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Not only do you want it, if you are like many people, you have likely defined a large part of your purpose for being alive as integral with this belief. Any prospect of rejecting it is going to be terrifying. Life without a false safety net. Very few people come out of this. Reason is 10 times harder than faith, and demands more than most people are willing to give, and to give up. The prospect of eternal life being nothing more than a whim and a wish, while our present life being all we have? Who would want that? Those among us who would rather know what’s true, even if it pales in comparison to a grand but false promise.
Hi Marc. Ok, I take it you think people believe in the soul/spirit due to insecurities and emotional weakness. Essentially, these beliefs are an indicator of a fear of looking at reality for what it actually is, and instead preferring in order to live in a fantasy world, deceiving oneself to pacific one’s fears about mortality. Does that sum it up?
Do you feel this way about anyone who believes in the existence of a soul/spirit, regardless of the person’s worldview or religion?
Do you have more respect for people who can provide reasons/evidence for their belief in a soul/spirit, than you’d have for someone who offered no more reason for their beliefs than ‘a feeling’?
But you only know what you know. You don't know what you don't know. As you learn new things you can totally reject a belief without it being terrifying.
Some people reject anything that is not tangible, predictable and has physical evidence.
Others just "know" there is more, much more to this world then the tangible.
I'm not trying to change your thinking at all. You think what you want to think about soul/spirit.
But don't go around bashing those that have other opinions and beliefs.
Our conditioning to this physical existence is powerful because there are observable consequences to our actions within it, and knowing what is tangible has definite survival implications for us. Few of us have the time or inclination to explore our Reality any deeper than is necessary to facilitate our functioning and survival. We tend to compartmentalize our thinking to accommodate the intangible because most of us recognize there is a lot about our Reality that IS intangible.
The compartmentalization enables us to hold often contradictory views of our Reality that we assign to spirituality or religion. However, if you make the significant and tedious effort to acquire sufficient knowledge about the composition of our Reality on the fringes of known science, the contradictions begin to evaporate. Very, very, few people bother to do this or are capable of doing so. For most, the pragmatic and tangible are far more comforting and provide a reassuring sense of stability to our world and the compartmentalization tends to work.
An honest question was asked. A correct and honest answer was given. The best course of action for everyone, including you, is to embrace reason and naturalism. Why? It comports with observed reality. The only reality there is. Anything else is accepted on faith. Faith is not a reliable means of learning what is true or real. It should be abandoned in favor of reason, logic, and acceptance of our status as temporary living beings who need to make the most of our lives while we are alive. We are the center of our universe. Each of us as individuals. There is no choice, it is our nature.
Good post and I agree.
But each of us is connected to everything else because everything alive - and what most consider not-alive - are composed of the same material.
Hi Marc. Ok, I take it you think people believe in the soul/spirit due to insecurities and emotional weakness. Essentially, these beliefs are an indicator of a fear of looking at reality for what it actually is, and instead preferring in order to live in a fantasy world, deceiving oneself to pacific one’s fears about mortality. Does that sum it up?
Yes, a fairly good summation. I don't think there is an intention to live in a full-on fantasy world, but the universe can be a terrifying place for a conscious life. The overwhelming majority of the cosmos is non-supportive to life. We are pattern-matching computers that seek to establish connections and causation. So naturally questions arise. The mistake is answering them without proper evidence. We seem unable to say "I don't know" and leave it at that. But that is the correct approach. Belief should be limited to that which can be demonstrated to be true using only the tools of science.
Inventing other spaces where mystery tools are required to understand ineffable domains is all nothing more than absurd assertion. Belief should be proportioned to the evidence, not assertions by those who claim access to spaces unavailable for observation, experimentation, testing, analysis, verification by outside parties, and other scientific methodologies.
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Do you feel this way about anyone who believes in the existence of a soul/spirit, regardless of the person’s worldview or religion?
Yes. It's not the person that is important. It is the activity. We are able to compartmentalize irrational notions. It is probably the result of evolutionary psychology that acts as a defense to us being completely consumed by these notions. Survival and prosperity are enhanced if most of our brain acts rationally and prompts positive action to survive in existence. No matter how smart you might be in other ways, compartmentalized irrationality afflicts all men. No one is immune, and we need to fight it each and every day.
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Do you have more respect for people who can provide reasons/evidence for their belief in a soul/spirit, than you’d have for someone who offered no more reason for their beliefs than ‘a feeling’?
Thanks.
Definitely. I love evidence. But it has to meet scientific standards that prevent deception, self-deception, cognitive bias, and other knowledge killers. People think that the scientific method is divorced from daily life, and it is something to be utilized only by professional scientists. That is incorrect. All of us should use scientific methodology every single day.
Demonstration, testing, repeatability, and verification. We do it implicitly at times. For example: Trust, but verify. Ask someone else if they think the same thing. Discuss why that is. Ask why someone believes what they believe and assess if the reasons are sound. The standards of the scientific method belong on the ground in our toolset for daily life. Trivial things with small consequences can be taken at face value. But anything important in your life should be carefully checked and verified.
And certainly, if someone tells you that you're not dying but going elsewhere? That is so absurd that disbelief should be automatic pending extraordinary evidence. We know that all living things die, and we never see them again when they're gone. Dreams don't count. Why? Because they can't be verified with observation from someone else. Neither can hallucinations, or visions, or meditative apparitions, or any other amorphous modality of that type. That is why personal experience is nonsense when it comes to extraordinary claims. It fails the test of repeatability, the test of demonstration, the test of outside verification. It fails nearly every test that we have designed to vet something as bona fide knowledge.
Personal testimony and personal experience are not evidence, and not acceptable when presented as evidence. They may accompany actual evidence, or describe actual evidence, but they cannot BE evidence. They do not explain, they just claim. And asserting something does not provide evidential warrant.
Last edited by Marc Paolella; 01-02-2021 at 09:17 PM..
Love Carl. The Demon Haunted World should be required reading every school year K-12. Every damned year.
Nonetheless the word "connected" is fraught with ambiguity. Am I connected with Andromeda because we both contain carbon? I don't imbue connection based on material composition. I need something much tighter than that.
Love Carl. The Demon Haunted World should be required reading every school year K-12. Every damned year.
Nonetheless the word "connected" is fraught with ambiguity. Am I connected with Andromeda because we both contain carbon? I don't imbue connection based on material composition. I need something much tighter than that.
Love Carl. The Demon Haunted World should be required reading every school year K-12. Every damned year.
Nonetheless the word "connected" is fraught with ambiguity. Am I connected with Andromeda because we both contain carbon? I don't imbue connection based on material composition. I need something much tighter than that.
It's right there in your brain, Marc. It's a part of you that you already tap into, that thing when you are in the flow, like when everything falls into place in RE sales in Succasunna at the same time and you're riding the wave and can't fail. Yeah, I give you the part where you know what you are doing, too. If you were in Bergen, I'd use you.
No, there's not necessarily a crash. Things just go back to normal. But for that brief window, you were in it, you were connected. Let a little woo into your life.
It's right there in your brain, Marc. It's a part of you that you already tap into, that thing when you are in the flow, like when everything falls into place in RE sales in Succasunna at the same time and you're riding the wave and can't fail. Yeah, I give you the part where you know what you are doing, too. If you were in Bergen, I'd use you.
No, there's not necessarily a crash. Things just go back to normal. But for that brief window, you were in it, you were connected. Let a little woo into your life.
I tend to agree with Marc about the ambiguity and how we are all "connected" to Andromeda...
I too am a big fan of Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I don't hear them saying anything I would disagree with. Of course we are all just "specks" in our universe. Of course we all come from the same stuff, but this push to relate all things with some sort of connection that makes me part of Andromeda is just a little too much woo all considered I think. For people like Marc and me anyway. Our brains.
Each one of us is part of the universe. Of course. To what extent we are one with the universe is where some people take a fair bit of woo liberty compared to others.
"Not that there is anything wrong with that!"
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