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Oh my, what an argument!
Can you touch time? Place it into a tube or into a Pitri dish? Take a specimen of it and place under microscope? And yet, you honest to gods believe that it exists and base entire humanity life on it!
Can you touch a thought? Yet, there they are, flooding your mind!
Can you touch mind? Yet, there it is!
Can you touch love, beauty, anger, passion, talent and so on and so on? Yet, there they are, daily present!
Many things that ARE, can't be touched. Or otherwise sensed or measured with instruments and, yet, they do exist.
Oh my, what an argument!
Can you touch time? Place it into a tube or into a Pitri dish? Take a specimen of it and place under microscope? And yet, you honest to gods believe that it exists and base entire humanity life on it!
Can you touch a thought? Yet, there they are, flooding your mind!
Can you touch mind? Yet, there it is!
Can you touch love, beauty, anger, passion, talent and so on and so on? Yet, there they are, daily present!
Many things that ARE, can't be touched. Or otherwise sensed or measured with instruments and, yet, they do exist.
I doubt that was meant as an absolute argument.
Some things are commonly accepted abstractions, but I think it's fair to say that time is useful and reproducible enough that it is far more demonstrably "real" than some other abstractions such as afterlives. That is why the computer you're reading this on has a clock crystal that divides time into tiny increments in order to synchronize and organize its internal activities. I am not aware of such practical applications for afterlives, other than to make claims about them that way too many people are impressed with.
Oh my, what an argument!
Can you touch time? Place it into a tube or into a Pitri dish? Take a specimen of it and place under microscope? And yet, you honest to gods believe that it exists and base entire humanity life on it!
Can you touch a thought? Yet, there they are, flooding your mind!
Can you touch mind? Yet, there it is!
Can you touch love, beauty, anger, passion, talent and so on and so on? Yet, there they are, daily present!
Many things that ARE, can't be touched. Or otherwise sensed or measured with instruments and, yet, they do exist.
As is often the case, you so want to argue that you're missing the point of the post. The dinosaur fossils are there for all to see. The concept of reincarnation is clearly not there for all to see.
I have a very large back yard. Sometimes one of my neighbors will drop over when I am working in the back yard. No matter who walks into my backyard they're going to see 2 palm trees, 3 citrus trees, 3 pine trees, 2 other deciduous trees, assorted cactuses, 2 beds of lantana, and so forth. Whether they know the name of the various plants is irrelevant. They see the plants. The plants are physically there (just as with the dinosaur bones).
On the other hand, if I'm thinking of eternity (in the broad sense) while I'm working in my backyard, I'm probably thinking about karma and/or rebirth/reincarnation. If my neighbor walks into my backyard at the same time and by some weird coincidence is thinking about eternity, she (as a christian) is thinking of heaven. If a Hindu walks into my backyard, he or she may be thinking of some other version of eternity.
No intelligent and realistic person is going to walk into the Hall Of Dinosaurs in the Smithsonian in Washington and say, "Oh, they're just fake". But lots of people will say that reincarnation/rebirth...or on the other side of things that christian heaven...isn't real.
Some things are commonly accepted abstractions, but I think it's fair to say that time is useful and reproducible enough that it is far more demonstrably "real" than some other abstractions such as afterlives. That is why the computer you're reading this on has a clock crystal that divides time into tiny increments in order to synchronize and organize its internal activities. I am not aware of such practical applications for afterlives, other than to make claims about them that way too many people are impressed with.
Fair enough but, does that prove that time exists? Because there is a mechanical gizmo, measuring certain imaginary data, does not prove, that that data is real. I do agree with you that, indeed, time concept is a matter of convenience to predict certain events. But, otherwise, those events are relying on movements of the celestial spheres and components but, by no means, on imaginary time.
So, kindly, please, re read my post that you quoted and ask yourself simple question.
Do I mordant, have more proof for mind/thought existence, than I do for time? Unless you are brain dead, and you are not, at least, being capable of providing coherent online conversation, you WILL admit that yes, you do have proof for mind/thought existence. And yet, outside of volumens, written by others, you have NO proof to time existence. ZERO.
And yet, time was used as argumentative solid proof. While, being a fantasy. And, 100% for each one who posted here, existing mind/thought - is considered a fantasy. Relevant to the OP, if mind/thought exists, a priory proven by all the posts here AND can not be measured by any physical instruments, then what gives grounds to discarding possible transition of that mind/thought construct into an after the death state?
Fair answer should be - plausible, until proven otherwise.
To what, one may argue that science measures mind/thought with say encephalograph. To what I'll argue that, that device only measures brain activities, RESULTING from mind/thought activity, but not the mind/thought itself. Just like the quartz crystal is designed to correlate change in position of the celestial bodies into digestible concept of time.
Fair enough but, does that prove that time exists? Because there is a mechanical gizmo, measuring certain imaginary data, does not prove, that that data is real. I do agree with you that, indeed, time concept is a matter of convenience to predict certain events. But, otherwise, those events are relying on movements of the celestial spheres and components but, by no means, on imaginary time.
So, kindly, please, re read my post that you quoted and ask yourself simple question.
Do I mordant, have more proof for mind/thought existence, than I do for time? Unless you are brain dead, and you are not, at least, being capable of providing coherent online conversation, you WILL admit that yes, you do have proof for mind/thought existence. And yet, outside of volumens, written by others, you have NO proof to time existence. ZERO.
And yet, time was used as argumentative solid proof. While, being a fantasy. And, 100% for each one who posted here, existing mind/thought - is considered a fantasy. Relevant to the OP, if mind/thought exists, a priory proven by all the posts here AND can not be measured by any physical instruments, then what gives grounds to discarding possible transition of that mind/thought construct into an after the death state?
Fair answer should be - plausible, until proven otherwise.
To what, one may argue that science measures mind/thought with say encephalograph. To what I'll argue that, that device only measures brain activities, RESULTING from mind/thought activity, but not the mind/thought itself. Just like the quartz crystal is designed to correlate change in position of the celestial bodies into digestible concept of time.
In my view, the fair answer would be, "possible, but highly unlikely given that all actual evidence points the other way".
Also, it's not really an actionable concept in that all we can really do is speculate about it anyway. On these fora we have people who imagine all sorts of things about the afterlife -- worshipping god 24/7, streets of gold, reunited with loved ones, a stable of virgins at your service, complete loss of individual identity in an oceanic universal consciousness, selecting a new body to reincarnate in after a life review which you will then forget -- you name it, it's been thought of by someone, somewhere.
I don't mind at all if you pick one of the countless afterlife concepts you like to imagine yourself in and even tout it to others so long as it's non-coercive. I'm not here to disrespect you or rain on your parade. I'm just not personally convinced by these arguments. Also, since getting away from assuming I was headed for eternal life, I have been able to re-examine my assumption that an afterlife is necessary or valuable, and I have come to the conclusion that it's actually nowhere near as appealing as I used to think. Because I actually took the time to imagine myself either caught in the Christian eternality, or in the Eastern wheel of Karma, and realized that either one would eventually become its own hell.
Your arguments about time are really about the fact that things aren't always what they seem at first glance, or have subjective or illusory aspects. But it is still observable and repeatable and has vast utility, which is more than can be said for the supernatural, which is by definition unobservable and therefore unverifiable.
I would not go so far as to argue that the supernatural lacks personal utility for the believer. It can be a source of comfort (to a point), can provide personal subjective experiences that bind you to others of similar beliefs, and much more. It just never worked, on balance, for me.
Maybe the fairest thing I can say is that I was looking for an accurate model of my lived experience, something that would accurately explain and predict actual outcomes, and found the religious model almost comically unreliable. Where as many people are just looking for peace of mind, and have a better ability than I to suspend disbelief in the process of getting there. If one can dispense with evidentiary requirements, and just embrace ideas because they feel good and/or appeal to you, then perhaps they should. Who am I to say otherwise? It simply just isn't for me.
That's fine. Every firm conviction is what it is ONLY because it speaks to mind, heart and spirit. It does to mine, does not to my wife, we are still together after 40 years. I am not even sure, why you decided that I am on some sort of a quest to convince anyone in my views. I am only pointing out that, anything is plausible until proven beyond any doubt, as false and, considering that, pretty much only disinformation is mass supplied to masses.
But, you see - this is conceptual argument, not religious. I follow the principle, expressed in one sentence - Only lies will be printed. There is a very long story behind this and this is not a philosophy or politics section to bring it in. I'm just a crazy old fool, that should have been retired by now and spend time with grandchildren, instead of on idle conversations. But what I found, took me good forty years to arrive at and, it speaks to my mind, heart and spirit - and that is the ultimate proof for me.
That's it. To each of his own, my friend. As they say in the East, there is 968 dhammas to choose from but, they all come to the same end.
PS. A word of wisdom from then CIA director, William Casey
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