'true' methodology of science, and whenever I see that the requirements of that methodology have not been fully applied, as in the case of Anthropogenic Climate Change, I believe it is sensible to be skeptical. Likewise, if a poet and fiction writer, whilst in a state of trance, claims that 'consciousness creates all the matter in the universe', then I would search for validated evidence that confirms this hypothesis, before accepting it as true. However, I also accept that there are many, many issues that are far too complex for the successful application of the 'Methodology of Science', which is why many 'so-called theories', are really in the category of 'Hypothesis'. The concept that 'consciousness creates all matter' is a hypothesis, similar to the concept that the universe was created by God. I should also address a part of my quote that you might have misinterpreted. "Following are a couple of articles which address her beliefs and her background, which seems quite awful, and which must have influenced her later writings." The sentence does not state that 'her beliefs' seem quite awful, but just her background. If I included both beliefs and background to seem awful, I would not have used the word 'seems'. Perhaps it would have been clearer if I'd changed the position of the commas, as in: "Following are a couple of articles which address her beliefs, and her background which seems quite awful, and which must have influenced her later writings." Everyone throughout their life is influenced by their background and early experiences, but not in the same way because no two situations are identical. Some people become criminals because of traumatic experiences during their childhood. Jane Roberts became a famous writer, which is obviously a remakable achievement.

Well, one of my points is that Seth is a fictional character created by a female author who suffered a very traumatic childhood, and who had many health problems throughout her life, dying at an early age of 55.

I'm no expert on 'Seth', and I have to admit that until I searched the internet for information about him, I assumed he was a real person rather than a 'fictional' character created by the female writer, Jane Roberts, whilst she was in many states of some type of trance, communicating with the paranormal. Her life and writings should be a fascinating subject for parapsychologists. Following are a couple of articles which address her beliefs and her background, which seems quite awful, and which must have influenced her later writings. https://sethresearchproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Cunningham_Contribution-to-the-Study-of-the-Possession-Trance-Mediumship-of-Jane-Roberts_Journal-of-Parapsychology-2019-832-248-267.pdf "Dorothy Jane Roberts was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, on May 8, 1929, the only child of Delmer and Marie (Burdo) Roberts. In 1931, when Jane was two years old, her father and mother divorced. For the next five years, Jane lived on welfare with her mother in half of a rented house shared with her mother’s parents in a relatively poor neighborhood of Sarasota Springs. It was during this time that Jane’s mother began to develop a long-standing rheumatoid arthritis condition that eventually made her bedridden—the same disease of which Jane would die in 1984 at the age of 55. Being raised a Catholic, priests in the parish regularly visited the house to offer help to the family. The sexual overtones of these visits is disclosed in Jane’s recollection about “how the one priest who put her to bed when she was but 3 or 4 years old would ‘play’ with her sexually, and how Marie finally figured that out” (Roberts, 1997, p. 222). My mother was a strong, domineering woman, probably scared to death of the position she found herself in. She was psychotic, attempting suicide several times and scaring the devil out of me as a kid with threats . . . One day [she] would say that she loved me, and the next day she’d scream that she was sorry I’d ever been born—that I’d ruined her life . To escape this unhappy childhood, Jane wrote poetry. By the testimony of those who knew her during these early years, Jane always wanted to become a writer and devote her life to writing poetry, novels, and short stories." This next article addresses her psychic, mediumship processes. It's very convoluted. https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1/9856/ShawA0516.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y "Writing from the 1960s through the early 1980s, Jane Roberts claimed to channel the teachings of a discarnate energy personality named Seth. My purpose in this project will be to show that the Seth material, even as a product of the New Age movement, can be read according to the same principles that scholars have developed for approaching the channeled texts of previous eras. Because the Seth material comprises dozens of works over thousands of pages, I have focused my investigation on a single text: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto. Written by Roberts, the book is a memoir which describes her experiences as a medium. Through various close readings of the manifesto, and by situating the work in a historical and cultural context, I demonstrate that The God of Jane functions as an interpretive guide for reading New Age channeled texts. In addition, I find that Roberts is not only a literary medium, she is also a literary theorist, who translates the tradition of mediumship into the latter half of the twentieth century."

I don't see how that question debunks the theory of evolution in any way. 'Consciousness' is a very broad term. The simplest definition is 'awareness', that is, 'the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings'. According to this definition, it seems reasonable to assume that all forms of life, including plants, must be conscious to some degree and in some way. However, because there are numerous types, levels and degrees of consciousness, one has to clearly define what type and level of consciousness one is referring to when examining consciousness from a scientific perspective. A unique quality of human consciousness is our higher capacity for abstract thought, which allows us to develop complex languages and make distinctions between numerous 'forms', and label them, using language. Form is created by 'human consciousness', because 'form' is a word created by humans. Every idea, concept, thought, word, scientific theory, non-scientific theory such as a creator God and all the other Gods throughout human history, are creations from human consciousness. However, the issue that's most relevant to any life-form, including microbes and bacteria, is the accuracy of its 'conscious creations' and its ability to adapt to a changing environment, and avoid accidents and mistakes, for the purpose of survival and reproduction. All life is in a constant competition for survival and reproduction. There are no exceptions that I'm aware of. If you know of any, please enlighten me. A Buddhist monk might be stting peacefully in a temple or cave, pleased that he avoids all activities that can kill life, such as digging the soil whicn can kill worms and insects. Yet he is probably not aware that within his own body there's a constant battle between competing microbes and bacteria and the human immune system. The number of 'killings' each day within just one human body is astronomical; far too numerous to count.

Can I assume that you are joking? Is there a better explanation for the development of millions of different species on the planet? What sort of questions should be asked that would show, or imply, that 'evolution is a great lie'?

Wikipedia has an interesting article on neurotheology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion The following quote from the article is an interesting explanation of the processes that result in a Buddhist monk, meditator, or contemplative guru, experiencing what they feel is the ultimate reality, or a oneness with the universe. "What Andrew B. Newberg and others "discovered is that intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads one to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid, tangible reality. In other words, the sensation that Buddhists call oneness with the universe." The orientation area requires sensory input to do its calculus. "If you block sensory inputs to this region, as you do during the intense concentration of meditation, you prevent the brain from forming the distinction between self and not-self," says Newberg. With no information from the senses arriving, the left orientation area cannot find any boundary between the self and the world. As a result, the brain seems to have no choice but "to perceive the self as endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything." "The right orientation area, equally bereft of sensory data, defaults to a feeling of infinite space. The meditators feel that they have touched infinity." Here's the definition of 'orientation', in this context. "Orientation is a function of the mind involving awareness of three dimensions: time, place and person. Problems with orientation lead to disorientation, and can be due to various conditions. It ranges from an inability to coherently understand person, place, time, and situation, to complete orientation."

Everything we experience and think about, occurs inside of you, including all the emotions of happiness, hatred, depression, anxiety, and all the experiences of sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing. However, everything is connected, and therefore the conditions of the outside will always influence, to some degree, what happens inside of you.

I would disagree with the concept of 'whole new level'. There are numerous grades and levels of understanding which all involve the intellect, that is, the processing in the mind of all data received through the five senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Such processing also involves the memory of past and related experiences. A person who has never visited a beach anywhere, but has read wonderful stories about the beauty of beaches, which stimulate his/her imagination, might be very disappointed when visiting a beach in Thailand for the first time. The weather might be dull, the water dirty, and the sand might be cluttered with rubish. On the other hand, if the only story about beaches the person has read, is about the awful trash on Thai beaches, then, when the person, for the first time, happens to visit a beach which is pristine and the weather is fantastic, his direct experience will not accord with what he has read. Also, we need to discuss this concept of 'intellectual knowledge alone'. Is there really such a thing? There are varying degrees of distinction to be made between 'fiction' and 'non-fiction'. It's not 'either/or'. Everything is 'fiction' to some degree, because everything, every sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, has to be interpreted by the mind, and such interpretations always differ to some degree, even if there is a consensus on an issue. This is why it's impossible to completely separate the subject from the object. The disciplines of science strive to be as non-fictitious as possible, and succeed to the degree that the scientific understanding becomes non-fictitious, resulting from the application of the 'true methodology of scientific enquiry'. However, because of the complexity of many situations, a degree of uncertainty still exists, especially in the so-called 'soft' sciences, such as economics, psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology, various field of medicine, climate change, and so on. It's difficult to find a comprehensice list of 'soft' sciences, probably because it's not an 'either/or' situation. However, the fundamental concept of a 'soft' science is based upon an inability to create the conditions required to 'falsify' a particular theory, because there are so many variables, and/or the time involved to get a result makes the experiment impractical. Is there anyone reading this, who would prefer to live in a world devoid of the benefit of modern science?

That's is a good point. The precise meaning of the words we use is a very significant issue. When one searches the dictionary for the meaning of any word in common usage, there are often many variations and synonyms, and the meaning often changes with the context. However, the numerous scientific disciplines have to create words that are much more precise. According to my search on the internet, the average English speaker knows, or recognizes, about 40,000 different words, but around half of those are only partially understood, and not understood well enough for active use, so the average English speaker uses only around 20,000 words. The full Oxford English Dictionary list about 500,000 words, but it's estimated there are another half million technical and scientific words that are not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. The field of Biology alone has over 70,000 precise terms, which is almost twice the number of words that the average English speaker has stored in his/her memory. However, there appears to be hundreds of 'branches' of the major scientific disciplines. The following Wiki article lists them, but doesn't provide a total number. Perhaps someone has the time to count them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_branches_of_science

Did you paint that, Sunmaster? That's an excellent painting, but it looks as though you changed your mind and added a second painting of additional clouds above the original painting. Perhaps you bought the painting, then decided to improve it by adding the additional sky and clouds which you painted yourself.

The above quote from Wiki is the most relevant to the issue of 'reality' which is often discussed in this thread. Here's the definition of Epistemology: "The theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion." 'An internal perceptual copy of that world, generated by neural processes in our brain', is equivalent to 'an individual interpretation, in the brain, of everything a person experiences through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.' Since all individual humans are both genetically different to some extent, and have different 'early' experiences embedded in their subconscious, which 'unknowingly' affect their opinions and motives, and have different experiences during their education and development, which also affect their 'path' through life, their likes and dislikes, and so on, then it's no wonder there is such a wide range of different beliefs and opinions, amongst humans, which sometimes result in devastating conflicts and wars. In other words, everyone has at least a slightly different sense of 'reality'. Even Buddhist monks who strive to experience a reality which is free from the influences of the 5 senses, have disagreed on many issues during the past 550 years or so, and continue to do so.

Sometime you just gotta pee. What's the alternative? Let your pee drible down your legs and trousers? This can be a major problem for older men with an enlarged prostate.

You're out by a factor of 10. The current concentration of C02 in the atmosphere is 0.042%, or 420 parts per million.

Of course there isn't a single reality. There are trillions of life forms on our planet, and they are all different to some extent. Even creatures of the same species are all slightly different, so I would estimate, as a very rough guess, that there are around 500 quadrillion realities on our planet, and possibly much more. Each lifeform has its own reality, although the reality of members of the same species tends to be very similar. As I've mentioned before, reality is an inseperable combination of the environment and the subject experiencing the the environment. The reason why science tends to focus more on objectivity than subjectivity is because the environment is absolutely essential for life to exist. However, life is not essential for the environment to exist, although it's true that the existence of life does change the environment to some extent. A Buddhist monk sitting in a cave, meditating 16 hours a day, for 20 years, and imagining another reality, still needs the environment to survive, the air to breath and the food to eat. But the air and the plants and the oceans do not need the Buddhist monk.

I do keep an open mind, and I always change my views when I discover new evidence that is more convincing than the previous evidence that my opinions were based upon. An example is my current view on the claimed catastrophic effects of human CO2 emissions. A few decades ago, when Anthropogenic Global Warming became an issue, I accepted the 'so-called' science that was reported in the media, and which was discussed and explained during interviews of certain scientists, on the media. Why should I doubt the views of respectable scientists, when I've always had a high confidence in the efficacy of the Methodology of Science. However, when I investigated the issues for myself, doing searches on the internet for specific information, which was never addressed during such interviews, such as the history of flooding and storms in a particular location, the pH of the oceans, the undeniable benefits of CO2 which is stupidly vilified in the media as a pollutant, and so on, I soon realized that it wasn't 'validated science' that was being reported, but selected data which was cherry-picked to create the maximum alarm. So I changed my mind with regard to the claimed dangers of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and began thinking about the reasons for this political agenda to create excessive alarm. Was it to prepare well in advance for an eventual scarcity of fossil fuels that would eventually occur as nations continue to develop and increase their wealth? Was it to create fear, in order to control the population? Was it a misguided but genuine attemt to improve the natural environment, and so on?

Surely, in order to 'find out when we pass over to the other side as to why', there must be a thinking and conscious mind that continues to exist after the body has died. That is, a mind that functions without a brain. Wow! How miraculous! What seems more plausible to me is that death is like going to sleep without ever waking up. It's the end. It's all over for the individual. There's nothing to worry about and nothing to think about any more. It's equivalent to perfect and everlasting peace, which is why I prefer this idea, in the absence of any sound, contradictory and scientifically valid evidence..

I think you should begin by making a specific reference to what I've writtem that you interpret as my having a prime assumtion 'that our dear old mother earth, the entirety of our precious physical universe, and the 'you' that you see in the mirror is all there is'. Perhaps we should start with the definition of 'assumption'. The following definition is the most common. "a thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof" Didn't I give two examples in my post that you are responding to, which distinguish between an estimate of probability, that Dark Matter and Dark Energy exist as an explanation for the observed accelerating expansion of the universe, and the certainty of religious people that God exists? Perhaps the problem is the paradoxical way we sometimes use language. I recall stating in a previous post that 'I believe in the true methodology of science, which requires repeated experimentation that produces consistent results before something can be accepted as true, but true only with a high degree of probability.' However, the word 'believe' is a synonym for 'assume', which is to accept that something is true without proof. Therefore, if I say, 'I believe in a methodology which requires proof', it's equivalent to saying, 'I assume without proof that there exists a methodology which requires proof.' Also, I don't know why you are accusing me of cherry-picking data that fit my assumptions, and discarding other data which do not fit my assumptions. I agree that many people do this, but I am not one of them. I try to consider all sides of the argument that are availabe to me, and use my nous (capacity for rational thinking) to assess what seems most probably true.

Not quite. We have to make a distinction between a logical and rational inference that something, which cannot yet be detected, might exist, because it's the best explanation for certain observed phenomena; and an illogical claim of certainty that something which cannot be detected, does in fact exist. An example of the former, is the existence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. It's existence is inferred from observations of the behaviour of distant galaxies. However, it's existence cannot yet be confirmed because Dark Matter and Dark Energy cannot yet be detected. There are other explanations for the observed accelerating expansion of the universe, but they are more problematic and flawed than the hypothesis of Dark Matter and Energy. An example of the latter is the certainty (or belief) that God exists, despite no confirmed and proven detection. This is an example of the 'giant logical faux pas' you refer to.