God's Existence Avoids the Infinite Regress trap of a Creator (Islam, punishment)

[MysticPhD]

Wow, this thread exploded. I am so pleased. I will try to catch up with everyone.

Originally Posted by Mircea

Consciousness exists because highly specialized brain cells interact with certain chemicals.

There are neither highly specialized brain cells in Space, nor the chemicals required for the highly specialized brain cells to function.

Electromagnetic energy is a by-product of the chemical reactions with the highly specialized brain cells that permit consciousness, not the cause of consciousness.

All objects greater than 0°Kelvin produce electromagnetic waves as a result of black-body radiation, but that energy is in the infrared band and is neither consciousness nor the cause of consciousness.

That is science, which is readily distinguishable from the science fiction you peddle.

Sound waves, actually.

Sound waves can travel quite far. If a 10 km asteroid impacted Earth 20,000 km away from me (meaning on the opposite side of the Earth from me) roughly 17 hours after impact the strength of the sound wave is 61 decibels (dB).

You wouldn't hear that in an urban environment. Possibly suburban. Definitely in semi-rural or rural, but you wouldn't know what it was.

If it was 150 km wide, you'd definitely hear it at 98 dB and be able to tell what it was.

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

That consciousness exists is indisputable since I am conversing with it. But what exactly its energy form IS seems in dispute. Too many seem ready to accept that it is an illusion which is an absurd denial of the existence of Self. I have no idea how anyone can think they do not exist. But the part of them that does all the thinking is made of consciousness. So what kind of energy do YOU think consciousness IS?

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

<Crickets>

Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes

Hint, the world does not revolve around your posts.

I would most like Mircea's answers to the above.

Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes

Unless that idea of self is part of the illusion. To call it absurd is just question-begging, and shows limited thinking.

I cannot comprehend how an illusion can exist to question its existence. That does seem absurd to me.

No one is arguing they do not exist. Perhaps you should investigate the various theories of consciousness before telling us your opinion.

That is very presumptuous since anyone who is really familiar with my views would know that I have done far more than that on the issue of consciousness.

Originally Posted by Harry Diogenes

You are presenting your theory as fact again. You are pretending you know it is received by the brain while ignoring the simpler idea it is a product of the brain.

My views are a mix of knowledge and extrapolation/hypotheses from what is known, but you can treat them as my opinions if that makes you more comfortable. The ideas of being received by the brain and produced by the brain are NOT mutually exclusive. The brain is a transceiver. It produces our consciousness and records it within the brain. Then we experience its production as a delayed broadcast of the recorded information. We are truly living after the fact. Our unconscious is our true Self influencing our consciousness and being added to by our newly produced consciousness.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by Clintone

I can't speak for everyone else, but the reason I hadn't responded to that yet was because I was waiting for Mircea to do it, and because I pity you right now, because you're currently engaging in a discussion with about...what...20 people simultaneously? But you're the one who doesn't seem to want your thread locked, which implies that you want the discussion to continue, so I'll respond now.

You are correct. I do not want the thread locked and I enjoy the challenges to my views. They have put in place a rule specifically designed, IMO, to act as quicksand should I venture too close to it. Unfortunately, my views are closely tied to the banned topic.

I've heard Daniel Dennett say that consciousness is an illusion. I haven't looked into his views enough to be sure of what he means by that, but one thing I do know is that illusions still exist. I can say that a mirage is an illusion. The mirage still exists, just not in the way we see it.
Presumably, the reason why you can't understand how anyone can think they don't exist is because you're not understanding that statement the way those people see the statement.
I'm suspecting it's similar to the concept of nothing. If someone says, "the universe emerged from nothing," on the face of it, that sounds very odd, but what is nothing, really? Most definitions of nothing I've heard have actually been something. The one exception was from a philosopher, and he was only speaking of a hypothetical state.

Dennett is simply expressing the typical belief among neuroscientists that there is no homunculus in the brain. No one running the show so to speak. This runs counter to my experience of running the show so I reject it. I agree with Descartes. I think therefore I am.

Regarding your question asking what kind of material do you think consciousness is...I don't know. Perhaps there is no way for us to detect it if it stems from some material. Aside from that though, regardless of how bizarre other people's explanations for consciousness are...your explanation requires the existence of some alternate plane of existence you have yet to show a good reason to believe exists, as well as things that we also don't know to exist interacting with us in ways we don't know exist, and you've neglected to mention why any of that even stands a decent chance of existing.

Au contraire. We may not know WHAT it is that exists, but it comprises over 95+% of our Reality We call it dark matter and dark energy because we cannot directly measure it, much as we cannot directly measure the content of consciousness. So I do have at least 95% of our Reality having that plane of existence needed.

Which I see as a partial counter to Freak's post, kind of, but not a complete counter. Our minds can be dramatically altered through the world we live in. If nearly everything about us changes when we get Alzheimer's, or a serious brain injury, or amnesia, or just age from age five to ninety-five, what's left in our mortal world that necessarily has any similarity to our soul in the next world? At least for some people, the way I'd see it, the existence of any kind of soul that continues on in the afterlife would seem like it would be less like a continuation of themselves and more like the creation of an entirely new person, in which case, I don't see why my soul has much, if anything, to do with me. So, as I see it, you're basically proposing the existence of a species of alien that, for some reason I have yet to understand, has some similar characteristics with humans (and I don't know how these similarities would be determined yet) and that live in an alternate reality, before you've even explained why this alternate reality exists.
To illustrate the oddness of your worldview, I'll give an example of how that might really play out if your views, as I've seen them expressed so far on this thread, are true:
Maybe our true form is Danny DeVito. Maybe, after we die, we all become Danny DeVito, forever.
I can think of worse fates. Mr. DeVito is one of my favorite actors.
There should be some kind of consistency our minds retain throughout our lives if our soul has anything to do with us, or I see no reason to claim that my soul has anything to do with me. The way I see it, humans are basically able to change into completely different people, more or less, throughout the course of their lives...particularly if we look at the change from babies to older children. Babies seem to lack self-awareness and are entirely dependent on their parents. Older children can run around and explore and communicate in complex ways and have complex social lives. What do the two have to do with each other? Does the soul change as we grow, or do we just have the souls of adults throughout our lives, even while babies, or what?

We are growing and developing so the kinds of changes you allude to are to be expected. That accidents, trauma, disease, etc. can interfere with that development is just the way things are. I believe the essential spiritual characteristics (Love, Mercy, Compassion, Kindness, Decency, etc.) will be preserved.

The point I'm trying to get at is that you have ideas that might be right...but don't really make much sense upon examination. I don't even know exactly what you're proposing beyond "stuff could happen after we die that involves something that might have some similarities to us continuing on." Never mind how or why or what those similarities might be.

I hope my Synthesis will help you to get on the same page so we can engage the issues with parity.

Meh...I kind of agree with both you and phetaroi. Yeah, our opinions can't alter reality (although I think I remember, in some other thread, you believing they can. If I'm correct about that, that is seemingly wrong...but that's another topic).

It is indeed another topic and a deep one at that but too far afield for this thread.

But there are countless different opinions about what God is, many of which believers have confident, pretty clear, mental images of. Sometimes God is a vague comforter, like yours. Sometimes God is something more humanoid - a powerful father. Sometimes God is a punisher of one's enemies. Sometimes God is a frightening and abusive controller. Sometimes God is some difficult to comprehend, vaguely friendly sense of a presence that exists when one explores the woods. They're all God, and if worshiped, they're all, basically, different types of false idol worship because everybody's inventing their own gods, in their minds, to revere, despite nobody having met the real one, if a real one even exists. (Not that I'm not opposed to idol worship. I love idol worship. It can be a fun, rewarding, emotionally healthy experience. However, I think many people are opposed to idol worship, who commonly engage in it.)

The worship idea is overrated since it is almost universally misunderstood as something God wants or needs. Its primary function is to aid us in achieving the proper mental state for the production of our consciousness.

That's why I like to define my perception of God when getting into any serious discussions about it. God is, almost always, a sentient force that controls the universe, with various additional characteristics tossed on, but stating specific characteristics seems to avoid a lot of pointless bickering about exactly what I mean when I say "God."

But if many people in our world contact your God, or Einstein's God, rather than theirs', they're going to be quite surprised.

Note that you seem to believe that God is more a part of the universe than some external being controlling it, but I see little difference between the two. If it has intelligence, there should be at least some part of it that's separate from the universe around it, in the same way that my mind perceives itself as separate from my body, and that, in my imaginings, I often perceive myself as looking in on my mental world rather than being a part of it.

There is. My panentheistic God is BOTH immanent AND transcendent. God IS the substrate for our Reality (the immanent part). But God's consciousness is not constrained by the "laws" we have discovered governing our Reality (the transcendent part) just as our imagination is unconstrained by our physical laws. I see this as being created in God's image (imagination) and likeness (having imagination).

[Arach Angle]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

Wow, this thread exploded. I am so pleased. I will try to catch up with everyone.




I would most like Mircea's answers to the above.

I cannot comprehend how an illusion can exist to question its existence. That does seem absurd to me. That is very presumptuous since anyone who is really familiar with my views would know that I have done far more than that on the issue of consciousness.

My views are a mix of knowledge and extrapolation/hypotheses from what is known, but you can treat them as my opinions if that makes you more comfortable. The ideas of being received by the brain and produced by the brain are NOT mutually exclusive. The brain is a transceiver. It produces our consciousness and records it within the brain. Then we experience its production as a delayed broadcast of the recorded information. We are truly living after the fact. Our unconscious is our true Self influencing our consciousness and being added to by our newly produced consciousness.

i think what you are missing the intermediate step. that is the machine langue.

If you take apart a computer, can you figure out that the image on the screen is actually +/- five volts that are actually translated from 1's and o's, and then to dots on an led? now, imagine some other langue than binary. maybe even quantum computing in the brain. We need to figure what the state of the machine is in to produce the image in our heads.

could you imagine just one's and zero's being superimposed on the same atom? trying to figure that out? let alone other numbering systems like base ten. what about "kernels"? what are the kernels, if they are even used? what about packets of information?

where i agree with you is that all life on this planet is the universe processing the information in a meaningful way. That the universe is processing information in a meaningful way is the reason we are alive. We can even say QM seems to be the best reason we have, even though its not actually a mechanism yet.

I just don't know why you need a awareness field. i don't know why you need awareness as the unified as apposed to it being from the interactions between fields.

maybe, if the acceleration is true, the universe becomes another inflationary period ... then boom again. or if we collapse ... then boom again.

its all about that boom.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by Clintone

I find Mystic's statements interesting, at least. I like to read his posts because he puts thought into them. I'll have to read more of his posts before arriving at your conclusion. I've just disagreed with many, if not the vast majority, of his statements on this thread.

I do remember that there was a poster named Eusebius who was a master at mental gymnastics. He'd do these extremely creative explanations for how Noah's Ark and the worldwide flood could have occurred. If Mystic is a more advanced version of that...I'd find that even more interesting. I feel like most people, kind of, trick themselves into believing things they have some kind of motive to believe, frequently. For example, if I'd rather eat a candy bar and watch Star Trek Voyager than go jogging, I'll find my brain suddenly inventing all sorts of creative explanations for why eating the candy bar and watching Star Trek would be the better idea. I'm always interested in discovering better and better experts at mental gymnastics. What I'd really love to discover is someone who is simultaneously brilliant but who is so unaware of the motives behind their thought process that they essentially have a kind of Machiavellian split personality controlling a completely un-knowing, innocent one who genuinely believes that a Tyrannosaurus Rex might have been a vegetarian - using its giant, bone-crushing jaws to break apart hard vegetation like a fruit bat.

If Mystic's like that, just with a more sophisticated view of what God might be, and the nature of reality...I'm going to stalk him and learn everything I can about every thought that has ever crossed his mind. He's going to become my new main hobby, and I will be utterly thrilled to read every word he has to say.

Hmmmm. "Verry Interestink!" I am no Eusebius, but I found him fascinating. I welcome your interest, Clintone. Nothing would make Arq (Transponder) happier than if you would proclaim to have sussed me out and agree with him.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

No, "I don't Got it!" You have no substantiation for this OPINION. God is WHY we exist and God establishes our Reality in His consciousness field (unified field). Those are my beliefs. Your beliefs or lack thereof are irrelevant to the tenability of mine because I repeat, "We Do NOT Know."

This post shows exactly the problem in your thinking. You complain that the other poster has no substantiation for his OPINION. Fair enough. But neither do you with yours. You have just thrown a whole lot of crapola up against the wall trying to find something that will stick. Just because you talk science doesn't mean it's good science.

Frankly, I can't decide whether you're a fraud or naive. But if you want to prove to us that there's science behind your idea, then here's what you need to do. Peer review by other scientists. Convincing a few people on this forum that you know your science is laughable. And if you're really a PhD, you ought to know that. I suggest you find a true science forum and present your belief. I'm pretty sure I already know what the result will be.

I dare you.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by ImissThe90's

It also isn't logical or reasonable to say, as Mystic does, "Doesn't matter about anyone else's perception, because mine is the correct one!".

Please cite a direct quote of mine corroborating this lie or retract it.

Like I said, they can't all be right. The most logical explanation is that they are all, in fact, wrong. They are likely experiencing nothing more than their imagination.

Non-sequitur. Since we do not know, we cannot determine whether or not one of them is right so "all wrong" does not follow.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by Arach Angle

let's look at mystic's. mystic says that QED defines our realty. That is a trait of his god that is supported by science.

Originally Posted by ImissThe90's

So I can just say I saw something while meditating, look at some science to find something to back it up, and science supports my God?
That makes no sense, Arach.

Can you try to focus on what is being said and not what you want to think is being said. Arach simply looks at the traits and attributes claimed for God and looks to see if what we know from science supports the existence of such traits. Quantum ElectroDynamics is supported by science. It is the first theory to achieve full agreement between Quantum Mechanics and Einstein's Special Relativity.

[Mircea]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

Your preferred beliefs about those issues do NOT decide the issue.

Congratulations, you just refuted the entire premise of your thread.

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

That consciousness exists is indisputable since I am conversing with it.

Uh-huh. And X-Moses conversed with a pillar of smoke.

What of it?

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

But what exactly its energy form IS seems in dispute.

It's not in dispute. It's only in dispute in your mind, because you have no understanding of physics.

You keep screaming "Dark Matter/Energy" while failing to realize it's just a hypothesis, one of several competing hypotheses, none of which have been proven.

You don't even know what Dark Matter is.

It's brown dwarves, black dwarves, red dwarves, white dwarves, neutron stars, black-holes, planets, planetoids, moons, comets and asteroids and other celestial objects like chunks of ice or rocks.

That's what Dark Matter is, and it's neither connected nor conscious.

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

But the part of them that does all the thinking is made of consciousness.

No, wrong. Consciousness is the product of highly specialized brain cells and chemical reactions. It is not a thing that is separate and apart from the brain.

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

So what kind of energy do YOU think consciousness IS?

Consciousness has no energy. There is only the electro-chemical reactions with highly specialized brain cells emitting electro-magnetic energy in the range 10 Herz to 100 Herz, which is so weak it can barely penetrate the 6.5 millimeters of skull-bone.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by Mircea

Congratulations, you just refuted the entire premise of your thread.
Uh-huh. And X-Moses conversed with a pillar of smoke.
What of it?

Thanks for responding. You are trying to argue that the intellects ensconced in your consciousness and mine are NOT conversing as proof of our existence as consciousness energy. Good luck with that.

It's not in dispute. It's only in dispute in your mind because you have no understanding of physics.

Quite presumptuous even if you think you are psychic. I have an extensive understanding of physics and everything that exists within our Reality is some manifestation of a field in the form of energy/mass/momentum. I am asking what form the intellect I am conversing with is in since we cannot directly measure it.

You keep screaming "Dark Matter/Energy" while failing to realize it's just a hypothesis, one of several competing hypotheses, none of which have been proven.
You don't even know what Dark Matter is.
It's brown dwarves, black dwarves, red dwarves, white dwarves, neutron stars, black-holes, planets, planetoids, moons, comets and asteroids and other celestial objects like chunks of ice or rocks.

I have repeatedly said we do not know WHAT dark matter or dark energy are, but that they comprise over 95% of our Reality is NOT in dispute.

That's what Dark Matter is, and it's neither connected nor conscious.

Since we cannot directly measure either dark energy or dark matter, you cannot make this claim.

No, wrong. Consciousness is the product of highly specialized brain cells and chemical reactions. It is not a thing that is separate and apart from the brain.

Since we cannot directly measure the intellect in consciousness, you cannot make this claim.

Consciousness has no energy. There is only the electrochemical reactions with highly specialized brain cells emitting electromagnetic energy in the range 10 Herz to 100 Herz, which is so weak it can barely penetrate the 6.5 millimeters of skull-bone.

Everything that exists within our Reality is some manifestation of a field in the form of energy/mass/momentum. You can only talk about what we can measure. Since we cannot directly measure the intellect in consciousness, you cannot make the claim about consciousness in bold.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

Please cite a direct quote of mine corroborating this lie or retract it. Non-sequitur. Since we do not know, we cannot determine whether or not one of them is right so "all wrong" does not follow.

It's a paraphrase, and it's accurate.