Expansive thinking, God the universe and humanity

JohnRoberts said:

Our life experience gives us a linear, only moving forward experience of time.

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I would have said " our sober life experience gives us a linear, only moving forward, experience of time" 

But seriously, the point is that there are other 'modes' of consciousness that aren't necessarily linear. 

States of mind such as 'dreaming', 'intoxicated', 'denial of physical needs for meditative purposes'  etc  can have validity in the broad landscape of personal metaphysics exercising.

Integration of these kinds of intuitions, into the 'rational' thinking process can be beneficial, if reasonably balanced and not too 'moon beam' focussed.

JohnRoberts said:

My brain breaker was if space is infinite, what is beyond that? 

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I would point to the "North Pole analogy" again and guess that the question doesn't actually make sense.  ;D

What I always come back to is the question of why anything at all exists. Existance itself is so baffling to me, wouldn't it be (infinitely?) more logical, if there was nothing at all...?

A few years ago I read a whole book about it, "A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing" by the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss. It has lot's of stuff about dark energy and particles sponatinously coming into existance. But it really didn't answer the question for me why there is a Universe that would work in that way... 

living sounds said:

I would point to the "North Pole analogy" again and guess that the question doesn't actually make sense.  ;D

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not remotely the same...  The north pole exists more or less as a physical location...

If the vastness of space exists as a huge mostly empty physical space, is it bound? What exists beyond the boundary? Our life experience teaches us that even vast spaces have boundaries, and something on the other side of such boundaries.

What I always come back to is the question of why anything at all exists. Existance itself is so baffling to me, wouldn't it be (infinitely?) more logical, if there was nothing at all...?

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This is why many people are attracted to religion for answers to such unanswerable (by physical law)  questions.

JR

A few years ago I read a whole book about it, "A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing" by the physicist Lawrence M. Krauss. It has lot's of stuff about dark energy and particles sponatinously coming into existance.


But it really didn't answer the question for me why there is a Universe that would work in that way... 

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you won't have to ponder these questions much longer,

this  planet will be dead by 3019

the magnetic field is the biggest thing on earth

it is going away

solar winds will prevail,

the only solution is a gigantic transformer,  lams will need to be 1 mile wide, pure nickel, lots of polarizing DC, big gap,

we will need to take over Siberia to mine the nickel for this project, who wants to join the secret army? 

CJ said:

you won't have to ponder these questions much longer,

this  planet will be dead by 3019

the magnetic field is the biggest thing on earth

it is going away

solar winds will prevail,

the only solution is a gigantic transformer,  lams will need to be 1 mile wide, pure nickel, lots of polarizing DC, big gap,

we will need to take over Siberia to mine the nickel for this project, who wants to join the secret army? 

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I don't plan to be here in 3019

JR

iomegaman said:

I had a dream a few weeks ago, in the dream we finally encountered alien life...but they came to basically collect the best of us and kept us at a very safe distance...the alien life forms had evolved without ever using violence at all...no "survival of the fittest" even in their DNA...and in the dream it was finally revealed what humans were here for...

We were specifically evolved as super predators because we would eventually overcome ANY system that had competition to us...and we had been specifically "lab grown" on a planet with exponentially more life forms than anywhere else in the universe just so we could adapt to ANY life form competition...

It seems we were basically a species meant to cure space cancer...just send us out into the galaxy where there was uncontrolled competition for resources and sit back...(in the dream our creator species had encountered a violent species in another realm and refused to get their own culture dirty by using violence, hence "Send in the humans")

Strange dream...I remember how odd it felt to think of entire civilisations that had never experienced even the faintest levels of violence and how WE were the actual aliens in the universe, violence was as natural to us as peace was to them...we were looked upon with awe and dread and kept at a very safe distance...I'm sure it did not end well for them, but the dream was over before I knew the inevitable outcome.

We eventually killed our makers.

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I love this thread, the responses, and your avatar.

I feel like a pedant because I can’t help but think that if this non-violent species is seeking a violent action from humans, that thought alone is a violent act. In this case humans are just a weapon to commit an act of violence

I think about these things a lot. I come from a Christian family and have never found that Christianity as I understand answers all of my questions. I guess this is the “faith” part that they talk about. I have never been able to accept atheism though. The universe just seems too perfect and complex to be a random occurrence, but then come the questions about where did the creator come from etc. The only thing I understand is that I don’t understand.

I don’t understand where matter came from, what matter actually is, or how anything ever happened. Maybe there was a thought that somehow existed without matter and all matter as we know of is a representation of that thought

Fuzz Face said:

I don’t understand where matter came from, what matter actually is, or how anything ever happened. Maybe there was a thought that somehow existed without matter and all matter as we know of is a representation of that thought

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“In the beginning was the Word...”

Or if you’re a baseball fan,

“In the Big Inning was the Word...”

Mike

Fuzz Face said:

I love this thread, the responses, and your avatar.

I feel like a pedant because I can’t help but think that if this non-violent species is seeking a violent action from humans, that thought alone is a violent act. In this case humans are just a weapon to commit an act of violence

I think about these things a lot. I come from a Christian family and have never found that Christianity as I understand answers all of my questions. I guess this is the “faith” part that they talk about. I have never been able to accept atheism though. The universe just seems too perfect and complex to be a random occurrence, but then come the questions about where did the creator come from etc. The only thing I understand is that I don’t understand.

I don’t understand where matter came from, what matter actually is, or how anything ever happened. Maybe there was a thought that somehow existed without matter and all matter as we know of is a representation of that thought

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I was a third generation preachers kid...worship pastor for years...strong moral compass etc...but went through a series of events where relationships of over 30 years were tossed aside for the sake of power and empire of nepotism in the church where I served...I was exiled so to speak...it was enough to generate a very critical analysis of ALL I had believed for 50 years...deconstruction is hard, messy.

At the end of it I decided there was just to many coincidences and fine tuning required for life on earth to be just some random act of fate/science/evolution/chance...there is such an abundance of KINDS of life here and the fine tuning required to make it so is so vastly incomprehensible that assigning it as a "random" coincidence seemed to require as much faith as anything I had encountered in religion...however...my concept of God went through a VAST deconstruction and there is very little left of the evangelical christian god in my tool box...the idea of someone creating infinite conscious torment for eternity is complete b*llshit in my book...and to be fair I used academia to deconstruct much of my christian heritage...most of the theology I was handed was backwoods nonsense that had no real root in the biblical text (the evangelical concept of hell is quite out of line with the text/etc.)

At the end of the day I was left with some experiences (actual physical healings etc) that defied common logic but also a bunch of nonsense that religion had created in order to control the narrative...I lost friends who had been close for 30 years...but I cannot abide dishonesty in ones belief system.

I know less now than anytime ever in my life and I have studied harder to know more than ever before...there is an inverse equation that demonstrates the more I need things to be certain the less certain they become...I'm ok not knowing answers that humanity has grappled with for our entire existence.

I figure if God exist, he/she/it/they are probably a bigger atheist than anyone we know...at least he/she/it/they refuses to believe in our definitions of god in the way we describe it.

Regarding the origin and size of the universe, my understanding is there's no proof yet that it is finite.  If it turns out that the universe does in fact have an ever-expanding event horizon and point-of-origin, then the occurrence of a big bang is still not entirely coherent, because how does one account for the area of expansion prior to expansion??? What is it that the universe expands into??  To put it another way, how can there be a boundary of expanding something that crosses a threshold of nothing?  The tools of rational empiricism break down; there is no such thing as no-thing, in a science built on the axiom that to know is to show.  ;D

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
-- through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.
-W.C. Williams

Until proven otherwise, I instead choose to believe that the universe is infinite, as it removes the paradox of something from nothing:

"That which is infinite cannot be many, for many-ness is a finite concept. To have infinity you must identify or define that infinity as unity; otherwise, the term does not have any referent or meaning."
-Carla Rueckert

Parmenides of Elea (fifth century BC): "Out of nothing nothing comes." Similarly, I've never been able to accept the notion that something could come from nothing. If something is, then whether or not it is in our universe seems more of a boundary problem than a question relating to existence.

I suppose I was a Christian until I attended an Anglican school as a boy. I never really made it back to God. However, I've always liked the Spinozan conceptualisation of the universe in which God is effectively coextensive with the universe. Something along the lines of God is the infinite, uncaused and unique substance of the universe. I think what got Spinoza into a bit of trouble back in the day is that this God that he posited did not have an independent will (i.e. was not a liberty to throw thunderbolts on a whimsy (smiting anyone?), chastise straying flock member, or decide to do random acts of magic (staves into snakes, &c). Random acts of magic could still happen, it was just that God didn't decide to do them. Spinoza's conceptualisation is probably as close as I get to believing in a God. I certainly don't much go in for the smiting kind. The Judeo-Christian God can come across as just as petulant as Zeus and all that rabble from time to time. I didn't really think that petulance and omnipotence could co-exist in a proper deity. I'll admit possible in a demigod or minor deity.

A propos de rien, I have always felt that there was inherent self-loathing in the notion that humanity was a cancer on the earth. I suppose we might come across as seemingly without purpose as a cancer. Perhaps our purpose as a species might be to release all the fossilized carbon in the earth in order to facilitate the onset of a new "age of the plants"?

U. G. Krishnamurti

Squeaky said:

A propos de rien, I have always felt that there was inherent self-loathing in the notion that humanity was a cancer on the earth.

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Not necessarily. Being conscious of one's own vanity is a big step towards wisdom, provided it doesn't turn in despair.

  I suppose we might come across as seemingly without purpose as a cancer.

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I haven't found yet a plausible purpose for humanity, as well as for any form of life.

Perhaps our purpose as a species might be to release all the fossilized carbon in the earth in order to facilitate the onset of a new "age of the plants"?

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That would be in opposition to the common belief that evolution tends to develop more apt forms of life. I'm not saying I agree with this notion...

abbey road d enfer said:

The human race is like cancer, it slowly destroys its host, as if it didn't know it will kill him, and results in its own death.
I don't think the Universe actually needs life; it just happened, unfortunately with a blind will to expand.
With the human race came a quest for understanding ((who am I, where do I come from, where do I go, when is dinner?), and a cohort of profiteers taking advantage of the fear and credulity of the weaker (the majority, actually).
In fact, nobody knows the answer, and it's fine like this. The actual answer to these questions would be a terrible disappointment to those who think they had a purpose.
The analogy with bugs is adequate; at the end of our life, we will have managed to make the earth scratch itself.

  That's as likely as cancer ceasing spreading in consideration for its host welfare.

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Indeed. It looks as though we're a cancer, and that's all...however, I do believe there is something behind it. Einstein believed it, and so do I. I've given up trying to sort it all out however, as it all just got too frightening after a while. Suffice to say, I plan on striving towards a more 'virtuous', compassionate existence. I simply do not believe you can get away with murder.

desol said:

Indeed. It looks as though we're a cancer, and that's all...however, I do believe there is something behind it.

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Why do you believe it? Does it help you understand or sooth the anguish at going nowhere? I can't see a single sign that there is a "great watchmaker" that controls everything, because everything is such a mess.

Einstein believed it,

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He never explained why, and I don't think he believed in an anthropomorphic "God".

I've given up trying to sort it all out however, as it all just got too frightening after a while. Suffice to say, I plan on striving towards a more 'virtuous', compassionate existence. I simply do not believe you can get away with murder.

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Same for me, on account it's a better way of living together. No metaphysics in there.

I can't see a single sign that there is a "great watchmaker" that controls everything, because everything is such a mess.

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Entropy!  The world moves toward a more random state.    My wife always hated it when I used that to explain the messes around the house.

abbey road d enfer said:

Why do you believe it? Does it help you understand or sooth the anguish at going nowhere? I can't see a single sign that there is a "great watchmaker" that controls everything, because everything is such a mess.
He never explained why, and I don't think he believed in an anthropomorphic.
Same for me, on account it's a better way of living together. No metaphysics in there.

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Maybe you haven't looked closely enough. Slowed down enough. I sense a peaceful, creative 'infinity' in nature around me...that's the best way I can describe it. I've felt it since I was a kid.  I'm not sure why you used anthropomorphic as no one stating anything about human traits or emotions. Einstein settled on Spinoza as the closest explanation for what he could 'see'.

If you believe that an uncaught serial killer that dies, is free from cause and effect - 'action/result', the only thing I can do is leave you with that to rationalize.

- an additional thing that I'd like to add is that 'for me', this whole thing(life, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, us..our understanding, our sense of morality, etc.); the way it's all set up...just seems too perfect to have been the result of chance.

fazer said:

Entropy!  The world moves toward a more random state.    My wife always hated it when I used that to explain the messes around the house.

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Entropy wins most skirmishes it encounters, but life and evolution are kind of self organizing, as success gets rewarded by reproduction for more success, etc ad infinitum.

Of course don't ask why?

JR

desol said:

I'm not sure why you used anthropomorphic

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Typo error, I wanted to type anthropomorphic God. I've edited the former post.

- an additional thing that I'd like to add is that 'for me', this whole thing(life, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, us..our understanding, our sense of morality, etc.); the way it's all set up...just seems too perfect to have been the result of chance.

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Then, why is the perpetrator hiding?

abbey road d enfer said:

Typo error, I wanted to type anthropomorphic God. I've edited the former post.

If you believe that an uncaught serial killer that dies, is free from cause and effect - 'action/result', the only thing I can do is leave you with that to rationalize.
Then, why is the perpetrator hiding?

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Hey Abbyrd. I took some time to think this over before answering, while having dinner at a relatives this evening. While I have my feelings and ideas on the nature of what's going on, I don't think it's wise for me to try to attempt to answer it confidently, at least at this time, or maybe never at all. I think it best for each person to find there own way, in their own time. Cheers and peace.

Thats the whole point, the only thing that seems for sure is that there is something magical about life. But all of humanities thoughts about it are just that... thoughts. Human consciousness is just a weird byproduct of cells splitting. Theres no meaning, and individuality is an illusion. Just a complicated survival technique. Humanity is one massive organism. To say there is some repercussion or "karma" for the murderer who dies without getting caught is just mystical thinking. It would have to be true for the lion who eats the antelope. There is no wrong or right to life. There is no death, just matter changing form. That is the only real truth. Like CJ eluded to, the sun will eventually explode and this whole thing will be gone. That is definitely going to happen. And since time is all here now, it already happened. So I guess the whole point is really there is no point (in thought).

I mean in my OPINION that is ;D

Yes! U.G Krishnamurti. The anti-guru as some people describe him. And enlightened man who claims you will never become enlightened... so stop trying and get on with it.  A great philosopher!

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mystique_of_Enlightenment/Part_One